White and black boys and girls, fast friends in a suburban elementary school, are tugged apart by seemingly irresistible cultural and academic forces by the time they begin high school.
Apart from one mandatory freshman course designed to teach how to approach college-level work, and courses that may be prescribed by graduate schools, there is no academic forced-feeding here.
"The Human Stain" is about Coleman Silk, an academic forced to resign when he is accused (falsely, he believes) of using a racist word; who is having a quiet affair with an illiterate cleaning woman; and who has an even more inflammatory secret in his past.
According to the report, such positions now make up only 24 percent of the academic work force, with the bulk of the teaching load shifted to adjuncts, part-timers, graduate students and full-time professors not on the tenure track.
While many higher education experts — and parents — bemoan the fact that tenured professors are a shrinking presence, now making up less than a quarter of the academic work force, a study released Monday found, surprisingly, that students in introductory classes learned more from outside instructors than from tenured or tenure-track professors.
Any sustained loss of foreign students, scholars and scientists would damage American universities, where foreigners make up a huge portion of the graduate student body and academic work force, as well as industries that rely on short-term infusions of technical talent.
This casualization of the academic labor force has not helped higher education.
A major issue for both groups is a decline in the participation of women in science as they make their way through school and into the academic work force.
As an academic mother forced to befriend a stranger who claims to be her estranged son's pregnant girlfriend (played by Ellen Page), Janney once again proves to be among today's most beguiling talents.
Or to a rising star in the academic world forced to turn down a prestigious university appointment because she cannot take her care package with her? Disabled people can't be economically productive if the support that enables them to live independently is missing or unaffordable.
