Celebrate the beginning of spring, fall, and/or new years with these reads:

• How War in Syria has Changed Lives.
• An American Drug Bust in West Africa.
• The Miracle of Minneapolis.
• Evidence-Based Wishful Thinking at the NYT.
• The State of Adjunct Professors.
• The Civil Rights Movement’s Forgotten Radicals.
• When the KKK was Mainstream.
• Adjunct Professors and the Myth of Prestige:

In the spring of 1997, the adjuncts of nine colleges and universities in New Jersey received their ballots in the mail. We voted, returned the ballots, and waited for the count. The vote was successful and we were unionized. Despite initial resistance from administrators—the special interests—it seemed an easy fight.

Nearly two decades have passed since that vote. The union I voted for still exists and it still protects its members. But other things have changed. Teachers unions are under siege across the republic as the push to further privatize education gains momentum in legislatures and courts (a push that is largely funded, of course, with public money). Adjunct labor has been further divided in many ways, with new classes of positions cropping up at various schools, our right to collective bargaining challenged or denied at every step; we are all sharing the same employment insecurity courtesy of semester-to-semester, year-to-year, or provisional multi-year contracts. There are more of us now, twice as many as then, far too many—a surplus, a logjam, a largely expendable work force of intellectual laborers. To the world outside, we are “professors.”

• Academic Dishonesty, India Edition.
• Why Do Severed Goat Heads Keep Turning Up in Brooklyn.
• The Dark Side of Selma.
• Gates Foundation says climate change is a threat, but invests in fossil fuel companies.
• Private Justice in Alabama.
• The Real Bullies at School – Coaches.
• A Girl, A Shoe, A Prince: The Endless Evolution of Cinderella.