Breaking Ranks

Breaking Ranks
Author: Colin Diver
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1421443066

Some colleges will do anything to improve their national ranking. That can be bad for their students—and for higher education. Since U.S. News & World Report first published a college ranking in 1983, the rankings industry has become a self-appointed judge, declaring winners and losers among America's colleges and universities. In this revealing account, Colin Diver shows how popular rankings have induced college applicants to focus solely on pedigree and prestige, while tempting educators to sacrifice academic integrity for short-term competitive advantage. By forcing colleges into standardized "best-college" hierarchies, he argues, rankings have threatened the institutional diversity, intellectual rigor, and social mobility that is the genius of American higher education. As a former university administrator who refused to play the game, Diver leads his readers on an engaging journey through the mysteries of college rankings, admissions, financial aid, spending policies, and academic practices. He explains how most dominant college rankings perpetuate views of higher education as a purely consumer good susceptible to unidimensional measures of brand value and prestige. Many rankings, he asserts, also undermine the moral authority of higher education by encouraging various forms of distorted behavior, misrepresentation, and outright cheating by ranked institutions. The recent Varsity Blues admissions scandal, for example, happened in part because affluent parents wanted to get their children into elite schools by any means necessary. Explaining what is most useful and important in evaluating colleges, Diver offers both college applicants and educators a guide to pursuing their highest academic goals, freed from the siren song of the "best-college" illusion. Ultimately, he reveals how to break ranks with a rankings industry that misleads its consumers, undermines academic values, and perpetuates social inequality.

Breaking Ranks

Breaking Ranks
Author: Ronit Chacham
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2003-12-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781590510995

Originally published in 2003 following the Second Intifada, a series of powerful conversations with Israeli soldiers who refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2002, fifty-two members of the Israel Defense Forces signed an open letter, published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, detailing why they refused to serve in Gaza and the West Bank. A year later, the movement counted more than five hundred of these “refuseniks.” In a series of moving and provocative conversations, nine members of the movement tell why they refused “to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve, and humiliate an entire people.” These nine refuseniks are sergeants, majors, or lieutenants; their names are Guy, Assaf, Rami, Yaniv, Tal, Shamai, Yuval, Ishay, and David. They tell of their individual family backgrounds and beliefs, and as they share their stories of personal and moral struggle, they also raise the disturbing issue of human rights abuses by the Israeli army in the occupied territories. Through these personal accounts, the refuseniks offer new perspectives on entrenched ideas about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Their voices carry a message that is much needed and sorely lacking in our discourse about the current crisis: one of hope and humanity.

Breaking Ranks

Breaking Ranks
Author: Matthew C. Gutmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2010-08-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0520947908

Breaking Ranks brings a new and deeply personal perspective to the war in Iraq by looking into the lives of six veterans who turned against the war they helped to fight. Based on extensive interviews with each of the six, the book relates why they enlisted, their experiences in training and in early missions, their tours of combat, and what has happened to them since returning home. The compelling stories of this diverse cross section of the military recount how each journey to Iraq began with the sincere desire to do good. Matthew Gutmann and Catherine Anne Lutz show how each individual's experiences led to new moral and political understandings and ultimately to opposing the war.

Breaking Rank

Breaking Rank
Author: Norm Stamper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2005-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781560256939

The former chief of the Seattle Police Force offers a hard-hitting, candid assessment of law enforcement, discussing issues of gun control, prostitution, narcotics, and race in the process.

Breaking Ranks

Breaking Ranks
Author: Matthew C. Gutmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2010-08-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520266374

"Breaking Ranks eloquently documents the many ways that militarism infiltrates ordinary lives, and is a powerful reminder of the personal costs of war. A model of sensitive and perceptive analysis of oral history interviews, Breaking Ranks reaches its audience on many levels. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about better connecting intellectually and humanly with the current political moment."—Robert A. Rubinstein, The Maxwell School of Syracuse University "Breaking Ranks is extraordinarily well written, lively and compelling. This is the first book to combine gripping, personal stories of anti-war Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with rigorous academic analysis."—Aaron Glantz, author of The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle Against America's Veterans "As Matthew Gutmann and Catherine Lutz show in this timely and important book, soldiers can and do think on their own and come to political and ethical conclusions that often run contrary to what the military might want, expect, or portray. In Breaking Ranks, Gutmann and Lutz give us a valuable addition to our understanding of soldiers, politics, and ethics."—Andrew Bickford, George Mason University

Breaking Ranks II

Breaking Ranks II
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2004
Genre: Administration scolaire - États-Unis
ISBN: 9780882103532

Breaking Ranks

Breaking Ranks
Author: National Association of Secondary School Principals (U.S.)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 128
Release: 1996
Genre: Education
ISBN:

This definitive study offers numerous recommendations for reforming and enhancing American schools -- from curriculum to diversity and student-based learning to school governance.

How We Do Harm

How We Do Harm
Author: Otis Webb Brawley, MD
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2012-01-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1429941502

How We Do Harm exposes the underbelly of healthcare today—the overtreatment of the rich, the under treatment of the poor, the financial conflicts of interest that determine the care that physicians' provide, insurance companies that don't demand the best (or even the least expensive) care, and pharmaceutical companies concerned with selling drugs, regardless of whether they improve health or do harm. Dr. Otis Brawley is the chief medical and scientific officer of The American Cancer Society, an oncologist with a dazzling clinical, research, and policy career. How We Do Harm pulls back the curtain on how medicine is really practiced in America. Brawley tells of doctors who select treatment based on payment they will receive, rather than on demonstrated scientific results; hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that seek out patients to treat even if they are not actually ill (but as long as their insurance will pay); a public primed to swallow the latest pill, no matter the cost; and rising healthcare costs for unnecessary—and often unproven—treatments that we all pay for. Brawley calls for rational healthcare, healthcare drawn from results-based, scientifically justifiable treatments, and not just the peddling of hot new drugs. Brawley's personal history – from a childhood in the gang-ridden streets of black Detroit, to the green hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital, the largest public hospital in the U.S., to the boardrooms of The American Cancer Society—results in a passionate view of medicine and the politics of illness in America - and a deep understanding of healthcare today. How We Do Harm is his well-reasoned manifesto for change.

Star Wars Rebels: Servants of the Empire: Rebel in the Ranks

Star Wars Rebels: Servants of the Empire: Rebel in the Ranks
Author: Jason Fry
Publisher: Disney Electronic Content
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1484717015

As a new student at Lothal's Imperial Academy, Zare Leonis does everything it takes to pass as a model cadet. But secretly, he is a hidden enemy among Imperial loyalists, determined to discover the truth about his missing sister and to bring down the Empire. Luckily, he has his tech-savvy girlfriend Merei by his side, willing to help him however she can—even if it means dealing with criminals in the shadiest parts of Capital City. In the meantime Zare must face down a dangerous foe of his own: Lieutenant Curahee, who seems bent on pushing Zare to his breaking point. Join these rebellious cadets as they risk it all to take on the fearsome Empire.