CAA News Today

Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

Know Your Rights: A Tool for Artists

Creative Capital spoke with Joy Garnett from the Arts Advocacy Project at the National Coalition against Censorship about a new educational tool, Artist Rights, which was created to address questions that artists may have about their rights under the First Amendment. (Read more from Creative Capital.)

Is Getting an MFA Worth the Price?

In the 2000s, the MFA was pitched as a Golden Ticket, with an ever more youth-oriented art market generating rumors of dealers snapping up artists right out of school. A degree that was originally designed to allow you to teach became seen as the pathway to a gallery career. In more recent years, angst about art school has become entangled with the political debate about student debt’s crushing toll. (Read more from Artnet News.)

Notes for a New Faculty Member

When I first started teaching more than twenty years ago, I was a TA, nervous, excited, and preoccupied by technical details that suddenly seemed important. There were assignments to draft, grading techniques to practice, readings to master, departmental policies to incorporate into syllabi, and training sessions to attend. It was easy, in those overwhelming days, to forget why I wanted to be in the classroom to begin with. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.) 

How Men Benefit from Family-Friendly Tenure Policies

Academics are well aware that gender gaps continue to exist on American campuses. It is true that female students now outnumber male students, and also that more women earn professional degrees compared to men. But it is also true that only 28 percent of tenured faculty are women. (Read more from the Conversation.)

Fair Use and the Future of Art

Twenty-five years ago, in a seminal article in the Harvard Law Review, Judge Pierre Leval changed the course of copyright jurisprudence by introducing the concept of “transformativeness” into fair-use law. Soon thereafter, the Supreme Court embraced Leval’s new creation, calling the transformative inquiry the “heart of the fair use” doctrine. Yet the transformative test has failed art, and this article shows why and what to do about it. (Read more from the New York University Law Review.)

Organizations with Staying Power

As we strive to ensure that our arts organizations have a sustainable future, management teams across the UK are focusing on income and diversifying business models as key drivers for resilience. Resilience is the buzzword at the moment and was the subject of a session at the Arts Fundraising Summer School at the University of Leeds. (Read more from Art Professional.)

A Brief Guide to the Battle over Trigger Warnings

The University of Chicago’s dean of students recently sent a strongly worded letter to incoming freshmen declaring that the institution didn’t endorse “trigger warnings” or “intellectual safe spaces.” The message touched off a debate both inside and outside academe about the use of such terms on college campuses. Here’s a look at how professors view the warnings—and at how widespread they really are. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

How Trigger Warnings Silence Religious Students

Last week, the University of Chicago’s dean of students sent a welcome letter to freshmen decrying trigger warnings and safe spaces—ways for students to be warned about and opt out of exposure to potentially challenging material. While some supported the school’s actions, arguing that these practices threaten free speech and the purpose of higher education, the note also led to widespread outrage. (Read more from the Atlantic.)