Monthly Archives: January 2014

Who’s the Boss?

In the current wave of online ill-will between contingent and tenure-track faculty (which of course most faculty in either group will never see, know about or care about), one of the common sentiments that produces some modest degree of agreement … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 20 Comments

Now I’m In For It

So I’ve overhauled my survey course on the history of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa this semester as an experiment in “flipping the classroom”. I’m not quite flipping the way that some do, with lectures as homework and … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa, Defining "Liberal Arts", Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Heroic Measures (The Modest Proposal Remix Edition)

Bill Keller has spent the last two years in a dull and very public exasperated talking-to with the rest of the world for not being enough like Bill Keller. Since the New York Times helpfully selected him among all the … Continue reading

Posted in Cleaning Out the Augean Stables | 2 Comments

Unplanned Obsolescence

Solidarity and sympathy in online culture and social media are fleeting things: you are only as good as your last response rather than a lifetime of responses, and only as welcome as you are permitted to be within a particular … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 10 Comments