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Author Archives: Timothy Burke
Be Nelson Mandela
It is 1981 and I am writing my first long research paper ever in my high school government class on why the U.S. government and U.S. institutions need to commit more aggressively to fighting apartheid. I am citing a report … Continue reading
Posted in Africa, Politics
34 Comments
In Loco Parentis?
I used to believe much more in procedural reform as a way to deal with questions of fairness, equity and justice. That every institution and community should have its established rules and processes, and if you signed on, you accepted … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore
14 Comments
Look! Over There! What On Earth Can That Be?
When I was working on my dissertation, I read through the lengthy transcript of a Southern Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry that had been charged with investigating the poor living conditions in some of the rural reserves that Africans had been … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics
5 Comments
Smarter Than You: The Ideology of the Incentive (Parking Lot Edition)
I’ve already made my feelings about most uses of “incentives” by technocratic planners fairly plain, and besides, I’m just really at best a handmaiden on this point for my colleagues Ken Sharpe and Barry Schwartz, who make the argument more … Continue reading
The Cheese Stands Alone
The movement for higher education to divest from fossil fuel producers frustrates me. First and foremost in the way that participants in the movement are anointing themselves as sole moral paragons struggling through a wasteland of sin and sinners. I … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore
5 Comments
Amendments
John Winthrop’s City Upon a Hill, amended for 2013: Now the onely way to ENSURE this shipwracke and to SCREW OVER our posterity is to followe the Counsell of Micah, to doe UNjustly, to SCORN mercy, to YELL LOUDLY ABOUT … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
7 Comments
Lashed to the Rack, or the Ideology of Incremental Improvement
I was walking through a poster session at a conference on educational and learning games some years ago and came across two very nice presenters who had created a game for students who were planning to study abroad in countries … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Games and Gaming, Politics, Swarthmore
6 Comments
War and Understanding
The violence at Kenya’s Westgate Mall over the weekend stirs something in me besides fear and sorrow and pain. There’s also the thump of righteous anger thudding away in me as I read the reports. I’m slower to let it … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
5 Comments
The Strains of Decision
I know I’ve written very similar posts to what follows, but this is really on my mind as I watch the ‘dance of enrollment’ with a bit more focus than in the past, due to my receiving the harshly punitive … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
6 Comments
Mind It Is Blown
Me reading suggestions from Twitter about how to do some data visualizations of co-citations out of my Honors seminar on colonial Africa. Some days the difference between a dilettante who just likes to read about cool stuff (me) and people … Continue reading
Posted in Digital Humanities
Comments Off on Mind It Is Blown