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Author Archives: Timothy Burke
Procrustes’ Market
My knee jerks pretty hard when I read an argument that because a service or institution does not behave like a perfect model market in economics, it must be changed until it conforms to the model. There is wreckage strewn … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics
4 Comments
Suez Has Already Happened
The problem with “turning points”, as they’re commonly described in popular forms of historical storytelling, is that very few of them were recognized clearly as such at the time. When I’m in the archives reading past individuals writing to and … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
12 Comments
The Method
Obama’s new education policy neatly showcases the spectrum of choice we now have in our political system: to be ground down a bit at a time by technocrats who either won’t admit to or do not understand the ultimate consequences … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics
11 Comments
Denial Is a River In Egypt
While I’m broadly in agreement with Adam Frank’s op-ed about the grave political and social costs of the current state of scientific literacy in America, there is something about the way that he comes at the issue that feels like … Continue reading
A Clean Room for Colleges?
Collaboration is one of those things that everyone in higher education claims to want more of, in more ways, and yet almost no one ever gets around to pushing beyond calls for more. I keep feeling in particular that there’s … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
Comments Off on A Clean Room for Colleges?
It’s a Confidential Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand
I had a heated conversation a few years back with someone I know whose work for the U.S. government routinely involves classified information. We weren’t talking about the content of that work, because this person takes classification very very seriously. … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore
6 Comments
Teleology and the Fermi Paradox
I sometimes joke to my students that “teleology” is one of those things like “functionalism” that humanist intellectuals now instinctively recoil from or hiss at without even bothering to explain any longer to a witness who is less in-the-know what … Continue reading
Historians Don’t Have to Live in the Past
In what way is the American Historical Association’s notion of a six-year embargo on digital open-access distribution of dissertations even remotely sustainable in the current publishing and media environment surrounding academia? On one side, you have disciplinary associations like the … Continue reading
The Codes of the Political Class
One of Benedict Anderson’s most famous insights into modern nationalism is the role he assigns to national newspapers in creating the sense of “simultaneity” that gave people across the national territory a sense that they were experiencing events together at … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
11 Comments
There Are More Things on Heaven and Earth Than Dreamt of in Your Critique
Just back from some research work that took up my energy for writing and thinking, I spent some time catching up on blogs and social media. I followed one link out from a Facebook friend to Paul Mullins’ excellent Archaeology … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Blogging, Popular Culture, Production of History
8 Comments