Author Archives: Timothy Burke

A New Approach To My Honors Seminar

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Swarthmore’s Honors program is one of its claims to distinction. I’ve always enjoyed teaching the seminars, with their close-knit and ambitious discussions, but I have also found the whole program somewhat frustratingly in its eccentricities and emphasis. Essentially the program … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Treason For Revealing a Legal Program That Everyone Already Knows About

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Timothy Burke

A shorter follow-up on surveillance and Snowden. Jedi mind tricks only work on the weak-minded. So all the pundits who are saying that Snowden should be arrested and thrown in jail forever and ever for committing treason but who are … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments

The Slow Poison of the Covert Imagination

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Terms like “rape culture” and “gun culture” are useful when they remind us that the harm of a thing is bigger, subtler and more pervasive than the thing itself. When we talk about guns, we’re missing an important point if … Continue reading →

Posted in Information Technology and Information Literacy, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 7 Comments

Recombinant Friedman

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Timothy Burke

My rephrasing of Thomas Friedman’s column today: “One of the best ways to learn about the changing labor market, if you can’t find a taxi driver to have a conversation with on your way to the airport, is to find … Continue reading →

Posted in Cleaning Out the Augean Stables | 11 Comments

A Partial Archive: Swarthmore 2012-2013

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

First Thought Second Thought Third Thought Fourth Thought Fifth Thought Afterthought (On Microaggression) There isn’t (and may not be for some time) a single narrative account of the recent turmoil at Swarthmore College, but the timeline looks something like this: … Continue reading →

Posted in Swarthmore | 8 Comments

Afterthought (On Microaggression)

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

One thing that I know annoyed many of the students is that they set out to get action and ended up instead having to tell personal stories in order to educate peers and administrators and professors. Here’s one more story, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

Fifth Thought: How (Not) to Play the Hunger Games

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

I was frustrated as a student activist in the 1980s about our dependency on the narratives and grammar of activism that we inherited from the 1960s and 1970s. Sometimes it felt more like we were historical re-enactors than people living … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 9 Comments

Fourth Thought: Respect Is a Two (Or More) Way Street

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

One of the more frustrating struggles threading through the protests has been about who is entitled to be “an ally”. What this often amounts to is well-meaning white kids begging for a gold star, an affirmation of their goodness. Sometimes … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 4 Comments

Third Thought: On Relevance

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

One of the best threads running through the events of the last week has been a critique by some students that classes at Swarthmore that are about race, class, gender, sexual orientation, that seem to be about oppression or marginalization, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Swarthmore | 3 Comments

Second Thought: On the Persistence of Wrong Action

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Earlier this year, the novelist Teju Cole wrote an essay for The New Yorker called “A Reader’s War”. A lot of people in my various social media feeds, on both the right and left, found its premise naive and its … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 1 Comment