Author Archives: Timothy Burke

What Won’t Change (II)

Progressives, conservatives, independents, libertarians, the disgustedly disengaged: whatever your political affiliation, you need to stop waiting for a Presidential (or Congressional) election to bring you closure. The day after, everyone you hate and fear politically is right here, just waiting … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 5 Comments

What Won’t Change (I)

Whatever happens in the U.S. elections tomorrow, two fundamental things will not change. First, the national security policy of the United States is unlikely to change in any systematic or meaningful ways, meaning both the approach of the government towards … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

The Whole World In Your Hands

My least favorite genre of online discourse, whether it’s on Facebook or email, is the hortatory appeal. Sometimes this comes before a petition or request for donation. More often, coming from the liberals and progressives who make up the majority … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 4 Comments

A Month of Blogging, Ten Years On

So as often happens with this blog, I get busy and other things occupy my attention. It’s all there in the title, folks. What also happens is I store up a lot of things I want to talk about in … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Blogging | 11 Comments

Leisure and the Liberal Arts

Johann Neem argues at Inside Higher Education that the liberal arts have no economic value, that they are intrinsically tied to the achievement of a free, affluent society that is relieved of the burdens of scarcity and open to the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 2 Comments

On Swarthmore’s Sorority

There’s been a running discussion at Swarthmore for a year now, mostly among the students and some between the students and the administration, about the effort to get a sorority established at the college. National media recently reported on the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 23 Comments

Commentary on Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

We had the first of four symposia on Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Righteous Mind last night at Swarthmore. The hope is that we can demonstrate the distinctive advantages that a “liberal arts” approach can yield when many different scholars … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

Tweet Away

I refuse to use the hashtag, but the bubbling-up of a long-standing conversation about live communications from academic conferences over the last three days has been interesting to read. While I can’t disagree with Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s pragmatic advice to concede … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 9 Comments

The Frenzy

I like the idea of “entrepreneurship” a lot when it describes the compression of several complicated things into one concept or practice. The first would be a structured kind of practical creativity, a purposeful or directed path to having and … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 5 Comments

Better Pedagogy, Less Cheating: Three Ideas

So Stuyvesant High turns out to have a cheating problem–or perhaps all selective high schools do? If the high schools do, I’m sure the colleges and universities that receive their graduates do as well. And so in turn do the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 5 Comments