Category Archives: Academia

Why the Owl of Minerva Doesn’t Get Party Invitations After Dusk

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I don’t do this very often, but I’m going to get a bit aggressive about disciplinary expertise for a second. William Easterly has an interesting post about the “mystery of the benevolent autocrat”, observing that while the highest growth rates … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Production of History | 5 Comments

Who’s Martin Luther?

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Timothy Burke

Let’s say there’s this person. He or she and family regularly go to church on Sunday, and their church is Lutheran. For them, church is a supportive community first, a theological and philosophical experience second (or third or fourth). He … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Production of History | 5 Comments

Learning the Rules

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I got into a conversation earlier this week about the cultural capital of graduating students at elite universities. What students learn in their coursework and from being in a college community builds some of the cultural capital that they will … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 8 Comments

How to Succeed as a Court Jester

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Timothy Burke

If you want to be the kind of professorial public intellectual who gets quoted a lot or profiled in mainstream media, some advice (keeping in mind that I’ve done a few laps around that racecourse) about what to write and … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics | 2 Comments

The Temperament of Serpents

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I went surf fishing in Delaware for the first time this summer. My previous experience had been limited to freshwater fishing, mostly for trout, some with a spinning reel using lures and bait, some fly-fishing. So I spent some time … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Production of History | 3 Comments

The Emperor’s New Interface

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Timothy Burke

A beginning-of-the-semester raft of posts is on the way. Let me start off with a little appetizer of outrage before I get on to the long-winded equivocating, though. It seems like most librarians are willing to kiss and make up … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | Comments Off

Evidence Is Old-Fashioned?

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Timothy Burke

So, more wailing and gnashing of teeth about Andrew Breitbart. The New York Times has a piece on plagiarism that reviews an increasingly prominent argument that contemporary college students simply don’t know that copying the words of another writer verbatim … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics | 10 Comments

Tenure from a Wide Angle

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Timothy Burke

So I see that the issue of tenure has come up again while I was away. No surprise: it will keep coming up until some stable new institutional norm for academic employment emerges. What is much clearer now than when … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 4 Comments

Extension Tutorials?

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Timothy Burke

On a somewhat related topic to the use of customized writing services. I keep getting emails from a Canadian company that is basically trying to sell themselves as short-term research assistants for hire. I’m not terribly impressed with the company’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 5 Comments

Cheats and the Cheaters That Use Them

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Timothy Burke

To foil cheaters, some universities have adopted an impressive range of new technologies, according to a New York Times story this week. All that stuff looks pretty expensive, especially if it isn’t just a showy pretense designed to fool would-be … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 1 Comment