Category Archives: Academia

Big-Tent Problems

One of the best experiences I’ve had in my career to date has been participating in a relatively informal group that meets irregularly at Bryn Mawr to talk about complex systems, emergence, and information theory among other topics. I’ve had … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 4 Comments

Precautions and Paralysis

In response to a prompt recently, I had to try and do a bit of forecasting about higher education. I’ve spent too much time teaching about the history of futurism and prediction to find that a comfortable invitation. No matter … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 7 Comments

Looking Backward

I’ve been fiddling with the syllabus for my Image of Africa class, which I am to teach this fall for the first time in a while. No course in my repertoire has changed as much in my underlying assumptions about … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa, Production of History | 22 Comments

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

A short while before I was supposed to get on a plane last week to fly to Chicago and participate in an event at Northwestern University, something I’d really been looking forward to, I started to have the sinking sense … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Domestic Life | 7 Comments

Literacy Quizzes (Again)

There is probably no point whatsoever to a critique of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s civics literacy quiz (via 11d), but hope springs eternal, I guess. First off, my generic criticisms of these kinds of historic or social-science literacy quizzes. Usually, … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Cleaning Out the Augean Stables, Politics, Production of History | 5 Comments

The Work of Cultural Capital

This entry about the Ramey study on family time at 11d got me thinking. Laura, citing David Brooks and Tara Parker-Pope, observes that a shift towards parents spending much more time with their children doesn’t seem to have any downside. … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Domestic Life | 6 Comments

Evaluation Across the Disciplines

One perspective that I’ve occasionally heard from colleagues that makes me grit my teeth, that I have very little patience for, is that it is so difficult to evaluate the quality of work in other disciplines or judge their comparative … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 3 Comments

What Color Is Your Leaden Weight?

Strictly in the department of anecdotes-don’t-make-data and a single year doesn’t make a trend, there’s been a slight acceleration in movement in enrollments this year at Swarthmore towards the sciences, particularly chemistry and biology. Reading enrollments anywhere is hard, even … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 9 Comments

Teacher Teach Me

Like a lot of other bloggers, I was impressed by Elizabeth Green’s article on teacher training in the most recent NY Times magazine. Green describes some movement towards improving the process of training teachers both before and after they’re on … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 8 Comments

Sacrificing Your Isaacs

Sorry for the long silence. Busy couple of weeks and a stretch where I just felt impossibly fatigued. ———– I’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of budgets, a Gordian knot if there ever was one. Whether we’re talking … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics | 1 Comment