Category Archives: Academia

I’m trying to think of sensible, fair-minded things to say about this story (via Margaret Soltan) about a Dartmouth instructor who plans to sue her students for making discriminatory remarks about her pedagogy, but I’m coming up empty. (Here’s the … Continue reading →

[cross -posted at Cliopatria] I tell my students that all good research projects and analytical writing have to provide an answer to the question, “So what?”, a justification for the project or the essay. One student asked me if history … Continue reading →

I had an interesting conversation with a student about this week where we were supposed to be talking about his work and I ended up hogging the conversation. He was asking me some interesting questions, though, about how I think … Continue reading →

For everyone else, April is the month where nature springs back to life, love is in the air, pleasant days and good feelings. I feel like in the academic calendar, April is the equivalent of winter. The year is dying, … Continue reading →

Last night, I was searching through my iPod for some of the African music I’ve ripped from my CD collection, to play briefly in class today. Unfortunately, some of what we’ve got is on old vinyl records that I’ve never … Continue reading →

Oso Raro and Tenured Radical underline one of the biggest problems with the tenure system in academia: its mystery. They’re both trying to write about a controversial tenure case at the University of Michigan, to understand the seeming mismatch between … Continue reading →

Margaret Soltan linked to an essay by William Deresiewicz, and somehow it got under my skin. I’m having one of those weeks where my to-do list is like the hydra, blossoming items faster than I can accomplish them, so I … Continue reading →