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Category Archives: Academia
Wary About Wisdom
Cathy Davidson has been steadily working away at the problem of inequality within higher education and at how higher education contributes to inequality. I admire the intensity of her focus and her willingness to consider radical rethinking of institutions of … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts"
6 Comments
Bourdieu + Foucault Spell Trouble For Us All
I wonder sometimes if one of the perverse consequences of the general dissemination of Bourdieu-style analysis of culture and habitus has been to inform and strengthen conservative attacks on public support for education, the arts, and so on. Especially when … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Politics
4 Comments
Rebooting
Folks who follow this blog, or my social media presence generally, have probably noted that I’ve not had much to say lately. Part of that is feeling overly busy, but it’s more the consequence of a growing sense of perplexity … Continue reading
How College Works: Assessment
I don’t think it’s a secret that I am very frustrated with prevailing trends in higher education assessment. I feel bad that this frustration often forces me to be a major annoyance to great local colleagues in the faculty and … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
7 Comments
How College Works: First Appreciation
One of the most extreme extreme cases of an unfair division in attention to two different books dealing with the same subject is the difference between William Deresiewicz’ Excellent Sheep and Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takacs’ How College Works. The … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
6 Comments
Abandoning the Post
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s governing body just made a serious mistake that will have consequences for the entirety of U.S. academia. I’ll let people who are better thinkers about organizing a political response within academia take the next … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
15 Comments
On the Salaita Decision
I wrote a short note to Chancellor Wise when this story first broke expressing hope that she would find a way to delicately undo the decision. I didn’t join some of the collective statements for a variety of reasons. But … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
15 Comments
Conduct Unbecoming
A campus Title IX coordinator recently made some interesting comments to Elizabeth Nolan Brown at the Dish about the problem of sexual assault on college campuses. A lot of the national debate, such as it is, about what’s gone wrong … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Swarthmore
13 Comments
The Potential Condescension of “Informed Consent”
Many years ago, I was involved in judging an interdisciplinary grant competition. At one point, there was an intense discussion about a proposal where part of the research involved ethnographic research that concerned illegal activity in a developing country. We … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Africa, Oath for Experts
1 Comment
The Listicle as Course Design
I’ve been convinced for a while that one of the best defenses of small classes and face-to-face pedagogy within a liberal arts education would be to make the process of that kind of teaching and coursework more visible to anyone … Continue reading