Category Archives: Academia

Playing the Odds

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Timothy Burke

The idea that higher education makes you a better person in some respect has long been its soft underbelly. The proposition makes most current faculty and administrators uncomfortable, especially at the smaller teaching-centered colleges that are prone to invoke tropes … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Generalist's Work, Swarthmore | 10 Comments

Subtraction Stew

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Timothy Burke

If the greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing people he didn’t exist, the greatest trick of a certain kind of neoliberalism has been to convince people that in all circumstances and times we live in the shadow of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

Fighting Words

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Timothy Burke

Days pass, and issues go by, and increasingly by the time I’ve thought something through for myself, the online conversation, if that’s the right word for it, has moved on. One exchange that keeps sticking with me is about the … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Generalist's Work | 4 Comments

Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax–and Commencement Speakers

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Timothy Burke

I found myself really annoyed in the last week when I came across the many cases of faculty approvingly endorsing the fate of commencement speakers like Robert Birgeneau and Christine Lagarde, and scolding William Bowen for scolding students for their … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics | 16 Comments

Read the Comments

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Timothy Burke

I keep coming back, obsessively and neurotically, to the question of what a liberal arts education is good for. I do think it helps with the skills that pay the bills. I do think it can make you a better … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Miscellany | Comments Off on Read the Comments

Frame(d)

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Timothy Burke

High Anxiety In modernity, dread only takes a holiday once in a while. Right now Mr. Dread is hard at work all around the world, and he’s not just sticking to the big geopolitical dramas or some single-issue fear. He’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics, Swarthmore | 8 Comments

Nervous Conditions

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Timothy Burke

Nick Kristof’s call to cloistered, monastic faculty to come out and speak to wider publics has already been lambasted, dissected and critiqued by a wide range of academics. My knee jerked pretty hard as well when I read it, for … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Blogging | 3 Comments

Who’s the Boss?

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Timothy Burke

In the current wave of online ill-will between contingent and tenure-track faculty (which of course most faculty in either group will never see, know about or care about), one of the common sentiments that produces some modest degree of agreement … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 20 Comments

Now I’m In For It

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Timothy Burke

So I’ve overhauled my survey course on the history of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa this semester as an experiment in “flipping the classroom”. I’m not quite flipping the way that some do, with lectures as homework and … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Defining "Liberal Arts", Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Unplanned Obsolescence

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Timothy Burke

Solidarity and sympathy in online culture and social media are fleeting things: you are only as good as your last response rather than a lifetime of responses, and only as welcome as you are permitted to be within a particular … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 10 Comments