Category Archives: Academia

Yesterday, All Our MOOC Troubles Seemed So Far Away

Everybody remember the expectation that a smart, professorial President would hire an equally smart, skilled staff who would prove that a well-run government can be quickly responsive to the needs of the society, efficient in the execution of its duties, … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Politics | 5 Comments

In Loco Parentis?

I used to believe much more in procedural reform as a way to deal with questions of fairness, equity and justice. That every institution and community should have its established rules and processes, and if you signed on, you accepted … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 14 Comments

Look! Over There! What On Earth Can That Be?

When I was working on my dissertation, I read through the lengthy transcript of a Southern Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry that had been charged with investigating the poor living conditions in some of the rural reserves that Africans had been … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics | 5 Comments

Smarter Than You: The Ideology of the Incentive (Parking Lot Edition)

I’ve already made my feelings about most uses of “incentives” by technocratic planners fairly plain, and besides, I’m just really at best a handmaiden on this point for my colleagues Ken Sharpe and Barry Schwartz, who make the argument more … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics, Swarthmore | 15 Comments

The Cheese Stands Alone

The movement for higher education to divest from fossil fuel producers frustrates me. First and foremost in the way that participants in the movement are anointing themselves as sole moral paragons struggling through a wasteland of sin and sinners. I … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Lashed to the Rack, or the Ideology of Incremental Improvement

I was walking through a poster session at a conference on educational and learning games some years ago and came across two very nice presenters who had created a game for students who were planning to study abroad in countries … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Games and Gaming, Politics, Swarthmore | 6 Comments

The Strains of Decision

I know I’ve written very similar posts to what follows, but this is really on my mind as I watch the ‘dance of enrollment’ with a bit more focus than in the past, due to my receiving the harshly punitive … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 6 Comments

Procrustes’ Market

My knee jerks pretty hard when I read an argument that because a service or institution does not behave like a perfect model market in economics, it must be changed until it conforms to the model. There is wreckage strewn … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics | 4 Comments

The Method

Obama’s new education policy neatly showcases the spectrum of choice we now have in our political system: to be ground down a bit at a time by technocrats who either won’t admit to or do not understand the ultimate consequences … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics | 11 Comments

Denial Is a River In Egypt

While I’m broadly in agreement with Adam Frank’s op-ed about the grave political and social costs of the current state of scientific literacy in America, there is something about the way that he comes at the issue that feels like … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics, Popular Culture, Swarthmore | 7 Comments