Category Archives: Academia

A Clean Room for Colleges?

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Collaboration is one of those things that everyone in higher education claims to want more of, in more ways, and yet almost no one ever gets around to pushing beyond calls for more. I keep feeling in particular that there’s … Continue reading →

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It’s a Confidential Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Timothy Burke

I had a heated conversation a few years back with someone I know whose work for the U.S. government routinely involves classified information. We weren’t talking about the content of that work, because this person takes classification very very seriously. … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 6 Comments

There Are More Things on Heaven and Earth Than Dreamt of in Your Critique

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Just back from some research work that took up my energy for writing and thinking, I spent some time catching up on blogs and social media. I followed one link out from a Facebook friend to Paul Mullins’ excellent Archaeology … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Blogging, Popular Culture, Production of History | 8 Comments

A New Approach To My Honors Seminar

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Swarthmore’s Honors program is one of its claims to distinction. I’ve always enjoyed teaching the seminars, with their close-knit and ambitious discussions, but I have also found the whole program somewhat frustratingly in its eccentricities and emphasis. Essentially the program … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Afterthought (On Microaggression)

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

One thing that I know annoyed many of the students is that they set out to get action and ended up instead having to tell personal stories in order to educate peers and administrators and professors. Here’s one more story, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

Fifth Thought: How (Not) to Play the Hunger Games

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

I was frustrated as a student activist in the 1980s about our dependency on the narratives and grammar of activism that we inherited from the 1960s and 1970s. Sometimes it felt more like we were historical re-enactors than people living … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 9 Comments

Fourth Thought: Respect Is a Two (Or More) Way Street

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

One of the more frustrating struggles threading through the protests has been about who is entitled to be “an ally”. What this often amounts to is well-meaning white kids begging for a gold star, an affirmation of their goodness. Sometimes … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 4 Comments

Third Thought: On Relevance

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

One of the best threads running through the events of the last week has been a critique by some students that classes at Swarthmore that are about race, class, gender, sexual orientation, that seem to be about oppression or marginalization, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Swarthmore | 3 Comments

Second Thought: On the Persistence of Wrong Action

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Earlier this year, the novelist Teju Cole wrote an essay for The New Yorker called “A Reader’s War”. A lot of people in my various social media feeds, on both the right and left, found its premise naive and its … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

First Thought: On Generosity and Teaching

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Timothy Burke

In the last week, I’ve heard a lot of staff and faculty talk about how hard it is going to be to teach and advise students in the near-term future, how much they now feel that they have to second-guess … Continue reading →

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