The Perimeter Institute will be hosting a workshop in September on “Science in the 21st Century“: Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars… Continue reading Science in the 21st Century
Category: Academia
Social Class and Educational Access
Via Matt Yglesias, the Quick and the Ed offers an absolutely terrific article about the effect of class on access to college, using AJ Soprano as an example. On The Sopranos, AJ was a delinquent, who nevertheless got sent off to college because of the tireless efforts of his mother, and the family’s money. Drawing… Continue reading Social Class and Educational Access
Edit Wars: Now With Extra Credentials!
In what is, alas, probably too deadpan to be an April Fools’ joke, Mark Wilson offers a breathtaking suggestion on Inside Higher Ed: I propose that all academics with research specialties, no matter how arcane (and nothing is too obscure for Wikipedia), enroll as identifiable editors of Wikipedia. We then watch over a few wikipages… Continue reading Edit Wars: Now With Extra Credentials!
When You’re Up for Tenure, You’re Never Paranoid Enough
It’s weird how blogs go in cycles– I’ll blog nothing but science for a while, and then flip into Academic Mode, as I have this week, and blog about nothing but tenure issues and academic politics. But, that just seems to be how things work, and the stories catching my eye recently are all about… Continue reading When You’re Up for Tenure, You’re Never Paranoid Enough
Quest for College
The latest issue of the Cult of the Purple Cow Quarterly— er, I mean, the Williams Alumni Review has a story about a woman I knew in college (she was a senior when I was a freshman) who has started a non-profit organization called Quest for College, working to help prepare kids for college (annoyingly,… Continue reading Quest for College
Two Cultures and Expertise
Academics of all sorts are highly protective of their scholarly territory. It’s an unavoidable consequence of the process of becoming an academic– I’ve often joked that getting a Ph.D. requires you to become the World’s Leading Expert in something that nobody else cares about. To make it through grad school, no matter what discipline you’re… Continue reading Two Cultures and Expertise
The Benefits of Tenure
Over at Reassigned Time, “Dr. Crazy” offers a remarkably sane post on what tenure means to her: Ultimately, this is the allure of tenure for me, and it’s what I think is most positive about the way I see tenure working at my institution. This is not to say that the tenure process at some… Continue reading The Benefits of Tenure
On the Suckitude of Office 2007
My sabbatical is coming to an end, so I’ve begun prepping my class for the term that starts Monday. I’m teaching the honors section of introductory E&M, and for the intro classes, I lecture off PowerPoint. We’re starting an entirely new syllabus this year, and I plan to use my spiffy tablet PC to do… Continue reading On the Suckitude of Office 2007
Class and National Service
The Dean Dad posted an interesting article about “national service” programs yesterday. He’s against them, for class reasons: The message that national service programs send strikes me as dangerous. The implication seems to be that rich kids can just jump right into higher ed and start moving up the ladder, but the rest of us… Continue reading Class and National Service
So Much for Faculty Indoctrination
David Horowitz is an idiot. Granted, anyone with any sense has known this for a good while now, but now we can prove it with SCIENCE!!! Well, political science– Inside Higher Ed reports on a study of student political views that finds that liberal faculty make no real difference: One of the key arguments made… Continue reading So Much for Faculty Indoctrination