Journalist – Historian – Speaker
.gif from Michael Branson Smith with full credits here. The academic slices of the internet are abuzz with the retreat of Sebastian Thune, lord of the MOOCs. He thought tech could fix all our problems with higher education and blazed his way into San Jose State’s curriculum. It turns out, as now has been widely …
More thoughts on academic cattle calls Over the past few weeks, I have been watching graduate students, adjuncts, and people on fixed-term appointments struggling with the decision of whether or not to book plane tickets and hotel reservations for their academic conferences. None of them have received interviews yet, all of them hope to do …
The conference interview as cattle call. In academia, for those not in our small world, job applications in many fields work as follows: 1) Submit applications 1a) Get request for more materials. 2) Go to first-round interview at national conference (10-15 people) 3) Get on-campus interview (3-4 people) 4) Get job. Below follows something of …
Autism Speaks is a highly successful and controversial autism awareness group. Here’s the critique from the feminist website “Tiger Beatdown” that made me aware of the problems first. I’ve tried to spread awareness of these issues ever since, but I often see celebrities, thinking they are helping, supporting Autism Speaks. To me, they are like …
Looking back over the week’s writing to think about my round-up, I was immediately drawn to Wednesday’s post on offensive language. There are, I think, ideas here worth exploring. I started with the principle: You do not get to decide whether I should be offended by something you do or say; you only get to …
I spent the last two days as a guest at Virginia Tech. On Thursday, I spoke about my current scholarly project on stories of material exchange in the Venetian mythographic tradition. The audience was mixed, with undergrads, faculty from Tech and other area schools, and even a few people from the community. They stayed awake …
Today I am talking to a group of undergraduates at Virginia about public engagement. So here are some links from my own writing for examples: Me: My Initial Public Offering (Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/22/2013) History: The New Franciscan Revolution (CNN.com, 9/20/2013) Pope Francis’ Wager (Atlantic.com, 5/24/2013) The Importance of Being Francis (Atlantic.com, 3/14/2013) History …
Today I am flying to Virginia to give a talk at Virginia Tech. This talk is on my core research into medieval Venetian cultural history, a subject I mostly keep away from the blog (as I use it to write about other things). But here’s one thing I’m going to say this evening to what …
Here’s my principle on language and offense: You do not get to decide whether I should be offended by something you do or say; you only get to decide whether you care. Here’s what I mean. Someone uses language I find offensive. I call them on it. They cannot decide for me whether it’s ok …
Somehow I missed this story from a few weeks ago: A few weeks ago I wrote about Pope Francis removing the “Bishop of Bling,” a German Bishop known for his expensive lifestyle, from his diocese. Here’s the update (now a few days old): Francis orders the multi-million dollar (euro!) home to be used to serve …