Journalist – Historian – Speaker
At the end of September I wrote a post about the arbitrary decision to end the NEH overseas summer seminars and institutes. It’s packed with comments from people whose lives and careers were transformed by such programs. Now I have a piece at Chronicle Vitae on my findings. They are: The NEH denies political pressure. The NEH …
My son is cute. Sometimes painfully so. He also has a kind of intensity to his love. Here’s a story from my newest piece at Al Jazeera America (please read it and share it so they publish more pieces on disability!). At the end of every day, Nico walks into the kitchen, wraps his arms …
Throughout the intense debates on Steven Salaita, I clung to one message: If you do not stand on principle for people with whom you disagree, you have no principles. It was no problem generating support for Salaita’s case (note, not Salaita, the case) for people who agreed with his critique of Israel, the challenge was …
I write a mostly monthly column for the Chronicle of Higher Education. I’m interested in the way that both individual academics and institutions engage with issues and spread their expertise in the public sphere. My columns look at what people do and how it works within an academic career. Recent columns are: Sustained Public Engagement …
I started the week with a piece on the academic hiring process. It didn’t get as much social media sharing as I think it deserves, not out of any ego, but because this lens displays a problem we can fix. It’s not a big fix. It’s not an answer to the huge power inequities in …
Last Sunday, my wife said to me, “I miss football.” We miss the sound of it in the background on Sunday, checking in to watch games of meaning, chatting about it. I miss reading long weekly articles about each game and what to watch for. I miss playing, and winning sometimes, fantasy football. Watching football …
Here are some stories I’ve been following. f the argument must call for strict enforcement of accountability. This is a story about the warrior cop and the rise of SWAT – There’s been no indictment in the case of a police officer who threw a flash-bang grenade into a house, where it landed on a …
I am teaching an independent study this semester in which we are discussing medievalism. Today, my student and I worked through some chapters from the Disney Middle Ages. One of the interesting findings is the way that Disney tries to clean up, sanitize, and Americanize the Middle Ages, often erasing the grimmer stories that support …
As a historian, I study myth and narrative, not events or actions. I believe truth exists – in that I believe people did things and said things and even thought things and that sometimes those things are knowable. I just don’t especially find that interesting. What interests me is how individuals and groups tell stories …
Today in Vitae I have a new piece on the role of governing boards in the academic hiring process. My basic premise is this: If boards are not just applying rubber stamps to hiring decisions made by appropriate academic officers (departments, committees, deans, provost, etc.), then they have do their work in a timely manner. …