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….
This week I wrote about a lot of things, and I’ll cover them below, but I want to focus on the NEH Summer Seminars. I generally see the NEH as unobtainable for me as a scholar (not as a teacher. They actually have good teaching-related programs. I am not talking about them). As a scholar,…
From the Travels of Ibn Battuta. That night, while I was sleeping on the roof of the cell, I dreamed that I was on the wing of a great bird which was flying with me towards Mecca, then to Yemen, then eastwards and thereafter going towards the south, then flying far eastwards and finally landing…
WARNING – VERY DISTURBING DEPICTIONS OF ABUSE This is what happens when the prison becomes the default first-line of care for people with serious mental health issues. This is what happens with prison guards grow up in a culture demeaning people with disabilities. This is what happens when you feed the cult of compliance. This…
Yesterday, KQED – NPR in San Francisco – published a long piece on police killings and psychiatric disability in San Francisco. 58% of all police killings involve forms of disability such as schizophrenia, many of them include weapons, and yet there may be ways to rethink strategies that could save some of the lives. The piece…