Journalist – Historian – Speaker
I write about public engagement and the academy for the Chronicle and here on the blog. Mostly, I have talked about the ways that formal non-academic writing (opinion essays, popular books, other media outreach) and community engagement (undocumented students) function within the core mission of an academic institution and career. There are, though, more radical views. …
Today is National Adjunct Walkout Day. Around the country, adjuncts have organized walkouts and rallies and donation funds and many other efforts to bring people together and insist on fair wages. And they are right to do so. As a tenured faculty member, I stand fully in support with this movement, I see their movement …
Over the border from me, the Scott Walker experiment to dismantle the state of Wisconsin continues. He wants to create Kansas-North. Conservatives are loving it, and he’s just the kind of boring white guy with an allegedly criminal past that the GOP establishment might nominate for president. Not long after President Obama unveiled his ideas for …
I have a meta-thesis about academic culture: It’s no worse than anywhere else, but we tend to think we’re better, and that’s where the problems come in. Usually I’m talking about race, class, or gender. We think we’re immune to the dominant trends of American society, so generally resist being told to change our ways. …
One of my absolutely favorite writers on disability, Lydia Brown, is at Georgetown. She’s an increasingly well-known voice on disability issues and, not surprisingly, was asked to provide a training to student organizations about accessibility. She agreed. No one showed up. In a powerful post, Brown explains what the empty room means. Nothing demonstrates more …
On Chronicle Vitae, today, I will have a new essay about ending the conference interview. In it, I offer ways to make the shift into a positive rather than a surrender to austerity. Listen. The conference interview is, in fact, already dead. Video interview technology is getting better and better, funds are limited, and like …
As surely all of you know by now, the hiring then unhiring of Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois has highlighted many important issues for higher education. Much of the discussion has, correctly, focused on how we may and may not discuss Israel and fundamental questions about academic freedom and faculty governance. As the …
Today Steven Salaita gave a press conference. I was there. Full video here. Salaita spoke, along with with his constitutional lawyer Maria LaHood, one of his employment lawyers, Robert Warrior (chair of American Indian Studies), and Michael Rothberg from English (who read a statement from the MLA). You can read Salaita’s statement here. I’d like …
I asked a faculty member at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whether they thought there was any chance that the chancellor and board might reverse their decision on Steven Salaita (you can read here for my take on the case). Their answer – If the scientists (i.e. the people with the money) get involved. So far, …
It’s been a busy week of writing and I hope you are enjoying this holiday weekend. Most of the week was spent on the cult of compliance and police violence. I started with a piece on CNN on 4 police killings of people with mental health issues. I argued that we need to think about psychiatric disability …