Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Google did a big study to see what teams worked well and which ones didn’t. Turns out, STEM skills (by which they mean Technology and Engineering, not basic science or abstract math) are the LEAST important for success. Here’s the post: In 2013, Google decided to test its hiring hypothesis by crunching every bit and …
On the myth of the “English major Starbucks barista.” From 2016, but in my feed last night and I missed this the first time around. What are we to make of this new old joke about the English major? Why did barista replace fast food worker? The fact is that English majors are not particularly …
HELLO @StOlaf we have so much to talk about tomorrow! #UmYahYah pic.twitter.com/nYeCAeCHOp — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) November 2, 2017 I’m looking forward to going back to Northfield today. I spent a year and a half there while writing my dissertation, a difficult and glorious time in my life. I struggled. I thrived. I wrote. …
In Pacific Standard, Noah Berlatsky and Ilana Gershon wrote a great piece about how humanities supports you getting a job! The skills you learn in the humanities are exactly the skills you use in a job search. The humanities teach students to understand the different rules and expectations that govern different genres, to examine social …
In Catapult, Kristen Cardozo writes about the written word in the Age of Trump. Some might say that studying the humanities in the twenty-first century was already a questionable choice before 2016 brought with it the vivid sight of a dystopian future running headlong to embrace us. The future is STEM, we were told. To …
So part of my new job at the University of Minnesota is to convince students – and their families – that they can major in History and still be gainfully employed. The good news is that it’s true, they can. Even the Harvard Business Review says so. According to three new books, the answer is …
Charles Huth, a Captain in the Kansas City PD, has written an outstanding essay taking apart two metaphors commonly employed by police trainers: The “warrior” and the “sheep/sheepdog/wolf” metaphor. Not only is he on point when it comes to the analysis itself and what it says about modern policing, but I was also struck that …
From The Mary Sue, Alysa Auriemma has a lovely essay about Captain America (in the context of the comic “Civil War”) and a new masculinity. After opening paragraphs on toxic masculinity and patriarchy, she writes: Captain America not only navigates masculinity, but he completely subverts and ultimately rejects our contemporary conceptions of what it means …
Yesterday at The Conversation, Cecilia Gaposhkin, a medieval historian at Dartmouth, wrote a piece arguing that STEM are not distinct or in competition with the liberal arts. They are the same thing. The idea that STEM is something separate and different than the liberal arts is damaging to both the sciences and their sister disciplines …
David Brooks published a column this week that has circulated widely, including among my circle of liberal intellectuals and artists, and to much praise. It’s really quite lovely. It celebrates the love of art – writing, music, images and more. It mourns for a lost world. And it completely misses the point of how we …