He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted and capable of maintaining itself to the satisfaction of everybody, must...
Read MoreBecause students matter . . .
Because what we do in our courses matters . . .
Because the university is not an ivory tower . . .
Teaching badly is no longer an ethical alternative. Students arrive at institutions of higher education in desperate need of our help in finding a place in the world and in better understanding how to navigate their personal and public roles. The societies we inhabit need workers and citizens with a rich understanding of the world around them. And our classrooms have become a central location for the war against inequality which is spreading across the globe.
More than ever before, the tools that we need to achieve these goals are available to us. For the last two decades I have had the good fortune to be part of a marvelous conversation about how to make higher education a place where the needs of our students and our societies are at last truly met. In this blog I would like to pass on some of what I have learned and to make a space for your thoughts as well. Please join in this great endeavor
Blog Posts
Who Killed Colin Powell? Higher Education and COVID Denial
We certainly know what killed Colin Powell. His weakened immune system was unable to withstand the assault of a powerful virus, despite the efforts of those around him to...
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Old Dog, New Tricks, and SoTL: 50 Years of Progress
“I hope I didn’t sound too much down on teaching. I enjoy it. And it is not a great deal of work right now. But it’s really not a...
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The COVID Kids are Coming
Early last March I drove from the Big Ten university, where I taught for forty years, to Bedford, Indiana, where I had been asked to talk to a high school...
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Mendacity on a Big Screen: MLK Day at the University
Martin Luther King Day, 2020 — It was a deeply painful spectacle to watch. In front of perhaps a thousand people, the President of my university was called upon to...
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Trump, Shame, and the College Classroom
Like much of the world’s population, I have spent the last four years contemplating what has led so many people to support Donald Trump, despite a series of shameful...
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Where the Buck Stops
Yes, there was always someone who screwed up before students arrived in our classes. There were parents who failed their children, teachers who failed their students, and a society...
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Foucault’s Soldiers
Several decades ago, when the writings of Michel Foucault were at the peak of their popularity in academia, my former colleague, Jim Riley, remarked insightfully that what was most...
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Vampire Universities
It was a test of my parenting, and I think I passed. We were on a trip to investigate colleges with our teen-aged son, and Yale had become part...
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