At the Movies: American Teacher
When we think of teachers today we tend to think of incompetence. The New Yorker had a devastating article about teachers in New York City’s “rubber room” who clearly should have been fired; because of...
View Article“Let’s think about that”: Mike Rose and the Democratic Tradition
Over the last several years we have had an increasing emphasis on educational research that tells us “what works.” The assumptions behind this drive are relatively straightforward: If we are going to...
View ArticleThe Art of Fielding I—Overview
The Art of Fielding is an academic novel where baseball is the centerpiece and two of the main characters are in a gay relationship. Did Chad Harbach have me in mind when he wrote this novel?...
View ArticleThe Art of Fielding II—On Excellence
One of the centerpieces of The Art of Fielding is Henry’s ability to field every ball that is hit to him. He is so good that by his junior year he has never made an error; he is about to break the...
View ArticleThe Art of Fielding III—The Academic Life
Guert Affenlight is Westish’s President. He is not unlike many good men and women who go about their academic lives trying to do as good as they can possibly can. He is a good, but not a great,...
View ArticleWhistling Vivaldi
We all know that stereotypes exist. Some are funny—white men can’t jump. Others remain from a distant past—all professors wear bow ties, tweed jackets, and smoke pipes. And others are...
View ArticleA Guide to Strategic Diversity
I wrote the Foreword to Damon William’s Examining Strategic Diversity Leadership: Activating Change and Transformation in Higher Education (Stylus, 2013). Here’s what I said: In his epic The Souls of...
View ArticleOn Empathy and Moral Worth: Michael Chabon’s “Telegraph Avenue”
Memorial Day suggests summer is around the corner! As we approach summer I wanted to suggest two first-rate novels to read; I’ll discuss the first one today and the second next week. I frequently tell...
View ArticleThe Digital Bookshelf of an Assistant Professor
Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is one of my favorite plays. At the beginning of the story, Faustus, surrounded by countless dusty tomes, declares that he has read everything about everything. I’m...
View ArticleThe Power and Peril of Free Speech
If we were going to list the world’s greatest living writers surely Salmon Rushdie would be on the list. I appreciate that he is not everyone’s cup of tea, but Midnight’s Children is regarded as a...
View ArticleWon’t Back Down: Movies I see so you don’t have to
Here’s something I thought I’d never say: Go see Waiting for Superman. If you have to see these types of movies, then a documentary is better than this movie. If you want a biased treatment of...
View ArticleMovie Review: On Regret–”Twenty Feet from Stardom”: I watched it–and you...
I try to focus on educational issues in this blog, and admittedly, reviewing Twenty Feet from Stardom is a stretch. Let me get over the particulars: this is a blast of a movie about the (mostly) women...
View ArticleMovie Review: “A Place at the Table”– I watched it – and you should too
Let’s begin with 3 propositions which lead to a fourth: No child in America should go to bed hungry. No child in America should die of cancer. No child in America should die because of terrorism. If we...
View ArticleMovie Review: Brooklyn Castle I Watched It–And You Should Too
Brooklyn Castle is about the “exciting” topic of kids playing chess. It’s particularly exciting because it’s a documentary and at the end of the movie there are no winners. Unlike feel-good movies...
View ArticleMovie Review: “Before Midnight” I Watched It–And You Should Too
Once, many years ago, when we were a young couple, as young couples often do, Barry and I got into an argument over nothing that went from zero to one hundred in a single moment and one of us blurted...
View ArticleI Read This and You Don’t Need To: How Universities Work
John Lombardi has a long and distinguished career as a successful, argumentative university president at the University of Massachusetts, University of Florida, and Louisiana State. He has penned a...
View ArticleIvory Tower Sounds the Alarm and is A Call to Action To Address the Student...
I went to see the documentary Ivory Tower last Friday. The movie was well done and very informative about the state of higher education and more specifically the student loan crisis in the United...
View ArticleBook Review: The App Generation by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis
I read this and I suppose you should, too. The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World, by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis, is a breezy, easy to...
View ArticleWill the Circle be Unbroken?
One of the better novels I have read in the last several months is Dave Eggers’ The Circle. Eggers came onto the stage with a great book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which was a memoir....
View ArticleMovie Review: Whiplash – The Art and Terror of Mentoring
A friend suggested that I write a review of Whiplash since I’m supposed to know something about mentoring. She had seen it with her son and mentioned “it sparked a great discussion about whether...
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