So here’s this Mallory Ortberg post about lying about having read books you haven’t read. Ortberg: It is possible, I suppose, that you are the sort of self-actualized person who has never once pretended to have read or seen something she hasn’t in conversation, and that you are never anxious about your social status, and […]
Continue reading →Whatever your broader thoughts on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (and there’s lots we can talk about), you may find this position paper of theirs on affirmative consent regulations to be useful. The nut, for me: Affirmative consent posits that sexual activity is sexual assault unless the non-initiating party’s consent is, as SB […]
Continue reading →I thought that this piece by Mychal Denzel Smith on why feminism shouldn’t make men comfortable was interesting and well-argued, but it has this central problem that is endemic to left-wing writing right now: the men who read and share it will almost universally do so in the spirit of implicating some other men. The […]
Continue reading →A couple of weeks ago, I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign with activist friends of mine. We went to protest in support of Dr. Steven Salaita and the several unions and student groups who were rallying for better labor conditions, for the principle of honoring contracts, for collective bargaining rights, for recognition […]
Continue reading →This cover story from New York magazine on campus activists working against sexual assault is deep and challenging, and you should read it in full. I want to talk a little bit about the burgeoning movement for explicit consent laws. These laws change the typical standard from “no means no” to “only yes means yes.” As the article […]
Continue reading →Update: Via commenter Audrey Watters, it gets even better. Actual comment: “I might stream this into my Second Life class as well.”
Continue reading →Five years or so ago, I was reading in the Russell Library in my hometown in Middletown, Connecticut, while two blocks away on Broad Street, Stephen Morgan was pumping bullets into Johanna Justin-Jinich. By then, the bookstore where she worked was called Broad Street Books, but I will always think of it as Atticus. I […]
Continue reading →My dad went to Antioch College (RIP?) for his undergrad. When he got there, he had two roommates. All three of them were named Fred(e)ri(c)k, which he always chalked up to a joke by some administrator at the famously liberal, weirdo school. He would later go on to work at Wesleyan, which is where I […]
Continue reading →The New York Times asked me to write a little for them about geek culture and grievance. You can check it out here.
Continue reading →The great education journalist Dana Goldstein made this point some years back, but I can’t find the piece, and it bears rewriting: while a greater percentage of black and Hispanic students fail to meet educational performance standards in this country than their white counterparts, due to the demographics of the United States, a plurality of […]
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