The funny thing about this Megan McArdle essay arguing that all of us spoiled academics should stop trying to be professors and get real jobs is that Megan McArdle lives a more profoundly professorial life than most professors I know, and wouldn’t occupy what she thinks of as a real job at gunpoint. But allow […]
Continue reading →This past November, a video of a beating delivered by one Houston area teen on another went viral. In the video, a black teenager named Sharkeisha attacked another, sucker punching her and continuing to assault her despite friends and onlookers attempting to separate the two. It’s unclear what precipitated the attack. Part of the immensely […]
Continue reading →I’ve been told that I’m burying the lead too much here, or that I risk obscuring my core beliefs about the broader situation, so I just want to clear that up here. This will probably be my last on this subject for awhile. The American university system has been guilty of many historical crimes. Perhaps […]
Continue reading →There’s another argument between Rebecca Schuman and the Tenured Radical. You could check it out, although it’s pretty much the same themes we’ve read before. Once again, I feel conflicted: there’s little question that Schuman’s voice needs to be drilled into the heads of out-of-touch faculty and that there are prospective grad students who need […]
Continue reading →Richard Haswell has used the term “the Bok Maneuver” to describe the tendency of people to respond to empirical research that does not confirm their expectations by simply saying that the research does confirm their expectations. I would like to advance the Rosin Gambit as a similar phenomenon. The Rosin Gambit is when you present […]
Continue reading →I feel like we’re finally getting broad acknowledgement that origin stories are terribly played out, at this point, after so many years of superhero and action movies that rehash the same origins that were been part of our collective memory already. From my viewpoint, it seems like movie execs are finally catching on to the […]
Continue reading →“”There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our […]
Continue reading →As you’re aware, I’m someone who often counsels people against getting a PhD, because the academic job market is so brutal and tenure track jobs so scarce. It’s how I start and end the conversation. It’s a reflexive, constant reminder I make: you are far, far more likely to end up without a tenure track […]
Continue reading →I try not to write about politics as politics here, but I do want to write about language, and language and politics are deeply bound together. Here’s a good example. I have recently been struck by the near-total demise of the word “sexist” in online political interaction, at least from my own anecdotal vantage point. […]
Continue reading →Well gang, I am home in Connecticut with my siblings and their spouses and kids. It’s nice to be home. I just wanted to wish you guys all the best and a merry whatever it is you are merry about, this time of year. Thanks for your readership, your feedback, and your support. It’s been […]
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