Right now I just think there’s this fundamental problem where so many people who identify themselves as being part of the broad left define their coalition based on linguistic cues, cultural overlap, and social circles. The job of politics, at its most basic, is finding common cause with people who aren’t like you. But current […]
Continue reading →So here’s a thing that’s happening at Yale. I stress: it’s really happening. It’s not a conservative media invention. It’s verified. Yale students are calling for the resignation or firing of Erika Christakis, Associate Master of Silliman College, and her husband, Master of Silliman College Nicholas Christakis, over an email about potentially offensive Halloween costumes. Here is […]
Continue reading →To begin with, I have repeatedly and publicly said that I won’t vote for Bernie Sanders due to his stances on Israel, immigration, and guns. Despite this, I am daily asked to answer for the conduct of Bernie Sanders supporters. It’s pretty strange. It’s also strange that our political class continues to think that the way […]
Continue reading →Here’s a tweet that’s been making the “we have to DO something in Syria!” rounds lately. As is typical of this genre, it presents the horrific violence in Syria as somehow proof-positive that we have an obligation to intervene militarily in the country. This elides the most pertinent question: does intervening militarily actually prevent slaughter? […]
Continue reading →Last month, I was contacted by representatives of Harvard University Press, inquiring about my interest in a review copy of the new book The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It. I enthusiastically indicated my interest. Like many in the world of higher education, I have been long convinced that deep reform […]
Continue reading →I’m in The Observer, looking back at Grantland with both admiration and frustration. It’s another in my long series of trying to work out a basic question: why are our conversations on art and culture sites of such profound anxiety? Check it out.
Continue reading →So I listened to Vox’s The Weeds podcast on the relationship between public policy, public health, and eating yesterday. They are particularly interested in the use of nudges and nags to improve healthy eating and healthy outcomes. It made me think of a few things. There’s no grand point here, just some impressions. 1. Maybe […]
Continue reading →As someone with both a professional and amateur interest in how the public talks about education, and particularly educational assessment, I’m fascinated and disturbed by a trend that I’ve noticed in popular assumptions about educational performance. Though I can’t say this with great rigor, it seems to me that many people now talk about educational […]
Continue reading →Statistical significance is an essential but confusing concept. As I’ve discussed in this space before, statistical significance fundamentally concerns the chance that a given quantitative result is the product of random chance, of variability that’s inherent to real-world numbers. (Update: Better — the odds that we’d observe the given result, or a more extreme result, simply […]
Continue reading →I have just gotten my hands on a copy of Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom, the new book by Dr. Steven Salaita. Dr. Salaita is a Palestinian academic who had a tenured job at Virginia Tech, left that job to take a job at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that he had […]
Continue reading →