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    Category: Jon Cogburn

    • Is this a violation of academic freedom?

      Is there a word for this, where you not only have to waste time doing something absolutely meaningless ("Kafkaesque"?), but where it's also the case that successful completion of the meaningless tasks requires enthusiastic pretense that the task isn't meaningless? Whatever the term is, it increasingly applies to university assessment procedures. Not only do you…

    • 164th Philosopher’s Carnival

      Philosophers' Carnival #164 is HERE.   Lots of cool links presented in a fun way by Eric Schwitzgebel.

    • Williamson on David Lewis

      This summer I'm trying to get a little bit up to speed on modality issues by doing an independent study with some students.* I've started looking ahead to Williamson's recent magnum opus and this little bit of the preface weirded me out: Since cosmological theories in physics are naturally understood as embodying no restriction of…

    • Zaretsky’s list of things academics should never do (hat-tip Rod Dreher)

      At the CHE, with discussion, here: Never give copies of your books to friends and family. Never call students by their first names. Never try to be cool. Never lament the building of new football stadiums rather than new library wings. Never become an administrator. Never allow the Internet in the classroom. Never teach a…

    • Canonical report on financialization of higher education

      Very nice report from the folks at Debt and Society here about higher ed's tango with Wall Street. Lot's of distressing stuff, including the change from old fashioned bonds to newer, more risky types of debt: Private and public colleges in the past more commonly issued municipal bonds that would be repaid using only tax…

    • How Wall Street Skims Higher Education

    • NYU Abu Dhabi Faculty letter to CHE (hat-tip Mathew Silverstein)

      Letter HERE, containing an explanation of what they are trying to accomplish, a discussion of labor issues in the gulf region, and what the university is doing about the recent scandals. It takes a lot of guts to be this forthright, and I think overall the letter's a good advertisement for the virtues of the…

    • Wilfred Owen – The Parable of the Young Man and the Old; Bright Eyes – When the President talks to God

      So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,And took the fire with him, and a knife.And as they sojourned, both of them together,Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,Behold the preparations, fire and iron,But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,And builded parapets the trenches there,And…

    • Mark Twain – The War Prayer

      It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading…

    • Froggy Fresh – The Fight

      One of the worst things about WWE's "attitude era" was that parents had very good reasons not to let their kids watch professional wrestling. The story-lines went beyond R rated and were often morally reprehensible as well. The promotion also at times seemed to be competing with ECW to see who could injure the most…