This post is a recent column by David Brooks of the New York Times about the price we pay in service to senseless bureaucracy. Here's a link to the original. Bureaucracy is not necessarily a problem. It arose as a mechanism for providing a rational structure for governing large organizations in order to keep them … Continue reading The Burden of Needless Bureaucracy
This post is a piece I published in 2020 in the Chronicle Review. Here’s a link to the original. It’s about an issue that has been gnawing at me for years. How can you justify the existence of institutions of the sort I taught at for the last two decades — rich private research universities? These institutions … Continue reading How Not to Defend the Research University
This post is a Frank Bruni column from the Times -- a tribute to the best sentences in the press in 2023. Let us all aspire to be on the list next year. It reminds me of a quote I like that comes from the opening chapter of Stanley Fish's book, How to Write a … Continue reading Frank Bruni — The Best Sentences of 2023
This piece was published in Inside Higher Ed in June, 2020. Here’s a link to the original. It speaks for itself. The argument here seems particularly pertinent in light of the current conflicts on campuses across the country over free speech and the war between Israel and Hamas. DOCTORAL DYSFUNCTION Many doctoral students today are tending to fall into … Continue reading Doctoral Dysfunction
Tell me if you think this sounds familiar: in its latter years (500-700 ace), the roman empire faced a formidable challenge from two devastating environmental forces — dramatic climate change and massive epidemic. As mark twain is supposed to have said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” During our own bout of climate … Continue reading Resilience in the Face of Climate Change and Epidemic: Ancient Rome and Today’s America
This post is a commentary on historian Walter Scheidel’s book, Escape from Rome. It’s a stunningly original analysis of a topic that has long fascinated scholars like me: how did Europe come to create the modern world? His answer is this: Europe became the cauldron of modernity and the dominant power in the world because … Continue reading How the Fall of Empire Spurred the Rise of Modernity — and Parallels with the Rise of US Higher Ed
When you’re interested in improving your writing, it’s a good idea to have some models to work from. I’ve presented some of my favorite models in this blog. These have included a number of examples of good writing by both academics (Max Weber, E.P. Thompson, Jim March, and Mary Metz) and nonacademics (Frederick Douglass, Elmore Leonard). Today I want to … Continue reading How the King James Bible Shaped the English Language and How It Still Teaches Us How to Write Well
This is my first ever Pollyanna post. I just wrote it in order to cheer myself about the world we live in. Consider it my New Year's present. We Live in the Best of Times We seem to be in a world that … Continue reading We Live in the Best of Times — Really
This post is a piece by Gurwinder Bhogal, published recently in his blog The Prism. Here's a link to the original. It's a lovely collection of principles to live by when you're trying to make sense of the world. For academics, who make their living this way, these principles are … Continue reading 30 Useful Principles
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 