In my profession, we often pin the word “academic” onto things, tacitly claiming a special relationship to them. Thus we speak of “academic dishonesty,” “academic freedom,” and “academic integrity” as if dishonesty, freedom and integrity have a level of sophistication for us that they do not have for tax lawyers, sculptors or lion-tamers. Of course, [...]
I’m giving a paper next week on I Was a Communist for the FBI and other scenes of weirdness in 1950′s radio at the Mass Culture Workshop at the University of Chicago. If you’re affiliated, interested or even just available, come tear my argument to shreds and put it back together again. Paper and details [...]
I’ve been thinking about a column that Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust published in The New York Times last weekend. At first, Faust’s theme seems to be a long-standing contradiction at the heart of higher learning: American universities have long struggled to meet almost irreconcilable demands: to be practical as well as transcendent; to assist [...]
© ducksanddrakes. Say something clever here. Or not. You decide.
