What I Believe, Part II: The Manifesto
Three core values inform everything I believe.
Read moreCategory Archives: Education
Conference Realignment? How About a Southern Ivy League?
College football realignment blah blah blah. What if we formed a “Southern Ivy League”?
Read moreYes, Folks, Jill Biden is a Doctor
For eight or nine centuries the doctorate of philosophy was eminently respectable, while the practice of medicine was still developing.
Read moreKent State and 75 Minutes That Changed My Life
I was nine when Kent State happened. I was a very current events-minded kid and read about it in the paper and saw the news. But I didn’t really understand it all. So I absorbed the narrative around me: buncha damned hippie punks got what they deserved. The event was never a big deal in my life. I grew up
Read morePrivilege, thy name is Amy Wax
The Amy Wax/UPenn problem isn’t about academic freedom, it’s about unexamined privilege. And firing her won’t solve the problem.
Read moreWould there be high school walkouts today if Marjory Stoneman Douglas was a black High School?
Is the right to protest itself a function of privilege? These kids raise good questions. Would there be massive high school walkouts across the country today if Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS was a predominately black inner-city school in Philly? In a neighborhood where there’s nothing special at all about gun violence?
Read moreOverthinking: rock music, pop culture, Donald Trump and America’s desperate race to the bottom
Donald Trump isn’t an anomaly. He isn’t an outlier. He isn’t a blip on the radar of history. He’s the very embodiment of the black, ignorant American soul. [Apologies in advance. These issues may seem unrelated to some of you, but the dots connect perfectly in my head. I’ll let you know when the big leap is about to happen.]
Read moreIts time to rid the English language of it’s outdated grammar and punctuation rules
Grammar nazis may not like it, but many of our language rules are artifacts of ancient languages that no longer serve a meaningful purpose. I’ve been a writer since the ’70s. I’ve written poetry, fiction, academic, business, political and entertainment pieces. I’ve written for print, broadcast, online, social and mobile. I’ve been responsible for ~2,300 posts at S&R alone (although
Read moreHappy 4th of July: what does “freedom” mean to you?
America is a great idea, but it’s hard to love these days. At some point tonight millions and millions of us will find ourselves sitting in a stadium or a park or maybe on a city rooftop or a grassy hill in the country, staring at the sky, celebrating our country’s anniversary by watching the annual fireworks show. I won’t
Read moreMy mentor, the pedophile [UPDATED]
Part 1 of a series.
Read moreThe only way to defeat Trump and his supporters
It’s about tribalism. You cannot work with Trumpists. Period. You must defeat them and then fix the problems that handed them control. It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. – Jonathan Swift Since the moment of Campaign 2016 when it became clear that Donald Trump actually had a chance,
Read moreIntroducing the American Civic Debate Union: first event addresses the Electoral College
We need a new American consensus driven by a commitment to knowledge, reason and good faith engagement with those whose views differ from our own. For decades I have toyed with the idea that we could use a civic forum for popular debate, an organization that would make it possible for communities to discuss the issues of the day in ways
Read moreRural elites: I've had it with the arrogance of ignorance (and its promoters)
The only thing worse than the willfully ignorant is the legion of apologists enabling them. Since the election – before, really – we’ve heard a lot of talk about how all those urban liberal elites need to stop being so arrogant and start listening to very real concerns of real Americans in rural flyover values America. We have more recently begun
Read moreThe Tiffany Martínez case and journalistic malpractice in the first degree
Journalism RIP: gone and apparently forgotten Here’s a sampling of the Google News headlines this morning for a search on [tiffany martinez]: Professor Leaves Racist Note on Student’s Paper – Yahoo News-22 hours ago The broader implications of unfairly accusing a Latina student of plagiarism – Inside Higher Ed-Nov 1, 2016 Professor accuses Latina student of plagiarism for using the
Read moreThe Tiffany Martínez case: her post is long on emotional appeal and short on details
The trending case of a Suffolk University student accused of cheating in front of her class raises more questions than her manipulative story answers… On Thursday, a Suffolk University student named Tiffany Martínez posted a blog in which she described how her professor had attacked her in front of a class for using language that was “not her own.” This
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lullaby pit 