Journalist – Historian – Speaker
On International May Day I wrote a little hymn. I wrote: Teaching is work. Programming is work. Scholarship is work. Science is work. Grading is work. Committee service is work. Today Chronicle Vitae published a column on academic work as labor, as work. It’s a linked column to this first piece on the language of adjunct …
In my Chronicle piece on being a father, I wrote: No one has ever questioned my work ethic to my face because I’m a father. In fact, one day I was so tired from caring for my two children—at the time a 2-year-old boy and a 3-month-old baby girl with colic—that I simply lost my ability …
I have a new piece up on CNN on Trigger Warnings in the Classroom. I make two arguments. 1. Psychological disability involving trauma is serious and should never be dismissed. However, we have a mandate through the ADA to provide reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities. Let’s increasingly support, fund, and use those services, make …
I have a new piece in the Chronicle today on being a “working dad,” a phrase I intend to own and explicate a lot over the next year. It ends: Academic dads operate with the privilege of separating their home life from their work life in ways unavailable to women. We get to be silent …
The issue of trigger warnings in the classroom, whether they are useful, attack academic freedom, are to protect our helicopter-parented elite students, or what, has become a fairly important topic in higher ed circles. I’m writing an essay on it now. Here is a list of resources. Please recommend additional materials. Start with Amanda Marcotte …
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, on my first piece about customer service, I made this comment: “Faculty members respond to the student-as-consumer by teaching defensively, fearing the management that we formerly referred to as administration. But administrators administrate on behalf of the faculty. Employees delivering customer service get managed.” It’s kind of a throwaway …
Blogging is not (necessarily or probably) scholarship. Who cares? That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t count. There was a great session at the OAH (Organization of American Historians) annual conference last month on blogging and scholarship (summary, critique, and video, another summary and critique here, Ann Little’s introductory remarks here). The general conclusion is no, blogging isn’t scholarship. …
There is power in a factory, power in the land Power in the hands of a worker But it all amounts to nothing if together we don’t stand There is power in a Union. Just in the last few weeks, the rhetoric of the adjunct crisis in American Higher Education has shifted, intensifying around the …
Adjuncts are Labor. Professors are Labor. Graduate Students are Labor. Staff are Labor. Administrators, well, that’s more complicated. What’s a “Chair” anyway? More on that later (and in the meantime follow that link for a good piece on definitions). I am going to be writing regular columns for the Chronicle and Chronicle Vitae over the …
I’m writing a piece on the ways that Catholic Colleges and Universities, especially my own, are helping undocumented students. The help comes in three ways: Money for tuition/expenses, changing discourse, and political action. What I’m really interested in for this piece is the link between mission and policy changes. One piece that has emerged is …