Here’s the latest. It’s a little too American — this isn’t about McGill’s relationship to the Bush administration or gated communities (sorry Marc, you’ll have to be more creative with your metaphors) but rather the politics of labor within Quebec and Canada and McGill’s place in it — but it’s getting covered nonetheless. More when …
Category Archives: Academe
TA Strike
The TA strike started on the day I left for Europe and has gotten complicated, as these things do. I haven’t posted anything since as chair I also speak for the department and so I am being extra careful. In the meantime, you can read about it here.
Academic Labor Politics in the Air
It must be the season or something. Today, our TA union staged a demonstration outside the front gates in support of their ongoing contract negotiations. McGill teaching assistants are quite underpaid compared to their counterparts at other Canadian universities and “R1” universities in the U.S. It’s a Quebec thing, since they’re better paid than TAs …
Interview Flashback
A student for whom I write recommendations has landed an interview at a doctorate-granting institution. In discussing the differences between this arrangement and others, it brought me back to my first time I had to emotionally confront the idea that I might one day supervise graduate students. I was on an interview at Michigan Tech …
This Week I Accidentally Met a Student Life Professional
Oso Raro has an awesome post about the gap between faculty and student life professionals here. It comes at a good time because this week I had a rare encounter with that side of the university. I got an email last Friday that so-and-so, head of some series of services [1], wanted to meet with …
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More Criticism of Sage
courtesy of danah boyd. I’ve long thought about moving to only open-access journals, though a combination of vanity (there are some journals I want to place stuff in just to say I did it) and willingness to support others’ publishing endeavors will probably not let me make it an absolute.
Quote of the Day (for yesterday)
Didier Delmas, from the preamble to his PhD comprehensive exam defence: The demands of everyday life conspire to hide the relevance of advanced knowledge.