The Barnacle of Higher Ed has been covering the controversy over academic blogging (or doing their best to manufacture one) for over a year now. The latest is a symposium on whether blogging “damaged” Juan Cole’s career. Cole is a middle east expert and a full professor at the University of Michigan. The “damage”? Apparently …
Category Archives: Politics
Disembodied Fish
Stanley Fish’s op-ed in today’s New York Times(1) argues that professors must separate themselves from their subject matter in the classroom. I believe we have some professional duties which require us to put our “selves” aside (for instance, not grading down students for disagreeing with us) but I also think that there are times when …
Passing When I Don’t Want To
As an English-speaking white person, I’m often mistaken for a Canadian. This happens to me on the phone as well as in person, and it’s been particularly acute in the last couple weeks (doctors’ appointments plus random calls here and there). As with any other country, there is all sorts of tacit knowledge you have …
Question I’m Thinking About For Today
Can a religious state in fact be democratic? If so, how would that work? What about immigration?
Sounds Familiar
An election too close to call, a media baiting the candidate of the left to concede before the votes are counted. Hmmm. Haven’t we heard this one before?
More Suspense Than The World Cup
I can’t stand it. Who’s going to win the Mexican election? Are we in for another neoliberal Bush-administration lapdog a la Vicente Fox, or will Mexico continue this hemisphere’s leftward drift?
New Text
1. A Bad Subjects op-ed on Christy Blatchford’s racist column from Monday’s Globe and Mail 2. “Lost recordings / Les enregistrements perdus” in Traces, ed. Nicole Gringas, 73-92. Montreal: Galerie Leonard and Bina Ellen, 2006.