Over 100 Kansas Distinguished Profs to KBOR: Rescind New Termination Policy Immediately.

03 distinguished professors from four Kansas universities (K-State, KU, Wichita State, KUMC) are calling for an immediate end to the Kansas Board of Regents’ new termination policy. It threatens long-term damage to the missions of each institution. It undermines the purpose of tenure, which is to allow faculty to pursue their scholarship without fear of repercussions. Academic freedom is the foundation upon which we build discovery, robust research, scholarship and creative activities.

Running Out of Time

Following a December blog-conversation about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal (occasioned in part by her own chemo), my friend Alison Piepmeier asked me to send her a contribution to her blog, Every Little Thing. It appeared there on Monday. I’m reposting it here now. In case you’re wondering, I got permission from the close relative (named below)

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Advice for Aspiring Academics (in Inside Higher Ed)

Attention, graduate students, adjuncts with tenure-track aspirations, and recent tenure-track hires*! Always be publishing Believe in and doubt merit Do not define success according to academe’s terms … and 9 other pieces of advice in “Advice for Aspiring Academics,” published in today’s Inside Higher Ed. Regular readers of this blog may notice that this is

Kieran Setiya, "The Midlife Crisis" (2014)

The Meaning of Life; or, How to Avoid the Midlife Crisis

Why do successes sometimes feel like failures? As philosopher Kieran Setiya points out in a wise new essay, “Our achievements, whatever they are worth, are always numbered” (10). Each time we accomplish something, it’s done, finished, and we must move on to the next thing: “the completion of your project may constitute something of value,

Advice for Aspiring Academics: A Twitter Essay

I have long been wanting to write a general “advice” essay for aspiring academics – recent PhDs, graduate students, anyone pursuing (or considering pursuing) a career in academia. The problem is that my desire to mentor and to encourage always collides with my equally strong desire not to mislead people about how challenging (even bleak)

Strike!

As American fast food workers strike for a living wage, it’s worth remembering that this struggle has a long history. It’s also worth teaching some of this history to children, so that they can learn about collective action, and fighting back against the powerful.  Julia Mickenberg and I collect some of these stories in the