100% Dubious

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH All language is an inexact effort to reference and communicate aspects of reality, and ultimately, even the most seemingly straightforward statement can be shown to have ambiguous possibilities. That said, human society depends on language to function, and as this account of a judicial ruling makes clear, making unusual efforts to…

Student Agency

BY AARON BARLOW In the weeks after the Kent State killings in 1970, I grew increasingly perplexed and withdrawn. My campus—I was attending Utica College in upstate New York—shut down and students seemed triumphant. Triumphant, that is, in the matter of standing for a moment on center stage. But I was unhappy. For it wasn’t…

Preserving the Primacy of Fact and Reason

  POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following item appeared in CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter for Monday, July 3, 2017: Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Fox & Friends” and was asked about the tweet Trump posted depicting himself metaphorically body slamming CNN. She retreated to a familiar White House talking point: the media is too focused on Trump’s tweets, not…

Justifying Greed

BY AARON BARLOW I’ve been told, and by people I respect, not to use the word “neoliberal,” especially when dealing with education–let alone politics. “It is too amorphous,” they say. “It doesn’t really mean anything; it’s just something to rail against.” That has changed. Not only that but, today, we can no longer keep neoliberalism…

Let’s Be a Little More Careful, Please

BY AARON BARLOW A decade or more ago, at a faculty party in New York City, I listened in as a diverse group of faculty spoke casually and disparagingly of “hillbillies,” “rednecks” and “white trash.” I reminded them that they were speaking of my own people (my ancestry is completely Appalachian), though they shouldn’t really be…