Regarding the Artist

Years ago, before I even thought about teaching as a full-time and permanent career, I spent a few semesters working for an online “university.” I won’t call what I did “teaching.” After all, the institution didn’t. I was a “facilitator” responsible for a section or two of the required Composition course. It had been designed…

The Neologist’s Notebook: 1

Yesterday, in her speech endorsing the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin referred to our need to resist inserting ourselves military into all of the many “squirmishes” occurring around the world. Yesterday, on ESPN’s Around the Horn, Woody Paige referred to the controversy surrounding the fans’ election of a hockey enforcer as an all-star…

A Crisis in Civic Education?

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a conservative group that has advocated increased activism by college and university trustees and a “return” to “traditional” curricula in Western Civilization and American military, constitutional, and diplomatic history (let’s put aside for now that, given the recent behavior of most trustee boards, these two goals may…

Dos & Don’ts for Faculty and the Media

This is a guest post by Greg Loving and Jeff Cramerding, authors of the article, “Five Rules for Dealing with the Media,” in the new January-February 2016 issue of Academe. Greg Loving is associate professor of philosophy at University of Cincinnati Clermont College and president of the UC AAUP chapter. Jeff Cramerding serves as director of contract…

MLK: The Purpose of Education

The following was written by Martin Luther King, Jr. and first published in the February 1947 edition of the Morehouse College Student Newspaper.  King was 18 years old. As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose…