The authoritarian mindset is hard to break. Here are things I would like to express to leadership in our department but don’t think I will be allowed to. I despair of being comprehensible, although I consider these things simple, so I’ll note them for the future. They are things are to save the department, whose … More Countering the Authoritarian Mindset
More on hiring. The hire I want, one person to replace a just-retired professor and a retiring instructor, will be a forward-looking person with at least some of these characteristics (and/or other similar ones): * a research program they like, and that they can bring students in on, including for undergraduate research * the ability … More On hiring
It’s a brilliant site. I got this from them. Axé. ENTER SHADOWS Then I saw the shadow of the massive cypress tree split the queue of cars in two. How can a neighborhood be as narrow as Ramallah al-Tahta? How can one tree’s shadow be as vast as a border cleaving countries? How can night … More Poem per diem: Enter Shadows
I should write an article for Academe on this. People in their effort to be kind to the NTT are ending up speaking ill of their fields. A fundamental point, perhaps, is that people, including alleged progressives and union members, forget that tenure is about INTEGRITY. The AAUP says academic freedom and shared governance but … More On the value of the PhD and tenure
TRANSLATIONa huevo: to be aggressively seduced by an eggay diosito: the small god you thank because your hands existme hicieron ojo: my eyelashes flew one by one like a longing!señora studies: look, a map in the dirt of your mother’s hurtsempacho: you ate cactus until you burst open like a rotten fruittacos de cabeza: quandaries … More TRANSLATION (poem)
I worked for hours on a draft that got lost due to some Internet freeze I don’t understand. It’s a short memo and a lot of notes. I want to send ISP’s piece on saving the humanities to leadership, to accompany the other piece and my other request. It offers a different and more hopeful … More Lost post
…our toxic department? It’s not that students are losing interest in the field, it’s that we are alienating them because the toxicity is so evident. What is needed? Axé.
This is important and revealing, as it shows why I am and have been so traumatized by “cajunismo.” I waver between understanding that this happened, and it’s common, and I withstood it better than many, and thinking I should have found a way to reject it, see what was happening, and start batting on my … More The academic power and control wheel
My department here moved to an old, marginally maintained mansion it had reclaimed from use as graduate student rentals. To celebrate the move, and I think we were living there as well, it announced a party but did not tell anyone it was not providing food, drink, or music. Arriving guests were nonplussed. Then everybody … More Dream
Discrimination exists. I started a card for an outgoing administrator who had been a breath of fresh air and all who signed were either instructors or professors of color. This caused me to see more clearly why the person had been refreshing. It was what they didn’t do. If it isn’t the non-discrimination, the instructors … More Discrimination exists
coldhearted scientist وداد 