Personal

Why I’m headed to ASU

The Tampa Bay Times‘ Elisabeth Parker* wrote a very kind piece about my leaving USF that will appear in tomorrow morning’s paper. Because of space considerations and (probably) generosity on her part, the broader context of my job search was highly abbreviated. In most cases, I’m happy to be far in the background on pieces […]

From the sauna into the frying pan

Brief programming note: part of the reason why my blog-writing has been lagging this semester is because I had two major talks to prepare in the last few months. One of them was a presentation about a month ago at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and I will be joining them this […]

Lashon hora, microaggression, and the academic asshole

There are three forms of social aggression that can infect an academic department or college and be hard to root out.1 I have been mulling these for a while and have only half-formed thoughts; it’s probably best to think of the following as a tentative classification. I hope to have time to discuss possible responses […]

Trend newspaper stories becoming quite common

The following isn’t quite the most emailed New York Times article ever, but I gather this is a draft of a feature that will shortly be appearing. Trend stories becoming common by Parke Davis “ICYMI, Thomas Friedman has a column in the NYTimes again,” said the tweet. “It’s becoming a trend.” This, like so many other […]

Odds and ends to begin spring break

For the first time I can recall, my children and I are on spring break the same week, which given that we are talking the coordination of three different systems, is Spring Break Convergence. It’s great to have our college junior home from the Northeast; on the downside, we cannot complain about the weather for […]