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Oh, the "Humanity"!
Posted March 2, 2019, by Mary Grabar: “Connecting People with Different Viewpoints” Yes, that is a real headline at the Hamilton College website.
Hamilton College is teaming up with “public radio's StoryCorps on a new initiative, One Small Step, to solicit community members in the Mohawk Valley and Hamilton students who hold opposing views to participate in a one-hour, facilitated, recorded conversation to get to know each other a bit as people.” This is to “focus on their common humanity, not their political differences.”
Hamilton College is presumably very good at this because they have a track record in fostering such “conversations”—the much touted “Common Ground” series, wherein respectful dialogue between people of different political viewpoints was put on display for students and community members.
Dissident Prof went to the first one, a debate between Democratic strategist David Axelrod and Republican strategist Karl Rove. It was a saccharinely sweet Kumbaya encounter as the two joined hands in politely bashing the President of the United States.
History Writing News at Concord Review
By Mary Grabar, posted on January 16, 2019: Long-time friend of the Dissident Prof, Will Fitzhugh, is passing the baton of editorship of The Concord Review, his internationally recognized quarterly journal of academic research papers in history by high school students, to Charles Emerson Riggs, a scholar of American intellectual history at Rutgers University. Mr. Riggs will be defending his Ph.D. dissertation about "the confluence of religion, existentialism, and psychoanalysis in mid-twentieth-century American thought, with a focus on the German-born theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich," this spring. Like Mr. Fitzhugh, Mr. Riggs graduated from Harvard College with honors. Although he was born in 1987, the same year Fitzhugh began The Concord Review, Riggs has worked as an editor, researcher, historian, and educator for a decade. This past summer, he began serving as as dean of The Concord Review's summer programs in San Francisco, Boston, and Seoul.
Why College Students Can't Write
Guest Post by John Maguire, Posted August 22, 2018: That American students and college graduates write lousy prose is not disputable. The Chronicle of Higher Education runs op-eds about it all the time. The Washington Post published at least three big blog posts on the subject in 2017. The New York Times ran a well-reported 2,000-word story by Dana Goldstein called “Why Kids Can’t Write.” However, the headline we’d like to see (“Business Owners Say College Grads Writing More Lucidly Than Ever”) will appear only in The Onion.
Contraries: The Swamp at DOE, Diversity, Retirements
Posted March 12, 2018, by Mary Grabar: It is with increasing dismay that I read missives from the Department of Education. On Friday, arriving in my mailbox was the Teachers Edition newsletter with a recommended link to an article about the winners of a New York Times contest for teenagers to connect classic literary works to articles in their newspaper. It does not take much imagination to guess what the results might be. The headline announced, "Student Contest Results in Eye-Opening Connections in Classical Texts" and linked back to the Times article, "Making Connections: 50 Teenagers Suggest Creative Ways to Link Classic Texts to the World Today." I'll say they were creative. Here are the winners:
Fahrenheit 451 and Trump: Zoe Georgulus connected President Trump's policy on language in CDC budget documents to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Writes the 17-year-old, "Our government has become a Mind Flayer of sorts: it sees itself as a superior race of thinkers and feels a need to dominate others to the point of mind control." Zoe connected the novel to the New York Times article titled, "Thought Control, Trump-Style."
Read more: Contraries: The Swamp at DOE, Diversity, Retirements
Christmas Shopping in Atlanta: Goldwater at Dollar Tree
By Mary Grabar, Posted December 22, 2017: The Dissident Prof is back in Atlanta, for the holidays and doing research, and noting the changes in the city (including Decatur and DeKalb County). Millennials have taken over and they all seem to love to live in newly buillt condominiums, eat out, and shop--except for books.
In Decatur, I almost thought I was back in Greenwich Village. (I was doing research at NYU in October.)
Book stores have all but disappeared.
Read more: Christmas Shopping in Atlanta: Goldwater at Dollar Tree
