The New York Times has a piece on how a liberal arts education that forces you to engage reading and analysis critically (surprise!) is good for the cognitive abilities of individuals regardless of profession.  And I thought I was wasting my time all this time…

(via Brian Leiter) My profession typified… welcome to academia, everyone!

Here’s what I’m doing in my course American Politics from a Comparative Perspective.  Any questions or comments?

Introduction

The American government is one of many possible strategies for a good society. In this course, we will come to understand the basic design of the American political regime and develop an understanding for why things work the [...]

I’m starting off my Intro to Political Thought course with Kant’s “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”  I think it should be fun to go after them a litle bit with the essay’s second paragraph:
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them [...]

Every time I try to understand a complex problem, I think on it myself, but I also develop a constellation of fellow travelers to who I turn to to read for guidance, inspiration and exposure to new and interesting ideas.  Since I read Peter Levine’s Living Without Philosophy I have always been interested in what he hast to say (his [...]

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while.  A lot of work last week on an exciting symposium that should come out either late this year or sometime next year….
Anyhow, I’m thinking about my American Government from a Comparative Perspective course, and I am seriously contemplating having a course weblog for extra credit.  
The idea would be something like this: [...]

I’ve worked very hard trying to make a syllabus for this course I’m teaching for the Fall. How does this look?
POLS 104 – 03
American Government in a Comparative Perspective
Introduction
The American government is one of many possible strategies for a good society. In this course, we will come to understand the basic design of [...]

My university’s center for E-Learning (I wonder how much more the school puts into that center compared to academic subjects) sent me a link to this article on “Legacy Demands and Technology Expectations.”  Here are some of the winning bits of commentary.
On campus, we educators behave as if computers have not yet been invented. Well, [...]

Harvard has this great page with all sorts of fascinating videos and lectures and stuff.  I had started watching the lectures on Beethoven’s 9th in the summer of 2007, but never finished.  We’ll put this one back on my to-do list.

In talking to students about papers this semester, I’m wondering about their writing priorities.  They are so obsessed with PLANNING their papers before ever committing a word to the page.  They are in fact, unanimously convinced that the best way to write a paper is to write it once and then to edit it to [...]