Category Archives: academia

Re: “Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age,” by Trip Gabriel

Trip Gabriel, “Lines on Pla­gia­rism Blur for Stu­dents in the Dig­i­tal Age” (h/t Kishore) I kinda feel sorry for the author of this arti­cle. There has to be this pre­tense of objec­tiv­ity, this sense that there’s a real inquiry going on: “Now we have a whole gen­er­a­tion of stu­dents who’ve grown up with infor­ma­tion that just …

August 4, 2010 – 3:12 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, education | Comments (7)

Attempted Justification, 6/20/10

Sub­ject to dele­tion when I reread and gag at how arro­gant this is I always do lots of per­sonal jour­nal writ­ing when trav­el­ing. It’s out of char­ac­ter with most of my jour­nal entries. Most of what I jot down are notes on books or poems with occa­sional rants. Some­times there are drafts of blog posts. So …

June 20, 2010 – 11:22 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, personal | Comments (1)

Q: “Why is Lady Gaga worth studying?”

Via aldaily.com — “Get your Ph.D. in Lady Gaga” There are lots of pro­fes­sors who rant about cul­tural stud­ies because of what hap­pens to the rest of the lib­eral arts. Not only do stu­dents take fewer courses in Shake­speare, for exam­ple, but new hires in the depart­ment increas­ingly lack com­pe­tence with the mate­r­ial that makes one …

June 12, 2010 – 8:04 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia | Comments (2)

At the University of Dallas, 3/28/10

I’m try­ing to get the “vibe” of cam­pus, and am try­ing to get to know as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. It does feel like things are more con­ser­v­a­tive here than when I started 7 years ago, but by “more con­ser­v­a­tive” I don’t mean peo­ple are busy putting up angry posters about lib­er­als and health care …

March 27, 2010 – 4:17 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, education, personal, politics | Comments (0)

So, Um, What’s the Value of a Liberal Arts Education Again?

From John Lingan’s “They’re All Zom­bies,” about a new craze sweep­ing col­leges nation­wide: Now that the game has been embraced by stu­dents at a dozen-odd other col­leges, we can see its pro­po­nents for what they really are: kids who view col­lege as a four-year play­ground. These stu­dents exists at any school—hence the pop­u­lar­ity of H …

March 4, 2010 – 6:08 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, education | Comments (3)