Rethink.

1. In some ways, it was natural for the university to become a type of sports franchise. I think of the pettiness of various professors, administrators and students I’ve encountered at a number of schools – schools that may not have Division I teams – and can’t help but wonder what end that spirit of …

1. At Barnes & Noble today. It looked trashed from holiday shopping. There wasn’t much left on the Philosophy shelves. Very few volumes of Nietzsche or Plato; couldn’t even find a copy of “Twilight and Philosophy” (my favorite book, besides this). The store was also reorganized. Philosophy was back in a corner that it took …

There are a number of professors – usually in literature departments, or cultural or gender studies – who create blogs specific to a course and sometimes even try to get their students blogging about the material. Generally speaking, my reaction to this sort of thing is *groan.* Don’t get me wrong, there are some teachers …

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 …