Tag Archives: rant

Rant: I Do Teach Politics. But Most People Think Politics Requires No Skill, And Therefore Can’t See What I’m Up To

Very rough, only an outline of an answer. Once again I’ve been asked for the 928347927972th time why I write on poetry and philosophy if I’m a political scientist. I think I’ve answered that at length before with commentary on how we relate to our heritage and the state of the media. Now I want …

June 13, 2008 – 8:57 am | By ashok | Posted in education, politics | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Rant: Should Literature Ape the Sciences? An Angry Response to Jonathan Gottschall

Writing in the Boston Globe, Gottschall argues that “literary scholars have mostly failed to generate surer and firmer knowledge about the things we study. While most other fields gradually accumulate new and durable understanding about the world, the great minds of literary studies have, over the past few decades, chiefly produced theories and speculation with …

May 13, 2008 – 9:08 pm | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged , | Comments (9)

Exhortation: Why the Liberal Arts? Is There A Lasting Good? (And Why the University of Dallas?)

After seeing a whole class of undergraduates sit like bumps on a log and not say anything or register any sort of reaction when the Gettysburg Address was being introduced, and then seeing more bumps on a log at the graduate level when the class was focused on Rousseau’s Second Discourse/the problem of whether any …

March 30, 2008 – 8:18 pm | By ashok | Posted in plato, politics | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Rant: If The Liberal Arts Are To Survive, Then People Can’t Be 6 Figures in Debt For An English Degree

To all budding philanthropists in America: If you are worried about things like a decline in reading, an inability to express oneself well verbally, a general lack of knowledge about the past or its significance, or the emergence of a thoughtless populist politics, then take note: You can’t expect people to dedicate themselves fully to …

February 26, 2008 – 1:59 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, education | Tagged | Comments (7)

Rant: The Cult of The Expert, Or The Media Is Problematic In Exactly What They Get Right

An enormous amount of learning is repetition and the reciting that goes along with it. In complaining about the media being biased, many of us forget that journalists do go to people considered the expert in their subject and repeat that opinion, complete with the facts supporting that opinion, in their work. They’re learning from …

August 29, 2007 – 12:48 pm | By ashok | Posted in media | Tagged , | Comments (1)