Is there anything more contemptible than revisionist history from a failed university president?
Tag Archives: academia
Hit Me with Your Best Shot
Well, it looks like the pro-booster side has essentially won the argument, at least in the US, over whether boosters ought to be given for recipients of the Pfizer-Biontech COVID vaccine, six+ months after the second dose. My brother Suleman and I have (very incompletely) argued the case in favor of boosters here, here, and here. As front-line health care workers (he’s a physician, I worked in OR EVS), we got our first doses of the shot back in December 2020, and our second ones in January 2021. He works with COVID patients in a hospital, and I work in an increasingly crowded office. Neither of us had any sense of how much protection we were getting from the vaccine at this point.
Continue readingThe Lost Boys
Here’s an exchange I just had with Stephen Hicks over a recent Wall Street Journal article, “A Generation of American Men Give Up on College” (Sept. 6, 2021). (The Journal piece is paywalled, but can be one-time accessed by registering.)
Naturally, I’m having trouble with the technological wonders of the “block editor,” so I’ve indicated in italics where each separate quotation begins.
Stephen’s reaction to the article:
Two thoughts:
- This is a bad thing. Boys and young men have been ill-served by mainstream education, such that they are unmotivated and unprepared for life’s challenges — and they know it in their bones.
- This is a good thing. Rather than waste two or four more years of the same at colleges and universities that extend the mis-education, the young men will gropingly get into real life and actually find something engaging and valuable to do.
FU
In one year, Felician University has lost its President, its Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, its Dean of the School of Business, its Registrar, and most recently, its Vice President of Academic Affairs. Before that, it lost a Trustee, a previous VPAA, a Provost, the Dean of Nursing, and two Deans of Business. Vanity compels me to mention that it also lost an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Pre-Law Adviser, along with literally dozens of faculty and staff, often terminated on the flimsiest of pretexts, and in some cases, on the basis of manufactured scandals and outright lies.
Continue readingGoFundMe Request: Tanya O’Malley
I wanted to share this GoFundMe request, a fundraiser for the equivalent of a scholarship for a young woman named Tanya O’Malley.
I met Tanya on a flight home from Rome back in 2016, after I’d spent the summer in Palestine, and she’d spent hers in Italy. We were total strangers to one another, mere seatmates on a nine-hour flight.
Instead of ignoring each other, or sleeping through the flight, we had an intense nine hour conversation…about education! And she initiated it, not me. She was at the time a 17-year-old high school student, and I was a 47-year-old college professor, but our thirty-year age difference melted away in nine hours (sooner, really). We became friends, and remain friends five years later.
Continue readingThe Life She Saved
I was cleaning out some computer files when I came across the folder from my old Felician University office laptop containing all (or most) of my student letters of recommendation. On a lark, I decided to look some of my former students up. Some might call this “stalking”; I call it Pedagogical Outcomes Analysis.
Here’s one of them, an RN-to-BSN student for whom I wrote a letter back in 2010, when she was applying for a position as a school nurse. I’m pleased to say that she got that position, and then some:
Continue readingCFP: “Rethinking College”
Reason Papers (now edited by Shawn Klein, Arizona State University) has just issued a Call for Papers on the topic, “Rethinking College.” Here’s the blurb:
For years, we have heard about the coming bursting of the higher education bubble. Cancellation of college debt is an active political issue. Free speech on campus (or lack thereof) is a perennial issue. Criticisms of higher education from across the ideological spectrum continue to grow. The Covid-19 pandemic brought many of these issues to a head and has many people rethinking college. This symposium is interested in papers engaging these or other normative questions and issues about higher education.
Here’s a link with more information. Manuscript due date is July 15, 2021.
Academized Paper Writing Service
How to succeed in high school, college, and even grad school: Buy your papers from the Academized Paper Writing Service!!
Check out their list of reasons why people might buy school papers, personal statements for college admissions, and even their PhD dissertations! My favorite: lessen your course load and make sure you get everything submitted on time.
Sophomore level college papers start at $14.99/page. (Assuming you can wait two weeks, otherwise it’s more.)
Need a doctoral dissertation? No problem! Prices start at $17.99/page—though you have to wait two months for delivery. (Again, for faster service, the price is higher.)
First time customers get 15% off!
Not sure whether to take the plunge? It may be well to be cautious. TopDissertatons.org gives them only 3 out of 5 stars. The problems are that their website is not user-friendly enough, their writers not specialized enough, and slow response times for customer service. They of course have an 800 number and Live Chat, but wait times are long. On the bright side, TopDissertations rates Academized’s prices as “not bad at all.”
The rating from TopDissertations is in line with other reviews. IHateWritingEssays.com gives them only 1.5 out of 5 stars, while awriter.org gives them only 5.2 out of 10.
Fortunately, the rating sites rate plenty of other paper writing services. Awriter.org’s home page lists about 80 paper writing companies! So, if Academized seems not to be the best, there are others to choose from.
Is this a great time for education, or what?
EVS Journal (1): Kill ‘Em All
Some readers may remember that back in May, I resigned my position as Associate Professor of Philosophy at Felician University in protest at malfeasance I encountered at the university, malfeasance that upper-level university administration wanted covered up. These same administrators apparently expected me to help them cover it up, but I wouldn’t and didn’t; after a ten-day standoff with these assholes, it became clear that they wanted me off of payroll and out of the way. As an at-will employee at a non-tenure-granting institution (five years on the AAUP’s censure list), I had no viable institutional options for dealing with corruption that willful and entrenched, so I quit before they fired me. I’m glad I did. As I’ve been saying for years, Felician is a sinking ship. It’s only a matter of time before it goes under. Continue reading
Solidarity with Nathan Jun
The following is an open letter by Professor Nathan Jun, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Midwestern State University Texas (ht: Roderick Long). Please distribute widely.
Dear Comrades:
As many if not most of you are already aware, I was subjected to an intense campaign of doxing, harassment, threats, and vandalism this past summer owing to comments I had posted on social media in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Although this campaign had waned significantly by August, it has since resumed with a vengeance this past week following a speech I delivered at a campus rally for Breonna Taylor on Thursday, 24 September. Within 24 hours of that event I had already received several death threats. The situation quickly escalated after fascists (acting in concert with local media) disseminated a comment I posted on a friend’s Facebook page.
