On good days it seems that we may be moving toward a society that respects all gender and gender choices. Read a newspaper or watch the news – rules, rights and expectations around gender issues are changing and being more inclusive. On other days, less optimism feels appropriate. Reflection reminds us about how slow and…
Category: Reviews
Reviews of books, articles, and the like
The Big Test Two Decades On
It is helpful to be aware one’s biases. I’m saddled with more than a few, and one is a reflexive distrust of anything called a “secret history.” I know, it’s not rational. To my thinking, though, if it’s being talked about, it can’t be a secret. So why call it that? That idiosyncrasy played a…
University of Nike: Wrongs and Rights
Joshua Hunt, a young journalist, was sent to Eugene, Oregon in 2014 to do an assignment for the New York Times. A University of Oregon student had alleged a sexual assault by three of college basketball players. The police report was harrowing. Amid growing national concern about student athletes and sexual violence, many media outlets…
Liberal Arts Colleges and Liberal Arts Education
Reading essay collections is a shot in the dark. Some volumes are tightly edited and themed. Those are my favorite, for they offer multiple perspectives on an issue. They are easier to remember them and I feel as though I’ve learned something when I finish the volume. Other collections wander. And while it’s almost always…
Academic Conservatism From the 1970s
I recently read an interesting book published more than forty-five years ago: The Idea of a Modern University. The volume contains the “fruits” of a two-day symposium held at Rockefeller University in February of 1972, organized by a group called UCRA (University Centers for Rational Alternatives). The book, conference and group are very much a…
More Than a Memoir
If you have not yet heard about Tara Westover’s Educated: A Memoir, I wager that you will soon. And if you have not yet read the book, I expect that you probably will. This is a book that will be assigned, taught, and taught again and again for many years to come. It is that…
An Education to the Stars
Mike Massimino is a retired NASA astronaut, a seasoned space traveler who played a key role in two Space Shuttle missions. When I picked up his memoir, Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe, I expected a bit of biography and a tech-heavy account of space exploration, perhaps written with…