Food is no longer just food. It is a statement, a value, a marker and a signifier. Food has political value and it is freighted with meaning. What we eat, and what are children eat, is no simple matter. Stepping beyond the perspective of a father encouraging his children to consider a balanced plate, what…
Zeitoun: What’s the Solution?
Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun is an award-winning work of narrative non-fiction. Lauded enthusiastically and critically acclaimed, Zeitoun chronicles the life of Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. Written in a economical style, akin to dramatic journalism, the book unfolds gracefully, pulling the reader into a Job-like story. The Zeitouns ran a successful…
Change and Trust in Higher Education
In recent years the need for change in higher education has become a recurrent refrain. Institutions need to change, faculty need to change, curricula need to change – and recognition of this is widely shared within and outside of the academy. The world and our students are changing at a rapid pace. Higher education, to…
Colossus – Building the Hoover Dam
Good popular history combines the rigor of academic historical scholarship with accessible, lively prose. Good popular history is about telling a story with heroes, villains, drama and resolution. Popular historians can situate their subjects within broader historical questions. Most importantly, good popular history takes a complicated story and renders it in human scale. Popular history…
Commencing a Rethink
Late spring the season higher education celebrates and sends forth its graduates, usually with pomp, circumstance and oration. The commencement address, often given by an honorary degree recipient and friend of the institution, figures prominently in this ritual. It has long been a fixture of academia, with commencement addresses taking place in the United States…
Clio, Ares and Hestia
In Civil War Wives, Carol Berkin sketches the lives and times of Angela Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis and Julia Dent Grant. This is solid women’s history, close to the sources and closely attuned to opportunities and constraints these well-known women faced. Weld was married to abolitionist Theodore Weld. Davis was the spouse of the…
What Sort of Justice is Possible?
Few forms of injustice incite our sense of outrage more than the abuses of power. Power can often have a corrupting influence and unchecked power provides predators opportunities to hurt the weak. And when evil occurs under these conditions, right-thinking people call out for equity and demand justice. In early 2002 the Boston Globe published…