Arguments on behalf of the liberal arts are borne, more often than not, out of fear. “The liberal arts are under attack!” academicians decry, faced with budget cuts and the vagaries of student enrollment trends. People do not understand their importance, it is claimed, with a tone whose undercurrent is condescending. The most popular major…
The Burr That Keeps On Giving
The neuroscientists are hard at work. Their discoveries, hypotheses and suppositions are gaining traction, within and outside of the quad. Science is helping us gain better and deeper understanding of how humans learn. This is no slow process, either. The pace is rapid and shows no sign of abating for decades. Imagine what we will…
On Trust
Trust is an essential component of markets. Trust enables exchange, facilitates planning and commitment over time, and in many ways is the oxygen of contemporary life. The explosive rise of commerce over the internet has precipitated a bevy or articles on the twenty-first century “trust economy” and I anticipate that the phrase and concept will…
Many Crises and One Panel: Historians Discuss Public Higher Education
A very good historian, NYU’s Tom Bender, chaired a panel at the American Historical Association conference last week entitled “The Crisis In Public Higher Education.” Joining Professor Bender were Robert Berdahl of the Association of American Universities, Roger Geiger of Pennsylvania State University, Douglas Greenberg of Rutgers-New Brunswick, Carla Hesse of Berkeley, and Terrence McDonald…
Graduate Education – Growing Again
Is the MA the new baccalaureate? Is a graduate degree critical to professional success? Many seem to think so, but the big picture is more complicated, and interesting, than one might imagine. Each year the Council of Graduate Studies and the folks who bring us the GRE do a survey of graduate schools, asking questions…
Playing in the Shallows – Just What is the Internet Doing to Our Brains?
I read The Shallows by Nicholas Carr in an old-fashioned format: hardcover book. It wasn’t an accident, either. Carr penned “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” for The Atlantic, and the article generated a good deal of thought and discussion around the house. We tend to be Google-philes and the “gee-whiz” factor of what emanates from…
Netherland
Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland is a very good novel. A post 9/11 narrative, a book about post-modern living, love and family, a buddy story, a novel about exiles (modernism, anyone?, a love story, a narrative about New York City – it is more than fiction, it is literature. Snobbish, perhaps, but outstanding fiction can transcend itself and…