Women and Men in Dark Times (Syllabus Included)

University Lectures at The New School

Elżbieta Matynia and I are teaching a special university wide course for undergraduates this semester, inspired by our favorite political thinker, Hannah Arendt, and her illuminating collection, Men in Dark Times. The course is a response to the present political moment. We, as did she, live in “dark times.” And as ...
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Women and Men in Dark Times (Syllabus Included)

Gender and its Discontents

OOPS course

Description: We start by acknowledging that sex- and gender-based social organization is pervasive and, further, that its prominence and persistence is reflected in sex- and gender-conscious research across the humanities, the arts, the social sciences, design, and studies dedicated to social policies and innovative strategies for social intervention. We expand on ...
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Gender and its Discontents

The Dark Side of Homeschooling

What the Turpin case teaches us about the lack of oversight on homeschooling in the US

Earlier this month, police responded to a 911 call made by a 17-year-old girl, informing them that her brothers and sisters were being held captive in her family home in suburban Perris, CA. On arrival, police found her thirteen siblings, aged between 2 and 29, showing clear signs of malnourishment and ...
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The Dark Side of Homeschooling

Tiny Houses, Narrow Visions

Examining American inequality through the problem of teacher housing

This past December, the Vail School District, in the suburbs of Tucson, Arizona, stumbled briefly into the national spotlight when it announced a plan to build tiny homes for teachers who couldn’t otherwise afford to live in the district. Starting salaries for Arizona teachers are $36,000 a year, while the median income in ...
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Tiny Houses, Narrow Visions

Milo in Berkeley

Further reflections on the renewed academic free speech debate

What light if any, I will ask here, does this claim shine on the larger discourse about academic free speech, specifically as that discussion has come to focus, for historical and strategic reasons, on UC-Berkeley. The proximal cause of Berkeley’s centrality is the shutdown of an intended speech by Milo ...
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Milo in Berkeley

The Campus Speech Wars

You have conservative students, so teach them

In the coming weeks, I want to write more about the meaning of free speech, how we understand free speech differently depending on how and where we are positioned, and whether our difficulty in listening to--and understanding--each other is a crucial context for exercising our first amendment rights. But since ...
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The Campus Speech Wars

On James Baldwin and The New School

What It Means to be a Progressive University

And it is the local experts who field questions about Baldwin. The most recent request was from the university’s marketing and communications department to confirm that he had, in fact, been a student. The Baldwin estate had agreed that the university could quote him on its website but the estate ...
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The Republican Tax Bill

How to Murder Higher Education

Higher education in the US, in general, has a particular structure. Universities have considerable tuition -- often higher than $30,000 per annum. Masters students usually receive some measure of a tuition waiver, and PhD and post-doctoral candidates often receive full or significant tuition waivers along with a stipend. These tuition ...
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To a Revolutionary Degree

Power to the PhDs

The catastrophic state of early career employment in faculty roles for PhDs is nothing less than a moral issue that must be addressed with some major changes that we, as PhDs, must work to effect. These changes must prepare PhDs for work broadly conceived, rather than hewing to the current ...
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When Title IX Hits Home

Addressing Our Troubles

As I see it, there are two dimensions of the problem and they should be separated. First, as it is clear now, problems of harassment, as well as apparently improper intimate relationships have existed at the New School as well as other institutions of higher learning. How bad the problems ...
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Don’t Tax Tuition Waivers

American Historical Association urges action for graduate student funding

Targeted Outreach to Conferees Since the conference committee members have been announced, we have begun targeted outreach to our advocates in the states and districts of the Republican members, encouraging them to write or call their Members of Congress. If your representative is among the committee members listed below, we encourage you ...
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