When Is Someone “Like Us”?

When the victims of the Paris attacks received massive public sympathy on a global scale, many people pointed out that such an outpouring was disproportionate, and even stunk of Eurocentrism. After all, other attacks had occurred in recent months, other lives were lost, and far less attention was paid. There ...
Read More
When Is Someone “Like Us”?

The Triumph of Design (Thinking)

What’s wrong with useful creativity

September’s edition of that venerable and elite journal of contemporary capitalism, the Harvard Business Review, is devoted to the evolution of something called “design thinking” and its role in current business practices. We are all likely familiar with the way in which design has come to play a central role ...

Read More

On the Academic Calls to Boycott Israel, Part III

The Jewish Question and the debate over the Israeli academy

The “Jewish Question” was defined in turn of the century Europe as a question about the manner and degree to which Jewish difference was compatible with the ideals of European modernity (Librett 2014) as well as with political projects that took shape with and against its geopolitical contexts (Bauer ...

Read More

Adjusting the Lens on Rape Culture

Notably absent from Zaretsky’s idyllic depiction of the college campus as an outpost of sexual freedom and experimentation is any discussion of the role of the drug and alcohol culture in such settings. Zaretsky’s campus thrums with intellectual and cultural exchange -- as he says, in classes, athletic and cultural ...
Read More

Rape Culture and the College Campus

The idea that colleges and universities are “rape cultures,” that is cultures in which rape is normalized due to invidious gender norms, is a false and malicious one that should rejected by all progressives. Young women go to college for reasons very similar to those of young men, among which ...
Read More

O.O.P.S. vs M.O.O.C.s: Midterm Report, Part 1

“The proponents of M.O.O.C.s (Massive Open Online Courses) look for the magic bullet, hoping to find a technological solution to the crisis in education. The O.O.P.S. (Open Online Public Seminar) project is to use the new technology, the potential of the web, to extend education’s promise.”

With these words, I closed ...

Read More

Four Ways African Universities Should Support Democracy

African universities need to redefine themselves and with greater urgency pursue a more vigorous democratization mission of their societies, given the spectacular failure of political leadership in the region to build quality democracies.

The challenge for African countries is how to mold democratically based models of citizenships in countries and regions ...

Read More