politics

Tolerance Is Not A Virtue

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

Let me be clear at the outset: when I say that tolerance is not a virtue, I’m saying that as a philosopher for whom virtue has a conceptually substantive meaning.  I do not mean to imply that tolerance is a vice, a claim to which I think no reasonable moral agent, and no philosopher worth…

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Genius: Generative or Generic?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

I had the very good fortune of seeing historian Darrin McMahon (Florida State University), author of the recently published Divine Fury: A History of Genius, deliver a lecture last week as part of Rhodes College’s year-long Communities in Conversation lecture series. I want to write a bit here about some of the questions his book…

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AltAc, TransAc, PostAc and Just Plain Old ACK!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow published a piece a few days ago in the NYT entitled “The Repurposed Ph.D.,” which served as my first introduction to the neologism “post-academic.” The abbreviated (and eminently hashtaggable) version of that term– “PostAc”– is something like the poorer, sadder and less pretty twin of “AltAc” (“alternative academic”), which has for the last…

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Hate Crimes, Complicated: Or, Why It’s So Hard To Do What’s Right, Even When You’re “Right”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

I’ve never been in a fist-fight in my entire life  but, yesterday, I received my first black eye. I got my black eye roughly 48 hours ago now, on what just so happened to be the last day of my College’s Fall break, which ended Tuesday evening.  I spent the entire evening on Tuesday with…

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Doctor Nobody, or: How I Learned to Stop Sitting Passively By and Actually Fight the MOOC Machine

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 20 Comments

As just-another college professor, it’s hard not to feel like the war against MOOCs is more than a little bit like the War on Drugs, or the War or Terror, or the War on Poverty.  The “enemy” is largely nonspecific, nonlocatable, plural, mutable, incredibly powerful and often invisible.  It’s hard to tell on which front…

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30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), Day 26: A Song By a Band/Artist You’d Like To Have Dinner With

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 30 Day Song Challenge, 30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), 30 Day Song Challenge 2014, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

I’m going to assume that today’s prompt means for me to pick among living artists/bands, partly because it would be really creepy to have dinner with a dead person, but more so because the idea of choosing a dinner guest from all the living and dead artists ever is far too daunting a project for…

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30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), Day 18: A Song That Makes You Think of a Place You’ve Never Been

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 30 Day Song Challenge, 30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), 30 Day Song Challenge 2014, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

I’ve never been to Africa, which is particularly embarrassing in my case since I have a Doctoral Minor in African Studies and a large part of my dissertation involved the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  Not having been to Africa is far and away the greatest regret I have in my life, one that…

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30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), Day 11: A Song You Love From the 90s

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 30 Day Song Challenge, 30 Day Song Challenge (The Sequel), 30 Day Song Challenge 2014, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

This week, I’ve begun my third stint in the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies.  RIRS is an innovative summer program in which Rhodes’ best and brightest students get to create their own independent research projects (each of which has some relation to the region) and work with one faculty member for eight weeks to complete…

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Those Children Were Not Babies

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

In a press conference shortly after the horrible news of the Connecticut grade-school shooting broke, White House press secretary Jay Carney said: “There is, I am sure– will be, rather– a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I do not think today is that day.”  Carney could not have been more…

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2012 Year in Sports

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 2012 Year in Review Lists, Dr. J's Lists, RMWMTMBM Archive, Sports, Year in Review Lists 0 Comments

Legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi once said: “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”  In spite of the many ways sports serves as an apt metaphor for life, Lombardi’s sage reflection keys in on one of the important differences between sports and life.  Namely, in sports, they keep score.  On a scoreboard.  And…

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