politics

Solidarity

This past Monday, November 21, students at Rhodes College organized a candlelight vigil to show their solidarity with the student protesters at UC-Davis who were assaulted by police while nonviolently protesting on November 18. Rhodes’ event was an answer to the call sent out by Occupy Colleges, the student wing of the Occupy Movement, asking…

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Beautiful Politics

Please, please take 4 minutes and 29 seconds out of your day and watch this.

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Dr. J Catches Up

It’s been too, too long since I’ve posted here. Two whole months, in fact. [Insert standard excuse about being too busy.] My absence was particularly egregious this time, since my last posts, back in September, left a few issues hanging. (Just as an aside, it’s hard for me to believe that the last time I…

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Leiter v. Alcoff, Part One: The Basics

Now that things have quieted down a bit, and in response to readers who’ve been asking me to do this for a while, I’ve decided to offer a few reflections on the recent (and very public) kerfuffle between Brian Leiter and Linda Alcoff. I expect that most of you who aren’t professional philosophers don’t have…

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Leiter v. Alcoff, Part Two: The Context (or, Why This Isn’t Simply A “He Said, She Said” Story)

Okay, if you haven’t read Part One of this series, you should go back and do so. Otherwise, the following won’t make much sense. If you have read Part One, and if you don’t already have a dog in this fight, you may be wondering: what exactly is the big deal here? So what, two…

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31 Days in Seuss: The Rules

Some of you have already written me to ask “what in the world is 31 Days in Seuss?!” Well, it’s like the 30 Day Song Challenge that I did last month (in June), only it’s done in verse, like Dr. Seuss. Each day, I will have to answer the Seuss prompt with as much cleverness,…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 2: Your Least Favorite Song

Day 2 of the 30 Day Song Challenge asks for “your least favorite song” and I really thought this one was going to be harder to choose than it actually was. I mean, there are whole genres of music that I don’t like– speed metal, experimental jazz, anything Celtic, the endless musical masturbation of jam…

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Kyle Ference Mans Up

The picture to the left is of a former student and advisee of mine, Kyle Ference (author of the Refudiating Through Life blog). During his time at Rhodes, Kyle was in many ways the very ideal of a liberal arts student. He was smart and hardworking, affable and well-liked, committed to socially-conscious extracurricular activities, a…

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