One of my favorite things to do at the end of the semester involves sending emails to those particularly excellent students I had in class and trying to recruit them to the Philosophy major. I don’t think I tell students often enough during the regular term that they’re doing good work, or that they have…
Read MoreIf this were a post on Buzzfeed or Upworthy or some other such listicle-driven site, the thumbnail caption would read: “You won’t BELIEVE the AMAZING things these COLLEGE STUDENTS did in their PHILOSOPHY class! Check it out!” That would be a 100% true description, but I will attempt to be more measured in what follows….
Read MoreTonight, on Facebook and Twitter, I posted that I was “praying” for Minneapolis, for Chicago, for #BlackLivesMatters, for refugees fleeing violence and seeking safety and, more generically, for anyone and everyone who loves justice, defends and protects the most vulnerable among us, who is under assault, in danger and in need of not only our supportive solidarity, but our active advocacy. This was…
Read MoreThis is the second installment of my Reading Coates posts, offering some reflections on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me in light of our summer reading group’s discussion of the same. You can read Part 1 here. Before I jump right into Chapter 2, I want to take a moment to comment upon what I…
Read MoreOver the last several years, I’ve steadily increased the amount of time I spend in my moral and political philosophy courses on the theme of “digital identity.” I’ve done so in part because one important cornerstone of my pedagogical practice is to use my courses to combat digital illiteracy– the single greatest vulnerability that will…
Read MoreI just got home from a whole day at the first ever TEDxMemphis event– I say “first” because it looks like plans are already in the works for another one next year (THIS MUST HAPPEN!)– and I cannot possibly exaggerate what an amazing, informative, inspirational and motivational event it was. Especially for this city, my city,…
Read MoreThere are certain works of art in every medium– literature, theater, photography, sculpture, film, painting, music, et al.– that somehow manage, through an impossible-to-determinately-calculate alchemical combination of human creativity, the raw materials of Nature, and some other mysterious thing we might generically point toward and say “meaning” or “truth,” to reach beyond the mere representation…
Read More[This is the second installment of my series The Wired Election, employing insights gained from HBO television series The Wire to interpret 2016 Presidential election campaign events, persons and states of affair. The cheese stands alone.] Like many of my fellow web-citizens, I found myself doing a number of dramatic double-takes on Wednesday morning as I watched “news”-casters review…
Read MoreThey say you can’t “unring a bell.” It’s an analogy that is often used to illustrate our incapacity to un-experience things, to erase lived-experiences from our bodies and minds. What I discovered recently is how particularly true that is in the classroom. A few weeks ago in my Philosophy and Film course, we screened Werner…
Read MoreParis was ambushed by seven separate terrorist actions last night, a horrific set of events eerily reminiscent of both the Charlie Hebdo massacre less than a year ago and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Any one of them– the mass shootings in various restaurants and bars, the suicide bombing outside of a soccer match at the Stade de…
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