Many of you probably read Daniel Drezner’s recent Chronicle of Higher Education article about the decline of public intellectuals (“Public Intellectual 2.0”), in which Drezner wants to contest the presumed Götterdämmerung that many–like Francis Fukuyama, Russell Jacoby and Daniel Bell— believe began in the 1950’s and has yet to abate. Specifically, Drezner takes to task…
Read MoreI’m a pretty big fan of reality television. Or “reality” television. I like to claim that my primary interest in it is as a cultural phenomenon, but I know that’s not completely true. The truth is that I just find it totally fascinating–partially in the same voyeuristic way that everyone else does, but also as…
Read MoreBecause I was having some technical blogging difficulties last week, I just posted briefly on the Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Day. In that post, I urged readers to visit the Tear It Down project website, which is the home of an initiative to tear down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and to call…
Read MoreMy oh my! I am seriously impressed with the flurry of activity on my friends’ blogs in the week that I’ve been away from this one. (Especially nice posts by Ideas Man on what’s really wrong with Mormonism, and by chet on the death of the author/artist.) As chet rightly pointed out to me, I…
Read More[Chet has forced me to place a temporary moratorium on Memphis-themed posts to this blog. But it’s only temporary.] I was tied up with Merleau-Pontyans shortly after the Columbia University speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but I did actually watch his speech in its entirety on CSPAN and wanted to offer my $0.02 on…
Read MoreHere’s something we all need to talk more about: eros in the classroom. I was reminded of this just recently by an excellently written article in The American Scholar by Yale professor William Deresiewicz entitled “Love on Campus.” (If you haven’t read the piece already, please stop and read it now. The references follwing will…
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