I’ve been writing about the 1980′s lately and it’s served as a  reminder of just how many key problems have remained unsolved for most of my adult life. We were calling the tenure system a horrible mess then; it’s a horrible mess now, or an even more horrible mess. We knew Republican policies would lead to massive transfers of wealth; that’s why I voted against Reagan in 1980 and then again in 1984, and then against every Republican candidate since.

Obama is no dream progressive but Romney could expand the power of the oligarchs beyond all hope of reform. We were also talking a lot about global warming in the 1980′s, and energy, particularly in relation to reducing oil dependency and curbing the…

I’m never on time in academia.  In fact, I think always trying to be on time– to be timely, fashionable, etc.– is one of the big problems of academic culture. Last year or the year before it was Tweeting; now that’s passed and we are on to Klout or, I suppose, Klouting….

Anyway, I was doing my usual behind the times reading this morning and found this passage by the ACTA, in defense of a blogger recently dumped by the Chronicle of Higher Education:

She argued on the basis of the Chronicle’s own descriptions of the dissertations that they were substituting political partisanship for objective research and analysis. Her piece was sharp, controversial, and sarcastic, but certainly not out of…