A TV sitcom is just a frivolous thing, right? Not worth taking seriously, surely. Except that we do; we take TV shows and TV characters very seriously. The enormous hoopla and press coverage surrounding the reboot of the sitcom “Roseanne” is a case in point, and TV writer and actor Kelvin Yu makes a very …
Continue reading Not “all caught up”: Kelvin Yu on “Roseanne”
March Madness draws a lot of attention to many colleges and universities that don’t usually get noticed, and the lack of recognition applies to much more than sports. In this March 2018 essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, education professor Kevin R. McClure argues that public regional universities across the US should receive much …
Continue reading Ready for the ball: Kevin McClure on public regional universities
Spring break, yay!!! *Cough*—not so fast. Spring break is a nonstop party for some, but for others, it’s lonely and hungry. When campus food service shuts down, when there are no cooking facilities available, things can get very grim. In this March 2018 New York Times essay, Harvard sociologist Anthony Abraham Jack reports on a …
Continue reading Spring broke: Anthony Abraham Jack on food insecurity on campus
Oh, those famous ‘three little words’! No, not “I love you,” although they’re important, too, of course. The ‘three little words’ of our era are “I hear you,” and don’t underestimate their power. But here’s the thing: it’s easy to hear the voices and ideas that we already agree with. How well do we hear …
Continue reading Bubble scrubbing: Joan Blades and John Gable on the power of conversation
Some Twitter users have hundreds of thousands of followers. Wow, they must be really important celebrities. Or maybe they have interesting and influential ideas. Or maybe they’ve just paid for a few thousand follow bots to puff themselves up. Isn’t that . . . cheating? Not according to technology researcher danah boyd, and she explains …
Continue reading Bots that fluff: danah boyd on bot-hating and Twitter
Today, robots and AI-enabled devices can vacuum your carpets, remind you to water your plants, or give you a weather forecast for next week’s trip to Disneyland. But can a robot commiserate with you at the end of a hard day or applaud you for a personal triumph? Well, maybe not yet, but soon, for …
Continue reading Bots that care: Arielle Pardes on personal support chatbots
Criticisms of amateurism in college sports usually center around compensation for student athletes. Here, sports historian and former NCAA national champion distance runner Victoria L. Jackson calls out college sports amateurism for another reason—racism. Her January 2018 op-ed was published in the Los Angeles Times; Jackson was also interviewed for the Chronicle of Higher Education …
Continue reading Who pays the price: Victoria L. Jackson on race, revenue, and college sports
Just how important are community colleges in the landscape of higher education in the United States? Well, nearly half of US undergraduates attend a community college; that makes them pretty important. Two community college presidents—Gail Mellow of LaGuardia Community College in New York and DeRionne Pollard of Montgomery College in Maryland—argue in this February 2017 …
Continue reading Opportunity and healing: Mellow & Pollard on community colleges
Many of the students at top-ranked universities have worked enormously hard to get there. They know that a degree from such an institution will pay off in “the market.” Such an emphasis, however, has its own costs and consequences. Vanderbilt University student Jorge Salles Diaz takes a step back and poses some larger questions in …
Continue reading “The people we want to become”: Jorge Salles Diaz on elite universities
You’ve probably been hearing the phrase “global village” for your whole life, and the phrase is usually associated with warm and fuzzy feelings about the interconnectedness of all people and the universality of the human condition. The reality, however, as we’ve been seeing recently, is not especially warm and very far from fuzzy. What’s gone …
Continue reading “Mistrust and friction”: Nicholas Carr on today’s global village
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