Yesterday I wrote about the White House’s conference on American history. Read that post here. Conservatives are cheering the event. Those on the Left–particularly academic historians–are trashing the event. There are a lot of reasons to be critical about what...
academic profession
An Accidental Professor
I love reading stories of professors raised in working-class families. I thus need to read Jennine Capo Crucet’s recent book My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education. The Atlantic is running a piece based on the book. Here is...
What Makes Your Book Valuable?
How do authors measure the success of their books? Rachel Toor asks this question in a very interesting piece at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Given my history in publishing, people often ask me for help with their book projects. One...
“Critical Thinking” and the University
Over at his blog Blue Book Diaries, Jonathan Wilson reminds us that the teaching of “critical thinking” skills is not the primary purpose of a college education. (Neither is job training). Here is a taste of his piece “The Most...
*Inside Higher Ed* Covers the Erin Bartram Blog Post on Leaving Academia
We blogged about this yesterday. Get up to speed here. Here is a taste of “Calling Academe’s Bluff.” Janet Watson, an associate professor of history at UConn, worked with Bartram in graduate school and reached out to her about her...
AHA Dispatch: “Historians Behaving Badly”
Mike Davis is back! See his previous AHA 2018 posts here. In this dispatch he summarizes a panel on professionalism in the discipline (or lack thereof!). –JF I attended two sessions on Thursday. I wrote about a session on community...
Gordon Wood Is Still Relevant
History-related social media is blowing-up over Gordon Wood’s essay on historian Bernard Bailyn in the recent issue of the conservative Weekly Standard. The fact that Wood, one of the most decorated American historians of the past century, is the center of attention today...