What should professors do about AI generated papers? When I returned to teaching from a sabbatical last year I noticed that the students in my general education history classes suddenly learned how to write. Were they using ChatGPT to write […]
teaching
“No one is going to pay you to do things that can be done as easily as having AI write your essays for you. How are you going to acquire skills that may actually be valuable?”
Jim Cullen, a history teacher at Greenwich County Day School and a Current contributing editor, talks to his class: We’re in my “Money and Morals” elective, where we’ve been reading Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning 2022 novel Trust, a fun-house mirror of postmodernism […]
There is a “crisis of trust” in the college classroom
I am thankful to historian Seth Bruggeman for writing this piece at Inside Higher Ed. It put into words much of what I was feeling last semester in one of my classes and raises some important points about teaching college […]
Grading robots?
I am heading back to the classroom in August after a year-long sabbatical. I am wondering just how much has changed since I left, especially in terms of student use of AI. Here is Beth McMurtrie at The Chronicle of […]
Hamline University’s president is rebuked for an “inaccurate” and “harmful” approach to academic freedom. She responds by inviting Eric Dyson and Robin DiAngelo to campus.
I think they call this “doubling down.” Here is Mark Berkson at The Chronicle of Higher Education: On September 12, Hamline University held a forum on academic freedom. The forum was presented as a response to the incident that occurred last year […]
Pedagogy as therapy?
Is the goal of education for students to feel good about themselves? Is it a form of therapy? Len Gurkin tackles this issue at The Chronicle of Education. Here is a small taste: Vincent Lloyd…widely read essay in Compact, “A Black […]
“Offensive” professors
Last academic year a student told me that they were offended by an image I showed in a Reconstruction Era lecture. I had another student complain because I said that systemic racism was built into colonial Virginia society after 1680 […]
It is possible to teach and write at the same time?
Here is novelist Christina Lynch at LitHub: When I was hired for a tenure-track English professor position, a colleague said to me, “You’ll never write another word.” I was slightly offended, since I had at that point been writing professionally […]
Ideas in Progress: Julie Durbin on vocation, mission, teaching, and the creative life (Part II)
In part I of this interview, you told the fascinating story of the many hats you have worn and currently wear—missionary and traveler, writer and musician, and of course, professor. So, let’s pick up now with this last one, in […]
Should universities be more like monasteries?
Here is a taste of Molly Worthen’s piece at The New York Times: Colleges should offer a radically low-tech first-year program for students who want to apply: a secular monastery within the modern university, with a curated set of courses […]
“Good [humanities] teaching matters, but it can’t be measured”
Here is a taste of Johann Neem’s review of Gayle Greene’s Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of Algorithm: These are tough times for humanities professors. Flip through The Chronicle and the disillusionment jumps off the page. Post-pandemic students are disengaged. Colleges […]
He was Florida’s professor of the year in 2006. Today his courses would be illegal.
In 2006, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching chose WIlliam Felice, a political science professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, as it’s Florida Professor of the Year. He is now retired, but if he were still teaching […]
What is going on at Hamline University?
An art history professor at Hamline University in Minnesota was fired for showing a 14th-century painting of the prophet Muhammad. I will let writer Jill Filipovic take it from here. Below is a taste of her recent piece at Slate […]
Authors I am teaching this semester
Today is the first day of classes! Based on this list of authors, try to guess the two courses I am teaching this semester: Antiquity: 18th Century: 19th Century: 20th Century: Late 20th and 21st Century
What if Jesus got teaching evaluations?
Here are a few of my favorites from Amanda Lehr’s piece at McSweeney’s: “He’s nice enough, I guess, but he doesn’t vet his TAs: they all provide completely different, conflicting lecture notes. (TIP: Try to get in Luke’s section.)” “By […]
On the value of music in the history classroom
Twenty-two years ago, when I regularly taught the second half of the United States history survey (I’ve never taught it at Messiah University), I used a lot of music in class. I still have a small CD collection from those […]
A conservative academic changes his mind about safe spaces
Here is Jon Shields of Claremont-McKenna College: Like other conservative professors who are advocates of free speech on campus, I once opposed efforts to create a classroom climate in which students are protected from speech they find emotionally upsetting, ranging […]
Some suggestions for teaching the Russian invasion of Ukraine in U.S. history classrooms
Some helpful suggestions from Chelsea Gibson of SUNY-Binghamton in a post at Nursing Clio: Discuss the relationship between history and power. Call attention to the memory of World War II Give attention to the anti-nuclear movement Reflect on the differences […]
The scandal of university teaching
Here is Jonathan Zimmerman at Liberties: In 1925, student delegates from twenty colleges met at Wesleyan University to discuss a growing concern on America’s campuses: the poor quality of teaching. They decried dry-as-dust professors who filled up blackboards with irrelevant […]
Historian David Blight champions teachers; criticizes Democratic Party’s “endless debates over the right language”
Here is the Pulitzer Prize-winner and Frederick Douglass biographer: Blight is also concerned about the current state of the Democratic Party: