So what do you think of massively open online courses (MOOCs)? Well, they’re not “massively open” like they were at the start (back in 2008), since now they’re tied to venture capital, the profit motive, tuition fees, and corporate/university branding. There were those who thought they were the future of higher ed, and not just for distance ed students either, but there are now those who are not so confident. […]
How do you think a classroom ought to be structured? Who is the expert — is there even one? Is everyone in it together or are some speakers more authorized than others? After all, one of the people in that classroom is assessing the others — or is everyone assessing everyone else, with the same consequences on the line for all? Consider this article: Read it all here. […]
Interested in a frank discussion of race, identity, and some implications for university campuses interested in diversity among students and faculty? Then consider this clip that our inaugural Zach Day lecturer, Prof. Monica Miller, posted earlier today on Facebook, featuring Prof. Yaba Blay, of Drexel University, and the author of (1)ne Drop: […]
Are you familiar with the work of the Christian theologian John Howard Yoder (d. 1997)? I remember reading his classic The Politics of Jesus long ago, in a galaxy far far away from the academic study of religion. A recent New York Times article (Oct. 11, 2013), entitled, “A Theologian’s Influence, and Stained Past, Live On,” opened as follows: […]
Yet another article has been posted that offers doubts to the no taken-for granted mantra that the US needs more STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates. […]
Have you read this article, posted online by the University of Missouri’s Department of Religious Studies? It’s on the unemployment rates for various degrees, and fields in the Humanities are far lower than the “crisis in the humanities” rhetoric portrays it. As the article argues: […]
Read More from “We Have Failed to Make the Case for Those Skills…”
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for why public meetings, such as the Greece, NY, town council pictured above, ought either to be allowed or disallowed from opening with prayer. What do you think? Learn some background on the case here. See item C on an agenda from one of Greece NY’s recent town meeting here (PDF). Interested in a report on how the arguments before the court went…? (Photo from the LA Times‘ editorial on the case.) […]
Last night we kicked off a new speakers series: “There and Back Again: Grad Tales.” We’re inviting back some former REL majors, who have graduated and gone on to some interesting careers. Coz if you think that the study of religion is all about being religious, then you’ve likely never thought it might be a great preparation for being a high school teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, or maybe even starting your own business. Sure, some of them went on […]
Have you read the foreword, by novelist J. M. Coetzee, to John Higgins’s Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa? […]
A friend up in Canada posted a link to this brief blog post from the other day–have you seen it? In response to a New York Times article, tracking supposed declining interest in the Humanities, it argues: It does make one wonder how we judge the strength of academic fields and, depending on how we answer that, then in whose interest is the now taken-for-granted narrative of “the humanities in crisis”? […]