Academia

Created
Mon, 18/08/2025 - 12:39
A book review from Inside Story: After The Spike by Spears and Geruso The most striking observation in Dean Spears and Michael Geruso’s new book, After the Spike, is summed up by the cover illustration, which shows a world population rising rapidly to its current eight billion before declining to pre-modern levels and eventually to zero. […]
Created
Mon, 11/08/2025 - 21:34
The Economist, having surveyed the current state of European higher education, has decided that the most significant problem is that the specialized graduate school where I work is insufficiently “relevant.” Two objections so far. First, please please please let’s move on from the Harry Potter references. We’re talking about a campus headquartered in an abbey in Florence, the real-life birthplace […]
Created
Sat, 09/08/2025 - 02:16
The latest podcast produced by the Center for Ethics and Education focuses on political disclosure in the classroom. I think a lot of CTers will find it interesting. Several students were interviewed, and they are quite insightful. For what it is worth, my view is that, in general, when teaching about controversial politically and morally-valenced […]
Created
Wed, 30/07/2025 - 23:07
Tech regulation raises some of the thorniest questions of our time — about free speech versus hate speech, copyright versus fair use, truth versus manipulation. Yet these debates are increasingly irrelevant unless states can first establish digital sovereignty. Without the will to enforce laws on multinational corporations, “tech regulation” is a dead letter. Both the […]
Created
Thu, 31/07/2025 - 10:47
At the Sydney Gleebooks launch of Graeme Turner’s new book Broken, an audience member said: I spend more time on admin than doing my job. I raised the microphone to my mouth to say ‘that is because of moral deskilling’. But it was not my gig, so I didn’t. It would have been very inappropriate. […]