21st Century Scholar

Around graduation some USC seniors had some parties off-campus. The parties got out of hand for one of the groups. Apparently two parties were held across the street off-campus from one another. Mostly white kids were at one of the parties and mostly black kids were at the other. The parties got loud and a [...]

According to knowyourmeme.com: Hip is an American slang term vaguely meaning fashionably current. But since the term doesn’t refer to one specific quality (similar to ‘cool’), what is actually considered hip is ever-changing and therefore impossible to define. Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, the term “hipster” had gone the tragic route of other generational pejoratives such [...]

If we were going to list the world’s greatest living writers surely Salmon Rushdie would be on the list. I appreciate that he is not everyone’s cup of tea, but Midnight’s Children is regarded as a masterpiece; it not only won the prestigious Booker Prize, but was voted the “Booker of Bookers.” Some of his [...]

Memorial Day suggests summer is around the corner! As we approach summer I wanted to suggest two first-rate novels to read; I’ll discuss the first one today and the second next week. I frequently tell my students if they want to read good writing they’re not going to find it in social science. I find [...]

I wrote the Foreword to Damon William’s Examining Strategic Diversity Leadership: Activating Change and Transformation in Higher Education (Stylus, 2013). Here’s what I said: In his epic The Souls of Black Folk in 1903 W. E. B. Du Bois commented that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” Damon Williams [...]

Kurt Vonnegut once said to a group of eager writing students, “Probably all of you are good enough to make it as writers. But it’s likely that only one of you has what it takes to endure the constant rejection.” I’m not sure I would reduce academic life to such a straightforward statement, but he’s [...]

How the higher ed world changes in such a short time. K–12 education has been in “crisis” much of my adult life, but usually higher education has been spared the Hollywood-like metaphors. “A nation at risk” paralleled other 20th century reports that forecast calamity because particular goals had not been reached in K–12 education. The [...]

We all know that stereotypes exist. Some are funny—white men can’t jump. Others remain from a distant past—all professors wear bow ties, tweed jackets, and smoke pipes. And others are pernicious—African American students don’t do well on standardized tests. Stereotypes also tend to speak as much about the group not mentioned as the group mentioned. [...]

These are the two videos (click here and here) that preceded the AERA lecture. Many of you have asked for them. Leo Diaz made them. I’ll be thinking and writing about this past year after I catch my breath. Adieu.

The conference is upon us, and it’s a chance not just to renew past acquaintances but to make new ones. At a meeting that approaches the size of a small city, the temptation is to cordon oneself in a particular disciplinary, ideological, or methodological neighborhood and never venture out. I encourage you to resist temptation [...]