On Terran Lane's "On Leaving Academia"
Over the last day or so, many of my Facebook friends have been posting UNM CS professor Terran Lane’s reflections on leaving academia for a job at Google. It’s worth a read, and raises some very valid points about the troubles with academia—pay, funding, job security, incentives, isolationism, work/life balance and so forth. But I also find the piece fairly… read more
Is this ethical?
Yesterday I received the following email from Academia.edu, a social network for academics to share research papers. Hi Ian, We noticed that you are following the Computer Science research interest on Academia.edu. We wanted to mention that we are hiring software engineers at Academia.edu, and if you know any current or former students who might be interested, we offer a… read more
If you write about your expertise from a place of contempt, maybe you’re not so smart after all.
One of the pleasures I enjoy as an editor at The Atlantic is bringing the work of scientists and scholars to our pages. From the Object Lessons series on the ordinary lives of everyday things, to the Metropolis Now project on technology and urbanism, to our regular coverage of science, technology, and health, I have had the privilege of editing… read more
The limits of the search giant's philosophy
When I saw that Google had introduced a “Classic Papers” section of Google Scholar, its search tool for academic journals, I couldn’t help but stroke my chin professorially. What would make a paper a classic, especially for the search giant? In a blog post introducing the feature, Google software engineer Sean Henderson explains the company’s rationale. While some articles gain… read more
Is 'adjunct activism' the only path to labor reform in higher ed?
At Chronicle Vitae, full-time adjunct professor Lori Harrison-Kahan writes “Blaming the Victim: Ladder Faculty and the Lack of Adjunct Activism”. The piece addresses tenured faculty’s apparent (or at least relative) silence in the ongoing debate over adjunct labor in higher education. Harrison-Kahan rejoins such faculty for failing to extend their ongoing defenses of marginalized communities to their own community: Why… read more
Advice for negotiating academic jobs. And maybe others too.
Apropos of nothing, some advice for my academic friends who do or may have to negotiate a faculty position, either on the giving or receiving side. It probably applies well beyond academia, but I see the same disappointments year after year in the university. So much dissatisfaction among newly hired junior faculty (and the chairs who have to manage them)… read more
An essay and book series about the hidden lives of ordinary things
Object Lessons is a series of concise, affordable, beautifully designed books and of smart, short essays based around singular objects and the lessons they hold. Books are published and distributed worldwide by Bloomsbury, and essays are published at The Atlantic. You can also keep up with Object Lessons on Twitter and on Facebook. At around 25,000 words, each book starts… read more
Would I be doing what I do now had I been subject to today's University of California graduate tuition and fees? Probably not.
My graduate school experience was unusual, at least for someone pursuing a humanities PhD. While I did teach some, for much of the time I was in grad school I was also working in the technology and entertainment industries. In part this is because I was an immovable ass who wasn’t willing to give up my interests in computing in… read more
Žižek on "radical" academics
This excerpt from a 2008 article by Slavoj Žižek has been sitting in my notebook for a while, and I thought I’d post it. My personal experience is that practically all of the “radical” academics silently count on the long-term stability of the American capitalist model, with the secure tenured position as their ultimate professional goal (a surprising number of… read more
The facile scourge of paid speaking
Writing for Esquire, Stephen Marche writes about The real problem with Niall Ferguson’s letter to the 1%, which amounts to “paid speaking gigs.” Here’s the money quote: Ferguson’s critics have simply misunderstood for whom Ferguson was writing that piece. They imagine that he is working as a professor or as a journalist, and that his standards slipped below those of… read more