Blogs

For more than one year, almost every two months, I enjoy writing a book review. Most of the books I am interested in cover the main issues I am focused on in my daily lectures; there are books on political science, history of Central and Eastern Europe, foreign affairs and identity, ethnic minorities and tolerance.

We increasingly depend on companies whose business is collecting information about us – what we read, what we say, what we watch, what we buy, where we go, and who we know. It’s scary how much the tools that we use every day capture and use personal information - and how little we care. But perhaps that will soon change. Both Facebook and Google will be revealing some of the astounding amount of information they’ve gathered about us, and it may make people uncomfortable enough to stir things up.

Sometimes I regret not pursuing a life on the tenure track. Academic freedom and job security both sound pretty good. Life took me in a different direction, however, and at points I need to remind myself that it has been a pretty good ride.

Tech bloggers were awake and ready in the wee hours of the morning to "live blog" the highly anticipated Facebook IPO today. While the filing didn't come until later this afternoon, there's still going to be plenty of ink spilled over the numbers that it reveals. What's interesting to me as part of the S-1 filing is a letter from CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg. In it, he speaks of "The Hacker Way" as part of the Facebook culture. When we think about how technology can and will change education, what's to be learned from this sort of philosophy?

What is Strategy? The classic definition of strategy is a plan of action aimed at achieving a specific objective. Competitive...

Last weekend we came far too close to every college president’s nightmare.

It happens far too often. There are so many open tabs in Chrome that I can barely see the favicons all in a row at the top of my screen. Pondering a solution to this issue, an epiphany of sorts took place while walking outside (59 degrees in Boston, really?!) -- why not share some of the stories and items that I'm reading?

Like many community colleges, mine offers some credit-bearing courses onsite in some local high schools that are just far enough way that it would be difficult for the students to commute. In some cases, we’re just renting space in the high school and teaching at night. Those cases are relatively straightforward; we pay a room fee and otherwise do what we would normally do. But sometimes the school district wants a 100-level class offered to its students, on its premises, during its normal school day.