Opinion

Colleges can help students surmount political cynicism, write Paul Loeb, Alexander Astin and Parker J. Palmer.

The tragedy in Libya illustrates why American students need to be inspired to study the region and to serve their country with their knowledge, writes James I. Gadsden.

An understanding of the causes and consequences of economic inequality may be one of the most important issues for any educated person to grapple with, yet the number of our students who read The Price of Inequality is most likely very small.

Saturday afternoon, I took a nap. Somehow that feels like a confession, something I should feel a tiny bit guilty about. And yet it was, after all, the weekend. And my sleep had been a bit interrupted the night before -- the cat was chasing things around, or my son was up playing computer games, or something -- so it was completely understandable. But it still felt a tiny bit self-indulgent. I had a to-do list that included grading, house-cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping ... most of which went undone while I slept. I wasn't sick, I was just tired.

A quick slice through the NYT yesterday disclosed two articles that raise interesting issues: Who Built the Internet and Free Speech.

If colleges don't want glib, packaged answers, they should stop asking easy questions, writes Peter Laipson.

Graduate students can't afford to get taken advantage of, writes Nate Kreuter.

In August, Amy Rubens (@ambulantscholar on Twitter) posted a thoughtful post on her personal blog about her plans for the semester and how to continue her research agenda while teaching (and also adjusting to a new town and new school). Amy and I met via Twitter some time in the past year when we were trying to finish our dissertations, balance work along with dissertating, and blogging about our phd exploits. We both graduated last May, and are embarking on new jobs this fall. In her post, Amy pointed out that in order to get her conference presentations done in time she will be blogging about her reading; it's a way for her to stay accountable and to digest the information on a long-term. She also discussed how she thinks of her blogging as a form of public scholarship, an idea I sympathize with.