Global Crisis

It's Sunday and it's my birthday. Here's my blog post.

I wrote good stuff this week. Please go read it and share it. :) I published three essays - Chronicle on being a working dad, CNN on trigger warnings, and Chronicle Vitae on labor identity for full-time faculty, which is a record for me. All of these are themes to which I will return frequently in the year ahead.

• I wrote about Scorn in the Trigger Warning/Commencement debate - Resources: Scorn
• I wrote about avoiding the phrase "last acceptable" when talking about prejudiece in - The Last Acceptable Prejudice is ________.
• I added on to my essay on labor identity from Vitae: Work is Work!
• I added on to my essay on Academic fatherhood from the Chronicle: Awww, What a Good Father
• I added in to my essay from CNN on Trigger Warnings: Trigger Warnings Continued
• Still more on my essay on Academic Fatherhood from the Chronicle: Working Dad
• And a collection of Resources: Trigger Warnings in the Classroom

If as professors, we just teach empathetically and respectfully, and think about what is our material and who our students are, I do feel that we're going to take care of a lot of these cases before it comes up.

To some extent students are taking responsibility, it's students who are driving this conversation who are asking for these policies. And we need to listen to them. That doesn't mean we have to enact the policy that they are requesting, but we do have to be very open to the conversation and think about what's happening in our classroom.

As an off-the-cuff remark, I'm pretty pleased with that. Approach conversations as dialogue, meet people with respect, and we'll accomplish a lot in trying to be good humans.

Thank you, as always, for reading. Next week I am probably on semi-break as I work on footnotes. I do have a dozen essays I want to write, but I really need to do these notes.

And now, Venice cake.

Not actually my cake!