Author Archives: Robert Basil

Update needed

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Robert Basil

I had long been puzzled by how many people don’t get the saying “That’s the exception that proves the rule.” This morning it occurred to me that the opacity is not in the minds of my friends but in the phrase’s … Continue reading →

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Come to Canada

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Robert Basil

In a tart post this morning Atrios notes that he would be shocked if foreign enrollment in [American] colleges and universities wasn’t down 10%+ next year (I completely made up that figure, of course, but you get the idea) even if … Continue reading →

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Abandoning One’s Mother Tongue

Posted on January 7, 2017 by Robert Basil

I had not thought this possible. A very poignant story via the great Language Log.

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Holiday season re-post: Keep your online platforms happenin’

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Robert Basil

It is a truism that dormant websites and social media platforms can do more harm to you than good, no matter how active you have been in the past. I teach my students numerous methods to keep their online presence … Continue reading →

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The Interruption

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Robert Basil

The renowned and divisive Hungarian-American physicist Edward Teller would tell this little story about an exchange he had with the great Niels Bohr: Some of us, including Bohr, were having a discussion about the spectrum and states of molecular oxygen. Bohr had some opinions, … Continue reading →

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The Hobo Ethical Code

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Robert Basil

This is beautiful. From Open Culture: 1. Decide your own life; don’t let another person run or rule you. 2. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times. 3. Don’t take … Continue reading →

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Where are the experts on *who we are*, in the social sciences, or in the arts, … anywhere?

Posted on November 14, 2016 by Robert Basil

Over at Research as a Second Language: Writing, Representation, and the Crisis of Social Science, Danish writer Thomas Basbøll does not view this question as an academic one. Neither would he give “both” as his answer. In his stirring dissection of the United … Continue reading →

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Elitism in the classroom

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Robert Basil

Professor Mayhew’s recent take on the topic: Teaching is transactional. The instructor is not feeding information to the students, teaching them that information, but interacting with them. A third element is the text in the class. The text is not … Continue reading →

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Hence, teaching manners matters

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Robert Basil

In a blog post this morning called “A Raging Snowflake,” my good friend Clarissa writes: Remember the Oppressed Tiffany, a very special snowflake whose “narrative was erased by the entire field of academia” when a hapless prof asked her to … Continue reading →

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Battle

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Robert Basil

In the New York Times obituary section recently I came upon one for Jacob Neusner, a scholar (and polemicist) who published more than 900 books in his lifetime. I calculated – on the back of a napkin, as it were – … Continue reading →

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