Browsing all posts in Academic Politics.

An academic life punctuated by bullets, part 2

There are some titles that should never be reused. This is part 2 of this post I wrote in 2007. This older post is better than this one. Please read the older post here.
Earlier this evening I got an IM from a friend alerting me that this afternoon there had been a shooting at the [...]

You must have Power to Stop Discrimination

This is a piece on gender inequity and sexual discrimination (not sexual harassment, which is a different and emotionally more devastating thing). I’m writing this at this time not because of any one thing that’s happened, but because of a culmination of things. Sometimes it just seems like a topic is in the air, building [...]

Spoofing 3am Commercial

This is from PhD Comics. Normally I wouldn’t throw the whole thing in my blog, but . . .

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T’was the Astronomer’s Sys Admin’s Night Before Christmas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and clouds filled the sky
Not an object was twinkling, not even Iota Tri;
The telescope was parked in its dome with great care,
In hopes of spying a star on which it could stare;
My students were nested all snug in their beds
While visions of data danced in their heads
And I in my [...]

Scientific Dialogue by Journal Article: Coffee maybe required

Today I had two juxtapositions of journal articles. On one hand I had the photo-ready proofs of a journal article on the Astronomy Cast listener survey I submitted to, and had accepted by CAP. On the other hand I had a bunch of journal articles my student was working on data mining for our research [...]

The Wizards in the Tower

Somewhere, once upon a time, the metaphor of faculty living in a mystical Ivory Tower entered the vernacular. I don’t know the history of this imagery, but it always conjures images of wizards working their spells while the look out over the common people – the little people – from their vantage on high. These [...]

An academic life punctuated with bullets

Every university seeks to convince parents (and itself) that it is a safe place where learning and personal development are fostered in a protective yet stimulating environment. This is part of the myth of the Ivory Tower: we form the intellectual fortress where the knowledge-wealth of a society is stored, and intellectual returns roll in at double-digit rates as papers are published and student sponges absorb the words of the marble and bronze professors we’ve placed on pedestals.

In truth, universities are just places that strive to be more, but often struggle to make their dreams reality. As places run by humans and often open to the public, they aren’t as secure as we may desire. While the majority of crimes are related to random strangers entering campus to thieve, and peep, and sometime grope and rape, the most tragic crimes we see are the ones perpetrated by the students and staff who become broken as they try to run the academic gauntlet.