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Pedagogy Writings

RSA 2024

I recently returned from the RSA (Rhetoric Society of America) conference in Denver. I gave two talks: one, co-authored with Nick Sciullo: “A Reconsideration of Callicles’s Arguments in the Gorgias: Was “Uncle Cal” Onto Something?” and one solo: “Bringing the Machines Closer: Richard Feynman and Metaphor.” The reception was positive, and based on the work that I did to get it into presentation-shape, I should be able to get the Feynman paper submitted somewhere in the fall.

I am not skilled at making connections at conferences, but for whatever reason, I met a lot of interesting people doing interesting work this time around, including some I’d only met over Zoom during the pandemic.

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Writings

It’s Almost If…

…riot police on your campus is not a good look.

UT-Austin, by the way. It’s almost as if committing to free speech on your campus is completely performative.

The faculty seem to have noticed.

Once again, BS like this is easy to avoid. Defend free speech. It’s not complex.

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Writings

Defend Free Speech and Academic Freedom. It’s Not Hard – If You Believe In It.

The ongoing protests at northeastern campuses are a symptom of a larger lack of commitment by the last few generations of administrators to free speech and academic freedom.

Both public and private universities have gotten away with a loose-goosey approach on campus speech for decades, so, predictably, they respond with inconsistency and arbitrary action when there’s a flashpoint. If they had drawn a clear line straight from the hard lessons of the 1960s, as the AAUP has done, there would be nothing to “manage.”