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I was recently at the cinema and watched a new production based on the biography of political theorist Hannah Arendt. The film portrays Arendt primarily as the author of the controversial book Eichmann in Jerusalem, a book that provoked a wide debate about the nature of evil, responsibility, and nationalism, and nearly cost her her university position. In the culminating scene of the film, Arendt holds an open lecture in the university auditorium in front of a large audience of students, colleagues and (former) friends. In it, she is portrayed as an astute speaker, a convinced and convincing teacher, passionate, articulate and inspiring.

The obstacles aren’t trivial, but I drew hope from seeing Education Secretary Arne Duncan tweet approvingly a link to a story about Maryland K-12 schools adopting later start times.

So I need a new backpack. The world's best backpack for anyone that works at the intersection of learning and technology. Do you have any recommendations?

At the most recent conference of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), held last November, representatives from several academic presses and scholars who had recently published monographs based on their dissertations held a roundtable dedicated to giving current grad students tips on what they should prepare for if they intend on turning their dissertation into a book.

When I teach Principles of Macroeconomics (which I have not done for some time), I teach, among other things, the Keysian model that says that the total spending in the economy can be summarized as consisting of “C+I+G”. That is, it is made up of consumer spending (C), business investment (I) and government spending (G). I thought of this recently when I contemplated a gift that will allow Ursuline College to make a major investment in our facilities. Thanks to an anonymous donor, we are able to proceed with plans for a building which will be called the “Center for the Creative and Healing Arts.” We plan to break ground on this investment in the fall.

From time to time, I'm invited to visit our local ag/tech college, which trains quite a number of students to enter the food service industry at levels where you never have to ask whether someone wants fries with that. Program faculty, of course, cover all the material about industry standards and standardized procedures and more-or-less standard approaches to management. But they've kind enough to ask me in to speak about sustainability considerations, and I really enjoy interacting with students who learn (and think, and create) in hands-on mode.

The California Legislature is considering a bill "to require the state’s 145 public colleges and universities to grant credit for low-cost online courses offered by outside groups, including classes offered by for-profit companies.

A few years ago, some colleges in my neck of the woods flirted with the idea of partnering with more expensive for-profits to provide “express lanes” for students to get around long waiting lists for high demand programs, especially in nursing. The idea was that the colleges didn’t have the resources to build the needed capacity, so they would partner with institutions that did. Now, and on the other ocean, California is considering requiring public colleges and universities to accept MOOCs for credit when taken by students on waiting lists for regular classes.