Apr 30, 2018

Expert knowledge and faculty governance

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An educated citizen should be able to see the limits of his or her knowledge, and defer to experts. That is, more or less, the outcome of a...
Apr 23, 2018

Shared governance: The joys and responsibilities

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We have exactly three more weeks of instruction left. The semester is winding down, everyone is tired, and there is so much more grading to...
Apr 16, 2018

The world is so big

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Did you know about the Sea Worm Festival in Lombok province in Indonesia? Did you know the men’s Chitrali cap in Pakistan sports a peaco...
Apr 1, 2018

Seeing one’s own power

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Power is a weird thing; when you don’t have it, you know it; once you get some, it suddenly becomes invisible. It is not something you alon...
Mar 19, 2018

Over-promising is one sure way to fail

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One certain way to ruin one’s reputation is to take on an impossible task, and then fail at it. The essential qualification of any contract...
Mar 12, 2018

Forgiveness is a skill

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We tend to dress forgiveness in heavy ethical clothes. It is perhaps because all the world religions recognize the pragmatic importance of ...
1 comment:
Mar 2, 2018

Hunting Russian trolls, a field guide

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How do you identify a Russian troll? It is simple, really. Scott Shane caught one by just noticing that the activist’s English was a littl...
1 comment:
Feb 26, 2018

“I can easily do it,” a path to over-commitment

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Here is a trap I used to find myself in, a lot: I am sitting in a meeting, with good ideas flying around. This is what I live for – ideas, ...
1 comment:
Feb 19, 2018

Must Innovators be asked hard questions?

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Consider a typical start-up cycle: The idea first is germinated, bounced by many people. Then people create start-up, produce some sort of ...
Feb 12, 2018

What makes things move?

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At one of our last “Troika” meetings (the two A-Deans and I), we were wondering why some of the processes seem to go on their own, and need...
Feb 5, 2018

The procedural menace

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Managers impose rules on staff, and then forget about both. The rules and staff live their own entangled lives, invent routines, understand...
Jan 28, 2018

The clarity temptation or How to write a good policy

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In policy-making, the greatest temptation is clarity, and I am going to make the case for resisting it. The case in point is our College’s ...
Jan 22, 2018

Can Sac State become a startup university?

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Stanford reports spinning off 6000 companies. Forbes lists 50 most productive startup universities , and if the top of the list is not at...
Jan 16, 2018

How to build a killer T&P portfolio

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You know that annoying student who wants you to tell him, how exactly he has to write a paper, and what to write in every section, exactly?...
Jan 8, 2018

My mother's voice

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I saw Mama in December, just four weeks before she died. She could not remember me, but kept saying that I look very familiar. Just in cas...
3 comments:
Dec 18, 2017

Meeting God on Saturday

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Svetlana and I have a new grandson, whom I am anxious to meet. With children, you never know what to expect. The fun is to catch an occasio...
2 comments:
Dec 3, 2017

A dictionary of euphemisms

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In my native culture, sincerity and directness are often valued above politeness. Like other East Europeans including Ashkenazi, we tend to...
1 comment:
Nov 27, 2017

The pedagogy of relation and defunding of public higher education

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Until relatively recently, defunding of public higher education was caused mainly by economic reasons. States had mandatory and increasing ...
Nov 20, 2017

On on-line teaching

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In face-to-face teaching, we use many communication techniques subconsciously. The most typical example is this: an instructor demonstrates...
1 comment:
Nov 13, 2017

How do you make things happen?

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In the course of any given week, I run through several various good ideas, each could be clearly beneficial to our College if implemented. ...
Nov 6, 2017

Not every idea is a directive

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Everyone has had an experience of not being take seriously, when your ideas and suggestions are being just ignored or dismissed. The experi...
Oct 23, 2017

False promises, or When doing the right thing may be the wrong thing to do

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As it is often the case, several things that happened recently, have madу me think about the same thing. Giving false promises is not a goo...
Oct 15, 2017

The California Autumnal

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A slow autumn takes small bites out of the green rows of parade-cheering trees along the streets; lazily, absentmindedly, as if yet undecid...
Oct 8, 2017

Remaking education to help regional development, a pitch

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A Bay Area company that considers moving to Sacramento area is not after reducing costs (there are cheaper places in the US), but because o...
1 comment:
Oct 2, 2017

Do we need a catastrophe to feel real?

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This morning news of the mass shooting in Las Vegas brought me back to the text I was working with yesterday. Boris Groys writes , “Confron...
Sep 24, 2017

The art of ignoration

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Yes, it is an actual word. I ignore problems all day, every day. I did not learn it overnight. In mid-90s, Ivan Bobrovnikov, my friend and ...
Sep 18, 2017

Teaching to trust

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Every year by November 1 I send a paper to the Philosophy of Education Society conference. It has been my academic home since 1995, and hav...
Sep 11, 2017

Should we cancel an otherwise successful search, if the finalist pool lacks diversity?

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This is not a hypothetical question; at least one of our faculty members answered “yes” to it; others probably think the same. The question...
1 comment:
Sep 4, 2017

Longing for bigger ideas

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I think we have a good plan for the next few year. It is in the Vision statement we crafted together over a few meetings during last Spring...
4 comments:
Aug 28, 2017

The First Nations, and why we need them

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On Friday, I was driving East on highway 16, to attend Rose Borunda’s Indian Curriculum fundraiser. The evening sun baked the round hills t...
Aug 19, 2017

A non-eulogy for Dima

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On Friday, my former colleague and friend Dmitry (Dima) Semenov died in a car crash in Thailand . He was 31, an accomplished scholar and le...
Aug 14, 2017

The mainstream's borders have to be patrolled

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The very existence а political life depends on the distinction between the mainstream and the fringe politics. Debate and disagreement amon...
Aug 7, 2017

Technology vs. the Organization

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I have spent a great deal lately of time to figure out our graduate admissions. This is a case in organizational studies. The information t...