May 31, 2021

Everyone has a trigger

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We all can be triggered into experience an involuntary emotion. This is not about particularly fragile or very traumatized people. If you d...
May 24, 2021

Imagining the end of the pandemic

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The ability to imagine is the most useful feature of human mind. It has limitations, too. For example, many of us are having hard time visua...
May 10, 2021

Do not judge a movement by its fringe

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Any social movement, progressive or conservative, national or liberatory, has its excesses. They all develop a fringe that takes things too ...
May 3, 2021

And here is what I’ve learned about life so far

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The highway called life is crowded, filled with small and smallish things, with accidents, happenings, talks, decisions, encounters - the me...
Apr 24, 2021

Does intent matter?

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At least three times in the recent weeks I heard something to the effect that your intent does not matter, and the effect of your words or a...
Apr 18, 2021

The cost of hygiene theater

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In at least two different meetings last week, we discussed campus reopening and safety measures. The question is: should we follow the best ...
Mar 29, 2021

We all are conservatives sometimes

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We have much to preserve. The California State University system is an enormously valuable public investment. Despite its faults, the system...
Mar 22, 2021

Perfectionists and slackers in academia

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Academia rewards perfectionism, until it does not. Grad school instills in us an internal auditor, an ethical control mechanism against slak...
Mar 15, 2021

Why some of the most useful technologies are not adopted

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There is a whole theory of innovation diffusion, first put forward by Everett Rogers in 1962. We know – more or less – how innovations are a...
Mar 8, 2021

Crisis is a harsh but effective teacher

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It does not please me to say this, but evidence is undeniable. The pandemic taught us many things quickly. Instead of 5-10 % of faculty who ...
Mar 1, 2021

Ignoraphobia

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In Academia, knowing is the currency of the realm. Because of this pressure, some people develop an interesting anxiety that prevents them f...
Feb 15, 2021

Administrator as a prophet

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Administrators both predict the future and strive to shape it. That’s where our similarity with real prophets end: we experience no divine r...
Feb 8, 2021

Too much to manage

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Any organization wages a never-ending war against chaos. It commands an army of rules, forms, processes, and procedures to force the natural...
Feb 1, 2021

Seven strategies of successful online teaching

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Build relations intentionally. Intuitive ways of relationship-building do not work online, therefore you need to apply specific effort. Educ...
Jan 19, 2021

Hybrid as default: Imagining a post-COVID university

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The year of forced distant learning is revealing two contradictory ideas: One is that meaningful instruction in the online environment is po...
Jan 9, 2021

Trump syndrome or the assimilation bias

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One may not think much of Donald Trump, but he seems to be sincere. Sincerity even that of an error is a major part of his appeal. His case ...
Jan 4, 2021

The Deep State does exist, and we are better off for it

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It is not what Trump thinks, not a conspiracy of bureaucrats against him. This country has a cadre of civil servants for whom maintaining th...
Dec 21, 2020

Martial law, official poisoners, and hope

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Can’t think of anything other than the crazy, evil things in the news. Trump has been discussing martial law on Friday, willing to throw awa...
Dec 14, 2020

What does my signature mean? Or Why are universities so clunky?

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We have moved away from paper, thanks to COVID. However, just like before, I often wonder, what does my signature mean on this and that pape...
Dec 5, 2020

December in the Central Valley

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This land makes you wait for it: December, fall, my favorite season. Stand under a big ginkgo tree, squinting at the autumnal yellow sun; le...
Nov 23, 2020

It is time to shrink

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In a conversation with one of my chairs, I suddenly realized that the best thing I can do for her right now would be to take less of her tim...
Nov 9, 2020

American Education: The party of choice and the party of resources

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Betsy DeVos has been a staunch advocate of the “party of choice” in American education. It believes that giving parents choice will lead to ...
Nov 2, 2020

Depolarization of America

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Tomorrow night, or a few days later, half of this country will be celebrating, while the other half will be fuming. In close elections, turn...
Oct 26, 2020

Teaching is not political activism

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The Antiracist movement captured the academia, provided urgency, energy and a new focus to our work for justice. Many of our previous effort...
Oct 19, 2020

The harsh professor syndrome

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It happens to those professors who do not learn how to teach and relate to students reasonably well within the first 3 years or so of their ...
Oct 12, 2020

Churches, unmasked

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Some 19 per cent of Americans do not believe masks are effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19 . Many of those are Christian, and chu...
Oct 4, 2020

Black Lives Matter: (Only) or (Too)?

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In conversations with my Russian friends, I suddenly realized that some of them completely misunderstand what “Black Lives Matter” means. Th...
Sep 27, 2020

We are the tools that need care

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Let’s not pretend this is normal, because it is not. The entire year online feels like a sentence to an exile. The conditions are reasonable...
Sep 21, 2020

Past mistakes do not set precedents

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Precedents are important in law and in all policy applications. Considering a precedent helps to ensure consistent and therefore fair applic...
Sep 14, 2020

Don’t replicate, recreate: Observational learning in an online course

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In his effort to overcome the limitations of behaviorism, Albert Bandura demonstrated the existence of observational learning, a subspecies ...
Sep 7, 2020

Why can’t universities become tech companies? An investment opportunity

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 If you follow business headlines, you probably heard that Walmart has turned into a tech company, and Tesla is not a car manufacturing firm...
Aug 31, 2020

The parallel universe does exist: Education after the pandemic

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The current pandemic is not that interesting on its own; history knows a plenty of similar tragedies. What is interesting is that for the fi...