Below is the letter I sent to the American Political Science Association‘s Executive Committee tonight, ahead of their meeting tomorrow to discuss the status of the APSA annual meeting scheduled for Los Angeles over Labor Day weekend. Service workers at Los Angeles hotels have organized to negotiate a living wage (read more about that here …
It took me less than 24 hours at the Braver Angels convention in Gettysburg, Penn., this week to grasp—in a visceral and disappointing way—that the organization and I are not a good fit. I boarded a plane to take me home only a few hours later, flooded with questions about whether I had failed the …
This morning, I finished reading adrienne maree brown‘s short book, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice. I needed to read this book–and, probably, you do, too. brown’s central thesis is that progress does not happen when we are constantly engaging in call-out culture. brown is focused on the behavior of …
Today is our third day of classes on my college’s campus. In person, without any legal backup to mandate masks or vaccines, or even require COVID-positive reporting. In other words, we’re well underway at becoming a COVID hotspot. It’s inevitable. In my class today, 1/3 of my students had masks on. I am literally not …
** With apologies to Harry Potter fans for butchering the line. I spend about six hours a week staring at a video feed of myself whilst holding virtual office hours (which I call drop-in student hours, because not everyone knows what “office hours” means). During that time, I typically have very few students actually swing …
After an incredibly tortuous journey, in August 2014 I defended my dissertation and officially earned my Ph.D., which would be conferred at some point later on. While I’m proud of my tenacity and proud of the research and writing I did, there’s no question that the best part of the whole process was getting to …
I remember being scolded as a child for using the word “hate,” a word with such emotional charge my mother assured me it was not warranted … probably ever. “Stupid” had the same charge and was banished from my vocabulary. (As a teenager, I also was told not to use the word “suck” as an …
At a recent stop on his book tour for Shade, Pete Souza provided the following list of qualities one might look for in a presidential candidate. Obviously, his time spent with Barack Obama influenced this list, as does the contrast between Obama and Donald Trump. I agree with what Souza values in compiling this list, although …
On this cloudy Friday, I believe a few things to be true: I believe Christine Blasey Ford. I believe Brett Kavanaugh is a basically good man. Notwithstanding his behavior as a teenager and his petulant performance yesterday, which reeked of entitlement. I also believe Kavanaugh doesn’t remember what Blasey Ford accuses him of doing because …
Background: Last week, I gave a short introduction to Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy for a group of new honors students at Chattanooga State (where I teach), and the remarks I gave really hit their mark uncommonly well. So, I thought I’d share. Although I don’t talk from a script, I captured my remarks soon after they …
