Standing on the Barricades

Returning to Gray is Beautiful Last year I announced my intention to write a series of posts for the PS Commons (we’re now calling these “letters”) around the gray is beautiful theme.  Predictably, things got in the way. I did write soon thereafter on controversies surrounding Israel/Palestine and Turkey/Kurdistan.  But then ...
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On the Ankara Massacre

While I empathize with this mood, I have been frustrated by the reports I have read about the massacre in my usual news sources, as have many of my associates who are from Turkey (Zeyno included) or follow events there carefully. A former student, Solen Sanli made things clear on ...
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Sociology vs. Market Fundamentalism

Last night, at The New School for Social Research convocation, I used the occasion of introducing the graduating MAs and PhDs in sociology to reflect on the dangers of market fundamentalism on universities and on the important resistance of our graduates : Looking at the big picture, it is easy to be ...
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O.O.P.S. vs M.O.O.C.s: Midterm Report, Part 1

“The proponents of M.O.O.C.s (Massive Open Online Courses) look for the magic bullet, hoping to find a technological solution to the crisis in education. The O.O.P.S. (Open Online Public Seminar) project is to use the new technology, the potential of the web, to extend education’s promise.”

With these words, I closed ...

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