The theme of University Press Week 2017 is #LookItUP: Knowledge Matters.In today’s political climate—where “fake news” and “alternate facts” are believed by so many people—valuing expertise and knowledge can feel like a radical act. University presses not only believe in facts and knowledge, but traffic in them daily, publishing approximately 14,000 books and more than 1,100 … More #UPWeek: Knowing the Facts.
Miles Lord: Minnesota’s Maverick Judge will air on TPT/Twin Cities PBSon Sunday, Nov. 19. Here’s a preview.More about the book. BY ROBERTA WALBURN There was once a generation of young Minnesotans who, imbued with a social-gospel populism, set out to make their state, their nation, and their world a better place for all. Especially in … More Judge Miles Lord: Our Brothers’ and Sisters’ Keeper
BY LINDA LeGARDE GROVER Here in Duluth, not long after my seventh grandchild was born, I began to write short essays about aspects of Ojibwe contemporary life that link to the joy and gratitude that Ojibwe people have for new life and the continuity of our existence. He is a third-generation child of our extended … More Linda LeGarde Grover: "Everything that we experience, no matter how small, is a story."
BY MARK JARZOMBEKMassachusetts Institute of Technology BEFORE BUDDHA INVENTED RENUNCIATION; before Christians invented martyrdom; before Mohammed invented the jihad, before the Hebrews invented monotheism, before Plato invented the dreaded cave in which we supposedly live, blind to the presence of all that is Good, people talked to each other in freer ways. They talked to … More On Being and algorithmic clouds.
BY JACK ZIPESUniversity of Minnesota Once upon a time, when the famous scientist Albert Einstein was teaching at Princeton University, a tiny old woman approached him as he was walking home after a class he had just taught. She was schlepping a skinny young boy of about six who was dragging his feet. “Mr. Einstein,” … More Discovering Fairy-Tale Postcards: The Adventures of a Scholarly Scavenger
BY CLARE BIRCHALLKing’s College London The words “Trump” and “transparency” don’t often appear together. Administrative transparency isn’t something Trump promised during his campaign, and it hasn’t been on the agenda in the last eight months. Yet the term has turned up in communications from the Trump camp. In July, referring to the Commission on Election … More Trumping transparency.
BY ANDREW PILSCHAssistant professor of English, Texas A&M UniversityIn my timeline on Twitter, I get a lot of updates about Elon Musk. Maybe you do too, especially if you follow as many data scientists, technologist, and futurists as I do. Seemingly every week, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, Solar City, and Tesla is making headlines … More What’s the deal with Elon Musk? A transhumanist’s perspective.
BY CEDRIC JOHNSON (The Neoliberal Deluge and Revolutionaries to Race Leaders) AND THOMAS JESSEN ADAMS Excerpt from article published in Jacobin: The rains over Corpus Christi and Houston have finally stopped, and floodwaters are beginning to recede. Some residents are still stranded, while others — tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands — won’t be able to … More The Coming Storm
BY GREGG LAMBERTSyracuse University In the light of the recent violence and sovereign personages, I have been reflecting on the conclusion of Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, which should be read as an introduction to our century, and not as a summary judgment on the past one. As Arendt forecast, “it may even be that the … More Our New Sovereign
BY NICHOLAS DE VILLIERS I have just returned from a lovely experience filming an interview segment for Juliana Piccillo’s documentary Whores on Film (forthcoming 2018), which she has conceived as The Celluloid Closet (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 1995) for sex workers: primarily sex workers discussing tropes in representations of sex workers in Hollywood movies, … More Sexlexia: Reading Sex Work and Genre
