TIME recently crowned 10 college presidents (nearly all men) the "best" in the nation. The article spurred the usual pushback against "top 10" lists and raised questions about the criteria used, but a notable aspect of the list hasn't drawn much attention: One of those presidents is Eduardo Padron, a community-college president.

This was a smart, strategic pick on TIME's part. 2009 is the year of the community college, and while Miami-Dade is exceptional in many ways (including that it's officially Miami Dade College, since it awards BA's), inclusion of a president from that sector was wise.  The signals abound: The status of the public two-year college is rising, at least in the...

In italics, placed at the end

Of the Indian Palace Royal Café

(Take-out available) menu's end,

Is the kicker,

("All Goat Entrees Served ‘Bone In'!").

Did the menu's writer 

Wish to speak heartily about goat

Or to demand respect

For its proper preparation?

Italics are at once modest and proud

Concerning their difference.

The swirl and curve of letters

Announce details which

For some restaurant patrons

(including

the husband from New Jersey

whose raw expression  at

the word "goat"

turns eating in

or out

into  self-sacrifice)

Will come as a surprise,

An inkblot test, for those

Unprepared for goat, for...

Time recently published its list of Top 10 college and university presidents. Featured on that list is one of the most extraordinary individuals I have ever had the honor to know -- Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, the president of UMBC. The article highlighted Dr. Hrabowski's achievements in increasing the number of underrepresented minority students who pursue advanced degrees in science, engineering, and medicine. His accomplishments in this regard have been tremendous -- and his work has proven that if we want students to be successful, then we must continually raise the bar, force them to aim high, surround them with highly motivated mentors and peers, hold them accountable for their own success, and require them to give back to others even more than they took along the way.

For Dr. Hrabowski, there are no excuses and no exceptions -- just opportunities to work...

Most of the reviews are in, and if it weren't for Wes Anderson's new animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Lee Daniels might have the most critically acclaimed motion picture of the year.

Precious, based on the novel Push, by the poet Sapphire, is finally going into wide national release today, but most critics have been gushing about this gritty little film for weeks. 

Even before it had a distributor, I wrote about Daniels and the Sapphire book right here on Brainstorm, especially after the film won prestigious awards at Sundance and Cannes, something close to the equivalent of Best Picture Prizes at both festivals.

I called my previous post "Sundancing with Controversy," because I thought that Daniels had chosen a very difficult book: the first-person story of a poor, sexually abused (by her father), HIV-positive...

It's easy to get lost in the excitement over what appears to be a New Deal for higher education. This was an exciting year, what with the nation's president stepping forward with substantial goals to increase college attainment, heavily invest in community colleges, and reform the financial aid system. The message is loud and quite clear: More Americans should be thinking about college and moving towards enrollment.

But is the message the right one? The Chronicle Review recently tackled the issue by asking a variety of experts to weigh in on this question: are too many students going to college? The answers from folks ranging from Richard Vedder to Sandy Baum were varied and thoughtful, but some of the most difficult questions and concerns weren't raised. Perhaps it's because even saying some...

Decades ago, the sculptor Carl Andre remarked that Andy Warhol, King of Pop Art, was “the perfect glass and mirror of his age and certainly the artist we deserved.” With Warhol’s iconic painting 200 One Dollar Bills selling for $43.7 -illion at last night’s Sotheby auction, not a thing has changed: Warhol remains our perfect glass and mirror and continues to be the artist we deserve. The painting, which sold to some anonymous rich collector or other, is one of Warhol’s first silkscreen paintings consisting of a grid of 200 of our almighty greenbacks, arranged in an oh-so-perfect modernist grid.

Warhol’s art, simultaneously a critique and a celebration of consumer society, brought the attitudes and accoutrements of modern mass culture out onto the...

I just want to highlight some of the early comments to my last post. Overnight, several readers offered recommendations and critiques. Let me mention a few of them.

goxewu asks: First question: How does Prof. Jackson cover his undergraduate classes when he's off at a conference? Second question: What does Assoc. Dean Jackson think of the way Prof. Jackson covers his undergraduate classes when he's off at a conference?

I teach on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays this semester, so I haven't had to miss any class sessions for conferences, even during this recent stretch. Your point, however, about how to juggle conferences and teaching is a fair one. And it isn't always easy to pull off. 

rachel321's strategy is to *often* take students with me to conferences as part of their professionalization. sometimes i even take along with me senior...

Literary study is in terrible shape, as everyone knows. The language and literature majors are down, the job market in English looks terrible this year (see this), and unit sales of a literary monograph are lucky to reach 400 copies. Also, the insularity of the perspectives and approaches, not to mention the boggy prose, makes the reading of them a wearisome exercise.

But there are great exceptions, and here are three.

Morris Dickstein's Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression is an entertaining and sophisticated ramble through the books, films, music, and ideas of the 1930s. It doesn't do tight interpretations, and there is no grand thesis or theory in play. Rather, it's an engaging...

For the sake of full disclosure, I should probably start off by admitting that I'm in the middle of a particularly heavy conference stretch right now, which clearly informs this mini-tirade.

American Studies, one of my favorite annual meetings, held its conference in D.C. this past weekend, and the event overlapped with the American Academy of Religion's gathering in Montreal. I'm finally just back from both, and the National Communication Association's conference starts tomorrow. In Chicago!

It seems that many of the academic associations (at least the ones putting on conferences that I've planned to attend) have conspired to meet at one and the same time most years. Indeed, some folks might even push for a few extra weeks in the fall semester just to accommodate all of these meetings. 

I have to admit that I really enjoy a great deal about these...

x-posted: howtheuniversityworks.com

Everywhere you look, students and faculty are hitting the streets -- digital music in their ears, cell phone cameras in hand, uploading their manifestos from occupied dean's offices. It turns out civil disobedience doesn't have to be boring.

The membership of the grad student union at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign just overwhelmingly authorized their leadership to call a strike at will -- winning the support of legislators, the undergraduate...