24 Mar 2015
by R. William Ayres
1 Comment
One of the great gifts of teaching is that occasionally, you learn something. The opportunity to discuss things with students sometimes takes you down a path you didn’t expect and hadn’t seen before. The following emerged from a discussion with … Continue reading
21 Jan 2015
by R. William Ayres
0 comments
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I started a series of blog posts on moving from a faculty position to the administrative realm (you can find them by typing “Dark Side” into the search box on … Continue reading
19 Sep 2014
by R. William Ayres
0 comments
There has been a lot of buzz lately about secession, owing to the Scottish vote yesterday on the question of whether to leave the United Kingdom. As a scholar of secessionism, it’s thrilling to see this stuff back in the … Continue reading
27 Aug 2014
by R. William Ayres
0 comments
In the wake of the Salaita “non-hiring” decision at the University of Illinois, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether “civility” should be used to judge academics in hiring decisions. The Chronicle has a pretty good rundown of some … Continue reading
26 Aug 2014
by R. William Ayres
1 Comment
My colleague Brandon Valeriano wrote an excellent post yesterday responding to a much-circulated blog at the University of Washington purporting to give grad students advice on the “dozen sentences” needed in their job search cover letters. There is much to … Continue reading
25 Aug 2014
by R. William Ayres
0 comments
There is a lot of debate and discussion about the almost-hiring/top-down “firing” of Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois. For those who have missed the story, you can find a recap in the Chronicle here. Academics, of course, love … Continue reading
19 Aug 2014
by R. William Ayres
0 comments
Crises happen periodically in both domestic and international politics. Except in America, where crises always happen in twos. I don’t mean that a crisis at home (say, Ferguson, MO) is always matched by a different crisis abroad (the Islamic State … Continue reading
14 Aug 2014
by R. William Ayres
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Watching the sudden and (to Western eyes) unexpected unfolding of the Islamic State and its territorial gains in Iraq has been fascinating. The dynamics have been heretofore unpredictable – a few weeks ago a conflict scholar asked on a social … Continue reading
14 Jul 2014
by R. William Ayres
0 comments
Like my good friend Steve Saideman, I don’t write much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is academically odd, given that most of my stuff has been on ethnic conflict, secessionism, and irredentism, and the whole Israel/Palestine thing falls smack in … Continue reading
13 Jun 2014
by R. William Ayres
0 comments
When George W. Bush was pushing the Iraq war, the concern from some of the left was: is this another Vietnam? By “another Vietnam”, most Americans mean “a really long war with lots of US casualties that in the end we … Continue reading