Category: Viewpoints

The Week in Viewpoints

This week in Viewpoints, a smattering of contemporary events coverage. Meredith Conroy at FiveThirtyEight takes up the issue of ‘Why Being ‘Anti-Media’ is Now Part of the GOP Identity.’ Declining trust in media has been a phenomenon affecting the American public for decades now. Few public institutions, save perhaps Congress, have a worse reputation with… Continue reading The Week in Viewpoints

COVID passports threaten to prolong the pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic mercifully draws to a close, a new struggle appears on the horizon. That struggle is vaccination: who’s vaccinated, when, where and how? How do we know if enough people are vaccinated? How does vaccination change the rules for social distancing? Most importantly, how many people need to be vaccinated before we… Continue reading COVID passports threaten to prolong the pandemic

The Week in Viewpoints

This Week in Viewpoints, I decided to take aim at people missing the point, or writing themselves into absurd positions by ignoring the obvious. It has long been my opinion that the best journalists are educational generalists with a wide knowledge base and a curiosity that prompts them not just to point out disconnected facts… Continue reading The Week in Viewpoints

Ceaseless construction is detrimental to the college experience

A new science building is great and all, but I can’t remember the last time I woke up and heard anything other than heavy equipment beeping in the distance. I exaggerate only a little, and, in fairness to UTM, the groundbreaking on the new Latimer Science Building only started last year, but it bears repeating… Continue reading Ceaseless construction is detrimental to the college experience

Should universities be leaving the lecture behind?

The lecture has been a tried-and-true tradition of the collegiate experience for as long as anyone can remember. No, really. When the first universities were established in the Middle Ages, they arranged pupils in benches (or sometimes on the floor) before a master behind a podium who, well… lectured. Even as far back as ancient… Continue reading Should universities be leaving the lecture behind?

Is the era of free money from Uncle Sam upon us?

It was once nothing more than wild speculation within the lofty ivory towers of Harvard and Yale, and maybe in the corporate boardrooms of America’s most “forward-looking companies.” Humans are almost obsolete. Jeff Bezos, even if he is nothing more than a brain floating in an anomalous liquid mounted onto a robot, is likely to… Continue reading Is the era of free money from Uncle Sam upon us?