Just got out of a department meeting on GSU's COVID policy for the fall. It's madness. Georgia universities are going to be superspreading vectors before the end of the semester.
No mask or vaccine mandate
No social distance policy
Limited contract tracing
No data transparency
Instructors may not require masks in class, or treat unmasked students different from masked in any way.
Instructors may not under any circumstances ask students about vax status
Instructors may not require masks in their own office
No instructor discretion to move courses online in the event a student reports COVID positive
Little-to no instructor ability to tell students if another student has tested positive, even anonymously
The message we got was that GSU has little-to-no agency in forming this policy; it's coming straight from the Board of Regents Which means all publics in Georgia will have the same/similar policies.
Context: Atlanta is out of ICU space. FWIW Grady Hospital is right next door to GSU. I park across the street from Grady’s front door.
1/ Sanders and Biden are both old white dudes who made their bones representing tiny states. So why is Biden succeeding and Sanders slipping? It's not their policy differences, it's because Biden is better at politics than Sanders.
A thread.
2/ First, VT is 94% white; DE only 64%. Biden knows that winning Dem primaries means reaching out to non-white voters. Sanders has never had to do that before, and it shows. In both his presidential campaigns he's proven he's tone-deaf to the concerns of non-white voters.
3/ Second, Biden knows politics is about relationships. He's spent 40 years working with other people, and that's paying off in the form of endorsements & other field-clearing actions. Bernie spent 40 years mostly trying to go it alone, and has mostly been ineffective...
1/ By far, the best part of an academic job search is the that you can give a phenomenal academic the stability and resources they need to fulfill their goals & contribute to the academic mission long term. Having the opportunity to offer that to someone is a true privilege.
2/ By far, the worst part of a job search is that there are so many phenomenal academics out there who deserve that chance. I was on a committee this fall, and even in a narrow search we saw many truly amazing candidates. And we could only hire one of them.
3/ In a just world the academic job market would clear. All the great scholars out there would get a TT job, and with it the opportunity to fulfill their teaching and research goals. This would also make the world better off in general.
1/ What I tell first year PhD students on the first day of class: Grad school is not intentionally designed to make you feel stupid. But, if you were going to design something to make someone feel stupid it would look an awful lot like grad school.
2/ The first thing you learn is how much knowledge exists in the world. The second thing you learn is that you don't know most of it. That's pretty intimidating. It's OK to feel intimidated - it's a natural part of the process for most people.
3/ Feeling overwhelmed or inadequate can be dealt with. I had a panic attack during seminar my 3rd week of grad school as it dawned on me what I had gotten myself into. But I got through it, and now that I'm faculty I've helped my students get through similar feelings.
1/ When there’s a tragedy like the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, someone always says it’s wrong or immoral to “politicize a tragedy.” This is bullshit.
2/ To understand why, we have to ask what it means to “politicize” something. Of course, it means to make a connection between that thing and politics. That’s not terribly helpful, so let’s dig a little deeper. What exactly is politics?
3/ Politics is negotiation. Specifically, it’s large-scale negation about how society should be organized and managed. It’s a means of making collective decisions in diverse populations when people have fundamental disagreements about that organization.