FAST TIMES AT RECRUITMENT HIGH: How Obama’s education secretary opened public high schools up to the military

Another new piece of mine at Mother Jones on Education Secretary Arne Duncan and his past record in Chicago’s school for opening them up to the military. *** Fast Times at Recruitment High When Arne Duncan stepped down as the head of the Chicago Public Schools to become the secretary of education in January, the school district he left behind had little to brag about. For... Read More

The Anatomy of an Endowment

This week, myself and a colleague at The Michigan Daily, staff reporter Kyle Swanson, have been publishing an extensive series on the University of Michigan’s complex, influential, multi-billion-dollar endowment.  As far as I know, this series is the only multi-part series on how a major university endowment actually functions, what it’s comprised of, who manages it... Read More

Spring break with a green twist

  My latest post over at “Going Green: Cutting Environmental Impact on Campus” is about bringing some sustainability into your spring break plans.  It’s posted in full below. Let me know what you think, comments, suggestions, etc. *** Spring Break ’09: Students gone sustainable Name which of these spring break staples doesn’t fit: A) Cancún B) Caribbean... Read More

And so begins the month of green living…

Beginning today, I’m launching an online journalism project in partnership with UWIRE and Palestra.net called “Going Green: Cutting Environmental Impact on Campus.”  For this project, I’ve set a goal to cut my carbon emissions in half by tweaking my everyday habits and routines to make them more environmentally sustainable. I’ll be blogging everyday... Read More

The latest—and best—retrospective on the life of the prodigiously talented David Foster Wallace

Photo via flickr user Steve Rhodes   Journalist D.T. Max has a piece in this week’s New Yorker on the life of the late author David Foster Wallace, the immensely talented and tortured writer who committed suicide last fall. You should read it. Here’s why. Read More  Read More

On the D.C. media: Bill Moyers with Glenn Greenwald on ‘Bill Moyers Journal’and Jay Rosen

A must-watch conversation between storied journalist Bill Moyers, author and Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen about the D.C. media establishment. (The following video is an edited version of the conversation. For a complete video, visit the official site of “Bill Moyers Journal.”)  Read More

Anti-intellectualism, ignorance, “the unacknowledged pit underlying American democracy”—”A quibble” well worth reading

Harper’s Magazine is far and away one of my favorite magazines today, and the “Notebook” essays in Harper’s rank as one of the many invaluable sections in the magazine. Photo courtesy of Steve Rhodes, Flickr A few recent gems that have appeared in the “Notebook” section: Lewis Lapham’s superb essay “Elegy for a rubber stamp”... Read More