Book of the Month

Doctor Cleveland's picture

Personal Information

Biography

Doctor Cleveland blogs about politics, education, literature, and the arts. His personal obsessions include live theater, Red Sox baseball, and powerful black coffee. He teaches college under another name, somewhere along America's glorious North Coast. While he blogs about the general academic life, he does not discuss his current institution, its students, or its employees on the blog. Nor does he use any university resources to blog. Any public statement he chooses to make about his employer will be made under his legal name.

History

Member for
3 years 36 weeks
Blog
View recent blog entries

Blog Posts

Doctor Cleveland's picture

Harvard's Cheating Scandal and the Failure of Mentoring

by Doctor Cleveland 2/3/2013 - 11:48 pm   |

The Harvard cheating scandal has ground to something like its conclusion, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 students being suspended asked to withdraw. There's been a lot of discussion, from different perspectives, about student ethics, educational standards, and what the world is coming to. [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

David Mamet and the Tragedy of the Literary Tough Guy

by Doctor Cleveland 2/1/2013 - 2:01 am   |

So David Mamet decided that he had to weigh in on gun laws, and tell everyone that everyone should have lots of guns all the time. [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

The War on Work

by Doctor Cleveland 1/29/2013 - 1:06 pm   |

When I worry about the future of my chosen profession, which I do too often these days, I take bleak consolation from the fact that every other profession I considered during my early years is also in crisis. Was it a mistake to become a university professor just as the job market for professors collapsed? Maybe. But if the original question was, "Should I become a professor, a lawyer, or a newspaper journalist?" then maybe not. Lawyers are having a hard time finding jobs; newspapers are laying off. And I can't say I would have been better off staying a high school teacher, as wave after wave of "reforms" make that job harder and worse.
 [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

Why Should Professors Do Research?

by Doctor Cleveland 1/12/2013 - 1:38 am   |

My high school physics teacher was a fraud. He claimed to have two PhDs, but had no graduate degree of any kind and as I understand it didn't even have a BA in physics. He left in a sudden flurry a couple of months before the end of my senior year.
 [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

Your New Year's Public Domain Report: 2013

by Doctor Cleveland 1/1/2013 - 8:40 pm   |

It's January 1, which means it's the day that works whose copyright has expired enter the public domain. Here's the list of works that entered the public domain in the United States today:

Nothing. Nada. Not a thing.
 [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

Fighting 'The Government' by Killing Your Neighbors

by Doctor Cleveland 12/27/2012 - 3:45 am   |

Before dawn on Christmas Eve a man set fire to his car and his house and waited for the firefighters to arrive so he could murder them. He shot four, killing two. They were volunteers. One of the men he killed was also a local police lieutenant. They died for going out on a winter morning to protect their neighbors. [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

The Gun Hobby

by Doctor Cleveland 12/19/2012 - 8:08 pm   |

Our gun laws have been distorted to suit the needs of a single interest group. That small, privileged group’s desires outweigh the needs of nearly every other American, and have more influence with our elected leaders than the suffering of crime victims, the recommendations of law enforcement, or the common-sense demands of public safety. These privileged few are not hunters, or sportsmen, or homeowners concerned with self-defense. They are hobbyists. We live in a gun collector’s paradise, and it is very dangerous.
 [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

What You Can Do About Gun Control TODAY

by Doctor Cleveland 12/14/2012 - 6:35 pm   |

20 children have been murdered in Connecticut. This what you can do about it right now:

1. Write and call your Congressman. Writing to your Congressional representatives is the most important thing you can do, more important than writing to the White House. Write and call your House member first, and then your two Senators. You can find their contact information at house.gov and senate.gov.
 [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

Reading the Renaissance for Fun (and Profit)

by Doctor Cleveland 12/6/2012 - 3:12 am   |

I stopped blogging for a while around Thanksgiving, partly because I was driving instead (I managed to log about 2500 highway miles in a week and a half), and partly because I needed to unplug both from national politics and from the unrelenting dailiness of office politics. (I go to more meetings at work than I used to, and answer a lot more e-mails.) The advent of winter holidays has always been a good time for me to step away from the noisy bustle and think more about what is durable. It's stepping out of the car after miles and miles of highway and looking up at the cold clear stars over New Hampshire.
 [Read more]

Doctor Cleveland's picture

The Humanities as Sugar Daddy

by Doctor Cleveland 11/30/2012 - 11:00 pm   |

So, the Governor of Florida set up a Task Force on higher education, and they decided that humanities majors should pay more than science majors for a college education. The thinking is that Florida wants more technology grads, and fewer humanities grads, and can get them by making humanities degrees more expensive so that students opt for science, math, and technology instead. They call this approach "market based," but its ignorance of basic economic realities is startling. [Read more]

Latest Comments

more