Terrance Kealey, Vice Chancellor at the University of Buckingham, UK, managed to find an extraordinarily intemporate way to advise professors not to sleep with their students. Well, not quite, at least. Crooked Timber weighs in here and here with the usual punch and elegance. This is, predictably, making the general rounds.
All of which is preface to this unfortunate little exchange. It’s a jungle out there.
At least it looks like it to me. Intro political theory students at Michigan are, as part of their course work, posting to a group blog. Is that a cool teaching idea or what? Not bad stuff for first years–they’re even citing right (sort of, most of the time). Also not afraid to pick a fight. A response to the obligatory excerpt from The Prince:
Anybody else really frustrated with this reading? Not at all because it is hard, but because it is poorly argued. Machiavelli picks and chooses which arguments he wants to support, and no addressing some important claims that seem to need some backing. He also speaks in an enormous amount of generalizations and superlatives. He is constantly using terms like “always”, and “never”. These types of arguments lead him into self-contradiction. Anyone have any thoughts on this or noticed the same thing?