Michael Furman

It's the first thing I changed when I started running faculty searches for my program

I think a good place to start is not even asking for recommendation letters until very late in the process. It introduces more bias and begs questions about status and prestige.

It's so much wasted labor on everyone's part to require them up front

I haven't encountered an HR practice that does not allow for ANY applicants to be rejected at ANY point of the search. It's more often that once you reject someone you can't go back to them if your narrowed pool doesn't work out, but that shouldn't stop you from rejecting someone who has no shot.

Nothing makes me more sad for our profession than receiving an email from an unsuccessful candidate complimenting us on our efficient notification. You might as well be complimenting me for not robbing a bank.

Academia, have some humanity and be better

#AcademicSky

Having run multiple faculty searches now I can say this with confidence:

There is absolutely no reason you can't inform unsuccessful candidates in a timely manner after every stage of the search process. It takes about five minutes to write and send blanket rejections through your HR portal...

This so much. It makes me so angry to hear jokes about this. What does it say about you and your relationship with your students that your position is essentially 'my students are lying to me until they prove they aren't.' Some basic humanity in this scenario costs you nothing.

The Emmys snubbing ALL the main actors in Andor is absolutely insane!

My University Values Football More Than Education At the University of Colorado at Boulder, athletics gets all the attention — and funding.

Talk about ruining a valid issue with the wrong messenger. #Academicsky

Whining about teaching 76 students a semester and then having the audacity to complain you don't make as much as a high school teacher with the same degree (but more credentials)? GTFO

www.chronicle.com/article/my-u...

Yep I'm going! First time back in St Andrews since I defended my PhD.

I guess Santa finally found a chimney he couldn't contort himself into...

They didn't do it for money.
They didn't do it for resources.
They didn't do it for conquest.
They didn't do it for thanks.

That's why they are the Greatest Generation, and why they would be ashamed that those qualities are so lacking in the United States today. Their victory has been squandered.

They did it through relentless determination, shared sacrifice, and unending optimism. They did it because it had to be done. They did it because they knew that authoritarianism anywhere undermines freedom everywhere.

80 years ago today my grandparents, a WAAF who spent months living in a subway tunnel while her city burned above her and a kid from the Bronx who lied above his age and landed in Normandy, celebrated what they thought was the defeat of fascism.

Did the Pulitzer Board just overrule the Jury to give Percival Everett the prize? Earlier today, the 2025 Pulitzer Prizes were announced and Percival Everett’s James was declared the winner for fiction. (You can see all of the winners and finalists here.) This came as no s…

If this is true it would be hilarious because it is something straight out of a Percival Everett novel

lithub.com/did-the-puli...

Reading through the comments on the annual faculty poll and it's hilariously sad how petty some of them are. Like with so many things to talk about, you chose parking as the hill to die on??

Exactly what I would want in upper administration. The inability to parse complex ideas into tangible positions and not giving enough of a shit about the crowning achievement of your students to sit your ass down and write a meaningful speech just for them to show you actually think about them.

For classroom policies, I tend to think of three categories

1) Benefits the students
2) Benefits me
3) Benefits no one/arbitrary

Good course design balances #1 and #2, because policy is an important way to practice self care.

The 'real world' argument falls under #3 and should be discontinued

Taking points off on a sliding scale for late work, so students can learn about consequences while not ruining their chance at a good overall grade in the course, seems like an obvious middle ground for teaching personal responsibility in a way that benefits students without being Draconian.

A student turning in a paper at 12:05 am when the deadline is midnight has no meaningful impact on anything the professor, who isn't going to start reading until the next morning anyway, needs to do.

So because the stakes are so low, why not take the opportunity to actually ease students into it?

Third, hard deadlines absolutely exist in the professional world, but when they do there might be a good reason behind them because whatever you are working on is just part of a larger whole that needs to work in unison to function.

That simply does not exist in the postsecondary classroom.

First, most of the professors I have encountered with this policy have never worked outside academia or if they have, haven't done so in the last twenty years.

Second, it's hypocritical because I have never encountered an academic who has never asked for an extension on something.

It's important to note that there are some very good reasons that you might have this policy, like how teaching students self-discipline and planning can help them build the skills to accomplish whatever personal or professional goals they set in life.

My problem is with this specific rationale.

To mark the occasion, I'm starting a series of posts called 'Give Me A (Spring) Break'

Every day I will address some common practice that I have encountered in higher ed pedagogy and then explain why it sucks.

First up: Not accepting late work because students need to 'prepare for the real world'

Lucasfilm Boss Kathleen Kennedy Expected to Retire This Year The prolific producer has presided over the 'Star Wars' and 'Indiana Jones' franchises through ups and downs since 2012.

She's planning her retirement in advance? She should have tried that with the sequel trilogy.

Talk about being handed the ingredients to Michelin star meal and making chicken nuggets out of it.

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

Oh man am I going to have my Ph.D. in Ancient History revoked if I don't make a pedantic ragebait post about the pic of Matt Damon as Odysseus?

It's a movie, not a documentary. Lighten up. Adaptation is art. If it gets people talking about or interested in the ancient world that's a good thing.

Watching the new French adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo and it is SO...DAMN...GOOD

As someone who mostly works on pedagogy and classical reception now, but whose PhD is in late Classical Greek political history, I always got the sense that I needed to demonstrate I was a 'serious' academic before I would be able to work on 'fun' topics. Not sure how much truth there is to it.

2. Half the content on that sub is professors complaining about how busy they are. Obviously you're not too busy to play detective on something so meaningless.

3. Guarantee this professor complains about their student reviews. You know the secret to good student reviews? Stop being a dick.

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As a professor, nothing enrages me more than seeing this from my peers.

1. Who cares if it IS fake? Students have lives beyond your class. Life happens. Stop being so vain and self-important and maybe ask yourself why the student would feel they need to fake it?

www.reddit.com/r/Professors...

I avoid this by muting my video until I get notified someone is in the Waiting Room