👓 Our first step into “Equity Unbound” | Writing Theory & Practice

Read Our first step into “Equity Unbound” by Mia Zamora (Writing Theory & Practice)
It was a pleasure to connect with all of you  earlier in the week, and to have the opportunity to hear a bit about each of you.  With this foundation course for our MA in Writing Studies program…

👓 Equity Unbound Webcomic: Amplification Effect | Kevin’s Meandering Mind

Read Equity Unbound Webcomic: Splintered Digital Identities by dogtrax (dogtrax.edublogs.org)
I am dipping into Equity Unbound, a new online course/collaboration with Mia Zamora, Maha Bali and Catherine Cronin. They will be working with university students as well as opening things up to other spaces where folks, like you and me, can jump in. (The Twitter tag is here...

👓 Add yourself to the #UnboundEq map | Equity Unbound

Read Add yourself to the #UnboundEq map by Catherine (Equity Unbound)
Zoom in, out, and around the map below to see the locations of #UnboundEq participants… and then add yourself. Before you add your pin to the map, think about the location you wish to share — would you like to share your work/study location, your home, your birthplace? There are privacy implica...
Done and done

👓 Eric Trump’s ugly ‘three extra shekels’ attack on Bob Woodward draws accusations of anti-Semitism | Raw Story

Read Eric Trump’s ugly ‘three extra shekels’ attack on Bob Woodward draws accusations of anti-Semitism by David Badash (Raw Story)
Eric Trump is lashing out at veteran Watergate journalist Bob Woodward, and his remarks are drawing accusations of anti-Semitism. Wednesday morning the president’s son charged the author of “Fear” – the latest bombshell book exposing the Trump administration as inept and corrupt – with writing it “to make 3 extra shekels.”

👓 Article 13 makes it official. It’s time to embrace decentralization | Ben Werdmüller

Read Article 13 makes it official. It's time to embrace decentralization by Ben WerdmüllerBen Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)
Today the EU passed Articles 11 and 13 of its new Copyright Directive in a 438 to 226 vote. This has, rightly, been widely painted as a complete disaster for European internet businesses - and the internet industry as a whole. Here's the first clause of Article 13 in its entirety: Information societ...

👓 40 Years Later, Talking Heads’ Most Valuable Member Is Still Its Most Under-Recognized | Paper Mag

Read 40 Years Later, Talking Heads’ Most Valuable Member Is Still Its Most Under-Recognized (PAPER)
Bassist Tina Weymouth contributions are some of the band's most iconic.

👓 U.S. put its Silent Sams on pedestals. Germany honored not the defeated but the victims. | Washington Post

Read U.S. put its Silent Sams on pedestals. Germany honored not the defeated but the victims. by Waitman Wade BeornWaitman Wade Beorn (Washington Post)
Two starkly contrasting approaches to remembering troubled histories

👓 No, Half Of All Colleges Will Not Go Bankrupt | Forbes

Read No, Half Of All Colleges Will Not Go Bankrupt by Derek Newton (Forbes)
Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen has said that half of all colleges will go bankrupt. The problem is, there's no evidence that's true. Only the supposedly innovative, disruptive for-profit ones are going under.

👓 Invitation: Launching @unboundeq with @miazamoraphd and @catherinecronin | Reflecting Allowed | Maha Bali

Read Invitation: Launching @unboundeq with @miazamoraphd and @catherinecronin by Maha Bali (Reflecting Allowed)
This is an open invitation to come and join us for Equity Unbound:) You may have seen the hashtag #unboundeq on Twitter or seen us tag the account or link to our website: What is it? Equity-focused…

👓 Gawker Set to Relaunch Under New Owner Bryan Goldberg (EXCLUSIVE) | Variety

Read Gawker Set to Relaunch Under New Owner Bryan Goldberg (EXCLUSIVE) by Todd Spangler (Variety)
The reborn Gawker comes under the ownership of Bryan Goldberg, founder and CEO of Bustle Digital Group, who was the winning bidder for the remaining assets of Gawker Media in July. Goldberg paid $1.35 million for the media gossip blog, which has been dormant for over two years after Gawker Media was sued into bankruptcy by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. In a memo to Bustle staff Tuesday obtained by Variety, Goldberg said he has hired Amanda Hale as the new publisher of Gawker. Based in New York, Hale most recently was chief revenue officer of The Outline, the culture website founded by Joshua Topolsky (who previously worked at Bloomberg Media and The Verge) that recently laid off one-fourth of its staff.

👓 Lenore Blum shocked the community with her sudden resignation from CMU. Here she tells us why. | Next Pittsburgh

Read Lenore Blum shocked the community with her sudden resignation from CMU. Here she tells us why. by Tracy Certo (NEXTpittsburgh)
This high-tech rockstar has done so much for women in the community, making her own experiences with sexism even more stunning.
Things like this are painful to hear, particularly given the recruitment and numbers that CMU has compiled over the past several years. I’m glad that Lenore and her husband have the wherewithal to do this and raise their voices to draw attention to it.

👓 Statement by Amie Wilkinson addressing unfounded allegations. | Amie Wilkinson

Read Statement by Amie Wilkinson addressing unfounded allegations. by Amie Wilkinson (math.uchicago.edu)
This statement addresses some unfounded allegations about my personal involvement with the publishing of Ted Hill's preprint "An evolutionary theory for the variability hypothesis" (and the earlier version of this paper co-authored with Sergei Tabachnikov). As a number of erroneous statements have been made, I think it's important to state formally what transpired and my beliefs overall about academic freedom and integrity. I first saw the publicly-available paper of Hill and Tabachnikov on 9/6/17, listed to appear in The Mathematical Intelligencer. While the original link has been taken down, the version of the paper that was publicly available on the arxiv at that time is here. I sent an email, on 9/7/17, to the Editor-in-Chief of The Mathematical Intelligencer, about the paper of Hill and Tabachnikov. In it, I criticized the scientific merits of the paper and the decision to accept it for publication, but I never made the suggestion that the decision to publish it be reversed. Instead, I suggested that the journal publish a response rebuttal article by experts in the field to accompany the article. One day later, on 9/8/17, the editor wrote to me that she had decided not to publish the paper. I had no involvement in any editorial decisions concerning Hill's revised version of this paper in The New York Journal of Mathematics. Any indications or commentary otherwise are completely unfounded. I would like to make clear my own views on academic freedom and the integrity of the editorial process. I believe that discussion of scientific merits of research should never be stifled. This is consistent with my original suggestion to bring in outside experts to rebut the Hill-Tabachnikov paper. Invoking purely mathematical arguments to explain scientific phenomena without serious engagement with science and data is an offense against both mathematics and science.
A response to an article I read the other day in Quillette.

👓 Why Is College in America So Expensive? | The Atlantic

Read Why Is College in America So Expensive? (The Atlantic)
The outrageous price of a U.S. degree is unique in the world.

“I used to joke that I could just take all my papers and statistical programs and globally replace hospitals with schools, doctors with teachers and patients with students,” says Dartmouth College’s Douglas Staiger, one of the few U.S. economists who studies both education and health care.

Both systems are more market driven than in just about any other country, which makes them more innovative—but also less coherent and more exploitive. Hospitals and colleges charge different prices to different people, rendering both systems bewilderingly complex, Staiger notes. It is very hard for regular people to make informed decisions about either, and yet few decisions could be more important.

In both cases, the most vulnerable people tend to make less-than-ideal decisions. For example, among high-achieving, low-income students (who have grades and test scores that put them in the top 4 percent of U.S. students and would be eligible for generous financial aid at elite colleges), the vast majority apply to no selective colleges at all, according to research by Caroline Hoxby and Christopher Avery. “Ironically, these students are often paying more to go to a nonselective four-year college or even a community college than they would pay to go to the most selective, most resource-rich institutions in the United States,” as Hoxby told NPR.