A couple years back I read a survey about first-time bloggers: something over 70% stop blogging within 90 days. That was about as far as I got last spring, so my identification with the demos is secure! Between administration, teaching, writing, and recovering from my February skiing accident, last spring went by in a flash. And this fall was just as hectic, as I worked on teaching, wrapping up my book Talk About Virtue, and various Morse Academic Plan (NYU core curriculum) projects and programs.
The highlights of the fall in the MAP were lunchtime presentations to the MAP faculty and graduate students by Richard Arum, my NYU colleague and the author of the terrific, terrifying, and inspiring Academically Adrift; Louis Menand and Alison Simmons came to speak on the re-shaping of the Harvard core; and Menand spoke a second time on topics addressed in his insightful book The Marketplace of Ideas.
Another highlight of my fall--though I'm not sure every student would agree--was teaching my large Texts and Ideas course, part of the core curriculum, for which this blog is named: The Deliberating Citizen. More on that later.
Finally, I must mention Occupy Wall Street, a movement I was initially very skeptical about but which has become a central interest. More on that later, too.
Now it's New Year's Eve, my particular friend is preparing pasta Bolognese, the champagne is chilling, and doubtless like thousands of bloggers around the globe, I commit to trying again with this blog in 2012!
