Classes began yesterday for the fall semester of 2018. I returned to Brooklyn College, to campus, to find an office in disarray: a paint job had resulted in displaced furniture, books, and worse of all, networking cables, resulting me in not having an internet connection all day. It was a rude and chaotic end toContinue reading “Falling Into Fall”
Tag Archives: teaching
Brooklyn College’s Disrepair And The Attack On Public Education
Over the past two weeks, I’ve sent the following emails to my departmental faculty list, complaining about the state of classrooms at Brooklyn College. First on Thursday, September 7, I wrote: Once again, this semester, I’m teaching in 4145 and 4219 Boylan. These classrooms are a disgrace. The air conditioner is so loud we cannotContinue reading “Brooklyn College’s Disrepair And The Attack On Public Education”
The Indispensable, Visibly Responsive Student
Every semester–with luck, in every class–there is one of them: a student whose physical expressiveness in the classroom acts as the wind beneath your teaching wings. There she (or he) is: eyebrows raised, smiling, astonishment or surprise breaking out on their facial features, experiencing ‘Eureka’ moments one after the other, informing you, with every wordContinue reading “The Indispensable, Visibly Responsive Student”
CUNY And The Public University That Couldn’t
In the fall of 2015 I taught my philosophy of law class in a hostile environment: my classroom. With windows and doors open, it was too noisy to be heard; with windows and doors closed and the air conditioner turned on, it was too noisy. With the air conditioner turned off, it was too hot.Continue reading “CUNY And The Public University That Couldn’t”
Lessons From A Skeptic About Hobbes
During my first semester of teaching philosophy, in my class on Hobbes and social contract theory, I introduced my students to the usual excerpts from Leviathan: the passages in which Hobbes describes the severely attenuated and impoverished life that awaits those who live in a state of nature, how this creates the need for a sovereign maintainerContinue reading “Lessons From A Skeptic About Hobbes”
On Becoming More ‘Confessional’ In The Classroom
A few weeks ago, in the course of a conversation with a colleague here at Brooklyn College, I remarked that over the years I had become more ‘confessional’ in my classroom interactions with my students. When gently pressed to explain what I meant, I said that I had become more unguarded there, in that space–inContinue reading “On Becoming More ‘Confessional’ In The Classroom”
Stepping Up To The Plate For Another Fall Classic
Around mid-August or so, my normal ‘auto-chattering’–the monologues I have with myself as I walk around the streets of New York City–picked up pace. I began rehearsing dialogues with an imaginary audience, holding forth, declaiming, answering questions, parrying objections–the whole package. The reasons for this are not hard to find. The 2015 fall semester beginsContinue reading “Stepping Up To The Plate For Another Fall Classic”
The Clock-Watcher’s Punch In The Gut
Last Monday, as I taught my graduate seminar on The Nature of Law, one of the students in attendance turned to look at the clock: we still had some forty-five minutes to go in a two-hour meeting. As I saw this, I experienced a familiar feeling, one that, as usual, temporarily, if not visibly, incapacitatedContinue reading “The Clock-Watcher’s Punch In The Gut”
Springing Back To Teaching
I return to teaching tomorrow. The 2015 spring semester kicks off at 9:30 AM with the first meeting of my ’20th Century Philosophy’ class. The class’ description reads: This course will serve as an introduction to some central themes in the twentieth-century’s analytic, post-analytic (or neo-pragmatic), and continental traditions. Time permitting, the philosophers we willContinue reading “Springing Back To Teaching”
Back to Teaching – II
I returned to teaching today–after a hiatus of three semesters. The first semester’s release from teaching was due to a union-negotiated parental leave; I was exempt from teaching two classes that semester and because I was scheduled to be assigned that workload in any case, I was effectively exempt from teaching altogether. (I was notContinue reading “Back to Teaching – II”
Samir Chopra 