Why I am a professor

A friend of mine challenged me recently to explain why I am a university professor. “Why did you choose this path?” she asked me, over a glass of pinot grigio and nibblies on the terrace of the Bad Dog Café on trendy Locke Street in Hamilton, Ontario. “You’ve sacrificed a lot of your private life …

Quite the day of airports and hot air balloonists.

Quite the day of travel today. I left my car in the long-term parking at Pearson airport and walked over to the Maple Leaf Lounge to wait for my flight. I love the ML lounges, because they really make for a happier trip, especially for someone like me – I can be a nervous flier …

Banksy making a Toronto stop?

I read on Torontoist that Banksy, famous British street artist and social commentator is coming to Toronto to promote a new documentary “Exit through the bakeshop.”  Here are some of his works that have been appearing around Toronto. Here are some more. Also, there was a poster campaign on Queen West. I admire his social …

Measuring up for tenure and promotion at McMaster

Today we had an interesting discussion in our tenure and promotion committee meeting around documentation. For those of you who know about how secretive universities tend to be, and how much word of mouth tends to rule the roost, you’ll be surprised to learn that universities are moving to a system where less is done …

[Belatedly] commemorating tenure with a pen

I picked up a gift from my grandmother today. A gift that she had given me money to buy a few years ago when I was granted tenure by McMaster University. She is terribly ill right now, perhaps in the beginning of a sad slow decline. In many ways, she was the person who raised …

What’s wrong with Canadian universities – part 2: How to reform them?

On April 15, I wrote a blog post about why I think Margaret Wente is wrong to say that universities are sitting ducks for reform because the system is overly focused on professors and research. She said that professors, because of a sense of entitlement and because of tenure, think that they are above the …

What’s wrong with Canadian universities – part 1

The university system is limping, that’s for sure. But it’s because of short-sighted decisions by policy-makers, not because of rebellious professors, as Margaret Wente would have us believe. I have been a professor of communication studies and French at McMaster University since 2001. In July of that year, I joined McMaster as the first professor …

Update on Ignatieff Visit

So, we have quite a few photo feeds. Eric Harrison put up a beautiful collection on his Flickr page from which I put a selection up on my Facebook page. His pictures are stunning. He really captures the mood and feel of the event. Lily Panamsky, one of the editors of The Silhouette, the student …

Preparing for Michael Ignatieff’s visit to McMaster.

Communications campaigns have really been the focus so far this term! In a couple of days, Michael Ignatieff will visit McMaster for an open conversation with students and faculty in a non-partisan, unbranded town hall-style forum. I am one of three Co-Chairs for the event, with Tyler Banham, a Hamilton lawyer and political organiser, Sarah …