The fragility of the knowledge society

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

I don’t really believe that we live in a “knowledge society.” Technocrats say we live in a knowledge society. Educators and politicians sometimes say we live in a knowledge society. Sometimes they’re trying to say: a world where formal knowledge from the education and research sector is crucial to social success, economic production, and the [...]

Knowledge, secrecy, and elite education

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

The academic press is particularly provocative these days. In a fascinating Chronicle column by Georgetown’s James O’Donnell, What a Provost Knows, we are informed that, as provost, he alone knows all the secrets of campus finances, the scale of comparative worth embedded in the salary hierarchy, and the general health of the institution. He ends [...]