What Makes the Obdurate Man Obdurate?
I've been thinking about Machiavelli's obdurate man, Walter de Brienne, the Duke of Athens who ruled Florence in 1342 and became the proverbial immovable ruler of Renaissance thought.  What made him obdurate?
On Faculty Governance, part 1
Not too long ago, I received a quotation via email from a colleague at one of the other UC schools that read: “Nothing we have said about the teacher's primary responsibility for defining the intellectual purpose of the university should obscure the fact that American teachers in the recent past have shamelessly abdicated this responsibility.