Paul Pfeiffer

UPDATE ON THE NEW SCHOOL STRIKE The Provost who only 5 days ago wrote the whole university implicitly threatening undergraduates with academic punishment and signaling an intention to hire scab graders is now invoking bell hooks on the paradise of learning.

On a website for people with a four-second attention span, that's a lot of folks who stopped to watch a four-minute video from forty year years ago. Real numbers.

A year ago, a non-academic friend listened to a talk I gave. I thought it went great. My friend disagreed. She said that academics are experts at making interesting stuff boring—and that we should all take a speech class. So I did. And here are 6 most useful things I learned.