Columbia Grads
To those Michiganders who are perusing this blog and wondering, the answer is yes. I am that Will Thomas. Regarding my fundamental inability to update my own blog, I respond: shaddup.
Obama Fatigue
After weeks of denying it, it’s time to fess up. I have Obama fatigue.
I was an ardent supporter from early on, but lately, I’m having a tough time find that old enthusiasm. Six months ago I could hardly describe the energy I felt watching every step of the race; now I can hardly remember the feeling.
It’s not as though I’m going to vote for McCain; I’ll show up dutifully in November. But the excitement seems to have drained as the Obama camp has practically gone underground these past six weeks. And this convention is hardly winning me back over. Even the high points are falling a little short. Take Hillary’s speech last night. It was great, but the speech picked up right where the primary left off. It’s as though the Democratic party thinks that we’re still in early June, just finally closing the primary with some feel-good loving and beginning to turn to the campaign.
I hope the Obama camp enjoyed their summer vacation. But it’s time to get back to work.
Ethics Goes Public
Enough meta-blogging. This is an encouraging sign: this summer the University of Michigan officially launched the Center for Ethics in Public Life. Part of the motivation?
In Fall 2004 President Mary Sue Coleman convened a task force of faculty, staff and students to examine ways in which the University might “explore the synergies of education and scholarship on the issue of ethics in public life, contributing to and is some cases structuring broader public discourse on these issues.”
In her charge to the task force, President Coleman noted the rising public concern about the unethical behavior and institutional failures that have been front-page news in recent years.
A big part of my intellectual interests are driven by experiences with ethical failures that seem bureaucratic or institutional in nature — the U.S. Attorneys scandal is an excellent case in point. In fact, although I’m enrolled in a philosophy PhD, I’m planning to focus my research on bureaucratic ethics (which explains the blog’s tagline… see, this blog is less ad hoc than you might think). So it’s nice to see someone else taking interest in this as an area of academic research.
A Blog Falling In The Woods
Alright, let’s start with the obvious. I’m not expecting a lot of readers. I’m sure I’d love to be the next Matthew Yglesias, but not enough to work on cultivating an audience. I’m thinking a dozen, tops.
So then, what is the point? I mean, why not keep a private journal or spend my time fighting crime or something useful? Is a blog a blog if it doesn’t have any readers?
I think so, because the potential of interaction exists. Unlike a personal log, I’m displaying this content for anyone to read. And even if very few people actually discover it, that potentiality carries the same risk/reward of public exposure.
True, I may reasonably expect that content posted in a more public forum will attract more scrutiny, but even there it is logically possible, however improbable, that my writing will never be discovered. Likewise, even if I expect that no one will read this, it is logically possible that someone beyond the standard porn-spammer will encounter this and meet it with a profound “meh.” This forum is public in principle, so it is a blog in practice.
Bored yet?
Beginning School, Beginning A Blog
Perhaps it is the organizer in me, but I have an irresistible (that’s too strong a word) urge to lay out in detail precisely what I intend to accomplish with a new project. Thus, a manifesto of sorts is born for this blog. I can only promise that I support what I say, and that what I intend to do here will very likely change soon (but I’ll be in full support of those changes as well).
This blog is intended in large part to detail my return to academia. Here’s the background. I am a former philosophy major from Columbia University. I’ve spent the past two plus years working as a political journalist for Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post. And in one week, I’ll be a student again, pursuing a PhD in philosophy as well as a law degree at the University of Michigan. As some of my future colleagues have asked: “Why?”
Thus, the blog. On the one hand, this is a place to exercise questions of philosophy, as well as indulge my lapses into political analysis (covering an election is kind of like being a day trader, so I’m hoping that my distance from the coverage will provide some more interesting perspective). But it also serves to track my journey from a young and flexible medium into one of the oldest — and arguably stalest — traditions in Western thought. In doing so, I hope to leverage the intellectual and technological tricks I have picked from years working on the Web — (i.e.- ADHD and Wikis).
I’ll be the first to admit: I find the idea of going back to school daunting, and I’m pretty sure that I don’t know a thing about the current world of philosophy. I’m hoping at some point that will be an asset, but right now I’m trying not to embarrass myself.
