Teaching political theory as political theory and nothing else

The needs of a student of political theory can not be met with mere fragments torn out of the great books of the past.

I will be blogging about my recent, treasured experience of teaching political theory for a bit. I have also taken the liberty of contacting a number of people at this time of year to alert them to the blog. Best to one and all.

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Holiday in paradise and conference in Ottawa

The Arizona Memorial. I have been on it before. While the memorial is moving, the crowd of cybermen I found on it put me off ever wanting to go on it again. Any sense of spirituality that the memorial imparts is blunted by the cybermen, tourists with video cameras stuck to their faces wandering to and fro. Rather than experience the memorial they want to capture it on film, and they do blunder about because they cannot see where they are going. So they do run into each other and me.

In October and November, when my duties as Acting Director for the Institute for Teaching and Learning at an end, I took two weeks of annual leave, and another week to conference leave. For the first two weeks it was family affair in Waikiki. Ahh…
Then I went on to – wait for it – Ottawa for a conference. Quite a change in climate. Along the way I stopped to visit still other family in Hastings.
I am still learning about picture sizes, links, and the like. So this entry is pretty uneven.

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Japan travelogue

We found the Tardis and it is Shibuya Station in Tokyo. You never know where you are and how you got there and you can never go the same way twice. No wonder the Doctor has forgotten his name.

A record of my visit to Nagoya University and Tokyo in September 2006. Some business and some sight seeing. All in all we found Tokyo and Nagoya very accessible. Arigato!

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Benchmarking with Nagoya University

They particularly focus on the survey research we do to get feedback from students, and I want to put that in a wide context so that it is not treated as if it were an end in itself.

How can a university that thinks of itself primarily as a research university (in say selecting, tenuring, and promoting academic staff) ensure good quality teaching? Students and taxpayers think a university exists mainly to teach students, but few members of a research university think that. Indeed some think that teaching is at the expense of research. What can be done to keep a balance between the two?

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I, Burocrat

According to the Three Laws a public administrator must:
1. not harm a minister, or, through inaction, allow a minister to come to harm.
2. obey the orders of a minister except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Download file
The rough draft of a conference paper for the Law and Parliament Conference in Ottawa, Canada, November 2006.

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