My latest (four): radicals, connectors, gods, and devils

I had four pieces come out in the last month, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t even posted links to the blog. Apologies all. One of my goals for 2027 is to back into the blogging game; all my time for writing and editing has gone to paid pieces, so it’s hard to justify more time here. In any case, here are the relevant links:

• “You Don’t Have To Be Radical” (CT, October 7) is a fun little autobiographical ode to the evangelical aughts and the perennial dynamic of young Christians who get it in their heads that there’s only one way to follow Jesus: by being “radical.”

• “The Connector” (Arc, October 9) is a profile of the wonderful Leah Libresco Sargeant, timed to the release of her excellent new book, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto, published in October with the University of Notre Dame Press. Thanks to editor extraordinaire Mark Oppenheimer for getting me to do this, or rather letting me try my hand at it as a non-journalist first-timer.

• “Keeping the Faith” (Chronicle of Higher Education, October 23) is a review essay of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s new book Captive Gods: Religion and the Rise of Social Science, published in October with Yale University Press. My first time in the Review.

• Finally, the academic journal Modern Theology posted an early-access online version of my review of Philip Ziegler’s new book God’s Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil, which came out in September with Baylor University Press.

My latest: Luddite pedagogy, in the CHE

This morning I have an “advice” essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education called “Luddite Pedagogy: It’s OK to Ignore AI in Your Teaching.” From the middle of the piece:

Although I’ve had, over the years, a handful of mild objections to my classroom tech principles, my students rarely if ever complain. They don’t negotiate or beg for relief. A few years back, they even voted me Teacher of the Year. Far from coming at me with pitchforks, in fact, a majority of my students thank me for my “strict” rules. Why? Because they’re well aware of the effects the ambient techno-pedagogical infrastructure produces in them.

Take an online grade sheet. It’s perpetually accessible and constantly changing, with every update generating an automatic notification to a student’s phone. That doesn’t relieve anxiety — it exacerbates it. As for the classroom itself, my students know and hate that they can’t concentrate in a typical screen-populated course. They are distracted by their own phone or laptop, and even when they find the will to turn it off, their eyes drift to a classmate’s device.

Put it this way: If we set out to design an environment that would undermine educational success — to interfere with listening, thinking, and conversing, and disrupt sustained focus and rapt attention — we would invent the contemporary college classroom. Why must we accept it as given?

Click here to read the whole thing.

I first described “Luddite pedagogy” here on the blog back in 2018. I see now that Audrey Watters (my ed-tech-critic hero) used the same phrase in 2020, drawing on a 2014 essay by Torn Halves. Haven’t read either yet, but hoping to get to them soon.