I'm looking around to see if this is normal. All I remember is that the convener finally says something like “That was a very informative talk, but we have to move on” and everybody acts like this is normal and not an epic battle of wills forever stamped into my memory.

Finally, the speaker trails off. I have no idea what they said because I am so intent on watching the drama unfold. The speakers seems slightly surprised and annoyed to find themselves standing elbow to elbow to the now out of breath convener.

This has gone from agonizing to entertaining. The convener and speaker start to wrestle for position. Picture the conveners head popping up and down behind the shoulder of the speaker as they maneuvering for position, like hockey players pushing their way to the front of the goal.

The convener, at a loss, moves closer to the speaker and eventually tries to step in front trying to end this spectacle. Nothing is going to stop this speaker. The speaker actually reach out with their arm to push the convener behind them.

I don’t know how long this has been going on now. Are we five minutes over? Ten minutes? The speaker has no intention of giving up the floor even though the audience has long since stopped paying attention.

The convener politely stands up, hands clasped together to get the speaker’s attention. The speaker is looking in the other direction. The convener moves to stand aggressively close to the speaker. Still nothing.

Time ticks by agonizingly slowly. I think I'm in shock. But finally we reach the end of the allotted time for the talk Except the speaker keeps talking. The convener checks their watch and fidgets. The audience gets restless and looks at the program. This doesn't phase the speaker.

The slides are out of order, but they are a veteran so this doesn't phase them and they plough through. Save your snide comments about Comic Sans fonts until you have seen someone power through dozens of slides, presented out or order, all handwritten written in cursive.

The first session in the morning started with a heavy hitter—one of those famous names that you read about as a graduate student and are excited to meet. They showed up with a stack of *handwritten* overhead slides maybe an inch thick and immediately dropped them on the floor.

Different issues at public vs private universities, but I'm pretty sure that different rules govern the unionization of private vs public universities. My understanding is that faculty at private universities post 1980 were considered "managerial" and excluded from protection by the NLRB.

Unionization in higher-ed is reportedly up for both faculty and graduate students and I expect this trend to continue as faculty governance continues to collapse.

There is a huge disconnect between the century time scale global scenarios that climate scientists and the press like to focus on and the more immediate local issues that the public is most concerned about.

Email or message me and I'll send write-ups of the approach and outcomes!

I do a lot of adaption focused research and we have been doing scenario planning workshops to help communities and planners understand how plausible scenarios challenge future planning and operations.

But what if the research actually says that providing more or even better information doesn’t actually improve decision making? Because that is what the social psychology research shows. And when it comes to climate, the climate part of the problem is often the most certain part of the problem.

Universities are messy, inefficient and have never been a bastion of courage. But let's be honest about what is going on here because it has nothing to do with "fixing" higher-ed. This is about controlling who gets into elite universities and restricting the knowledge we produce. 12/

Instead of a new university designed to make education affordable all we got is the University of Austin, whose academic mission seems to be primarily about making slurs acceptable again. Whatever the fuck is going on at University of Austin, it has nothing to do with merit or access. 11/

Not a fan of outsourcing public policy to the billionaires, but at least those dudes actually did something and didn’t just write whiny letters to the NYT. 10/

In 1859 Peter Cooper founded the Cooper Union as a free university open to all irrespective of gender, religion or race. Andrew Carnegie founded what would become Carnegie Mellon in 1900 as an institution of higher learning targeting the working class. 9/