{"id":13748,"date":"2014-05-05T09:19:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T13:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=13748"},"modified":"2014-05-05T09:19:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T13:19:29","slug":"become-professor-see-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=13748","title":{"rendered":"become a professor, see the world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They say that academia is an ivory tower, sheltered from the tumult of human experience. But I&#8217;m fortunate, thanks to my job, to meet a very wide range of people in highly diverse settings. In fact, I don&#8217;t think many people in other walks of life are as\u00a0fortunate in that respect. Within the past month, in the line of duty (so to speak), I have<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Heard a &#8220;legalese-hatin\u2019, cowboy-boot-wearin\u2019, unafraid-to-admihuit-it liberal <a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlerocksoiree.com\/post\/25967\/billy-roy-wilson-has-a-flair-for-being-a-federal-judge\">judge<\/a> who rules from the [Arkansas federal] bench in a rocking chair&#8221; tell hootin&#8217;-and-hollerin&#8217; jokes at the expense of his own profession.<\/li>\n<li>Done a windshield tour of the poorest neighborhood in Champaign (IL), where the small decaying frame houses are scattered on the edge of the prairie.<\/li>\n<li>Sat in the hushed office of the president of Duke, amid rubber trees, leaded Gothic windows, and framed honors, discussing the place of the humanities in public life.<\/li>\n<li>Visited a game-design studio in Madison, WI, where hip young coders sit on stools of different heights and take breaks playing with Nerf balls and huge inflatable bowling pins.<\/li>\n<li>Lectured in the Grecian rotunda of Mr. Jefferson&#8217;s University, a World Heritage Site.<\/li>\n<li>And heard up-and-coming country singers in a bona fide Nashville honky-tonk on a Friday night.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We may be on the verge of wrecking it&#8211;and we certainly need better institutions to govern it&#8211;but it&#8217;s still a great country and a privilege to be able to see so many facets of it.<\/p>\n<p>(On to DC this evening.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They say that academia is an ivory tower, sheltered from the tumult of human experience. But I&#8217;m fortunate, thanks to my job, to meet a very wide range of people in highly diverse settings. In fact, I don&#8217;t think many people in other walks of life are as\u00a0fortunate in that respect. Within the past month, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13748"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13760,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13748\/revisions\/13760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}