Mark D. White

Writer, editor, teacher

recent posts

about

I’m a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where I teach courses in philosophy, economics, and law, and the author/editor/co-editor of several books.

Category: Education

  • Do we need different types of tenure? On Adam Grant in The New York Times

    Mark D. White In an op-ed in today's The New York Times, Adam Grant, bestselling author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (and fellow blogger at Psychology Today), examines the current tenure system in American universities and the skewed incentives they provide for continued work after tenure: It's no secret that tenured…

  • The overseas superstar status of Michael Sandel and what economics can learn from it

    Mark D. White Thomas L. Friedman had an interesting piece in The New York Times last week describing the rock star reception given in Asia recently to Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, author of Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? and lecturer in the accompanying PBS series (available here). In the piece, Friedman…

  • The changing purpose of faculty sabbaticals [UPDATED]

    Mark D. White Over at Prawfsblawg, Elizabeth Dale, who teaches history and law at the University of Florida, has an extremely thought-provoking post about sabbaticals for full-time professors, wondering if the original purpose–scholarly rejuvenation and renewal–has been replaced by "catching up" with work one wasn't able to complete during the normal academic terms and breaks.…

  • CUNY bans smoking on all campuses–the unintended consequences

    Mark D. White Wow. The New York Times reported yesterday that the board of trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY) voted to ban smoking on all 23 of its campuses. The article notes that the ban won't mean much for the urban campuses, since the university cannot ban smoking on the public…

  • Alain de Botton on the modern university’s neglect of the wisdom in culture

    Mark D. White In The Wall Street Journal today, the very prominent popularizer of philosophy from across the pond, Alain de Botton, writes of the modern university's neglect of the wisdom that can be imparted to students through the study of culture, rather than just intellectualizing it all to death. From the article: The modern…

  • Erasing the Board at the End of Class

    Mark D. White At the Austrian Economists blog, Steve Horwitz has a fascinating post on "Economists, Empathy, and Unerased Boards," which has generated quite a bit of commentary, much of it very revealing. Well worth a look!

  • Welcome to the Economics and Ethics blog!

    Welcome to Economics and Ethics, a new group academic blog which we hope will allow us—and you, our readers and commenters—to: Showcase and discuss new work in ethics-and-economics by scholars around the world, Discuss ways to include treatments of ethics in economics education, Announce new projects and initiatives in ethics-and-economics, including calls for papers for…