Take EPE 628, Ethics & Educational Decision Making, S’20

In the spring of 2020, I’ll be teaching Ethics and Educational Decision Making, EPE 628, with both face-to-face AND synchronously online sections! The class meets on Tuesday from 4-6:30pm. Consider signing up or tell your friends who might.

Image of a road that forks, next to the text of the name of the course, 'Ethics and Educational Decision Making.'

Why study Ethics and Educational Decision Making?

  1. Ethics is essential for leadership in the educational policy context;
  2. The course fulfills an elective requirement for the Graduate Certificate in College Teaching and Learning;
  3. The course includes options for customizing assignments for conference and journal submissions;
  4. Two students from last semester had their papers accepted for presentation at the 2019 Midwest Educational Research Association conference;
  5. It’s really fun.

Thumbnail image of a flyer for EPE 628. Clicking on this image opens a PDF of the flyer, which is text searchable. Here’s a flyer for the course, and here’s a short bio about the instructor:

Dr. Eric Thomas Weber is Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation. He also serves as Executive Director of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA) and co-host of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, and is the author of Uniting Mississippi and Democracy and Leadership.

Consider joining the class or sharing this post with your networks! 

What’s New?

Diving into Public Philosophy, or maybe Belly-Flopping Into It

This spring has been BUSY. In Moving to Lexington, KY, I decided that among my key aims would be to dive deeper into the waters of public philosophy, public intellectual engagement. So far, a number of related activities have kept me busier than I could have imagined. They’ve also been hugely rewarding.

Still capture from our Trigger Warnings online symposium. Organizationally, I’ve been working a great deal on projects for and leadership of The Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA, on Twitter & Facebook). Last fall, we held an online video symposium on “Trigger Warnings,” which was a lot of fun, and we need to hold more of them. We haven’t gotten back to that yet, but we need to, I think. We should probably think of that kind of work as a program, one with a name, and that should happen with some frequency, as well as an officer leading the charge for how and when we’ll hold the next one. We’ve certainly learned a great deal about the need for and steps for better audio quality in recording such events. The next one will be better and we’ll keep on growing our archive of material and gatherings.

The DJ booth at WRFL Lexington on December 10th, 2016.In work for SOPHIA, we’ve also returned to a project I started in 2015, which was my Philosophy Bakes Bread podcast. Instead of it being solo and only a podcast, we’ve welcomed Dr. Anthony Cashio of the University of Virginia’s College at Wise as a co-host on the show, which is now centered on interviews about how and why philosophy matters in real life and leadership. We’ve been very fortunate to get a spot on WRFL Lexington, 88.1 FM. The program is now a weekly radio talk show and then a podcast after that, the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast (on Twitter and Facebook too). We started in January of 2017 and have been very busy ever since. The podcast, when I worked on it alone, only came to 4 episodes in 18 months. Since committing to the weekly radio show, we’ve aired 32 episodes, 27 hour-long programs and 5 short “breadcrumb” episodes. It has been considerably more work than I could have imagined, but it’s also been a great deal of fun. More importantly, it’s been some of the most engaging public philosophical work I’ve done to date. We’ve got listeners in 67 countries and the show has been downloaded over 9,000 times to date. We’re excited about approaching the early milestone of 10K downloads, which we hope to see happen in the next 10-14 days, or less, as far as our present trends appear to be going. That’s super exciting.

Logo for Philosophy Bakes Bread, which looks like two conversation bubbles shaped like slices of bread.

We also have a logo for the show now, that isn’t just my lame effort to put a text over an image in Photoshop… We’re finally getting around to putting the word out in efforts beyond social media posts. We’re WAY overdue on a few requests for interviews. To give you a sense of why, for each episode, we need to: 1) think about who’ll be on, 2) invite the person(s) on the show, giving info about what we do, how, etc., 3) schedule the interview, 4) meet to prep to give the interview, 5) meet and record the interview, 6) edit the interview for airing as an episode, 7) go to the station and air the episode, 8) announce the show on social media before and as it’s airing, 9) get the files after airing from the station and perform final mastering on them, 10) prepare language, images, and social media posts to accompany the podcast episode release, 11) post the show and announcements on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus, then 12) secure and make final tweaks to transcripts of the show that the great Drake Boling, UKY Philosophy undegraduate student, has been doing for us, and finally, 13) post the transcript on our site, as a PDF, and on Academia.edu. Ok, now do that 31 more times… to date (no, we’re not up to date yet with all the transcripts). To say it’s been a lot of work is an understatement.

Logo of the Public Philosophy Journal.This means that I’ve not had a chance to do as much of my own (single-author) writing, but the good news is that I’ve been doing considerably more coauthoring. In the academic world of Philosophy, people tend to think of meaningful writing as single-authored work, at least much of the time. That’s a mistake. There have been excellent philosophical works that are coauthored. Among them, I’m thinking of a number of projects by Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse. But they’re uncommon in the field. I’m glad to have had the chance to do some coauthoring, and one of these opportunities was a very special one. Again related to SOPHIA, I and three scholars put together a project that we pitched for the Public Philosophy Journal. The idea is that some theorizing has been needed for SOPHIA to pursue its mission: to build communities of philosophical conversation. To that end, Andrea Christelle, Sergia Hay, James William Lincoln, and I ventured to Michigan with grant support from the journal and the Mellon Foundation, ultimately, to write together a “Groundwork for Building Communities of Philosophical Conversation.” I’ve experienced coauthoring only a few times, and it’s not always been easy. This case went very smoothly. We’re not done with our project, and getting together remotely to finish the project is taking time, but the pay off has been great. We’re researching needs and methods for building communities of philosophical conversation, because we believe there’s a great need for a more philosophical culture in the United States and elsewhere.

SOPHIA's group at the PPJ's 2017 Collaborative Writing Workshop.

SOPHIA’s group at the PPJ’s 2017 Collaborative Writing Workshop.

Beyond that, I committed to coauthoring a paper for the Summer Seminar on the Future of Philosophy at UNC Ashville this July, which I’ll be driving to this afternoon. I’m also giving my own individual paper there, but have been very happy to coauthor a paper with my Philosophy Bakes Bread co-host Dr. Anthony Cashio as well. We’re looking to finish a longer paper a little later this summer for the journal, Dewey Studies, and this is a step in that direction. The paper is called “Lessons Learned Baking Bread: Taking Philosophy to Radio and Podcast.” We had a blast writing it, and were inspired in relation to that to answer some of our interview questions that we’ve received (and have been way late in answering them) in the last few months. Anthony is not only great to talk to on the show, but also to write with. I’m hoping that my future includes more and more coauthoring, because it’s very rewarding and makes for a superior project, I believe, when we can draw from more minds and from encouraging and sympathetic thinking and dialogue.

Lumber I milled up in late November and December of 2016. Last but not least, I’m finishing work finally on my edited collection of John Dewey’s public writings. That’s been a long-time coming. I keep thinking it’ll be done soon, and it will be soon now… I’m also working to finish my next book, which I’ve been developing longer than any before, called A Culture of Justice. That’s the other topic I’ll be talking about tomorrow in Asheville. These projects would have been done far sooner if I hadn’t committed to an intensive radio show, but I don’t regret a thing. It’s all been super rewarding. I feel as though I’m constantly working and getting more and more behind, but I think it’s more likely that progress is just advancing slowly on the huge projects, bit by bit, and that I’ll be excited to see them at the end. That’s a lot like a big bed project, which I’ve completed in my new hobby of woodworking. I milled the lumber for it in late November and December of 2016. Big projects sometimes creep along, but eventually, if you keep making little bits of progress, they come together, like this:

The bed I planned and built over the course of 7 months.

I need a nap… Nah, coffee will help. I’m excited to be headed to Ashville, to meet up with some great philosophers. And, while there, to do a number of interviews for Philosophy Bakes Bread! When we can record in person, it’s awesome, like in these two cases from my trip to Michigan (photos below). Thanks to Chris Long for the great photo with typewriter in the foreground, and thanks to Naomi Hodgson and Amanda Fulford (I don’t recall who took the picture, of the two) for the pic of our setup in the less attractive computer room in Michigan. The rooms were quite different, but the conversations were both substantive and fun.

This is a photo of four people sitting around a table and a microphone to record an episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread in May of 2017, in a lovely room near South Gull Lake in Michigan.

Photo courtesy of Dr. Christopher P. Long, 2017.

This is a photo of me setting up to do an interview with Amanda Fulford and Naomi Hodgson in Michigan, 2017.

Photo courtesy of Naomi Hodgson and Amanda Fulford, 2017.

I don’t know how interesting this post is or has been for people, but it felt good to sit down and write it out. It may be of interest to a few people who’ve been kindly following and engaging with me on social media. In fact, I should mention a bit of a celebratory moment: I’ve hit 100,000 “likes” on my Facebook author page! That’s super cool and deeply gratifying. Thanks to everyone who’s been following my work. It’s really rewarding to write about and advocate for things that others care about too, making however small a contribution to dialogue about issues so many of us care about. It’s impossible to measure real impact, but we shouldn’t let difficulty in measuring something meaningful keep us from diving into it, or from belly-flopping into it as the case may be.

Image of a post from my Facebook page about a signed-copy giveaway for my latest books.

Image of a post from my Facebook page about a signed-copy giveaway for my latest books.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for your interest! If you’re not yet following me on Twitter or on Facebook, get to it!

Exciting Growth for Philosophy Bakes Bread

Some of you may recall that I started a podcast in 2015 called Philosophy Bakes Bread. Now that it’s a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA), which airs on WRFL Lexington, and with my co-host from afar Dr. Anthony Cashio, the show is picking up steam.

Logo for Philosophy Bakes Bread.

As a stand alone podcast in 2015 and 2016, each episode was scripted and recorded by yours truly. It took a lot of time and it was hard back then to commit to putting out episodes as regularly as I had wanted to. Now that the show has a cohost and is primarily an interview-format and discussion-style show, and now that it’s on the radio each week, it’s been much easier to commit to regular work on it and to put out a steady stream of episodes. The latter is so crucial for developing and growing an audience.

One bit of good news is that we’ve just received our first iTunes reviews for the show, which are both 5 star reviews! We’re thrilled that people are enjoying the show.

Photo of a microphone and a soundboard.It helps for the show to be on the radio, which already has a listening audience base. Plus, the team at the station has been a big help. They’re looking into ways for us to transcribe the episodes, perhaps with grant support. Then, we’ve seen good early numbers for podcast episode downloads. We’ve only been putting them out since the last week of January, with minimal social media distribution efforts and so far we’ve had over 2,000 downloads. We’re looking to start sending out PSA’s and to get with TV news and newspapers about the program. Who knows. It would certainly be awesome eventually to syndicate the program, if interest grows.

The cool thing about a program like Philosophy Bakes Bread is that we can cover so many topics that matter. We can at the same time simply present matters that scholars are researching, that audiences care about, and we can also be advocates about things that matter. We can have people on whom we think ought to be heard more. Soon, we’ll be airing an interview with conference panelists who wrote and spoke about disability and American philosophy. That’s just one of many exciting examples.

Sliced loaf of French bread.I’ll keep you posted from time to time on what we’re up to with the show. For now, if you’ve not already subscribed, what are you waiting for? Go check us out at PhilosophyBakesBread.com. We’re on iTunes and have a regular RSS feed, which you can learn about on our site. We’ve just now submitted our feed to Google Play, which should likely be listing the show soon. And, of course, we’re on Facebook and Twitter. Check us out!

The logo for Philosophy Bakes Bread.Starting on Monday, January 9th, I will join a friend and co-host Dr. Anthony Cashio of the University of Virginia at Wise to broadcast the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA) airing every Monday at 2 on WRFL Lexington, 88.1 FM.

Philosophy Bakes Bread first aired as a pilot podcast, for which I put together 4 episodes here. The new show will be weekly, featuring a co-host, interviews, special segments, and more. Plus, it will be broadcast for the Lexington, Kentucky area, before it is then made into a downloadable, subscribable podcast (for me, so I don’t have to do it!). So, the initial audience is here in Kentucky, but soon becomes anyone with an internet connection or a smartphone. I hope you enjoy!

If you’re not in Lexington, you can stream the show live at http://wrfl.fm/stream, or you can wait until it comes out as a podcast episode. More info on that coming soon!

Date: January 9, 2017
Time: 02:00-04:00 p.m.
Event: Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show & podcast
Topic: Philosophy Bakes Bread
Sponsor: The Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA)
859.257.1849
Venue: WRFL Lexington, 88.1 Radio
859.257.9735
Location: Lexington, KY
Public: Public

If you haven't checked out SOPHIA, you should, at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

“Now Online, 2015 Interview with NPR Affiliate, Clinton School Presents”
by Nikolai Dipippa, with Dr. Eric Thomas Weber

Sorry, listening to the audio on this website requires Flash support in your browser. You can try playing the MP3 file directly by clicking here.

Eric Thomas Weber, author of "Uniting Mississippi: Democracy and Leadership in the South" speaks at Sturgis Hall October 19, 2015. Photo Credit: Jacob Slaton

Weber speaking in Sturgis Hall on October 19, 2015. Photo Credit: Jacob Slaton

From the “Clinton School Presents” Web site:

Interview with Eric Thomas Weber for NPR affiliate KUAR on Clinton School Presents, a weekly dialogue of distinguished guests that visit the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Arkansas. Nikolai DiPippa, Clinton School Director of Public Programs, sat down with Eric Thomas Weber, associate professor of public policy leadership at the University of Mississippi and executive director of the Society of Philosophers in America. His book, Uniting Mississippi: Democracy and Leadership in the South, applies a new, philosophically informed theory of democratic leadership to Mississippi’s challenges.

If the audio player above does not work on your platform or device, click here to hear the interview on the Clinton School’s site.

The recording runs 23 minutes long.

If you are interested in a speaker on the subjects of leadership, ethics, or democracy, visit my “Speaking” and “Contact” pages and be in touch.

“‘Uniting Mississippi,’ Ep4 of Philosophy Bakes Bread”
by Eric Thomas Weber

Sorry, listening to the audio on this website requires Flash support in your browser. You can try playing the MP3 file directly by clicking here.

Philosophy Bakes Bread
February 6, 2016

BrownBagLunchPic2Here’s episode 4 of Philosophy Bakes Bread, titled “Uniting Mississippi.” You can listen to it here above or you can visit the podcast’s page for this episode here. You can subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed here. If you prefer, you can download the MP3 file here and listen to it later.

iTunes has it too.

“Uniting Mississippi”

This episode considers what philosophy has to say about leadership. It features a recorded presentation I gave at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture on my September 2015 book, ‘Uniting Mississippi: Democracy and Leadership in the South.’ Though Mississippi is the focus of my application, the principles and challenges apply through the South and beyond.

Logo for Philosophy Bakes Bread, which is a loaf of bread.The transcript for the intro to this episode is available here. The bulk of the episode is a recording of a live talk I gave, for which I do not yet have a proper transcript. For those interested in the project, for now I can direct you to the interview about the book that I gave The Clarion Ledger on the book, as well as to the actual book, available here.

Check out the other episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread here.

Finally, if you’d prefer to “watch” the podcast on YouTube, here it is:

“‘Cultivating a Culture of Encouragement’ Interview, Stollman and Weber (12m in)”
by Christopher Long & Mark Fisher, hosts

Sorry, listening to the audio on this website requires Flash support in your browser. You can try playing the MP3 file directly by clicking here.

Logo of the Public Philosophy Journal.Before my Web site redesign in the summer of 2015, I attended a great workshop for the Public Philosophy Journal, a Mellon Foundation funded project. Jennifer Stollman of the Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation coauthored a proposal with me to write a paper at the workshop titled “Cultivating a Culture of Encouragement” — the link takes you to an abstract for our paper.

The recording here features five groups, each talking about their projects. Jennifer and I are in the second spot, 12 minutes in. Learn more about each group on Dean Chris Long’s Web site here. Each group has their title listed, with a link to their abstract.

The whole audio recording of the 5 interviews comes in at around an hour long, but you can skip ahead. If you have any trouble with that, you can download the MP3 file here and use whatever player you prefer. Again, Jennifer and I are the second group of writers of five groups, a little more than 1/10th of the way in from the start.

Logo for Matrix, Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences.Thanks to Chris and his co-host Mark Fisher. Chris and Mark were both at Penn State University. Chris has since moved to East Lansing, Michigan, where he is now Dean of the College of Liberal Arts there. He and Mark are continuing work on the journal with a special digital humanities team there called Matrix.

Check out the full info about the episode and all of the guests featured in it and learn more about the Public Philosophy Journal.

Interview on BAM South’s Midlife Criss podcast

January 6, 2016, With host Jack Criss, and guests Kinsella, Weber, and Rings

Photo of a microphone in front of a soundboard.

I had a great time talking with Jack Criss on BAM South’s Midlife Criss podcast. The interview will soon be up on BAM South’s site, but for now Jack’s posted the interview on Sound Cloud. The player is here below. Jack is a great M.C. and he had questions for me about Uniting Mississippi. My interview is about 16 minutes in from the start of this audio recording. I’m the second of three guests: Stephan Kinsella, me, and John L. Rings.

The Logo for BAM South, with the tag line, "Business Always Matters."Jack has kindly invited me to join him again for a more extended discussion when I’m next in Jackson, MS. I’ve got plans in the works for a trip to Jackson at some point in the spring of 2016, so I think that it would be great to join Jack again.

The name BAM South is short for Business Always Matters. Check out the online publication, which features a nice podcast series. Jack has a great voice, I should add. Fun host too. I hope you enjoy.

Here’s the interview (again, my interview is around 16 minutes in):

More information about Uniting MississippiInfo on Speaking.

The logo for The Giving Net.Looking forward to an interview with Andrea Price on The Giving Net podcast, based out of Little Rock Arkansas. The Giving Net focuses on civic engagement, philanthropy, and public service. I’ll be talking about my book, Uniting Mississippi.

Date: October 19, 2015
Time: TBD
Appearance: Interview on The Giving Net podcast
Outlet: The Giving Net: Civic Engagement, Philanthropy, Public Service
Location: Little Rock, AR
Format: Podcast

If you'd like me to speak with your group, visit my Speaking page.

“‘Acceptance & Happiness with Stoicism,’ Ep1 of Philosophy Bakes Bread”
by Eric Thomas Weber

Sorry, listening to the audio on this website requires Flash support in your browser. You can try playing the MP3 file directly by clicking here.

Philosophy Bakes Bread
March 14, 2015

PBB-Logo-1-itunesHere’s episode 1 of Philosophy Bakes Bread, titled “Acceptance & Happiness with Stoicism.” You can listen to it here above or you can visit the podcast’s page for this episode here. You can subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed here. If you prefer, you can download the MP3 file here and listen to it later.

iTunes has it too, though for some reason as I post this the episodes are out of order.

“Acceptance & Happiness with Stoicism”

This first episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread presents a very personal story about how stoic philosophy can make a profound difference for the better in our lives when we encounter difficulties beyond our control.

The transcript for this episode is available here.

Check out the other episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread here.

Finally, if you’d prefer to “watch” the podcast on YouTube, here it is:

If you prefer that format, here’s a playlist of the podcast episodes on my YouTube channel.