http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor Steven Schwartz Blog Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:07:02 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Hello, this is David Myton again standing in for Steven Schwartz. In her excellent book about the experiences of Soviet soldiers during World War II, Catherine Merridale records the words of the Russian war poet David Samoilov in reaction to the Nazi invasion that began on June 22 1941: “We were all ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/11/24/taking-the-sting-out-of-nasty-surprises/ The police inspector has a problem. Although he knows his two prisoners are guilty, he doesn’t have sufficient evidence to convict either one. His only hope is to get them to confess, but they refuse to talk. So he separates the prisoners and makes each the following offer: If you ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/11/12/managing-selfishness/ Hello, this is David Myton standing in again for Steven Schwartz while he is away overseas. In all the discussion leading up to the US Presidential elections some of you may have missed a thoughtful and confronting article that appeared in The Australian’s Higher Education section this week. It was by Associate ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/11/06/humanities-in-the-small-print/ It was my pleasure last night to meet the winners of the Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor’s Writing Competition for 2008 and to share in their pleasure as they received their awards. Eleven prizes worth around $15,000 in total were presented by our various sponsors. Competition judge Dr Willa McDonald told the audience how ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/10/24/prize-giving-a-write-pleasure/ Karl Marx is back in fashion. Sales of Das Kapital are booming as the “world realizes” it was in this book that Marx predicted capitalism would destroy itself. According to German publisher Jörn Schütrumpf these new readers are "those of a young academic generation, who have come to recognise that the ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/10/23/bad-marx-for-capitalism/ In his book The Poverty of Theory the English historian E P Thompson describes history as the “Queen of the Humanities" . Thompson was right; all other areas of study come together in history – English, politics, economics, sociology, even mathematics and science. Because history is the story of humanity (although ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/10/17/let%e2%80%99s-hope-queen-history-can-rule-in-peace/ "The outsiders want the students trained for their first job out of university, and the academics inside the system want the students educated for 50 years of self-fulfilment. The trouble is that the students want both. The ancient collision between each student's short-term and long-term goals, between training and education, ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/10/15/higher-education%e2%80%99s-collision-of-values/ The stock market’s tanking, the world is slipping into recession and banks are falling over like dominoes. Jobs and credit are getting scarce and pensioners are finding their retirement much less comfortable than they had planned. The media have turned the volume up to screaming point - talking about ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/10/14/australia-at-war-now-that-was-tough/ In a speech to a group of business leaders recently, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd linked the turmoil in global financial markets with the 1987 film Wall Street. In the movie, fictional stockbroker Gordon Gekko makes the following speech: Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/10/08/higher-education-less-gekko-more-gandhi/ Lord Patten of Barnes, former Conservative MP and Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, was in the news this week for a comment he made about his old alma mater, Oxford University. Speaking at a meeting of the UK’s Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ (school principals as we’d call them in ... http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2008/10/02/university-access-why-the-good-lord-is-wrong/