Higher education

Excellent Sheep

Starting from a viral essay, the 2014 book “Excellent Sheet: The Miseducation of American Elite” by Deresiewicz presents a critique of a system. The short take away might be a critique of the elite schools, but the critique is broader (why generations scramble to live a performative life without purpose). My notes don’t focus on […]

Tags: #American Elite #Deresiewicz #Education #Excellent Sheep #Higher education #Miseducation #Social Critique

Thought Provokers Nov 13

Tocqueville in Arabia

I opened Joshua Mitchell’s “Tocqueville in Arabia: The Anxieties of the Democratic Age” (original 2013 by UChicago Press, reprint in 2023 with Encounter Books) skeptical. The author spent 3 years in Qatar in the mid-2000s and runs the risk of pretending to a be country expert (as many fly-in fly-out scholars have done). Fortunately, I […]

Tags: #Books #Higher education #Philosophy #Qatar

Thought Provokers Nov 4

Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education

In 2015 a symposium was held at the University of Regina on “Public Engagement and the Politics of Evidence in an Age of Neoliberalism and Audit Culture”, which went on to be the basis of the book “Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education”, published in 2018 by the University of Regina Press. The book is edited […]

Tags: #Audit Culture #Dissident knowledge #Higher education #James McNinch #Marc Spooner

Thought Provokers Jul 26

Decolonising the University

Following demands – Rhodes Must Fall, Why is My Curriculum White?, #LiberateMyDegree – three editors brought together a diverse group of authors to think about what decolonising the university means (historically and pedagogically) and its experience (in universities and curricula) and reflections of those leading such efforts. Decolonising the University is edited by G. K. […]

Tags: #decolonization #decolonize #Decolonizing the university #Higher education #university

Thought Provokers Feb 27

About me

Logan Cochrane

Logan is a Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last twenty years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.

Logan Cochrane