Mel Brooks, the Chinese Gourmet Society, and the stoking of creativity and mutual support

One of my favorite parts of filmmaker and comedian Mel Brooks’s breezy, funny memoir, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business (2021), is a short chapter devoted to what he and his pals called the “Chinese Gourmet Society.”

For some nine years starting in the early 1950s (apparently — he gives no dates!), Brooks and a group of invited friends met for dinner every Tuesday night in New York’s Chinatown. While membership varied over the years, the group included:

• Irving “Speed” Vogel, one of Brooks’s long-time friends and a textile factory manager turned direct metal sculptor;
• Ngoot Lee, a friend of Vogel who worked for Bloomingdale’s as a calligrapher and furniture designer and knew of the best restaurants in Chinatown;
• Authors Georgie Mandel (The Wax Boom), Joseph Heller (Catch 22), and Mario Puzo (The Godfather) — all before they made it big; and,
• Julie Green, an “incredibly well read” diamond merchant.

Brooks doesn’t go into detail about what they talked about during those dinners, but he credits his friends and these dinners for providing “stability and inspiration” and getting him through some lean and difficult years. Indeed, as Brooks writes, the group had some dining rules that reflected their tight budgets and a commitment to this fellowship:

We had strict eating rules at the Chinese Gourmet Society. You were not allowed to eat two mouthfuls of fish, meat, or chicken without an intermediate mouthful of rice. Otherwise, you would be consuming only the expensive food. The check and tip, and the parking fees, if any, were equally divided among the members. It was compulsory, if you were in New York, not working nights, and in reasonable health, to be present at every Chinese Gourmet Society meeting.

We can only imagine what it must’ve been like to share a weekly dinner with this eclectic, talented crew, before many of them became prominent and very successful. How did their various conversations generate creative artistic and business ideas? How did they support each other when money was tight, success was far from assured, and assorted life challenges presented themselves? I’m quite sure that those dinners, in addition to providing an enjoyable social outlet, stoked both artistic genius and mutual support.

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I have long been fascinated by, and sometimes envious of, these small, informal, intentional cohorts of interesting, smart, creative people who meet regularly over meals in a spirit of fellowship. I even have a small collection of books built around other examples of these groups, including, among others:

• Laura J. Snyder’s The Philosophical Breakfast Club (2011) shares how four men who first crossed paths at Cambridge University — Charles Babbage (mathematics and computing), John Herschel (astronomy and photography), William Whewell (multiple fields of science), and Richard Jones (economic science) — began meeting over Sunday morning breakfast during the 1800s to exchange ideas and plant the seeds of the modernization of science.
• Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001) focuses on the lives and ideas of four remarkable members of a conversational club that met throughout 1872: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (law), Charles Sanders Pierce (philosophy), William James (philosophy and psychology), and John Dewey (education and philosophy).
• Philip Zaleski & Carol Zeleski’s The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (2015) tells the story of how writers C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and other intellectuals formed a literary club, the Inklings, that met weekly in various pubs and other locations around Oxford University during the 1950s, “to drink, smoke, quip, cavil, read aloud their works in progress, and endure or enjoy with as much grace as they could muster the sometimes blistering critiques that followed.”

While these groups offer their own fascinating stories, one of the great appeals of Mel Brooks’s Chinese Gourmet Society is its comparatively motley membership, untethered to a prominent university. Their work and creative aspirations were more commercial in nature, while having the power to shape our popular culture. I’m also betting that the more disparate occupations of the Chinese Gourmet Society members made for greater varieties of conversations and sharing of information and ideas.

(I readily acknowledge that these groups I’ve talked about above are noticeably lacking in gender and racial diversity. It is very likely that many similar stories remain to be told, or have been told and I am simply unaware of them.)

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The formation of these groups and larger tribes cannot be forced or contrived; any genuine sense of fellowship has to be somewhat organic in its formation, bringing together the right mix of personalities, intellects, dispositions, and interests. Food and drink help as well!

Although I have never been part of any ongoing group like the Chinese Gourmet Society, the Philosophical Breakfast Club, the Metaphysical Club, or the Inklings, I have experienced these fellowship experiences on a short-term, in-person basis, typically through the work I’m doing on workplace bullying and employment relations generally, human dignity, and therapeutic jurisprudence. Here are several pertinent blog posts:

• “Conferences as community builders” (2015) (link here) — About the biennial Work, Stress and Health conference co-sponsored by the American Psychological Association, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and Society for Occupational Health Psychology;
• “Tribes for brewing ideas and engaging in positive change” (2015; rev. 2019) (link here) — A piece contemplating how to nurture tribes to engage in collaborative change;
• “Launched in Prague: The International Society for Therapeutic Jurisprudence” (2017) (link here) — How we launched an international learned society devoted to advancing therapeutic jurisprudence at the International Congress on Law and Mental Health, in Prague, Czech Republic.
• “A workshop as annual ritual” (2019) (link here) — A look at the annual December workshop of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, held in New York City.
• “A veteran cohort of the workplace anti-bullying movement gathers in Boston” (2023) (link here) — Practitioners and scholars addressing workplace bullying, many of whom are associated with the Workplace Bullying Institute, gathered for an interactive workshop in Boston last year.

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I think it remains to be determined if Zoom and other communications platforms can be the central enablers for fostering such fellowship opportunities. My basic hypothesis is that Zoom, et al., can serve as a valuable connector between in-person gatherings, but that periodic face-to-face exchanges are a necessary component for sustaining successful cohorts of this nature.

Chip Conley on embracing midlife

I’m not quite sure when I started to use the term midlife in association with, well, my own life, but I think it was during my late 40s. At the time, it did make me feel older to concede that I had entered this stage. Now, however, having entered the heart of my 60s, I’m wondering how much longer I can claim to be in this relatively youthful category.

Well, my concerns are now somewhat assuaged by entrepreneur and author Chip Conley, who suggests that midlife is a multi-stage journey that “may last from 35 to 75.” This broader chronological framing of midlife is just one interesting piece of his new book, Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age (Little, Brown Spark, 2024). I recommend it heartily, though with a quibble or two.

Conley pulls together a lot of aspects about how we address aging, starting with a look at life expectancy figures and suggesting that at 50 years old, someone could literally be at their midlife point. He encourages us to look at this as a time of growth, purpose, and fulfillment rather than as one marked by steady decline. This includes becoming comfortable in our own skin, redefining our relationship with work, letting go of unhealthy emotional baggage and ties, seeking out meaningful associations and activities, and basically becoming our best selves.

The book mixes the author’s personal anecdotes, summaries of research on aging and lifespan development (he’s done his homework), and a wide variety of other voices. On the latter, if authors such as Brené Brown, Joseph Campbell, Arthur C. Brooks, and Viktor Frankl sound familiar, then you’ll be in comfortable territory. Overall, it’s an easy and thought provoking read.

My quibbles pertain mainly to this genre of writing generally. While Conley has faced his share of personal challenges, he and others who write about life stages and aging from a personal development perspective tend to have financial resources and strong networks. There is, frankly, an upper middle class lean to these introspective looks at life, which makes books such as this more useful to those who have some degree of personal control over their choices and financial flexibility.

That said, Conley isn’t limiting his messaging to those with lots of time and money. His Modern Elder Academy, for example, is offering an online course that includes a copy of Learning to Love Midlife for $49 (link here). 

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By the way, if you’re looking for a more intellectual take on evaluating your life, then I’m happy to recommend the second edition of Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be (Eerdmans, 2020), edited by Mark R. Schwehn and Dorothy C. Bass of Valparaiso University, where I earned my bachelor’s degree many years ago. It’s an anthology of excerpted texts drawn from literature, public affairs, and philosophy, built around the theme captured by the title. Although written with undergraduate humanities seminars in mind, it’s a great volume for adults engaging in midlife contemplations consistent with Chip Conley’s book above.

Autobiographical reflections: Mark Satin’s “Up From Socialism”

At the start of my second year as an instructor in the Lawyering program at New York University School of Law in 1992, I looked at my new class list of first-year students and saw a familiar name: Mark Satin. I would quickly confirm that this was the very Mark Satin who had written and edited a self-styled, left leaning yet “post-liberal” political newsletter titled New Options, which I had enjoyed as a subscriber.

Mark was 46 years old when he arrived at NYU Law. He brought with him an established reputation as an anti-war and left activist during the 1960s and as a progressive political writer during the 1970s. His first book, New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1976 + several revised editions), had generated considerable discussion as an attempt to synthesize and make sense of the politics of the New Left during the 60s and 70s.

After many years of writing and editing New Options, Mark sought to gain a stronger understanding of, and greater impact within, the societal mainstream. He figured that law school would give him some insights on how the worlds of law, policy, and commerce operated, so he set his sights on obtaining a legal education and earning a law degree. He took the Law School Admissions Test, filed his applications, and eventually landed on my 1L class list at NYU Law.

***

During our overlapping years at NYU, Mark and I shared many conversations about law, politics, legal education, and the general state of things. He was thoroughly invested as a law student, typically on his own terms and with a genuine curiosity about the Generation Xers who comprised the heart of the law school student body. Always attentive to emerging trends, and sometimes a key player in shaping them, he wanted to write a broad-ranging paper that surveyed and analyzed the linkages between law and psychology in many different aspects of legal thought and practice. That monumental research project would lead to a published article, “Law and Psychology: A Movement Whose Time Has Come,” in the Annual Survey of American Law, one of NYU’s student-edited law reviews.

Upon graduation, Mark held true to his goal of experiencing more of the mainstream, joining a small boutique business law firm in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. But sooner than later, he couldn’t resist the continuing siren call of writing and publishing. As the new millennium approached, Mark’s evolving social and political outlook were leading him to a place that he called the “radical middle.” His next newsletter creation was called just that. He wrote and published Radical Middle Newsletter (1999- 2009) (articles and back issues freely available here), and authored a book, Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now (2004).

***

Mark has brought together the chapters of a rich life in an engaging autobiography, Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics (2023). Do not expect a political tome here. This is a life recalled and reflected upon in a first-person, journalistic style. It is very opinionated, not overly concerned with political correctness, and sometimes rather detailed about the author’s romantic connections, mostly with women of a certain political leaning.

And if I may put on my dime store amateur therapist’s hat, Up From Socialism is about the author’s search for healing as much as anything else. It flips an old progressive, feminist chestnut: The political is personal. If you doubt my assessment, then go to the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph in Mark’s book. I don’t know if he has another book in mind, but if so, that’s its thesis statement and perhaps the starting point for shaping the rest of Mark’s life. (I won’t give it away, but has much to do with kindness.)

As for this book, I’m glad that Mark wrote it, and I’m glad that I read it. If any of this strikes your curiosity, then I’m happy to recommend it.

***

I should disclose that I am a supporting bit player in Up From Socialism, and I have supported Mark’s various endeavors with board service, editorial feedback, and modest financial contributions. Upon Mark’s invitation, I reviewed an earlier draft of the book to provide feedback and suggestions, concentrating on the law school/legal practice chapter.

In addition, as I wrote in a 2019 blog piece, “Workplace bullying, worker dignity, and therapeutic jurisprudence: Finding my center of gravity” (link here), “the overlaps between Mark Satin’s ‘radical middle’ and my back-in-the-day brand of liberalism appear to be many, at least if my other affiliations with the workplace anti-bullying movement, therapeutic jurisprudence movement, and human dignity movement are any indication.”

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Editor’s Note: After I posted this piece, Mark Satin sent this reply by email and asked that it be added. I’m happy to do so:

COMMENT ON DAVID’S REVIEW OF MY BOOK, FROM MARK SATIN

Either David is being much too modest here, or he simply does not realize how much his perspective has contributed to my Up From Socialism book.  That book is, among other things, an exposé of the nastiness, competitiveness, ego-drivenness, and BULLYING that went on in the New Left of the 1960s, the supposedly more idealistic “transformational” movements of the 1970s-1990s, and the supposedly more buttoned-down radical-centrist activities of our day – not to mention what’s going on in the new New Left!

In Up From Socialism, I trace much of this awfulness back to many activists’ poor relationships with self, parents, and partners; that’s why there’s little separation in my book between the personal and the political.  And that’s why the explicitly stated moral of my book is, “Only by becoming kind people can we create a kind world.”  I think David has been saying the same thing in his own way, and he’s been saying it longer than I … I am a more or less Bad Guy through much of my book!

Judith Herman’s “Truth and Repair,” Part 2: Workplace bullying targets and the search for justice & healing

In my previous post, I set out the basic premises behind Judith Herman’s new examination of psychological trauma, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (2023). In her welcomed volume, Dr. Herman’s focus is on a final stage of recovering from trauma, that of justice, reasoning that “(i)f trauma is truly a social problem, and indeed it is, then recovery cannot be simply a private, individual matter.”

I’d now like to apply Herman’s core precepts to targets of workplace bullying, mobbing, and related mistreatment whose experiences have been deeply traumatizing, including physical and psychological health impairments and costly impacts on careers and livelihoods. In other words, how might those whose lives have been so negatively upended by targeted work abuse regard the concepts of justice and healing?

Applying the elements of justice and healing to workplace bullying

Dr. Herman identifies acknowledgment, apology, and accountability as the key elements of justice. She identifies restitution, rehabilitation (of the offender), and prevention as the key elements of healing.

Let’s look at Herman’s elements of justice first. For targets of workplace bullying, we immediately see the problem. Most instances of severe bullying do not result in acknowledgment, apology, and/or accountability. The most common “resolution” of a targeted campaign of bullying is that the target either resigns or is terminated.

Next, let’s look at Herman’s elements of healing. Again, the problem is obvious. Most targets of severe bullying do not receive restitution. The offenders often continue in their ways; rehabilitation usually doesn’t enter the picture. And all too few employers learn from bullying within their organizations and resolve to engage in preventive measures.

A big missing piece in the U.S.: Legal reform

For her book, Dr. Herman interviewed “twenty-six women and four men who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, sex trafficking, sexual harassment, and/or domestic violence.” This interview cohort may yield some insights into applying her elements of justice and healing to workplace bullying targets. In each form of interpersonal abuse experienced by her interview subjects, civil and/or legal protections already exist. Granted, the effectiveness of these legal protections may be very uneven. But at least there are laws on the books, and sometimes they work.

By sharp contrast, workplace bullying is largely legal in the United States. Simply put, few targets of severe workplace bullying in the U.S. have a clear path toward harnessing the justice system to obtain relief in the form of acknowledgment, apology, accountability, restitution, offender rehabilitation, or employer prevention.

Herman found that most of her interviewees “seemed remarkably uninterested in punishment.” I cannot say the same thing for many targets of workplace bullying whom I’ve interviewed over the years. A good number of targets feel like their tormenters got away with something awful, because, frankly, that’s what happened. The anger can be palpable. While the intensity of these feelings may subside over time, and with it the desire for punishment, oftentimes the triggering factor is the absence of any semblance justice. Furthermore, much of the healing is self-generated. And in toxic workplaces, the bullying tends to go on and on.

As many readers of this blog know, I am the author of workplace anti-bullying legislation called the Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB). I’m part of a group of advocates from across the nation (go here for the national HWB campaign page) who have been urging elected officials to enact it. While enacting the HWB will not be a panacea, at least it will help to push open doors towards justice and healing that are often closed. Without legal incentives to take bullying at work seriously, too many employers dismiss reports of bullying, side with the aggressor, and allow this costly and destructive form of mistreatment to continue unabated.

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Those here in Massachusetts who wish to become involved in advocacy efforts supporting the HWB may contact me directly at dyamada@suffolk.edu. Although we are not equipped to do legal or psychological advising concerning individual instances of workplace bullying, those in search of guidance or assistance may find helpful the “Need Help?” page of this blog by clicking here.

In my final look at Dr. Herman’s book (for now, at least!), I’ll be applying her precepts to the interdisciplinary field of therapeutic jurisprudence.

Judith Herman’s “Truth and Repair,” Part I: Trauma survivors’ perspectives on justice and healing

In 1992, psychiatrist Judith L. Herman shared her groundbreaking analysis of psychological trauma, Trauma and Recovery. For years this has been among the “must read” books  on the topic, and Dr. Herman has remained a leading authority in the field. In a 2022 edition, she would add an epilogue that examines new understandings and developments in trauma research and treatment during the ensuing decades.

Throughout this time, I sensed that a lot of folks who are deeply interested in trauma wondered if Dr. Herman might have another major work in her, one that might advance our understanding of this important topic even further. This welcomed volume has arrived in the form of Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (2023).

In this three-part series of posts, I’m taking a good look at Truth and Repair and applying its precepts to two topics that recur often on this blog, workplace bullying and therapeutic jurisprudence.

The path to Truth and Repair

In her new book, Dr. Herman summarizes that Trauma and Recovery identified three general stages of recovery from trauma, all closely focused on the individual survivor: The first stage is “the complex and demanding task of establishing safety in the present, with the goal of protection from further violence.” The second stage involves “revisit[ing] the past in order to grieve and make meaning of the trauma.” And the third stage involves a “refocus on the present and future, expanding and deepening…relationships with a wider community and…sense of possibility in life.”

It was the contemplation of a “fourth and final stage of recovery,” that of justice, which prompted Herman to work towards a new book. After all, she reasoned, “(i)f trauma is truly a social problem, and indeed it is, then recovery cannot be simply a private, individual matter.” 

With this new focus, Herman interviewed “twenty-six women and four men who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, sex trafficking, sexual harassment, and/or domestic violence.” The results of these conversations helped her to conceptualize elements of justice and healing from a trauma survivor’s perspective.

Elements of justice and truth

Through her interviews, Dr. Herman identified three precepts of justice and truth, as defined by trauma survivors:

Acknowledgment — “The first precept of survivors’ justice is the desire for community acknowledgment that a wrong has been done,” for public recognition of a “survivor’s claim to justice must be the moral community’s first act of solidarity” with the survivor.

Apology — Perpetrators should provide a genuine apology for their traumatizing offenses, taking responsibility for their actions and offering to make amends. In some instances, an apology may “create the possibility of repairing a relationship.”

Accountability — While trauma survivors interviewed by Herman were ambivalent about punishment for perpetrators and complicit bystanders, many were drawn to the broader precept of accountability for individuals and institutions. Ideas behind restorative justice — a movement that embraces values of “nondomination, empowerment, and respectful listening” — resonated strongly in this context.

Elements of healing and repair

Dr. Herman’s interviews also identified three precepts of healing and repair, again as defined by trauma survivors:

Restitution — Restitution can take the form of money to cover a survivor’s losses and recovery, but it also can be defined in more systemic ways, such as creating more humane justice systems and safer institutional spaces (including workplaces). This broader take on restitution expands on the traditional legal notion of “made whole,” typically defined largely as financial compensation.

Rehabilitation — Because our justice systems, especially those governing criminal behavior, are vested mainly in the objective of punishment, “we know little about what it would actually take to bring perpetrators to relinquish violence and feel genuine remorse for their crimes.” Nevertheless, if we can find ways to “instill empathy or a feeling of common humanity in those who lack it,” we may create moral awakenings that truly safeguard our communities.

Prevention — Prevention, of course, means reducing potential exposure to traumatizing acts and events and help trauma victims in their healing. Educational programs, bystander training, and counseling and support for victims are among the preventive measures that can be implemented.

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Truth and Repair is much richer and more fulsomely detailed on a deeply human level than I can provide in a relatively digestible summary. Indeed, this important book merits a close reading by anyone who is interested in how we, as a society, respond to psychological trauma. 

Brevity aside, I hope this gives you a good sense of Dr. Herman’s essential theme. In the next two blog posts, I will apply these findings to (1) the experience of targets of severe workplace bullying and potential responses by the legal system; and (2) the interdisciplinary field of therapeutic jurisprudence, which examines the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic properties of our laws, legal systems, and legal institutions.

More from Dr. Robin Stern on gaslighting

I’ve recommended Dr. Robin Stern’s The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life (2018 ed.) as the best general source of information and guidance on the phenomenon of gaslighting, which occurs often in highly manipulative workplace bullying situations.

Now Dr. Stern has moved into a more direct self-help mode with the publication of The Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide (2023). My copy of the book just arrived the other day. It is a practical, informative, workbook-style guide, and I am happy to recommend it. Among other things, it includes a standalone section for workplace-related gaslighting that many readers of this blog may find very useful.

But that’s not all! It turns out that Dr. Stern has been very busy. She has also launched The Gaslight Effect Podcast (link here), and two of the first twelve episodes are expressly about gaslighting at work.

In addition, last year she penned an important Psychology Today piece (link here) that merits a read, “When It’s Gaslighting, and When It Really Isn’t.” Here’s a snippet:

But as the word “gaslighting” gained currency, it began to lose meaning: People often tell me that someone gaslighted them when in fact, what they are describing is mere disagreement.

…It’s worth revisiting what gaslighting is and what it isn’t.

…Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse where one person’s psychological manipulation causes another person to question their reality. Gaslighting can happen between two people in any relationship. A gaslighter preserves his or her sense of self and power over the gaslightee, who adopts the gaslighter’s version of reality over their own.

It’s important to distinguish gaslighting from disagreeing and to understand when conflict veers into gaslighting.

I hasten to add that Dr. Stern is hardly an opportunist when it comes to building her body of work about gaslighting. Rather, she has been a pioneer, having authored the first edition of The Gaslight Effect in 2007, a time when gaslighting as we understand it was barely in our vocabulary of interpersonal mistreatment. She has been ahead of this (twisted) curve, and now her expertise has made her a leading authority on this topic.

Free resource: “Political Science Internships: Towards Best Practices”

I wanted to re-share a resource that may be useful to those who are offering, arranging, and participating in internship programs in politics, public policy, international relations, and related fields. The book is Renée B. Van Vechten, Bobbi Gentry, and John C. Berg, Political Science Internships: Towards Best Practices (2021), published by the American Political Science Association (APSA).

The good news is that this super helpful resource is available for free from the APSA website (link here). Here’s a general description of the book:

Political Science Internships: Towards Best Practices builds on a robust body of evidence that demonstrates the integrative power of internships to help undergraduate students learn by doing. Targeting faculty, instructors, and administrators who deliver political science curricula, this book examines the state of internships in the discipline, scrutinizing different types of internship programs, their vital components, and the roles of key stakeholders: faculty mentors and instructors, site supervisors, and students.

I contributed a chapter, “Major Legal Considerations Pertaining to Internships” (link here). Here’s a brief description:

The burgeoning intern economy developed largely in the absence of federal guidelines or clarifying legal precedents until recently, creating significant ambiguity around interns’ rights, internship providers’ responsibilities, and institutions’ potential liabilities. During the past decade, litigation has helped clarify the relationship among students, their university or college, and their internship providers under current employment and education laws. This chapter surveys the major legal developments concerning internships, including compensation, harassment, and discrimination issues, with the core question being whether an internship is treated as an employment relationship under the law.

If you read my chapter, you’ll see that I am calling upon internship providers to compensate their interns even if they are not required to under the current, inadequate state of the law. Paying interns helps to ensure wider equality of opportunity, no small priority for internships that can eventually lead to positions of power and influence in public life.

There has been at least one welcomed, concrete change by an important federal government internship provider since the book appeared. Under the Biden Administration, the White House has turned its long-time unpaid internship program into a paid one. Last summer, I was interviewed by KCBS news radio in San Francisco about that important change. You may listen to that brief interview here.

Popular 2022 posts

Image courtesy of citypng.com

Hello dear readers, and welcome to the New Year! I collected ten of the most popular 2022 posts on work-related themes. If you missed them earlier or would like to take another look, then here’s your chance to read them:

• “Gaslighting” is the Merriam-Webster 2022 “word of the year” (Dec. 2022) (link here)
• Watching “Gaslight” (1944): One viewer’s guide (Oct. 2022) (link here)
• Workplace bullying and mobbing: Annotated recommended book list for 2022 (Aug. 2022) (link here)
• We need to dig beneath generic references to “toxic workplaces” (Aug. 2022) (link here)
• “The Wire” as work primer (July 2022) (link here)
• The Amy Wax situation: On academic freedom, diversity & inclusion, workplace mobbing, and cancel culture (July 2022) (link here)
• Dr. Martha Stout on outsmarting sociopaths (including those at work) (June 2022) (link here)
• On disability bullying (March 2022) (link here)
• Bullying, mobbing, and incivility in the healthcare workplace (Feb. 2022) (link here)
• A degrading money grab for classroom supplies in South Dakota (Jan. 2022) (link here)

Thanksgiving Week: Writing and remembrance

Hello, dear readers, I’m enjoying my traditional U.S. Thanksgiving trip to New York City right now. The 12 years I lived in this city (1982-94) were a personally and professionally formative time for me, so I always get a bit reflective when I visit.

With this morning’s publication of a piece contemplating the notion of personal libraries (see below for link) to the blog of Harrison Middleton University, where I’m doing a side gig as a 2022 Fellow in Ideas,  I thought I’d pull together variety of more recent (2018-present) writings from other sites, heavily themed on lifelong learning, books, popular culture, and personal nostalgia. I hope you find something here that strikes your fancy.

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Contemplations on a Personal Library (2022) (link here)

Living history: The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as experienced by U.S. Navy officer on a destroyer (2022) (link here)

Forty summers ago, a first-ever trip to NYC (2022) (link here)

Pandemic Chronicles #26: Old postcards as time travel experiences (2021) (link here)

Embracing middlebrow culture: The Book-of-the-Month Club (2021) (link here)

Pandemic Chronicles #25: Monet, London fog, and memory at the Museum of Fine Arts (2021) (link here)

Studying the Great Books at the University of Chicago (2021) (link here)

Pandemic Chronicles #20: Witnessing “The Troubles” 40 years ago (2021) (link here)

Libraries as learning hangouts (2021) (link here)

What’s behind “More Than A Song”? (2021) (link here)

Pandemic Chronicles #8: And suddenly, our worlds became very small (2020) (link here)

Pandemic Chronicles #1: “Be careful what you wish for…” (2020) (link here)

Twenty-five years in Boston…whoa! (2019) (link here)

Music as a time machine: 1979 (2019) (link here)

What is it about cold weather that draws me to bookstores? (2018) (link here)

Two memorable semester breaks (2018) (link here)

Watch: “The Dignity of an Intellectual Life for All”

Dear readers, on October 21, I hosted a program titled “The Dignity of an Intellectual Life for All.” Focusing on Dr. Zena Hitz’s thought-provoking book, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (2020), the program examined the value of embracing the liberal arts and humanities for their own sake and considered how a rich intellectual life for everyone enhances human dignity. We opened with a conversation featuring Dr. Hitz, followed by a responsive panel comprised of four distinguished educators.

It turned out to be a wonderfully engaging, conversational program. A freely accessible recording has now been posted to YouTube. Go here to watch it!

Here are the program details:

Hosted by Suffolk University Law School and co-sponsored by:

• Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, Graham School 
• Harrison Middleton University
• World Dignity University Initiative of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies 

Featured Speaker

Zena Hitz, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and author, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 2020).

Guest Panelists

Joseph Coulson, President, Harrison Middleton University

Hilda Demuth-Lutze, English teacher (ret.), Chesterton High School, IN, and author of historical fiction

Amy Thomas Elder, Instructor, Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, Graham School

Linda Hartling, Director, Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies

Moderator

David Yamada, Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School, Boston, MA

This program was supported by the Faculty Initiatives Fund at Suffolk University Law School.