Afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable

Here's a piece of mine for the Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review. This issue focused on an important subject:inequality. The article lists the ways that higher education hurts the poor and working class, and helps the elite:

It requires a subscription to read, but you can get to the article here. Thank you to my AD, Scott!

(Censored) up beyond all recognition

This illustration for The Chronicle of Higher Education is running in the current issue. It accompanies an essay by an associate professor from Virginia Commonwealth University relaying his experience attempting to teach some journalism classes at Northeast Normal University in China. As the professor soon came to realize, it's fairly difficult to teach about press freedom in a country that doesn't have much. Along with the concept of "press freedom," there were several other taboo subjects that he was warned to shy away from: one of them being the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Many of his students were unaware of the demonstration/massacre, even as they were approaching its 25th anniversary, due to the fact that the Chinese government has made sure to stifle public discussion of the event. I decided to use a heavily redacted text in the shape of a tank, along with an image of the famous "Tank Man" in front of it. It also helped to signify the fact that the professor was standing up to government censorship. He was able to use leaked diplomatic cables made public by Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks to have his students learn about Tiananmen, from U.S. State Dept cables that discuss the issue (apparently using a source that the U.S. government opposes, made it tolerable to Chinese authorities?). I was struck by the irony of a story criticizing China for quashing press freedom, discussing the use of leaked cables provided by Manning, who is now in prison in the U.S. for something that the press in this country has benefited so much from.
Thank you to Janeen, my AD on this one!

Ace of Database

Remember that band? They were the bees knees in '93. My sister had their cassette tape. Anyway, here's a quick piece I did for The Chronicle of Higher Education, for an article on the prospect of a nationwide database on all college students:

 The author is largely wary of the advent of such a database, which is understandable. There's a lot of debate about privacy, and the security of our personal information as of late. It's an interesting article to read, and you can find it here. Thank you to Janeen, the AD on this!

Oh the thinks you can't think

This piece for the current edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education illustrates the paradox of teaching critical thinking in a tightly controlled society, like China:

 The story explains the difficulty China is meeting with when venturing to teach people to think creatively and outside of the box, while at the same time limiting just how much they can question. As the article recalls, a recent Time story asked: China makes everything. Why can't it create anything? The government has since begun attempts to rectify the problem, by teaching students to think critically- just not about the Chinese government. You can read it here, with a subscription. Thank you, Ellen!

The MOOCs are coming!

I did this illustration for The Chronicle of Higher Education a couple weeks ago, on a tight deadline before the Memorial Day weekend. The article discusses MOOCs, Mass Open Online Courses (Wikipedia link here), and how they are a natural progression of how higher education has been evolving over the last few decades. The author explains that colleges, once very localized, are now universal in their departments, courses, standards, and almost every way they function. Instead of offering an education designed around the school's location, all schools are now basically the same. In the author's opinion, this leaves them vulnerable to the MOOC trend. He states in the article: "As any botanist knows, a monoculture is highly susceptible to a single pathogen."

That analogy helped to spark this idea, of the MOOC trend- in the form of binary code- overwhelming a college, much the way ivy has overwhelmed many school buildings over the last couple hundred years. The author likens this situation to the way big department stores closed in the wake of Wal-mart. Most colleges, he forecasts, will eventually be replaced by online courses- "the Wal-mart of higher education." But just as there are specialty, artisan shops for just about any product you might want, so too will there be niche, artisan schools.

 My sketches focused on the idea of these digital, online courses affecting the physical, brick and mortar institutions, or that the traditional setting of the class is a thing of the past. The article is online here, but requires a subscription. Thank you, Ellen!

Still to come: Harvard Law Bulletin, Institutional Investor, and Bloomberg Markets.

Know your enemy

I should have posted this earlier in the week, but I've been really busy. I believe it ran last weekend in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The author of the article suggests that having enemies, and even creating new ones where none exist, is part of our human biology. Early humans evolved by fending off hostile animals, as well as hostile bands of fellow humans. We battled "others" to protect our tribesmen and resources, and we battled them to steal and secure new (their) resources. Today, we have a pronounced ability to make enemies. An almost genetic need to have one, even if only to swell our patriotic pride. (We'll get all those evildoers someday. U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A!) You need a subscription to read the article, but it's online here.

This was a really fun piece to work on. Thanks so much, Ellen!

TIMBERRRRR!!!

This illustration for The Chronicle Review ran this past Sunday. It accompanied a very thought-provoking essay by Mark S. Weiner about the relationship between individualism and government. The old adage that in order for individual liberty to thrive, government must be small, or even nonexistent, is a very familiar line among conservative, and even leftist-anarchist thinking. However, the author contends that efforts to shrink, cut, weaken or dismantle government actually has the opposite effect: it hurts individual freedom.

The author explains that governments need to exist to ensure that individuals' liberties are protected. Rights, as well as goods and services in a democracy are based on the concept of "the public good." In the absence of government, humans tend to organize themselves in clans, where rights, goods and services are instead based on membership in the clan.

I wanted to show how the effort on the part of the individual to dismantle government ends up hurting that same individual. It's a great article, and if you have a subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education, you can read it here. On a related note, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from the author, complimenting me on this piece. It's always a huge honor to hear that the person whose work I'm illustrating enjoys it. Thank you to Ellen and Scott, and thank you, Mark, for your kind words.

Can you dig it?

Here's a piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education. It was the lead piece in the Views section, and the story focuses on the need for colleges to get on board with the sustainable food movement, i.e. growing their own food, or at least getting as much as possible from local sources, etc.

The article is titled "Fire Your Food Service and Grow Your Own," and much of it details the way most colleges, despite their commitment to many other hot issues, are very much dependent on Big Agribusiness for their food needs. With my first set of sketches, I was focused on "getting big business out of the food," and also on the idea that so much of the food comes from very, very far away. My favorite was the "registered trademark" symbol being plucked out of the bunch of grapes:

Well, missed the boat on that one... The editor replied that they wanted to focus more on agriculture, and the connection between colleges and the growing aspect. So, back to the drawing board, and ended up with the solution you see above, combining the "university column" with the idea of gardening, by way of a spading fork. You can also see Brian Taylor's "Zombie Marathon" at the top of the page. Sweet! Thank you again, Ellen!