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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





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Monday, January 12, 2015

O BRAVE NEW WORLD

Half a century ago, Clark Kerr, the Chancellor of the University of California, remarked that the modern university is "a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over car parking."  [He also observed in his influential book The Uses of the University that a university president is expected to achieve three goals:  "sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty."  He thought only the last presented a problem.]

I am here to testify to Kerr's prescience [about parking -- I remain mute about the other matters.]  I am teaching a course at UNC Chapel Hill that  meets in the Philosophy Building, Caldwell Hall [the second oldest building on campus, and the most handicapped-inaccessible building I have ever seen.]  Inasmuch as Caldwell is some distance from reliable public parking, I need a permit to park in a nearby campus garage, the Cobb Deck.  For the past week and a half, much of my time has been spent attempting to navigate the UNC system, ConnectCarolina, and satisfy its increasingly rigorous demands, all apparently issuing from an obsessive concern with security.  At this point, well into the second week of the semester, I still have not managed to obtain a parking permit, despite the heroic efforts of several Departmental staff. 

Oh, by the way, in ninety days, my password expires and must be re-set.  Seriously.

1 comment:

David Auerbach said...

Ahh, welcome to the modern U. I'm tempted (but will resist) sharing my interchanges with NCSU parking (or "transportation" as they call themselves) whose careless punitive responses I have questioned. They are oddly impervious, probably because, even more than athletics, they answer to no one.