Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Are technological optimists too optimistic about technological sustainability?

Posted 23 Nov 2015 / 0

Image courtesy of Pacific Southwest Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Wikimedia Commons The Chronicle of Higher Education “Ecomodernists Spark Rhetorical Heat” In my Ecology for Architects course I have students work on an activity that asks them to advocate one of four “extreme” environmental positions: Population bombers; Neo-luddites; Deep ecologists; or Read More

A Minor Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Environmental Justice, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Risk & Uncertainty, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Transportation, Sustainable Urban Design

Tenured and mostly a teacher? I think that is already happening, whether or not we admit it.

Posted 08 Jun 2015 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher Education “Time for a Teaching-Intensive Tenure Track” I remember that when I was nearing the completion of my dissertation and considering how to deal with the impossible job market, I looked up the C.V.’s of some of my favorite undergraduate professors back atĀ Pomona College. I had no delusions of being able Read More

A Minor Post, Higher Education

Do our students only respond to high-stakes testing?

Posted 08 Jun 2015 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher EducationĀ “Facing the Dreaded End-of-Term Question” I do give Final Exams, but they are relatively low stakes (~30% of students’ grades). Still, I can relate to this piece (a lot!). Increasingly students seem to think that the only thing that matters is the test. In my classes, I actually get a lot Read More

A Minor Post, Higher Education, Teaching

Rob Nixon on Rachel Carson’s prescience

Posted 14 Oct 2012 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher Education “Rachel Carson’s Prescience“

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Biography, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Economics, Environmental Justice, Habitat Destruction, Marine Ecosystems, Political Science, Pollution, Public Policy

Can neuroeconomics help economics become a real science?

Posted 06 Oct 2012 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Marketplace in Your Brain” I think that this article suggests that much of economics is not much of a science. Faced with new information, mainstream economics has failed to update its models of how the world works. Doing so would make economics akin to physics or medicine or evolutionary Read More

A Minor Post, Belief, Economics, Emotion, Evolutionary Psychology, Game Theory, Neuroscience, Psychological Adaptation, Psychology, Religion, Social Networks, Social Norms

Economics and Human Satisfaction

Posted 09 Jun 2011 / 0

There’s a nice article in a recent edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “The Economics of Unhappiness“. In this article John Quiggan gives an overview of two recent books that focus on explaining our incessant need to increase our economic status well past the point of meeting our basic needs. Both books suggest Read More

Articles, Cooperation, Evolutionary Psychology, Happiness, Human Evolution, Psychological Adaptation, Web

Barash and Lipton on Bin Laden (and Us)

Posted 10 May 2011 / 0

David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton are unafraid of explaining modern social behavior from an evolutionary perspective. As famous communicators of evolutionary psychology, they see in an understanding of biology the promise of explaining humanity. In their latest column for The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Why We Needed Bin Laden Dead“, Barash and Lipton Read More

Articles, Cooperation, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Nature, Multilevel Selection, Psychological Adaptation, Psychology, Punishment, Sociology