Opportunity: Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Director

Here’s an excellent opportunity for interdisciplinary folks and big thinkers. The Kauffman Foundation is looking to hire a Research and Policy Director to head up a program of academic research on entrepreneurship. As I understand it, this person would assemble and oversee an in-house group of maybe a dozen researchers, and coordinate with a larger …

Nature’s Cultural Blindspot

A recent editorial in Nature “Young scientists thrive in life after academia” on the future of careers for today’s scientists is on one hand, both optimistic, but on the other, deeply unsatisfying. The editorial is clearly well-intentioned, providing what it sees as a hope for a generation of new scientists facing the worse funding climate …

Henry Heller on IP-Based Capitalism at Universities

There’s a short piece in the Times Higher Ed by Henry Heller in which he outlines the transformation over the course of the second half of the twentieth century of American universities from publicly supported institutions working for the good of society as a whole to standard neoliberal corporations. The upheavals of the 1960s and …

Unconference Sponsorships Available

The first Ronin Institute Unconference, on the Future of Careers in Scholarship, is coming up soon. It is being held on Saturday, November 5, in Cambridge, MA. Sponsorships are now available for this unconference. If your organization is interested in sponsoring this event, you can find more information at https://ronininstitute.org/events/sponsorships/, or you can contact us at …

Access Denied: Access to Scientific Literature

Ronin Institute Research Scholar Emily Monosson has written a new post (cross-posted as AAAS’s Sci-on-the-Fly) where she discusses the challenges of accessing paywalled literature when you’re working outside the traditional academic system. Here’s an excerpt: Now, as we enter the Golden Age of information and technology – somewhere, somehow, this scientific information increasingly became locked away …