Michael Austin – Medium

Michael Austin
in
Dialogue & Discourse

Liberal Arts and Higher Education: The Vital Art of Not Being a Bug

The second strangest thing that happens in the first chapter of Franz Kafka’s masterpiece Metamorphosis is that the protagonist, Gregor…

5 min readNov 28, 2023

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Liberal Arts and Higher Education: The Vital Art of Not Being a Bug

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Michael Austin
in
The Collector

“Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao”: How Ideology Shapes Our Thinking and Prevents Us from…

There is a scene in the wonderful Chinese film, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress that has stayed with me for years (click here and…

6 min readNov 22, 2021

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“Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao”: How Ideology Shapes Our Thinking and Prevents Us from…

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Michael Austin
in
The Collector

Dr. Jill Biden Works with Community Colleges: That Makes Her a Hero

I have been involved in higher education, in one form or another, for 35 years, first as an undergraduate, then as a graduate student, a…

6 min readDec 17, 2020

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Dr. Jill Biden Works with Community Colleges: That Makes Her a Hero

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Michael Austin
in
The Collector

Donald Trump and the Spirit of 1876

though it is mostly true, it is not completely true that Donald Trump is swinging around wildly trying to stay in power. He has a playbook…

4 min readNov 19, 2020

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Donald Trump and the Spirit of 1876

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Michael Austin
in
Dialogue & Discourse

Biden’s Call for Unity Was a Pragmatic Plea, not a Moral Argument

It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again. To make…

5 min readNov 9, 2020

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Biden’s Call for Unity Was a Pragmatic Plea, not a Moral Argument

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Michael Austin
in
The Collector

The Law of Bad Numbers

Here, in a nutshell, is the Law of Bad Numbers: In an election involving millions of votes, it will always be possible to find reasons to…

6 min readNov 8, 2020

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The Law of Bad Numbers

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Michael Austin
in
The Collector

“Fair” and “Balanced” Are Not the Same — and Sometimes It’s Not Even Close

The executives at Fox News didn’t create the false equivalency between “fair” and “balanced,” but they certainly turned it into a national…

5 min readOct 30, 2020

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“Fair” and “Balanced” Are Not the Same — and Sometimes It’s Not Even Close

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Michael Austin
in
Dialogue & Discourse

Will 2020 Be a Realigning Election?

In a two-party system, political parties are not really coherent ideologies. There are simply too many ideological positions in a large…

6 min readOct 25, 2020

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Will 2020 Be a Realigning Election?

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Michael Austin
in
The Collector

We Aren’t Debating about Values Anymore; We Are Debating about Reality, and that Is a Huge Problem

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates — seven engagements that occurred in different Illinois cities between two candidates for the US Senate —…

5 min readOct 23, 2020

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We Aren’t Debating about Values Anymore; We Are Debating about Reality, and that Is a Huge Problem

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Michael Austin
in
Dialogue & Discourse

Nine Reasons that “Originalism” Isn’t Really a Thing for Supreme Court Justices

“Originalism” is a reasonable way to interpret 99.99% of Constitutional questions that come up. But the Supreme Court exists to handle the…

5 min readOct 17, 2020

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Nine Reasons that “Originalism” Isn’t Really a Thing for Supreme Court Justices

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Michael Austin

Michael Austin

Michael Austin is a former English professor and current academic administrator. He is the author of We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America’s Civic Tradition

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