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My life of the mind: Embracing transitions

/ David Yamada / 1 Comment

Raphael’s School of Athens (Apostolic Palace, The Vatican; photo: DY)

Since 1991, I’ve been a full-time law professor.  But that’s changing now. I’ve entered a voluntary phased retirement program at Suffolk University Law School in downtown Boston, where I’ve been teaching since 1994.  Starting with the current academic year, I’m on a half-time teaching schedule, and will remain so for the following two academic years. Although I may continue to teach on a very part-time basis after that, I am concluding my full-time employment as a law professor.

Although I still enjoy teaching our wonderful students at Suffolk, I’m delighted to be transitioning into a busy and fulfilling semi-retirement. I’ll be engaging in a variety of lifelong learning and cultural enrichment activities, volunteer service on various non-profit boards and advisory committees, and ongoing aspects of my long-time work. I’ll also do hobbies and spend more time with people dear to me.

As part of this transition, I’m looking at how my various learning and related activities are shaping up. Here’s how things are looking for now:

Great Books and Great Ideas

In 2024, I completed the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, offered since 1946 by the University of Chicago’s Graham School for Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. As I wrote earlier on this blog:

The Basic Program is an open enrollment, non-credit, four-year sequence of courses featuring the close reading and discussion of what have been called the Great Books. It starts with works by ancient Greek philosophers and poets and proceeds to examine other canonical authors and works of the Western tradition.

The Basic Program experience was so meaningful, both intellectually and personally, that I’ve continued to take elective courses and course sequences at Graham. Right now I’m enrolled in a series of courses titled “The End(s) of Humanity,” which use the lens of the humanities to consider existential crises such as climate change and the nuclear threat.

And by adding a service component, I’m jumping into this U of Chicago thing with both feet. Last year, I accepted an invitation to join the Graham Council, a volunteer body appointed by the University’s board of trustees that supports the Graham School and provides input and feedback to its administrators and faculty. And in the fall, I was interviewed for a video commemorating the upcoming 80th anniversary of the Basic Program and participated in a panel discussion on the value of reading Great Books.

Offering remarks during a Graham School panel discussion, Hyde Park, Chicago

I now regard the Graham School as a vital long-term home base for my lifelong learning activities. My service role with Graham also enables me to support the liberal arts and humanities generally. In sum, this has become an enormously enriching and satisfying association.

University of Chicago, Hyde Park, Chicago (photo: DY)

Singing

“I am passionate about . . . ” is probably one of the most overused expressions of our day. But dear reader, I am truly passionate about singing as a very meaningful, fun, and healthy hobby and pastime.

Since 1995, I’ve taken a weekly singing workshop with the same instructor, Jane Eichkern, first at the Boston Center for Adult Education, now at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. Taught in a supportive, encouraging small class format, it has been a place of learning, fun, and fellowship. It has been part of the rhythm of my life, going back to my first year in Boston. I have not missed enrolling in a term since I first signed up.

During recent years, I’ve become a big karaoke enthusiast as well. My go-to venue is the main stage at VIVA Karaoke & Studios in Boston’s Theatre District. Before the pandemic, I had become a regular at VIVA’s predecessor, Limelight Karaoke. When they reopened under the VIVA name, I returned and have kept returning.

I’m singing a fave Sinatra tune at the VIVA Karaoke main stage in Boston

I love singing the old standards, also referred to as the Great American Songbook. Songs popularized by the likes of Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin, and others are among my favorites. (If you’re on Facebook, you can check out three of these croonings here, here, and here!)

I harbor enormously modest singing ambitions: I want to be a great karaoke singer. That’s it! I’ve resisted suggestions to expand my vistas by seeking out a choral group or local theatre company to join. Voice class and karaoke are my happy places.

History

I have been an amateur student of history going back to grade school. This next chapter of my life will allow me more time to steep myself in learning about and understanding our past. Fortunately, I live in a city that is simply steeped in history. Among other things, Boston played significant roles in the American Revolution and in the anti-slavery movement that led into the American Civil War. The city is a casebook of early Americana.

I’m forging a very rewarding connection to the world of history via my service on the board of directors of Revolutionary Spaces, Inc., a Boston-based non-profit institution. Rev. Spaces stewards two nationally significant historic sites — the Old South Meeting House and the Old State House, both located in downtown Boston — and offers public education exhibits, tours, and programs about U.S. history, democracy, and freedom of speech. I began attending Rev. Spaces events in 2023. I was so impressed by the quality of programs and staff there that I basically enthused my way onto the board.

Performers take their bows at the annual interactive Rev. Spaces re-enactment of the raucous 1773 public meeting that preceded the Boston Tea Party, at the site where it happened (Old South Meeting House, Boston; photo: DY)

These on-site opportunities join with hundreds of books about history that are part of my personal library, many of which await my semi-retirement. With a bit of luck and good health, the upcoming years will allow me to satisfy more of my history geek leanings.

Non-Scholarly Writing Projects

I’m looking forward to doing more non-scholarly writing during the years to come. This includes social media contributions and articles for periodicals.

In addition, I want to explore some non-traditional venues. Before I began my teaching career, I was very drawn to the world of zines — little magazines and short booklets, often self-published — and imagined myself someday publishing in that mode. Well, the publication expectations of academe took over at that point, to the extent that even serious blogging (of which I’ve done a ton) isn’t considered to be academic writing by many people in this business.

But with my schedule becoming more flexible, I’m starting to explore what continues to be a thriving zine world. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time with offerings from Microcosm Publishing, and I’ve got several ideas for zine writing that might be interesting to some readers out there.

Part of my latest zine haul from Microcosm Publishing (photo: DY)

Legacy Work

Finally, although I will no longer be a full-time law professor, I will remain professionally active in focal areas that have shaped my academic work for decades, such as workplace bullying, employee safety and dignity, and therapeutic jurisprudence.

I’ve been doing this workplace anti-bullying stuff for a long time, and I have no intentions to stop.

This will include advocating for the enactment of workplace anti-bullying laws in the U.S., engaging in research, writing, and public education projects about creating healthier workplaces, and supporting the evolution of the law through innovative frameworks such as therapeutic jurisprudence. You may read more about my work at my Minding the Workplace blog, which I have been writing since 2008, and download many of my scholarly writings without fee from my Social Science Research Network page.

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My various activities will keep me downing coffee on a regular basis (photo: DY)

When I began thinking hard about what I would like this next chapter of my life to look like, lifelong learning naturally emerged as a recurring theme. The common thread that ties together so many of these activities is a commitment to learning and education, both for me and for others. I’m very much looking forward to it all.

“I read the news today, oh boy”: On following coverage of a war in Europe

/ David Yamada / Leave a comment

Screenshot of an Economist subscriber briefing on the Russia-Ukraine war

I sheepishly admit that until a few weeks ago, I had never paid much attention to Ukraine. But once Vladimir Putin’s Russia appeared ready to invade its much smaller neighbor, I sat up straight and quickly realized what was at stake. And all it took was a look at a map plus my (very) rudimentary understanding of global diplomacy and treaty obligations.

Back in October, I wrote about the importance of developing a global orientation, while confessing that I had a ways to go before reaching that state of insight and awareness:

In my more self-deluded moments, I like to think of myself as being something of a “global citizen.” After all, I do some international travel, engage in work that has some transnational relevance, donate to global charities, and gratefully have friends in and from many different countries. Hey, I even subscribe to the Guardian Weekly and The Economist!

In reality, though, I’m yet another professor whose travel experiences, work, and network of friends have international dimensions. I’m just as likely to check on the fortunes of my favorite sports teams as I am to click to news stories of key developments in other parts of the world.

Well folks, it’s interesting that I touted my subscription to The Economist as evidence of a supposed international perspective. Among the news sources I’ve tapped to understand the European situation right now, this magazine is becoming my go-to authority. Its smart, concise, and historically-informed coverage is spot-on for this moment in time. And to think that I considered not renewing my subscription earlier this year!

What’s not part of my news rotation right now is regularly watching television coverage of the war. Fortuitously, I guess we could say, my cable TV service has been off and on, and for various reasons I haven’t scheduled an on-site service appointment. So I’ve been relying on online news sites and print subscriptions to keep me informed.

My verdict? Television news may provide that dramatic, you-are-there kind of coverage, but it’s thin on deeper perspective and endlessly repetitive to boot. It feeds anxiety over the global situation, without delivering a concomitant benefit of more in-depth understanding.

The heroism and suffering of the Ukrainian people,  the actions and intentions of a tyrant in command of a huge military force, and the diplomatic chess game both transparent and opaque have drawn much of my attention. Two weeks ago, I missed a university committee meeting because I had gone down an internet news rabbit hole about the Russian invasion — clicking like mad from site to site and story to story — and didn’t re-emerge until the meeting had concluded!

When the world initially went into shutdown mode during the pandemic, some pundits said this marked the end of an era of globalization that had defined our international outlook since the 1990s. But this war in Ukraine is showing us, with sudden brutality, how we cannot afford to look at our lives through a narrower lens. Memo to self: We are all citizens of the world, whether we choose to admit it or not. Our day-to-day learning and self-education must encompass that global view.

My problem with The New Yorker — or is it The New Yorker’s problem with me?

/ David Yamada / 1 Comment

A New Yorker cover for our times

For decades, The New Yorker magazine has aspired to excellence in publishing what we now call long-form journalism. Each week, it delivers well-written, deeply-researched, and fact-checked dives into topics both mainstream and esoteric, along with fiction, poetry, reviews, and its legendary one-panel cartoons. A subscription to The New Yorker is something of a mild status symbol, proclaiming that you seek quality commentary about current events and popular culture.

The New Yorker also has a very lively online presence. In addition to publishing its print issue articles online, it adds a lot of content daily, often on breaking news topics. In all, The New Yorker offers a lot to its subscribers.

But here’s my somewhat blasphemous hypothesis: The New Yorker may also be one of the most unread magazines in existence. If my experience is in any way typical (and I freely admit that it may not be so), then a lot of folks get their magazine in the mail, quickly scan the table of contents, and then put it aside with the best of intentions to get to those beefy articles when free time allows. We rinse and repeat with each weekly issue, thus creating a pile in our homes.

Furthering the blasphemy: The New Yorker sometimes says too much about too little. Too many long pieces are overextended explorations by gifted writers who are very close to narrow topics that may not justify the reading time of many readers. Others — such as lengthy explorations of current news topics — may have a very limited shelf life. (I’m not going to give examples, because my purpose is not to trash specific pieces or writers.)

In sum, The New Yorker strikes me as being a writer’s magazine, but not necessarily a reader’s one.

Of course, my problem with The New Yorker could fairly be recast as The New Yorker‘s problem with my limited attention span and my decidedly middlebrow center of cultural gravity. You see, as much as I’d like to think of myself as the kind of reader who devours each issue in order to be both informed and sufficiently erudite, I am not that person.

Many of my day-to-day interests are of a niche variety, and if The New Yorker‘s chosen deep dive niches don’t match with mine, then I’ll likely flip past them. (To be totally fair, I don’t expect The New Yorker to run pieces about my niches, such as my passion for karaoke or my interest in obscure, defunct professional football leagues.) And I tend to rely on newspapers (online editions, these days) for current news and commentary.

From a lifelong learning perspective, The New Yorker implicates the choices we make about our reading. Given X amount of time available for reading, how much of it do I want to devote to lengthy article Y? Using that calculus, I’m on the fence about renewing my subscription.

In any event, I’m confident that my little critique of The New Yorker will not have a negative impact on its readership. I’m good with that. After all, the magazine stands for quality commentary and stringent editorial standards, at a time when the written word needs such strong support.