Civic Studies » memoir

growing up with computers

Peter — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:05:18 +0000

Ethan Zukerman’s review of Kevin Driscoll’s The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media made me think back to my own early years and how I experienced computers and digital culture. I was never an early adopter or a power user, but I grew up in a college town at a pivotal time (high school […] Continue reading →

revolutionary art without a revolution: remembering the eighties

Peter — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 16:21:49 +0000

When the 1980s began, I was a nerdy little white boy in middle school in the rapidly de-industrializing Rust Belt city of Syracuse, NY. When it ended, I was a grad. student in England, but I had lived in New Haven, London, Florence, and New York City. I was interested in classical music and the […] Continue reading →

some notes on receiving tenure

Peter — Wed, 15 May 2019 15:24:50 +0000

This week, the Tufts Trustees voted to grant me tenure and make me a full professor. I am very grateful to them, the Political Science Department (which is my tenure home), the Tisch College of Civic Life (which will remain … Continue reading → Continue reading →

on hedgehogs and foxes

Peter — Tue, 14 May 2019 18:27:18 +0000

“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one important thing” — Archilochus This proverb is in the news lately because Philip Tetlock has shown that foxes (flexible and curious generalists) are much better at predicting events than hedgehogs (specialists … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, and memories of Rust Belt adolescence

Peter — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 14:55:05 +0000

Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw (pictured below) were born in urban Michigan during the 1950s. By the time they were art students in the early 1970s, they’d seen all the stuff you don’t study in a University of Michigan classroom: doodles … Continue reading → Continue reading →

twenty-five years of it

Peter — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:16:39 +0000

Now 50, I can see that my scholarly or intellectual life has turned out differently from what I had imagined at age 25. Then I had a 9-5 job in politics–for the “citizens’ lobby,” Common Cause. I had written a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

my father’s books are going to James Madison’s desk at Montpelier

Peter — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 18:14:11 +0000

(Syracuse, NY) My father, Joseph M. Levine, collected more than 20,000 books as a working library of a professional historian. Many were published before 1800. I am a sort of trustee for this collection, happily responsible for its long-term future. … Continue reading →

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having one conversation for 26 years

Peter — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 16:49:03 +0000

(Salem, MA) I am here for a retreat of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, where I work. In the summer of 1987, I came here for a retreat of the Charles M. Kettering Foundation, where … Continue reading →

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