Here is a brief clip (5:50) from my longer interview with Dr. David Sheffler that considers public engagement and commentary as a historian. It explains how I began to provide public commentary and the reason I began blogging. It also considers how social media is influencing the way many people view the past.
Image above: Standing on the walls of Acre (“Akko”) in northern Israel, July 2016.
Over the next week or two, I will be turning my thoughts to the coming semester, with classes starting soon. I am happy to be getting back to teaching, as I generally enjoy it very much (my occasional complaints on Facebook aside), but I am also grateful to Florida State College at Jacksonville for granting me a twelve-month sabbatical over the past year, which I have tried to make as productive as possible. While many academics are familiar with the sabbatical process, I have learned few of my friends outside academia, or even many graduate students, understand it. Since I also assume I will need to account for my time spent during the sabbatical during a future evaluation for the college, I want to reflect here on the topic, how it works, and what I was able to accomplish as a result of it. Particularly in light of some of the good spirited teasing I have received from old friends (non-academics) worried about how their tax dollars were being spent as a result.
Andrew Holt, Ph.D. 