Otto's Random Thoughts

Americans often think of the Russian Empire as a country of emigration rather than immigration. But, the Russian Empire also took in a lot o...

I have now finished teaching my first full academic year. Overall it was a very good experience. Most of the students did all of the work an...

My girlfriend has started taking English language lessons. Almost all of our conversations are still in Russian, but I have been spending a ...

Today I am trying to work on my syllabus for my Nationalism, Race and Ethnicity course. I would like to stress the development of ethnic cat...

It is now very hot and humid here in Bishkek. I take the current weather to be a sign that summer is upon us. I have decided to stay here d...

Randy McDonald has posted a good review of Sidonia Dedina's Edvard Benes: The Liquidator (Mountain View, CA: RPF Publications, 2001). F...

Last night I went to a dinner party sponsored by Afghan students graduating from AUCA. The food and hospitality was most excellent. It was p...

The 18th of May marks the 64th anniversary of Stalin's mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their homeland to Uzbekistan and the ...

I have now finished and posted final grades for both my Migration and Borders and Political History of the USSR classes. Now I just have to ...

A lot of self styled "liberals" and "progressives" in Blogestan have been celebrating the 60th anniversary of Israel rec...

This weekend I read Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism. I agree with his criticism of historicism, but I think he could have made ...

Today is a holiday in Krygyzstan. Like in Soviet times May Ninth marks the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany. There are big billboards w...

Today I found one example of plagiarism and I graded eight final papers for Migration and Borders.

I have now graded six final papers for Migration and Borders and found three cases of verbatim plagiarism.

I have now graded four final papers for Migration and Borders and found two blatant cases of verbatim plagiarism.

So far I have graded one final research paper for my Migration and Borders Class and found one case of blatant plagiarism. As in the entire ...

Right now I am mired in grading for classes and it is only going to get worse between now and Wednesday when all my research papers are due....

One lesson I learned is not to assign more than four papers total to any one class. I assigned 12 short one page papers to my Migration and ...

Today I gave my last lecture of the semester. Now I just have to grade papers. This semester I taught my first history course. Despite being...

Last week I finished my last lecture for my Migration and Borders class. I have two more for my Political History of the USSR class. This m...