The Conference (and Classroom) Manifesto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An opinion piece about academic conferences in the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0a while back got a lot of attention, and I created a draft post about it but didn't\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/01\/the-conference-and-classroom-manifesto.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Conference (and Classroom) Manifesto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An opinion piece about academic conferences in the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0a while back got a lot of attention, and I created a draft post about it but didn't\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/01\/the-conference-and-classroom-manifesto.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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{"id":30151,"date":"2016-01-02T06:26:17","date_gmt":"2016-01-02T11:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=30151"},"modified":"2016-01-02T06:26:17","modified_gmt":"2016-01-02T11:26:17","slug":"the-conference-and-classroom-manifesto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/01\/the-conference-and-classroom-manifesto.html","title":{"rendered":"The Conference (and Classroom) Manifesto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

An opinion piece about academic conferences in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0a while back got a lot of attention, and I created a draft post about it but didn\u2019t return to the topic until now.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, it was saying something that I have said before<\/a> \u2013 that it is hard if not impossible to quantify the value of such conferences, and administrators at some point are going to begin to question their value.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the same sorts of things can be said about\u00a0classrooms<\/em>. In the modern technological environment, do we need students to gather in one physical place to learn?<\/p>\n

Educators, for the most part, will say that something that cannot be precisely explained or quantified can happen when students gather. Often it is the things that cannot be scripted that make a course memorable and amazing.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t the same true of academic conferences?<\/p>\n