18 April: Creative Commons Turkish Community Meeting

Prof. Mumford at Bilgi U.

A football lover himself, Prof. Stephen Mumford will have a lecture at Bilgi University. He will focus on Zidane’s headbutt at Materazzi in his talk entitled as “Should Athletes be Role Models? as part of Prof. Erhart’s course “Sports and Media” Abstract: Sport is sometimes thought to play a morally educative role, teaching us virtues … Read more

Two Announcements: Free Software and Linux Days Event/ Internet Week

Official site in English. the 10th Internet Week events organized by a platform of Internet related associations. Call for Action in Turkish here.

Bilgi University becomes the first private university to unionize in Turkey

After being acquired by an American education company, Laureate, (starting with this academic year, 2009-2010), Bilgi University employees of all sorts (academics and administrative workers) had been increasingly having job security issues as well as anxiety for possible policy changes. There haven’t been many concrete cases to encourage this rise of anxieties (but of course … Read more

A super busy week ends with a disappointing news.

This semester I have four courses to teach. It is a relatively heavy workload but I am fine with that. I like teaching anyway. One of the courses is an MA course on Cyberculture studies which is very satisfying. In fact, all courses so far went well. On Mondays I start teaching at 9.30 am … Read more

A video presentation: İSTANBUL DO/REDO/UNDO: SULAR, SOKAKLAR, SURATLAR

Our dean, Prof. Nezih Erdoğan directed a short documentary.It will be shown in santralistanbul on 17 February. Facebook event site here. Info in Turkish: Tarih: 17 Şubat 2010 Çarşamba Saat: 17:00 Yer: Santral Kampüsü, E1-301 Yapımını ve yönetimini İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi Dekanı Prof. Dr. Nezih Erdoğan?ın üstlendiği İstanbul Do/Redo/Undo: Sular, Sokaklar, Suratlar videosunun … Read more

Summer School: ?The EU-Turkey Relations: The Lisbon Treaty and beyond?

European Institute in collaboration with CIFE Summer University on: ?The EU-Turkey Relations: The Lisbon Treaty and beyond? İstanbul Bilgi University European Institute will be hosting the third session of the Summer University in collaboration with Centre International de Formation Européenne (CIFE). The lectures, roundtable discussions and debates will encompass several topics including; The lectures, roundtable discussions … Read more

A fashion week in the campus

Istanbul Fashion Week happened to be at the campus I work in. Santralistanbul’s large parking lot was turned into a tent town and fashion people showed around in the campus, frequenting our cafes and all. There was a Meg Ryan scandal. She showed up for a moment and then was frustrated with the crowd and she escaped basically. I don’t know who is really guilty there but we could not figure out why so much money spent for a person who is not really in the fashion business and not a hot shot any more. Or is she? I don’t know really.

It was the registration week, that meant one of the busiest periods in our academic year and I had only two ways connecting with this giant organizations. Instead of our usual parking lot, we had to park farther away, which was annoying with all rain and cold air. We swore a lot. There was a low profile clash of logics between university personnel and security people for the fashion organization. Secondly, well, it was beautiful to see around fashionable women. A friend of mine who happens to be in fashion circles sent me an invitation to one of the lingerie shows, but i wasn’t interested in that really.

via Hürriyet. Meg Ryan next to a minister and all.. More photos here.

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Two universities, two perspectives

Two promotional video spreading in the web, mostly in Facebook. The first one is about Bilgi University, particularly Visual Communication Design program. The second one promotes the library at Koç University. The latter is hosted at the library site and a kitsch product officially owned. The former is a viral one, not officially hosted or … Read more

Shoe-throwing- Turkish version

last update: 02 Oct. 2009- 10:50

Todays Birgüns first page
Today's Birgün's first page

The paper for whom Mr. Özbek works for shows solidarity, I guess. “Everyone needs a shoe one day”. The thrown shoe is an imitation Nike shoe.

Selçuk Özbek, an editor at Birgün, a leftist daily, throws a shoe at Mr. Strauss-Kahn. The incident took place at another campus of my university. I was in the other campus, waiting  for the introductory meeting with Media MA students. At first, we thought he was one of our students but he turned out to be a journalist. Not particularly imaginative after the original show throwing event. Mr. Strauss-Kahn responded maturely.

The protester has been released during the day. My Facebook and Friendfeed newsstream is full of comments praising the action although I am not that excited. More in the comments section…

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