BY WILLIAM MATTHEW MCCARTER For more than fifty years, I’ve been learning. For more than twenty years, I’ve been teaching. If at this stage I can’t profess something worth hearing, then I ought to quit and sell insurance. Students don’t pay for PowerPoints or rubrics. They pay for professors who profess. The word itself comes…
BY IAN FINSETH The following is an imaginary communiqué from a fictitious administrator of an invented university to its faculty. It is satire (one hopes). Dear colleagues: Here at the University of the Southern Upper Midwest, we know that our customers don’t pay tuition for such woo-woo things like expanding their intellectual horizons, developing a…
BY DALE E. MILLER In “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity,” Professor Lisa Siraganian throws down a gauntlet. After offering “seven theses against viewpoint diversity in any of its guises,” she writes that “if viewpoint diversity means committing oneself to a robust debate about truth and values, then the movement should be open to responding to…
BY JONATHAN REES In the last week of classes of the spring 2025 semester, our administration announced a deal that would allow Barnes & Noble to take over our university bookstore. It included an arrangement that would guarantee students access to all their textbooks on the first day of classes, in exchange for students paying…
BY HANK REICHMAN Charlie Kirk did not deserve to die. As so many have pointed out, political violence—whatever the source—must be condemned for both its immorality and its destructiveness. Much as I have abhorred Kirk and the movement he represented, we are all worse off today than we were before he stepped to a podium…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY The last week I have been around the world on Zoom interviews. From Australia news to Europe to the United States in every time zone. I had to turn down Chinese state TV. And I also had a series of awkward attempted dialogues with students. Not just about the events of the…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Most Americans are accustomed to authoritarianism by virtue of their daily experiences in the workplace. Managers make, interpret, and enforce the rules by which private companies operate; they say what goes, and they can use force to impose their will. Employees who resist can be disciplined or fired, often without due process…
BY THE COALITION FOR ACTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION On Tuesday this week, a subcommittee of the House Education and Workforce Committee held a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism.” Subcommittee Chair Rick Allen (R-GA) began the meeting with the following remarks: Today we will hear about how unions like the United Electrical Workers and a United…
BY RACHEL BOUVIER Act I: Collateral Damage The letter came by FedEx. Inside: A formal notification that my tenured position as an economics professor had been eliminated—the second time in a matter of months my line had been retrenched, along with fifty colleagues and entire departments. The first had been noisy and public. The second…
BY THE TEXAS CONFERENCE OF THE AAUP This week’s events are the clearest example yet: We are bargaining away Texas’s future so politicians can have material for fundraising emails and viral social media content. This week, Texas A&M University has presented the most startling example yet of the consequences of our state and federal governments’…