Yesterday we posted on Inside Higher Ed‘s men’s bracket. Today we have the women: Here at Inside Higher Ed, though, we celebrate the start of March Madness a little differently from the 1.44 million people who tuned in earlier this month to this […]
academic life
What if the NCAA tournament was based on academics? Congratulations, Clemson Tigers!
Inside Higher Ed does this every year and it’s great. Here is Johanna Alonso: To determine the winners, we used the NCAA’s key academic performance metric, known as the academic progress rate, for the 2022–23 academic year, the most recent data […]
“I once believed university was a shared intellectual pursuit. That faith has been obliterated”
What should professors do about AI generated papers? When I returned to teaching from a sabbatical last year I noticed that the students in my general education history classes suddenly learned how to write. Were they using ChatGPT to write […]
On Retirement
Alan Jacobs is taking the Baylor buyout: When I retire, in December 2026 (though I will be paid through May 2027), I will have been teaching for forty-four years — and I love teaching as much as I ever have. […]
“By presenting their expertise as part of a political fight, academics were not only squandering their credibility. They were asking to be treated like political adversaries.”
I am not a regular reader of Megan McArdle’s writing, but her recent piece on academia at The Washington Post has a strong ring of truth to it. Here is a taste: The Trump administration is not just trying to […]
There is a “crisis of trust” in the college classroom
I am thankful to historian Seth Bruggeman for writing this piece at Inside Higher Ed. It put into words much of what I was feeling last semester in one of my classes and raises some important points about teaching college […]
Reviving intellectual life in the university is “more than simply promoting the humanities or encouraging interdisciplinary study”
Earlier today I posted on Steven Mintz’s categorization of university professors. Read it here and figure out where you fall in Mintz’s taxonomy. Mintz’s categorized professors as part of his larger thoughts on how to make universities less anti-intellectual. Here […]
What kind of professor are you?
Here’s a post for the academics who read this blog. Over at his Inside Higher Ed blog, historian Steve Mintz writes: “As an academic, I’ve encountered a complicated taxonomy of professors that goes beyond these stereotypes.” He suggests ten categories […]
Jacoby: Marxism got lost in the academy
According to historian and public intellectual Russell Jacoby, Marxist scholarship is alive and well, but it has failed to reach ordinary people. Here is a taste of his Jacobin piece, “American Marxism Got Lost on Campus“: But specialization also entailed […]
Academics have a lot to be thankful for
Our annual Thanksgiving tradition here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. I wrote this Inside Higher Ed piece on gratitude in November 2008. I think it still holds up. It was a typical 1970s weekday evening. The sky was growing dark and I, an […]
“The politicization of research, hiring, and teaching made professors sitting ducks.”
I’ve seen enough of them in my quarter-century as a college professor. I’ve wasted far too much time arguing with them. And yes, they even exist at Christian colleges. I am talking about the political pied pipers posing as a […]
“Students would stop, perhaps look over at a bookshelf, or just say, point-blank, that they didn’t read.”Â
Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Beth McMurtrie writes: Students seem increasingly cynical about the value of college, transactional in their approach to learning, and frustrated by their coursework. On college tours and in admissions literature, they are promised […]
Drew Gilpin Faust on commencement speeches
Historian and former Harvard professor Drew Gilpin Faust (check out our podcast interview with her here) has a piece on commencement speeches at The Atlantic. I love the subtitle: “Where everything and nothing is at stake.” Here is a taste: […]
Why is Cornel West broke?
Edward Carson, a history teacher and Dean of Multicultural Education at The Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Mass., recently wrote this on his Facebook page: Cornel West and I are no longer on speaking terms. I am still a fan and […]
Yes, universities should offer courses on Taylor Swift
Should Harvard offer courses on Taylor Swift? Of course it should. Everyone is talking about a course at Harvard titled “Taylor Swift and Her World.” Here is some context from Stephanie Burt, the English professor who will be teaching the […]
Ben Sasse: “Harvard, Princeton, and Yale were originally founded as seminaries. They are seminaries once again.”Â
While I probably wouldn’t call early Harvard, Princeton, and Yale “seminaries,” I take Ben Sasse‘s point. As some of you recall, Sasse left the United States Senate earlier this year and became president of the University of Florida. Here is […]
The elite university presidents who testified before Congress are taking the heat
I have yet to watch the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn testify before Congress on the matter of campus antisemitism. But it does not look very good. This clip is pretty damning: The blowback has been strong and bipartisan. […]
The forgotten virtue of gratitude
Our annual Thanksgiving tradition here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. I wrote this Inside Higher Ed piece on gratitude in November 2008. I have had to remind myself of this piece a lot in the last couple of years.–JF It was a […]
In defense of academic book reviews
Here is historian Carolyn Eastman, the book review editor at the William and Mary Quarterly, at The Chronicle of Higher Education: Reviews can contain perfunctory writing, boring chapter-by-chapter summaries, and criticism so mild it’s almost imperceptible. But having just stepped […]
John McWhorter on affirmative action
Reading McWhorter’s piece today at The New York Times reminds me of the first time I read Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory twenty years ago. The only difference is that McWhorter took the Ivy League job and Rodriguez turned it […]