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 […]
college teaching
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. […]
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 […]
“And what is the best argument of the other side?”
Writing at The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan thinks colleges are lying to students. Colleges are saying professors want to teach students how to think, but professors are actually telling students what to think. Here is a taste of Flanagan’s piece: My […]
What is your AI policy? A Penn professor explains why he doesn’t have one.
Everywhere you turn these days professors are talking about how to handle students who use ChatGPT to write their papers. Over at The Washington Post, historian Jonathan Zimmerman explains why he doesn’t have a policy on the matter. Here is […]
“Good [humanities] teaching matters, but it can’t be measured”
Here is a taste of Johann Neem’s review of Gayle Greene’s Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of Algorithm: These are tough times for humanities professors. Flip through The Chronicle and the disillusionment jumps off the page. Post-pandemic students are disengaged. Colleges […]
Cornell University rejects a student call for trigger warnings
Here is a taste of the Cornell University Student Assembly’s Resolution 31: “Mandating Content Warnings for Traumatic Content in the Classroom”: Abstract: Urging university officials to require instructors who present graphic traumatic content that may trigger the onset of symptoms […]
What is going on at Hamline University?
An art history professor at Hamline University in Minnesota was fired for showing a 14th-century painting of the prophet Muhammad. I will let writer Jill Filipovic take it from here. Below is a taste of her recent piece at Slate […]
A conservative academic changes his mind about safe spaces
Here is Jon Shields of Claremont-McKenna College: Like other conservative professors who are advocates of free speech on campus, I once opposed efforts to create a classroom climate in which students are protected from speech they find emotionally upsetting, ranging […]
David Bromwich on the state of the university
Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Len Gutkin interviews Yale English professor David Bromwich on the state of higher education. The interview comes on the thirtieth anniversary of Bromwich’s Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking. Bromwich […]
The scandal of university teaching
Here is Jonathan Zimmerman at Liberties: In 1925, student delegates from twenty colleges met at Wesleyan University to discuss a growing concern on America’s campuses: the poor quality of teaching. They decried dry-as-dust professors who filled up blackboards with irrelevant […]
Historian Steven Mintz reimagines the U.S. survey
There is a lot in this piece at Inside Higher Ed. Here is a small taste: What should we do? The first step is to clarify, in our own minds, what students ought to get out of these survey courses. […]
“Cultural humility” vs “liberal humility” in the classroom
Baylor University political scientist Elizabeth Corey explains the difference between these two views of education in an excellent piece at National Affairs. I definitely find myself in the “liberal humility” camp (or at least I aspire to such an approach), […]