AKA Review - 04.25.2025

From The New Yorker

A University President Makes a Case Against Cowardice

By Molly Fischer

Wesleyan’s Michael Roth garners great attention for his vigorous stands against White House attacks on higher ed, activism he traces to his pre-pandemic efforts to increase student participation in the public sphere. In this interview, he ruminates personally and institutionally on how universities became so vulnerable; the “travesty of Jewish values” that anti-antisemitism represents; what allows him to voice outrage as other presidents remain circumspect; and how his scholarship in the psychology of history inflects his presidency today. Read this article

From Northwestern News

Research suggests attacks on higher ed part of a ‘political playbook’ since the Civil Rights Movement

Political attacks on higher ed, and especially DEI, are nothing new. New research shows they follow a playbook dating back to the Civil Right movement, when policies to increase college access were met with warnings that they would lead to a higher ed “quality crisis.” This false dichotomy framed quality as threatened by access from people of color. That narrative, solidified under Nixon and Reagan, continues today, as policymakers use race-neutral language to justify cutting equity programs in the name of “excellence” and “merit.” Read this article

From The Guardian

Who actually runs Columbia University?

By Arjun Appadurai and Sheldon Pollock

University boards play an increasing role in academic decision-making despite most trustees’ lack of experience as academics. Should we be surprised, then, when trustees ignore the foundational values of academic freedom and shared governance and bring intensely political agendas into the institutions they oversee? Looking at Columbia’s recent cave in to the Trump administration, two NYU and Columbia faculty emeriti cast a jaundiced eye on the role of boards and argue for “a new social contract” for them. Read this article

From The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Online Overhaul

By Taylor Swaak

Instead of waning as students returned to campuses post-pandemic, online education has become a focus rather than alternative. Particular surprises: enthusiasm for online learning among traditional-age residential undergrads and warmth from faculty who now recognize “they can do it with standards.” This article examines the drivers of expanding interest in online learning and its potential for increasing both enrollment and public trust. Once an extra, online education is now a necessity that institutions must make integral to their strategy. Read this article

From The New Yorker

Bluesky’s Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media

By Kyle Chayka

Millions of users migrated to Bluesky after Elon Musk’s 2022 Twitter takeover. This fascinating profile of the social media site discusses Bluesky’s innovative social media model. This decentralized, open-source protocol lets users control the rules governing their feeds, or easily take their followers and posts and build another site on the same platform. By redistributing the power that typically lies with corporations to users themselves, Bluesky is becoming “a corrective to prevailing social media that subjects users to the whims of billionaires.” Read this article