AKA Review - 05.05.2026

From Inside Higher Ed

There Seems to Be Some Confusion Over Who Speaks for the University

By Mark Yudoff
A former UC President finds the "renaissance" in institutional neutrality policies wanting. The problem is not neutrality itself but a failure to define its scope and rules, without which "neutrality becomes not a safeguard for free expression but a rational for suppressing it." Critical are (a) defining who has authority to speak for the institution and (b) when neutrality restricts students and faculty speech. His examples illustrate effective policies as well as how "getting institutional neutrality wrong strikes at the heart of what a university is for." Read this article

From The New York Times

I Found a College Where I Came First

By Skylar Mitchell

In this moving reflection on her choice 10 years ago to attend Spelman College rather than an Ivy League school, the author makes a compelling case for choosing a college based, in part, on how welcome one will feel. The criterion seems more relevant now. "In this decidedly more oppressive, even less hopeful moment, [HBCU's] feel more important than ever. They offer students something radical and deeply ordinary; the chance to begin adulthood in a place where their lives are assumed to be central to the story." Read this article

From Chronicle of Higher Education

How Our Growth-Obsessed Universities Spiraled Out of Control

By Brian Rosenberg

Major research universities have become “semi-autonomous units knit loosely together under the banner of a popular brand.” Their portfolios of teaching, hospitals, and athletic programs make no strategic sense, leaving them unable to change or prioritize at a time when higher education needs to reimagine itself. In their steady expansion, this former college president tells us, higher ed’s core mission, undergraduate teaching, has suffered most—harming “not only undergraduate students but the already battered reputation of universities.”Read this article

From Washington Monthly

The Higher Education Accreditation Wars Are Heating Up

By Bruno V. Manno

This evenhanded look at college accreditation highlights legitimate flaws in the process while characterizing the government’s reform effort as primarily a fight over control. Accreditation requires three-way trust, the author argues: students need confidence that colleges meet real standards, colleges that accreditation is not politicized, and government that federal aid rewards more than the status quo. “When trust frays, reform pressure grows. But when reform becomes politicized, trust can erode further. That is the danger in the current moment.” Read this article

From The Atlantic

The Best Graduation Speech Is One Nobody Remembers

By Ian Bogost

Dispensing memorable advice is good in concept but works only on vanishingly rare occasions. The writer offers examples of those occasions and highlights growth in celebrity commencement speakers and a trend toward controversial remarks. Yet good graduation speeches require humility, he tells us. The most important work a speaker can do is “to bring a community of people together through what they share in this fleeting moment.” “Cosmic wisdom is less relevant than the comforting sentiment that everything is going to be okay.” Read this article