AKA Review - 02.16.2024

From Chronicle of Higher Education

For decades colleges competed for students with flashy living, dining, and recreational amenities. Now, facing a likely looming enrollment cliff, institutions are turning to such new technologies as virtual reality and AI to drive academic innovation. Their hope is that campus technology will be the differentiator that helps them attract students eager for high-quality classroom engagement, skills to enter a technology-ready work force, and credentials with high currency in the job market. Read this article

From The New York Times

The Campus Wars Aren't About Gender... Are They?

By Kate Zernike

The college presidents called to testify in Congress about perceived campus antisemitism were all women and all too new in their roles to have shaped campus culture. Not summoned were the male presidents of Yale and Chicago, campuses that also faced aggressive pro-Palestinian protests. "Would a man have been treated the same way?" Interviews with women higher-education leaders highlight the pernicious disparities and unfair expectations they face despite the increase in female presidents in recent years. Read this article

From The New Yorker

The Future of Academic Freedom

By Jeannie Suk Gersen

This Harvard Law professor wades into the "speech/safety" debate by examining a trend she describes as students speaking of feeling unsafe when they hear things that offend them. Using vivid examples, she argues that the principles of D.E.I. and academic freedom are not in opposition. Rather universities must do three things: "acknowledge that [they] have allowed a culture of censoriousness to develop, recommit to academic freedom and free speech, and rethink D.E.I. in a way that prizes the diversity of viewpoints." Read this article

From Education Next

How to Unpack an Ideological Suitcase

By Michael J. Petrilli

"Suitcase words" are seemingly simple phrases that land very differently with those on the left versus the right. They can be "unpacked," this writer argues, to understand these differences and find where the parties’ views do overlap. To illustrate, he unpacks the phrase "educational equity" to identify policies that garner broad support across the ideological spectrum and benefit the greatest number of students—and suggests three rules to apply to controversial education issues from school funding to grading reform. Read this article

From The New York Times

There's Always Been Trouble in "The Groves of Academe"

By A.O. Scott

"Academia is a serious place, and it takes itself seriously. But it is also, like Hollywood or Washington, profoundly ridiculous" asserts this cultural critic. It is best understood through satire, which fortunately we have in abundance in the literary subgenre of "the campus novel." Scott looks closely at Mary McCarthy’s "The Groves of Academe" and other favorite campus novels before landing his punch: that their humor arises from the "entwined forces of narcissism and idealism" that run amok on college campuses. Read this article