Despite welcome diversification, literary culture is also becoming more tied to elite educational institutions, and more difficult to enter.
Tag: Higher Education
Good Teachers Know That Bodies Matter
Students must choose to do the work that will facilitate learning, so teachers must give them reasons to make that choice, again and again.
What Was the Classroom?
As many COVID-era courses have moved from seminar rooms to Zoom meetings, the haptic nature of teaching has changed. Is anything lost?
Quizzical: Which Academic Press Are You?
We don’t judge books by their covers, but we do sort people based on which academic presses match their personality types.
Poor Queer Use: Repurposing the Ivory Tower
Outside elite institutions, queer studies has the potential to go hand in hand with broader struggles of racial and economic justice.
“Soulful, Perhaps Even Magical” Science
Yaa Gyasi’s new novel meditates on the problems we try to solve with science, with faith, and with love.
Merit Must Fall
What does “merit” mean in a context—like India—where caste pervades public life?
How to Hear Campus Free Speech
Can a pragmatic approach to free speech on campus produce more inclusive, and more educational, institutions?
How to Subvert the Capitalist White-Supremacist University
Despite a long history of black presence and contribution, the academic space is still the stronghold of capitalist white supremacy.
Transforming Teaching amid the Coronavirus
Even though most professors are forced to value research over teaching, many are excellent teachers. It’s time to honor that skill.
More Mobility, More Problems
A philosopher examines how upwardly mobile students might thrive, and why they often will not.
Public Thinker: Tressie McMillan Cottom on Writing in One’s Own Voice
“You don’t tell children not to grow. And you don’t tell a writer not to write.”
College Worth Fighting For
Professors are in a class struggle, a real fight that cannot be won with critique alone.
Public Thinker: Kevin Gannon Sets the Record Straight
A professor of history at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, and the ...
Who’s Afraid of Affirmative Action?
“The rich diversity at Harvard and other colleges and universities and the benefits that flow from that diversity,” argued Massachusetts Federal District Judge ...
Quizzical: What Academic Jobs Wiki Updater Are You?
The academic job market reflects some of the most infuriating, mind-numbing ...
Quizzical: What Essential Part of an Academic Conference Are You?
Here at Public Books, we embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly of an ...
Academic Generosity, Academic Insurgency
During the summer of 2019, funding for the University of Alaska was slashed by the state legislature. With 41 percent of the annual budget, or $130 million ...
Is College Worth It?
What does it take to get to college graduation? The question becomes more urgent as college tuitions rise and education debt accumulates, even though baccalaureate completion remains a baseline ...
Virtual Roundtable on Fairness in College Admissions
The college admissions scandal exposed criminal and unethical actions that undermine the promise of the American university system. To get ...