Academia Archives - Page 2 of 4

Education

It Was Supposed to Make Getting College Aid Simpler. It Hasn’t.

An Urban Matters Q&A with financial aid author Kim Nauer about the FAFSA’s botched rollout

February 6, 2024 • by Center for New York City Affairs and Kim Nauer

Experts speaking at a recent webinar co-hosted by Immigrants Rising stated the FAFSA is “absolutely not working” for mixed-status families. “We’re talking about millions of individuals who are college-age,” noted the organization’s director of higher education....

It Was Supposed to Make Getting College Aid Simpler. It Hasn’t.

Education

The Humanities As a Theory of Change

The career of Ruth Simmons is a lesson in humanities methodology

November 14, 2023 • by Antoinette Burton

At a moment when state auditors are scrutinizing higher education budgets with an eye to trimming humanities majors and offerings out of existence, we’d do well to pause and reflect on the career of the distinguished educator Ruth Simmons....

Past Present

Ibram X. Kendi and the Controversy over the Center for Antiracist Research

Episode 393

September 26, 2023 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil discuss the apparent crisis at scholar Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research....

Ibram X. Kendi and the Controversy over the Center for Antiracist Research

Literature

Matters of Offense

A PEN America World Voices Festival conversation on free speech, appropriation, and what it takes to be an artist

September 5, 2023 • by Ayad Akhtar and Eboo Patel

In an intimate dialogue, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, novelist, and President of PEN America Ayad Akhtar (Homeland Elegies) and Interfaith America Founder and President Eboo Patel (We Need to Build) explore the climate of self-censorship facing writers, question whether marginalization is a useful category in art, and discuss the dangers of ...

Higher Ed

Why Do Students Cheat?

ChatGPT and the myth of meritocracy

February 22, 2023 • by Hannah Leffingwell

ChatGPT is just one symptom of a more severe disease in higher education, namely, the multiple forms of meritocratic thinking......

Higher Ed

“God Is Dead”

And other memories of coming of age gay and Catholic in the sixties

October 12, 2022 • by John D’Emilio

I was flabbergasted. The idea that someone not only didn’t believe in God but also had grown up without God was something I couldn’t take in. All I could think was, “Wow. Without God, he’d never have to worry about whether he was going to hell, whether he’d make it ...

Film & Performing Arts

Three Thousand Years of Longing—And One Hour and Forty-Eight Minutes of Regret from This Humanities Professor

The new film from George Miller doesn’t do humanities scholars any favors

October 5, 2022 • by Hannah H. Kim

The problem of Three Thousand Years of Longing isn’t just that Alithea, our unfortunate representative, is unimaginative; the plot suggests the humanities have no natural home in the twenty-first century....

Three Thousand Years of Longing—And One Hour and Forty-Eight Minutes of Regret from This Humanities Professor

The Arts

Making Experiences Our Own: A Review of The Amen Corner, 2021

For years, Ijeoma N. Njaka was afraid of failing to understand James Baldwin. Then she went to see his play

October 5, 2022 • by Ijeoma N. Njaka

It is by no means guaranteed that a potential audience member will automatically make a connection between their life experiences, interests, knowledge, emotions, or memories with a piece of art. Interpretive or educational materials, however, can help a viewer create a personally meaningful connection with the art itself....

Making Experiences Our Own: A Review of <em>The Amen Corner</em>, 2021

Higher Ed

The Best Student Debt Forgiveness? Discharge Loans Already Paid

But to do that, the Department of Education would have to release its data

September 21, 2022 • by Susan F. Feiner

Today, in some states you can even lose your driver’s license due to unpaid student debt. Senior citizens on Social Security can have their monthly checks garnished by student loan debt collectors without a court order, an authority that is unique. Other borrowers have had wages, alimony, or IRS tax ...

The Best Student Debt Forgiveness? Discharge Loans Already Paid

Higher Ed

Why Should Schools Be Mental Health Care Providers?

A capacious national health system should provide systemic solutions for young people

September 8, 2022 • by Claire Potter

Caring for students’ emotional needs is now an unspoken part of the contract you sign as a university professor. ...

Why Should Schools Be Mental Health Care Providers?

Higher Ed

The Problem Is Not Harvard, the Problem Is Graduate School

Sexual harassment is a normal feature of the current power arrangement. What will you do about it?

February 15, 2022 • by Hannah Leffingwell

This is because the system is built to protect, enable, and encourage harassers. Graduate students, whose cheap labor is used by the university to buttress the outrageous salaries of star faculty and senior administrators, are often broke, disempowered, terrified, and exhausted, even prior to being sexually harassed....

The Problem Is Not Harvard, the Problem Is Graduate School

Education

Sincerely, A Very Famous Man

Or, why academics should dispense with letters of recommendation entirely

December 20, 2021 • by Claire Potter

The letter of recommendation also shows us, in microcosm, how elite institutions—universities, foundations, humanities centers, think tanks—gate-keep for each other....