At the American Historical Association’s recent annual meeting, the program’s abundance of panels were devoted to issues of social justice. Perhaps its name should be changed to the Activists Historical Association. Here are a few examples: Historically Informed Present-Day Activism in the City Activism, Academics, and the Academy African Americans and Chinese Activists in World […]
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Yale is ending the teaching of one of its most storied courses—a survey of Western Art history from the Renaissance to the present. The Yale Daily News called the action a result of the latest student uneasiness over an idealized Western “canon” a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists.” […]
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In the fall of 2019, Victoria’s Secret, the iconic purveyor of scanty, lacy women’s underthings, announced that it was canceling its annual December fashion show, a staple of network television since 1995. The show, airing first on CBS and later on ABC, was famous for its bevy of top-earning supermodels—such famous names over the years […]
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The humanities are troubled – and that means the way of looking at the world is also distressed. Broadly conceived, the humanities are a filter to one’s view of the world, a way that emphasizes and celebrates what it means to be human. As a collection of academic departments that cover history, English, foreign languages, […]
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In early December, Merriam-Webster named “they” the 2019 Word of the Year. Anyone who spends time on a university campus was not surprised by their choice: personal pronouns are having a moment. At my own university, one can choose to have their personal pronouns displayed in the public directory: choices include “they/them” and “ze/hir.” For […]
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I have a confession to make. My recent study on state funding of higher education was about the simplest piece of research I’ve done in a dozen years. So was the finding; there’s been no trend of state disinvestment in higher education. But what a ruckus it caused. The key finding entailed simply downloading and […]
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Earlier this year, the New York Times published the ambitious “1619 Project,” an effort to reinterpret U.S. history as one dominated by the legacies of slavery and racism—thereby, according to the Times, “tell[ing] our story truthfully.” The Project’s lead essay, from Nikole Hannah-Jones, set the agenda: “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the […]
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In an environment where accused students too often need to go to court to undo unfair Title IX adjudications, lawsuits against universities continued apace in 2019. A critical ruling in the Seventh Circuit highlighted the year, but some troubling rulings elsewhere provided a reminder that in this area of the law, an unsympathetic judge can […]
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There are few good campus situations for accused students in the aftermath of President Obama’s Dear Colleague letter; virtually every school uses a process that at least in some way tilts toward the accuser. As a rule, however, students will have a better chance at public universities than at private schools, since public institutions need […]
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