Schools are so afraid of the feds they praising its "national call to action." An executive branch bent on “reforming” higher ed has found collaborators to play ball just as other threats have incentivized “deals” between corporations & the administration. www.wamc.org/podcast/the-...

Michael Roth will speak on education and democracy at the Monterey Meeting House on 8/9

Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan University, will speak at the Monterey Meeting House in Monterey, MA on Sunday, August 9th. His talk is titled: 'From Neutrality to Democracy; How Higher Ed Can...

wamc.org

Nothing to worry about here. Thanks to bold and courageous collaborators and institutional neutrality, we are fulfilling the promises of White House.

Join a Loyalty Club for Higher Education! "history [shows] us..how this might work. In the decade or so after the end of WWarII, higher-education leaders across the country collaborated with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s effort to rid the land of communists." www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Join a Loyalty Club for Higher Education—While You Still Can!

Another way to show devotion to the nation and to truth.

thenation.com

Read @mashagessen.bsky.social “evaluating history has the potential to change a people’s future by changing its self-understanding. It can unite people in a genuinely new project. And then there is the rewriting of history, which is crazy-making.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...

Opinion | Trump's Smithsonian Attacks Are Attacks on America’s Future (Gift Article)

This is how we decide who we are and who we want to be.

nytimes.com

Trump “he has no enduring scale, beyond his own vanity, to judge what’s important or what’s right. And if some in his tiny circle of decision makers do, they lack the courage to tell him.” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship | Mark Danner

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s inside account of the Trump administration portrays a president with a vast appetite for power but who repeatedly backs down when the costs of his actions become to...

nybooks.com

"Authoritarianism doesn’t have to involve men in suits dragging people into cars...Orban showed that critics — or pockets of independence — can be rendered pliable by making them believe that the smart move is to affirmatively sacrifice some of their independence" @yale.edu wapo.st/3RW4HPo

Opinion | Yale trustees, history is watching you

A lesson from Hungary: Boards don't capitulate to authoritarians. The people on them do.

wapo.st

Spoke with @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social alum @emilydreyfuss.bsky.social about #HigherEd #AI jobs, and #LiberalEducation Full episode @sfstandard.com @aacu.org @aceducation.bsky.social

Read @bardcollege.bsky.social prez @jabannandale.bsky.social "One fears that by the time US academic leaders understand the implications of our current retreat, the country’s leadership in higher education, like in so many other fields, will be lost." www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/even...

Even in the Trump era, abandoning HE’s civic mission is not an option

A room full of international educators half a world away reminded me what my priorities as an acting college president should be, says Jonathan Becker

timeshighereducation.com

White House authoritarian vision for #HigherEd clear at @Smithsonian @SmithsonianSec notes “It scares me when people aren’t brave enough to face their history. And in some ways you have to face it anyway.” @historians.org @Aacu.org @theFIREorg.bsky.org @aaup.org www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u...

Inside Trump’s Ideological Fight With the Smithsonian

nytimes.com

On July 4 I’ll participate in a public reading of the Declaration, & I’ll thank my lucky stars that I live in a country where the links between learning & civic participation are broadly valued & where freedom of speech—linked to freedom of thought—is still cherished www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2...

Higher Education at America’s 250th

wesleyan.edu

“I’m an original,” he said. “What I’m going to wear is something that says freedom.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/04/u...

How Do You Celebrate America’s 250-Year Experiment? However You Want.

nytimes.com

Read @jenszalai.bsky.social “After all, putting [cruelty]… first doesn’t have to mean that you give up imagining what could come after you denounce it. One can stare hard at reality as it currently exists and still propose a way forward.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/b... via @nytimes.com

Liberals Are Preaching Moral Values. What Took Them So Long?

nytimes.com

Read @mollyjongfast.bsky.social “When Mr. Trump’s authoritarianism is all but underwritten by well-liked public figures and all but ignored by others, its toxic tenets start to look like politics as usual.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/o...

Opinion | If These Celebrities Are Democracy’s Last Hope, We’re in Trouble

nytimes.com

www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2... @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social

A basic educational idea (in France) “What counts most,” he said, “is an individual’s capacity to understand and grasp ideas.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/w...

What Does It All Mean? Once a Year, French Students Try to Explain.

nytimes.com

Read @fieldsmeyer.com & @juliaangwin.com : “At precisely the moment conventional wisdom would say to retreat into the ease of a smaller, more cautious, more guarded life, people facing authoritarianism made their community bigger.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/o... via @nytopinion.nytimes.com

Opinion | The State of American Resistance Is Stronger Than You Think

nytimes.com

Lobbying against Derrida and relativism, no doubt: “Every Ivy League institution reported increases in legal fees, lobbying bills or both….Vanderbilt’s chancellor, estimated his time in Washington had roughly tripled in 2025.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/u...

Legal and Lobbying Costs Surge as Universities Face Trump Pressure

nytimes.com

An extraordinary memory, a more extraordinary heart. “Each book of “Paradise Lost” was like a “gothic cathedral,” he said, that he could enter by closing his eyes. “I’ll tell you,” he added, “it’s very useful at the dentist.” @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/a...

John Basinger, Who Memorized All 12 Books of ‘Paradise Lost,’ Dies at 92

nytimes.com

No night before commencement at Wesleyan University is complete without President @msroth.bsky.social joining the band for a jam session under the tent!

"Practicing education..is like practicing democracy: Both are collaborative, experimental paths of improvement. Both depend on inclusion rather segregation. Both are very much now endangered. If we don’t defend education and protect democracy, we will lose them" www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2...

President Michael S. Roth ’78: ’Expanding Your Circles of Curiosity and Wonder Enhances Your Lives’

wesleyan.edu

Read @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social prof Andrew Curran “On one level, this is admirable: We are, after all, one species. Yet this powerful ideal has sometimes served as a shield against self-examination. The logic is simple: no race, no problem.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/o...

Opinion | The Brutal History That France Prefers to Ignore Is Being Heard at Last

nytimes.com

.@jillfilipovic.bsky.social 10+ yrs ago: "No girl should be a hero for getting an education. But for many girls around the world, walking through the schoolhouse doors isn’t a right..it’s a victory over conservative fanatics –some of whom carry guns." Now Muslim & Jewish families must have courage.

Skylar Mitchell “When the pendulum appears to have swung back to antagonism toward racial equity, H.B.C.U.s like Spelman preserve the intellectual and civic inheritance of Black Americans precisely when the broader culture moves to forget it.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/o...

Opinion | The College Where I Wasn’t an Afterthought

nytimes.com

Read @dsallentess.bsky.social “The reflective patriot appreciates the power of free institutions to open pathways of possibility, while bringing cleareyed realism to where the country has and hasn’t lived up to its ideals, along with embracing correction and reform” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/o...

Opinion | Nothing Beats Polarization Like Civics Education

nytimes.com

Carla Sosenko on “proximity without belonging” on Long Island: a “place forever caught, like the whole country, between a vision of who we aspire to be and an anxiety about who we really are.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/o... via @nytopinion.nytimes.com

Opinion | Why So Many TV Bad Guys Come From Long Island

nytimes.com

George Orwell: “Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves?” www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad | The Orwell Foundation

"Is it wicked to take a pleasure in Spring and other seasonal changes?"

orwellfoundation.com

War going badly, so WH investigates trans students at @smithcollege.bsky.social Good time to recycle this: "My trans students have made me think hard about transformation and identity, about nature and convention, about character and performance." www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Contributor: A transformative education for my trans students and me

I teach college students, and I'm grateful when they make me think hard about transformation and identity, nature and convention, character and performance.

latimes.com

Read @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social “Computers can do much that humans once did, but they didn’t put humans out of work. The ability to do more made people realize there was more to do.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/03/o...

Opinion | Why the A.I. Job Apocalypse (Probably) Won’t Happen

nytimes.com

“Amid the…administration’s ongoing attack on higher ed, the message is clear: Don’t worry, it says, we are staying in our narrow lane. That’s not a mission; it’s a defense strategy. And the retreat from public purpose will not enhance trust; it will further erode it” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/o...

Opinion | Yale Has Come Up With a Surefire Way to Make a Terrible Situation Worse

nytimes.com

@aacu.org @aceducation.bsky.social @thefireorg.bsky.social @nytopinion.nytimes.com @aaup.org @yalepress.bsky.social @wes-alumni.bsky.social @mollyjongfast.bsky.social @kevinmkruse.bsky.social

My take on how NOT to restore trust in #highered “A lack of public engagement & an air of cloistered privilege are a big part of why so many people now view universities with suspicion. Retreating further behind the gates will make a bad situation much worse.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/o...