At Parsons, Getting Dressed Is Extra Homework

“What should I wear?”

In my first semester at Parsons School of Design, I sat in the library, dazedly looking around at other students’ outfits. I noticed someone wearing a denim beret with a long-sleeved white shirt that had images of bones, forming a skeleton laid on their back. They wore a long black ...
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At Parsons, Getting Dressed Is Extra Homework

What’s Higher Education For?

That’s exactly the question

At the turn of last year, The Economist published an alarming statistic: In 2024, half of Harvard College’s graduating seniors left campus for jobs in finance, consulting, and technology. For anyone who believes in the values of a liberal arts education, this is cause for concern. If we accept in good ...
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What’s Higher Education For?

Schools Are for Children, Not Soldiers

Global scholasticide is getting worse

The fact that you can read this article makes it likely that you, like 7.2 billion people worldwide who completed primary education, remember spending much of your childhood at school.  Learning is, by definition, challenging, and those of us reminiscing about childhood may also remember the stresses of grappling with math ...
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Schools Are for Children, Not Soldiers

All IU Faculty, Staff, and Students Are “Safe,” but Some Are Safer Than Others

The discursive stylings of an authoritarian campus administration

Instead of grading papers and preparing final exams last April, I was at Dunn Meadow, a public gathering space on Indiana University (IU) Bloomington’s campus. My aim, and that of my colleagues, was to protect student protesters from the violence sanctioned by IU’s top administrators, another possible intrusion by the ...
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All IU Faculty, Staff, and Students Are “Safe,” but Some Are Safer Than Others

Academic Dialogue Against the Background of War

There are currently no conversation partners for Western academics within the Russian academy

A recent issue of Aeon featured an article entitled “The Missing Conversation,” with the subtitle “To the detriment of the public, scientists and historians don’t engage with one another. They must begin a new dialogue.” The article amounts to a conversation between the famous scientists and historians of science, professors Lorraine Daston and ...
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Academic Dialogue Against the Background of War

To Know Your Enemy’s Face

Russian studies and language programs face a decline in the US, despite stable demand for expertise in the field

Knowing your enemy as the key to victory is centuries-old wisdom. Washington seemed to embrace it during the Cold War, investing significant resources in the development of Soviet studies. In recent years, however, the situation has changed. Researchers and university professors are concerned about the deepening crisis in Russian studies ...
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To Know Your Enemy’s Face

Camille Bordas’s Latest Novel Follows Comedians on the Hunt for Material

A novelist questions the price artists pay when mining personal life for inspiration

The Material opens with a classroom of aspiring comedians workshopping their latest creations: “On Wednesdays, three of them had to perform, in turn, a four-to-six-minute routine that the whole class then proceeded to rip apart, joke by joke, beat by beat, until there wasn't anything left and the budding comedians ...
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Camille Bordas’s Latest Novel Follows Comedians on the Hunt for Material