Academia Archives - Public Seminar

Higher Ed

The Burned-Over District: The Horses of Instruction and the Tygers of Wrath

Must the university resign itself to the fact that the liberal ethos at the heart of intellectual inquiry rarely informs our political convictions?

September 11, 2025 • by Jonathan Veitch

Genocide; Zionism; antisemitism; settler colonialism; structural racism; apartheid. "Divest now!"; "Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets too!"; "Anyone who sympathizes with Hamas is an antisemite"; "Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas's fight"; "Globalize the intifada"; "Using Gazans as a human shield is a war crime"; "From the ...

The Burned-Over District: The Horses of Instruction and the Tygers of Wrath

Democracy

Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extramural Speech

The protection of extramural speech is crucial for understanding the relationship of democracy to higher education

September 4, 2025 • by Judith Butler

In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, before Donald Trump took office and started to threaten universities with the withdrawal of federal grants, it was already clear that academic freedom had become increasingly disregarded by university administrations. It is difficult to make an argument that will not ...

Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extramural Speech

Education

The Evangelical Capture of the Republican Party and Its Implications for Academia

On evangelical anti-intellectualism in the Republican Party

August 28, 2025 • by David A. Hollinger

For the first time in American history, a major political party has a vested interest in a low-education electorate. This astonishing fact has inspired remarkably little discussion. Religion has a lot do with it. The Republican Party courted evangelical Protestants for decades, but the client eventually captured the patron. The party ...

The Evangelical Capture of the Republican Party and Its Implications for Academia

Higher Ed

Paying for College Was Already Stressful. Then Came Trump and DOGE.

A Q and A on today’s higher ed money worries

April 16, 2025 • by Center for New York City Affairs and Kim Nauer

Urban Matters: Kim, there’s certainly a lot of confusion about the future of the US Department of Education right now. I know you were in Washington earlier this month looking for some answers. But first: For those who haven’t gone through the process—or who have blissfully forgotten what it can be ...

Paying for College Was Already Stressful. Then Came Trump and DOGE.

Fashion

At Parsons, Getting Dressed Is Extra Homework

“What should I wear?”

March 10, 2025 • by Hannah McIntyre

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 ...

At Parsons, Getting Dressed Is Extra Homework

Education

What’s Higher Education For?

That’s exactly the question

February 13, 2025 • by Peter Schmidt

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 ...

Europe & Central Asia

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

September 27, 2024 • by Anastasia Shteinert

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 ...

Higher Ed

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

September 20, 2024 • by Emma Minor

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 ...

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

Education

Taking the Sad Measure of the “Better FAFSA” Fiasco

Financial aid maven Kim Nauer in conversation at the Center for New York City Affairs

July 2, 2024 • by Center for New York City Affairs and Kim Nauer

It looks like far fewer students will be going to college this year thanks to the Education Department’s FAFSA fiasco....

Taking the Sad Measure of the “Better FAFSA” Fiasco

Education

The Texas Attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education

DEI was already a compromise, so now what?

April 22, 2024 • by Jonathan Cortez

Texas legislature has made it clear that Texas institutions of higher education—and, by extension, the state itself—are not welcoming to people of color, queer and trans people, and undocumented immigrants. ...

The Texas Attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education

Activism

Elite Capture and Racial Capital, from the University to Palestine

A conversation on the part-time faculty strike and freedom on campus

February 14, 2024 • by Cresa Pugh, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Julie Beth Napolin

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and author of Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else), joined Cresa Pugh and Julie Beth Napolin at The New School in December 2023, for a conversation on racial capital in university life, the New ...

Elite Capture and Racial Capital, from the University to Palestine

Higher Ed

The Cyclopes in the Food Court

Or, how to get your students to go to their Gen Ed classes

February 6, 2024 • by Daniel H. Foster

As chair of liberal arts at Johns Hopkins’ Peabody Institute, every autumn orientation I tell the incoming students this tale of Cyclopean narrow-mindedness in order to plant a memorable image in their minds of what to avoid....