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For Moral Clarity, Don't Look to Universities

By Chad Wellmon

As the hate on display in Charlottesville made clear, scholarly practices and virtues cannot impart comprehensive visions of the good. They are, however, essential in another way.

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The Chronicle Review

How Universities Embolden White Nationalists

By Marcia Chatelain

Professors should be wary of unconsciously endorsing white victimhood.

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The Chronicle Review

What to Do With a Man on Horseback

By Troy Duster

Don’t remove problematic statues, like that of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. Challenge them, in the service of history.

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The Chronicle Review

Sigmund Fraud?

By Alexander C. Kafka

Frederick Crews’s capstone biography offers a most unflattering case history.

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The Chronicle Review

Why Donald Trump Has Been Good For Truth

By Peter N. Miller

We now have the opportunity to think of truth as something to be pursued, not possessed.

Recent Essays on the State of Higher Education

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Academe Must Confront Its Racist Past

By Pamela Newkirk

Colleges should incorporate the ugly history of bigotry into their curricula.

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Is 'Design Thinking' the New Liberal Arts?

By Peter N. Miller

A Stanford institute could change the way we think about learning.

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The College Sex Bureaucracy

By Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk Gersen

To fight assault, the feds have made colleges clumsy monitors of students’ sex lives. Will the Trump administration reverse that trend?

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Equalizers No More

By Suzanne Mettler

Politics thwarts colleges' role in upward mobility.

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More from the Review

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The Offender

By Tom Bartlett August 10, 2017

Two students accused Michael Bonesteel of being insensitive, unsupportive, and even violent. Did the art professor get what he deserved — or were the students out to get him?

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Nathan Glazer: ‘Students Could Be Protesting Really Big Things — Like Trump’

By John Kaag

The prominent 94-year-old sociologist reflects on campus activism, affirmative action, free speech, the literary sphere, and how he views his own career.

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Stop Blaming Postmodernism for Post-Truth Politics

By Andrew J. Perrin

Postmodern thought didn’t give us “post-truth.” Indeed, it can help us fight that plague.

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Trump’s Affirmative-Action Rollback: A Promise Kept

By Christopher Sebastian Parker

A constituency that feels threatened by a diversifying America is rewarded by the administration it put into office.

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The Real Threat to Affirmative Action

By Erwin Chemerinsky

Campus leaders shouldn’t overreact to the Justice Department’s steps. But on the horizon lies a real cause for concern.

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Why Conservative Fears of Campus Indoctrination Are Overblown

By Robert Maranto and Matthew Woessner

For one thing, students are smarter than we give them credit for.

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The New Urban Science

By Michael Anft

Big data and big dollars are transforming the field. But scholars are struggling to keep up.

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How the Government Segregated America

By Francesca Russello Ammon

A new book recounts the forgotten history of housing discrimination.

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A Fragile Urban Consensus

By Patrick Sharkey

Economists and sociologists finally agree: Where people live matters. Now comes the hard part.

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When Universities Swallow Cities

By Davarian L. Baldwin July 30, 2017

Is it in the public interest to have giant urban campuses freeload off their neighbors’ taxes?

Recent Essays on Academic Culture

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Holding On to What Makes Us Human

By L.D. Burnett

Defending the humanities in a skills-obsessed university.

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The Threat From Within

By John Etchemendy

Intellectual intolerance poses an existential danger to the university.

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Retire Already!

By Laurie Fendrich

Hey, you older, tenured profs, you’re being greedy and selfish, and your students would be better off if you left.

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Can Feminist Scholarship Stop Sexism?

By Becca Rothfeld

Sexism is rampant in academe. If only theorizing would provide a remedy.

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The Case for Breaking Up With Your Parents

By Terry Castle

Love them if you have to, but to free your mind, leave them behind.

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What It Feels Like to Be a Black Professor

By John L. Jackson Jr.

The senior African-American scholars I meet are bitter and disheartened. Am I doomed to the same fate?

Also in the Review

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Power to the Cities

By Sean Andrew Chen

Cities birthed democracy. They must reassert themselves to preserve it, argues the late Benjamin Barber in his final book.

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The Neighborhood University

Five scholars on what their universities owe their local communities.

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Cities: A Special Issue

In this special report, we look at the role urban universities play — for better and worse — in their communities, new insights into the history and future of cities, and the barriers that get in the way of good research.

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Climate Scientists Should Embrace Public Debate

By Christopher J. Ferguson

Ducking the skeptics only fuels conspiracy theories and increases the credibility of outlandish views.

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Nancy MacLean Responds to Her Critics

By Marc Parry

“Such rhetorical bullying would be laughable if it weren’t part of a pattern on the right,” says the Duke professor of history and public policy.

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A New History of the Right Has Become an Intellectual Flashpoint

By Marc Parry

Critics call Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains sloppy and ideologically driven. Defenders praise its insights.

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Harvard’s Long History of Going Too Far

By Ted Gup

The proposal to ban final clubs is illogical, illiberal — and totally in character.

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Choosing Status Over Love

By Donna Freitas

We all want to be popular, and for good reason. A lot rides on it.