Weekly Briefing

Labor Day comes for us all.

Every year since I took over this newsletter, the Labor Day issue has included a compendium of Chronicle stories for your reading pleasure.Take the long weekend to catch up on all the articles you said you’d get to this summer. Here’s a good place to start:

• A Museum Was Warned About Looted Antiquities. It Didn’t Listen.
• The Campus Job Talk From Hell: Threats. Psychosis. A Gun.
• The Substitute Teacher: Millions of Students Have to Use Courseware. Often, the Product Replaces the Professor.

From the archives:

• In the Land of Tests, the ‘Exam Dream’ Comes in Many Guises
• Fixing the Courses Everyone Loves to Hate
• The University Is a Ticking Time Bomb
• Who Gets a Vote in Departmental Decisions?

Lagniappe

This week, I got a kind email from a reader who wrote that he liked the curated links to items from beyond The Chronicle in this newsletter, because they take him outside the higher-ed world we’re all pretty steeped in. Feel free to send me your own learns, listens, reads, and watches: fernanda@chronicle.com.

• Learn. Here’s advice for your friendships. Spend unstructured time together. It may force you to act like kids, and that’s a good thing. (The Atlantic)
• Read. I’m reading the New Yorker writer David Grann’s latest nonfiction book, The Wager, about a shipwreck. But if you’re in the mood for a shorter but also true story, here’s one about a man with a steer in his passenger seat. (The New York Times)
• Listen. Paisley, the design you see on clothing and home décor, is back. This podcast episode details how the Indian pattern made its mark around the globe. (Articles of Interest)

—Fernanda