Constructive Commentaries
Periodic recommendations for reading, listening, or viewing in matters of higher education and its importance to democratic society.
Cynicism and sensationalism shape a lot of public debates about higher education today. Exaggerations, distortions, and falsehoods are common in punditry about the alleged state of college campuses.
Here are some constructive, fact-based, and illuminating antidotes to such “campus misinformation” that I’ve been reading, listening to, or viewing recently.
Zack Beauchamp, “Chris Rufo’s Dangerous Fictions,” Vox (September 10, 2023)
A fair, informed, and persuasive assessment of Rufo’s “slippery” arguments about contemporary U.S. culture, including his diatribes against universities, and how his rhetoric imitates autocratic movements abroad.
Jennifer Frey, “The Liberality of Liberal Education,” Fusion (September 2023)
A defense of liberal learning and the essential freedoms that it entails from Jennifer A. Frey, Dean of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa.
If Books Could Kill (podcast), “God and Man at Yale” (September 7, 2023)
An entertaining and humorous, but accurate and needed, debunking of the original handbook for reactionary tales about the alleged ills of college campuses: William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale.
Jennifer Robinson, “AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi’s Schools,” KPBS (September 8, 2023)
A feature on the PBS documentary about the integration of Mississippi schools in 1970 and the long-term struggle for equal education that it represented.
Michael S. Roth, “College Students Have Always Wanted Freedom,” Wall Street Journal (September 7, 2023)
A defense of many college students’ perpetual tendency to test boundaries, question authority, and engage in democratic protest—often for the betterment of their campuses and wider society.
Ian Ward, “Modern Conservatism Was Born on College Campuses. So Why Does the GOP Hate Them?,” Politico (September 4, 2023)
An interview with historian Laura Lassabe Shepherd (University of New Orleans) about her book, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America (University of North Carolina Press).