Teaching and Learning
Can Intellectual Virtues Reenergize Teaching? (Rebecca Vidra, Inside Higher Ed, July 25, 2025): Thinking about what it means to be an intellectually curious, humble and resilient teacher.
Why Students Are Using AI (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2025): By and large, students told me, their professors rarely discussed AI use in class. Some felt fortunate if they had a professor who incorporated AI into classwork, as it helped them understand what it is, and what it can and can’t do.
AI and Higher Ed: An Impending Collapse (Robert Niebuhr, Inside Higher Ed, July 24, 2025): Universities’ rush to embrace AI will lead to an untenable outcome.
Teaching and Learning Critical and Creative Thinking (Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed, July 23, 2025): How can we more deeply integrate the development of these skills into our curricula?
Instructors Will Now See AI Throughout a Widely Used Course Software (Sarah Huddleston, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23, 2025): New features integrated into Canvas include a grading assistant, a discussion-post summarizer, and even a way to pair assignments with generative AI tools.
A Summer Camp Where Professors Are the Focus (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 21, 2025): How two weeks at Hamilton College helped philosophy instructors become more innovative teachers.
4 Steps to Help Your Students Read Like Scientists (Kristi Rudenga, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 21, 2025): How to teach undergraduates to tackle a dense academic paper in a manageable way.
AI-Enabled Cheating Points to ‘Untenable’ Peer Review System (Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed, July 21, 2025): It’s not clear how widespread the new cheating strategy is, but it’s highlighting longstanding drivers of the peer review crisis some reviewers are now trying to alleviate with AI.
Universities in the Crosshairs
Columbia Deal a ‘Threat’ to Higher Ed, Experts Warn (Jessica Blake, Inside Higher Ed, July 25, 2025): The $221 million settlement extends beyond tackling antisemitism. Some experts said it’s an example of “coercion,” while others say Columbia had it coming.
Columbia’s Agreement: A Win for Authoritarianism (Austin Sarat, Inside Higher Ed, July 25, 2025): The disastrous deal between Columbia and the federal government only strengthens illiberal rule behind a façade of liberal values.
What Columbia Just Threw Away (Jonathan Zimmerman, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2025): It bargained with the unfettered expression of ideas.
The Art of the Deal Comes to Columbia (David Pozen, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2025): This sets a dangerous new precedent in how higher ed is regulated.
Tucked into Columbia’s Deal with Trump: A Restriction on International Enrollments (Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2025): Under the settlement, the university will conduct a “comprehensive review” of its international-admissions processes and “take steps to reduce its financial dependence” on foreign students.
Columbia Settles with Trump Administration (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, July 23, 2025): Columbia University has reached a $221 million settlement with the federal government over claims of antisemitism that is expected to restore millions in federal research funding.
The University that Chose Surrender (Brian Rosenberg, July 23, 2025): Columbia’s capitulation proves higher ed can’t save itself.
When ‘Female’ Is a Forbidden Word, Women’s Colleges Face a Unique Challenge (Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed, July 22, 2025): An Office for Civil Rights complaint filed against Smith College raises questions about how women’s colleges will navigate Trump’s anti-DEI and anti-trans campaigns.
Harvard Slams Trump Administration Funding Cuts in Pivotal Court Hearing (Susan Svrluga, Joanna Slater, and Terell Wright, Washington Post, July 21, 2025): Harvard called the government’s rationale for cutting billions of dollars in federal funding illegal and “cooked up.”
Inside the Powerful Task Force Spearheading Trump’s Assault on Colleges, DEI (Laura Meckler, et al, Washington Post, July 18, 2025): The Trump administration is using antisemitism investigations as a pretext to pursue an unrelated conservative agenda, critics say.
International Students and Scholars
5 Key Takeaways from ‘Ideological Deportation’ Trial (Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed, July 21, 2025): Government officials described how they found the names of pro-Palestinian student and faculty activists and gave insights into the confidential memos that led to their arrests.
Academic Freedom, Speech Issues and DEI
Trump’s Student Arrests, and the Lawsuit Fighting Them, Tread New Ground (Zach Montague, New York Times, July 22, 2025): The Trump administration’s efforts to deport foreign students who espoused pro-Palestinian views under a little-used foreign policy provision have no obvious legal parallel.
Anti-Semitism Gets the DEI Treatment (Rose Horowitch, Atlantic, July 17, 2025): University leaders may be implementing reforms that aren’t proven to work, or are proven not to work.
Extra Credit Reading
We Need a New Theory of Academic Freedom (Adam Sitze, Inside Higher Ed, July 22, 2025): The strongest defenses of academic freedom derive from arguments for judicial independence and religious liberty.
The Dangers of the Manhattan Statement (John K. Wilson, Inside Higher Ed, July 22, 2025): A conservative group’s ‘new contract’ for higher ed risks greater government intrusion into the sector.
These Scholarly Topics Are Hotly Debated. So Why Don’t Syllabi Reflect That (Emma Petit, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 22, 2025): A new working paper from professors at Claremont McKenna and Scripps Colleges attempted to peer inside it, by examining how three political and moral controversies — racial bias in the criminal-justice system, the ethics of abortion, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — are taught.
Can This Man Save Harvard? (Franklin Foer, Atlantic, July 18, 2025): To fend off illiberalism from the White House, the university’s president also has to confront illiberalism on campus.
Ideology in the Classroom (Graham Wright, Shahar Hecht, and Leonard Saxe, Brandeis University, July 2025): How Faculty at US Universities Navigate Politics and Pedagogy Amid Federal Pressure Over Viewpoint Diversity and Antisemitism.
Future Imperfect
An Ousted Dean and the Future of the Humanities (Len Gutkin, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 21, 2025): In an essay for The New York Times last week, the philosopher Jennifer Frey laments the palace coup at the University of Tulsa that ousted her as dean of the Honors College, the much-lauded great-books program Frey helped develop and which she says has been a tremendous success with students.
On the Bookshelf
Eight Books that Explain the University Crisis (Tyler Austin Harper, Atlantic, July 21, 2025): Now is the perfect time to look with clear eyes at the goals, accomplishments, and failures of higher education.
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Steven Volk (steven.volk@oberlin.edu), Editor
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Lew Ludwig (ludwigl@denison.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)