Kenyon College What Works 2024 Conference, May 30-31
Registration is open! Join Kenyon for the fourth annual “What Works” conference with a terrific lineup of sessions, exploring themes including collaboration between faculty and staff to support student learning, new applications of educational technology, and pedagogies of diversity, equity and inclusion. This year’s keynote speaker is Bryan Alexander, futurist, educator and author of “America Next: The Futures of Higher Education.”
Registration is free, but space is limited. The agenda is available on our website. This is a public, free, online event.
Teaching and Learning
Losing Grace (Rachel Toor, Inside Higher Ed, May 31, 2024): As instructors, we can miss crucial things about the very students we don’t think we have to worry about.
What Exactly is the Science of Learning Anyway? (Cindy Nebel, The Learning Scientist, May 30, 2024): Four cognitive psychologists discuss the concepts behind the “science” of learning.
Algorithms and the Problem of Intellectual Passivity (Eileen G’Sell, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 30, 2024): Our students are used to everything being tailored to them.
Bird Brains: The Collective Practice of Getting Better at Teaching (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, May 30, 2024): 34 min. podcast in which Dave Stachowiak interviews Bonni Stachowiak about bird brains and what they can teach us about teaching.
What to Do When Students Don’t Have Time (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 30, 2024): Two thoughtful, and different, responses to this question.
All Things AI
Teaching Writing in a Generative AI World: A Compendium (John Warner, Inside Higher Ed, May 31, 2024): The author collects his recent writings on this complex topic.
New ChatGPT Version Aiming at Higher Ed (Lauren Coffey, Inside Higher Ed, May 31, 2024): ChatGPT Edu, emerging after initial partnerships with several universities, is prompting both cautious optimism and worries.
Campus Protests Continue
New Congressional Hearings:
Different Hearing Format for Yale, Michigan Presidents on Campus Antisemitism (Marjorie Valbrun, May 31, 2024): Rather than appearing before a full congressional committee, the two presidents will be questioned by counsels and/or committee staff.
News of the ongoing student protests:
Wayne State Activists Vow to Come Back Stronger After Police Clear Pro-Palestinian Camp (Kim Kozlowski, Marnie Muñoz and Charles E. Ramirez, The Detroit News, May 30, 2024): Police started to dismantle the encampment around 5:30 a.m. Thursday and arrested a dozen people as university leaders cited safety concerns.
Gaza-War Protesters Agree to Dismantle Tent Camp at Western Washington University (Robert Mittendorf, The Bellingham Herald, May 30, 2024): Protesters and WWU administration came to the agreement a day before the 5 p.m. Thursday deadline that the campus officials had set for them to pack their tents.
Demonstrators Take Down DU [Denver University] Encampment Following 20-Day Protest (Sydney Isenberg, Denver 7, May 29, 2024): DU Chancellor Jeremy Haefner said university leadership met with members of DU for Palestine Tuesday regarding “ongoing concerns about their and the wider community’s safety.”
Police Descend on UCLA After Protesters Erect New Pro-Palestinian Encampment (Hannah Fry, Caroline Petrow-Cohen, Connon Sheets and Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2024): The move came amid escalating tensions between pro-Palestinian students and their faculty allies and administrators on the Westwood campus. The academic workers union announced Thursday that its ongoing strike over working conditions would expand to UCLA and UC Davis on Tuesday.
UO [University of Oregon] Coalition for Palestine’s Encampment Officially Ends (Daily Emerald News Team, Daily Emerald, May 23, 2024): Demonstrators of the encampment, in an agreement with UO admin, had agreed upon to “voluntarily remove” the encampment.
Further analysis, responses, and context:
Colleges Eye Rule Changes in the Wake of Spring Protests (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, May 31, 2024): Pro-Palestinian encampments and protests strained college policies this spring. As summer sets in, some are revising rules ahead of a potentially tumultuous fall.
New College of Florida Set to Punish Student Protesters Following Boos at Commencement (Steven Walker, Herald Tribune, May 29, 2024): New College President Richard Corcoran said the school could withhold degrees from students who protested.
How Republicans Turned Reports of Antisemitism at Colleges into a Political Strategy (Barbara Sprunt, NPR, May 27, 2024): A season of Congressional hearings on antisemitism on college campuses is winding down as the school year ends but the issue has become an effective political wedge that could endure.
How Campus Protests Flip-Flopped America’s Free Speech Debate (Colin Meyn, The Hill, May 25, 2024): After positioning themselves as defenders of free speech, many conservatives have suddenly found their free speech limit: free speech until it’s speech they don’t like. [See article about the New College, above, for example.]
These Arab and Jewish Students Want to Talk About the War (Erin Gretzinger, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 22, 2024): But they say their colleges and peers are obstructing civil discourse on the Middle East.
Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Harvard Should Say Less. Maybe All Schools Should (Noah Feldman and Alison Simmons, New York Times, May 28, 2024): By taking fewer positions on hot-button issues, universities can promote the intellectual pursuit of truth. You might want to read this in tandem with The Cynicism of Institutional ‘Neutrality’ (Anton Ford, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2024), which argues that colleges have already taken a side in the Gaza conflict.
The Education Dept. Tried to Draw a Line Between Free Speech and Discrimination. It’s Still Blurry. (Kelly Fiend, May 28, 2024): It depends who you ask whether the new directives provide any clarity on the issue.
Future Imperfect
Pronouns, Tribal Affiliations Now Forbidden in South Dakota Public University Employee Emails (WCCO News, May 27, 2024): South Dakota’s change comes in the midst of a conservative quest to limit diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives gaining momentum in state capitals and college governing boards around the country.
Trump Told Donors He Will Crush Pro-Palestinian Protests, Deport Demonstrators (Josh Dawsey, Karen DeYoung and Marianne LeVine, Washington Post, May 27, 2024): Trump has waffled on whether the Israel-Gaza war should end. But speaking to wealthy donors behind closed doors, he said that he supports Israel’s right to continue “its war on terror.”
Extra Credit Reading
Obituaries of Historians Show What We Value, and It’s Not Teaching (Peter Burkholder and Lendol G. Calder, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2024): The amount of obituary-column space devoted to research dwarfed that of teaching and service, sometimes by a factor of greater than 10 to one.
Do Humanists Know Anything? (Chris Haufe, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 24, 2024): We need to learn to make a better case for what we do.
Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021-2023 (Isaac Kamola, AAUP): During the 2021, 2022, and 2023 state legislative sessions more than one hundred and fifty bills were introduced seeking to actively undermine academic freedom and university autonomy.
On the Bookshelf: The attack on public schooling, a short reading list of recent books:
Cara Fitzpatrick, The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America (Basic, 2023)
Mike Hixenbaugh, They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms (HarperCollins, 2024).
Mike Hixenbaugh and Antonia Hylton, “Southlake” (Podcast)
Laura Meckler, Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity (Riverwalk Books, 2023)
Justin Murphy, Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York (Cornell, 2022)
Laura Pappano, School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education (Beacon, 2024).
Have a short article or some news related to teaching and learning at your institution that you’d like to share with colleagues? Send your contribution along to us. Also, please email Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
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)