New Books in Education

Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill purportedly meant to revive U.S. dominance in research and development. “We used to rank number one in the world in research and development; now we rank number nine,” Biden said at the signing ceremony. “China was number eight decades ago; now they are number two.” And a recent study from Japan’s science ministry reported that China now leads the world not just in quantity of scientific research, but in quality too. The success of the U.S.--and perhaps China, into the future–is due to the “research university”, an academic institution that offers professors the freedom to study and research, and students the freedom to learn, leading to high-quality academic output. Those universities are the subject of Professor William Kirby’s Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China (Harvard University Press, 2022). In this interview, Professor Kirby and I talk about the research university: Humboldt, Harvard, Berkeley, Tsinghua, Nanjing, and the University of Hong Kong. We also discuss what it means for China, and Chinese institutions, to play a bigger role in world academia. How might that change things? William C. Kirby is Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration and T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University, as well as Chair of the Harvard China Fund and Faculty Chair of the Harvard Center Shanghai. His many books include Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth (Harvard Business Review Press: 2014) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Empires of Ideas. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why Aaron Basko thinks we are looking at student success backwards. How asking alums why they stayed at a school often tells us more about student needs than asking the students who are withdrawing why they leave. What the “Big Six” for student success is. What two things to evaluate as you decide which college or university will be the right “fit” for you. His advice to parents and incoming students. Our guest is: Aaron Basko, who currently serves as Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services at the University of Lynchburg, in Lynchburg Virginia. With 25 years of experience serving as an enrollment growth specialist and student success strategist for multiple institutions, Aaron has been part of the leadership team that engineered historic growth comebacks at three different colleges and universities. Aaron specializes in creating cross-functional teams for strategic enrollment planning and retention success. A thought leader and author, Aaron has written for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The Times Higher Education, and the State Department’s Fulbright blog. As a 2015 Fulbright International Education Administrator and capacity building specialist, Aaron also assists institutions with student mobility and international partnership initiatives. Aaron loves to create “a-ha moments” and to help institutions clarify the distinctive voice that will resonate with the right students. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who holds a PhD in American history. She is the co-producer of the Academic Life. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: Aaron Basko’s article in Inside Higher Ed on how to attract more liberal arts college students to campus : Liberal arts colleges need new strategies (opinion) “Have We Gotten Student Success Completely Backwards?” and Aaron’s other articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Aaron Basko (chronicle.com) This discussion about the college admissions process. Get Real and Get In: How to Get Into the College of Your Dreams by Being Your Authentic Self, by Aviva Legatt This conversation about navigating the ups and downs of student life: How To Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World, by Alice Connor How to College: What to Know Before You Go (and When You’re There), by Andrea Malkin Brenner and Lara Hope Schwartz This conversation about rejection-recovery and dealing with mistakes You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

You Are Your Own Best Teacher!: Sparking the Imagination and Intellect of Tweens (Essential Books, 2022) provides a variety of teachable antidotes to the punishing forces bearing down on youngsters from harmful marketing, the insidious grip of 'virtual reality' and the tyranny of peer groups. Apprehensive parents and burdened teachers will delight in the lessons of this book for Tweens (9-12 year olds). Tweens, who are whipsawed by relentless distractions, profit-driven manipulations and oncoming addictions, are guided toward elevating their own sense of significance, protection and realizable achievements. Claire Nader introduces the young to Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass and Helen Keller to illustrate their profound awareness and discipline. Claire Nader is a social scientist and activist. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

According to A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students—and Universities (U Chicago Press, 2022) a college education doesn't come with a sticker price and perhaps, he argues, it should. Millions of Americans miss out on the economic benefits of a college education because of concerns around the costs. Financial aid systems offer limited help and produce uneven distributions. In the United States today, the systems meant to improve access to education have in fact added a new layer of deterrence. In A Problem of Fit Levine examines the role of financial aid systems in facilitating (and discouraging) access to college. If markets require prices in order to function optimally, then the American higher-education system--rife as it is with hidden and variable costs--amounts to a market failure. It's a problem of price transparency, not just affordability. Ensuring that students understand exactly what college will cost, including financial aid, could lift the lid on not only college attendance for more people, but for greater representation across demographics and institutions. As he illustrates, our conversations around affordability and free tuition miss a larger truth: that the opacity of our current college-financing systems is a primary driver of inequities in education and society. A Problem of Fit offers a bold, trenchant new argument for an educational reform that is well within rea Phillip B. Levine is the Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of five books devoted to statistics, the analysis of social policy, and its effect on individual behavior. Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

An incisive case study of changemaking in action, Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership (Harvard Education Press, 2021) analyzes the complex process of racial equity reform within K-12 schools. Scholar Decoteau J. Irby emphasizes that racial equity is dynamic, shifting as our emerging racial consciousness evolves and as racism asserts itself anew. Those who accept the challenge of reform find themselves "stuck improving," caught in a perpetual dilemma of both making progress and finding ever more progress to be made. Rather than dismissing stuckness as failure, Irby embraces it as an inextricable part of the improvement process. Irby brings readers into a large suburban high school as school leaders strive to redress racial inequities among the school's increasingly diverse student population. Over a five-year period, he witnesses both progress and setbacks in the leaders' attempts to provide an educational environment that is intellectually, socioemotionally, and culturally affirming. Looking beyond this single school, Irby pinpoints the factors that are essential to the work of equity reform in education. He argues that lasting transformation relies most urgently on the cultivation of organizational conditions that render structural racism impossible to preserve. Irby emphasizes how schools must strengthen and leverage personal, relational, and organizational capacities in order to sustain meaningful change. Stuck Improving offers a clear-eyed accounting of school-improvement practices, including data-driven instructional approaches, teacher cultural competency, and inquiry-based leadership strategies. This timely work contributes both to the practical efforts of equity-minded school leaders and to a deeper understanding of what the work of racial equity improvement truly entails. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: The Open Learning Initiative (OLIve) operating out of Central European University. The importance of language related to students experiencing displacement. How our guests center theory-informed practice in their work. Three proposals for opening up the university to promote transformative experiences. Advice to others in the field initiating programs for displaced students. Our guests are: Dr. Ian M. Cook and Dr. Prem Kumar Rajaram, two of the three editors of Opening Up the University: Teaching and Learning with Refugees. Dr. Celine Cantat is also an editor on the volume. Ian M. Cook is Director of Studies at the Open Learning Initiative (OLIve), Budapest located at Central European University (CEU). An anthropologist by training, his work focuses on urban India, environmental justice, access to higher education, and podcasting. He strives to make scholarly practice more collaborative and multimodal. He is part of the Allegra Lab editorial collective. Dr. Prem Kumar Rajaram is Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University and Head of the OLIve unit at the same university. He works on issues to do with race, capitalism, and displacement in historical and contemporary perspective. Our host is: Dr. Dana M. Malone, a higher education scholar and practitioner energized by facilitating meaningful conversations and educational experiences. She specializes in college student relationships, gender, sexuality, and religious identities as well as student success and assessment planning. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: Our featured book: Opening Up the University: Teaching and Learning with Refugees Refugee Education Initiatives Higher Education Supporting Refugees in Europe Refugees and Higher Education: Trans-national Perspectives on Access, Equity, and Internationalization You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Picture a typical computer geek. Likely white, male, and someone you’d say has a “natural instinct” for technology. Yet, after six years teaching technology classes to first-generation, low-income middle school students in Oakland, California, Cassidy Puckett has seen firsthand that being good with technology is not something people are born with—it’s something they learn. In Redefining Geek: Bias and the Five Hidden Habits of Tech-Savvy Teens (U Chicago Press, 2022), she overturns the stereotypes around the digitally savvy and identifies the habits that can help everyone cultivate their inner geek. Drawing on observations and interviews with a diverse group of students around the country, Puckett zeroes in on five technology learning habits that enable tech-savvy teens to learn new technologies: a willingness to try and fail, management of frustration and boredom, use of models, and the abilities to use design logic and identify efficiencies. In Redefining Geek, she shows how to measure and build these habits, and she demonstrates how many teens historically marginalized in STEM are already using these habits and would benefit from recognition for their talent, access to further learning opportunities, and support in career pathways. She argues that if we can develop, recognize, and reward these technological learning habits in all kids—especially girls and historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups—we can address many educational inequities and disparities in STEM. Revealing how being good with technology is not about natural ability but habit and persistence, Redefining Geek speaks to the ongoing conversation on equity in technology education and argues for a more inclusive technology learning experience for all students. Joao Souto-Maior is PhD Candidate in Sociology of Education at the New York University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In Community College Mathematics: Past, Present, and Future (CRC Press, 2022), Brian Cafarella addresses the key questions: How can we build a future model for community college gatekeeper math classes that is both successful and sustainable? Additionally, how can we learn from the past and the present to build such a model? From the 1970’s to the pandemic in the early 2020’s, the book uses interviews with 30 community college faculty members from seven community colleges to explore math curricula as well as trends, initiatives, teaching practices, and mandates that have impacted community college mathematics. Brian Cafarella is a professor in mathematics at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. He has taught a variety of courses ranging from developmental math through pre-calculus. Brian is a past recipient of the Roeche Award for teaching excellence and a past recipient of the Ohio Magazine Award for excellence in education. Marc Goulet is Professor in mathematics and Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: How both of today’s guests became involved in higher education in prison. Why this work is personal to them. Funding and representation issues in higher education in prison. The complexities of supporting students who are incarcerated without supporting the carceral system. And a discussion of the Journal of Higher Education in Prison. Our guest is: Dr. Erin Corbett, who earned her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where her dissertation examined the relationship between educational attainment level and post-release employment outcomes for formerly incarcerated people in Connecticut. While pursuing her doctorate, Erin launched a nonprofit that provides not-for-credit, postsecondary level courses in three correctional facilities in Connecticut. She has also taught in correctional facilities in Rhode Island with College Unbound, and guest lectured to incarcerated students in the Iowa through the University of Iowa Liberal Arts Beyond Bars (UI LABB) program. Erin was the Assistant Director for Applied Research at the Institute for Higher Education Policy focusing on federal policy related to the intersection of higher education policy and policy related to educational access for justice-impacted people; and she was the Director of Policy at the Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice before transitioning to working with SCEA full time and consulting. Our guest is: Dr. Breea Willingham, incoming Associate Professor of Criminology at UNC Wilmington. Dr. Willingham earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Willingham’s research examines the intersections of race, gender, higher education, and the injustice system. She is particularly interested in examining Black women’s pathways to incarceration, their experiences with higher education in prison, and providing a platform for Black women impacted by the injustice system to tell their stories. Influenced by her experiences as a sister and aunt of two men serving life sentences, Dr. Willingham’s research also focuses on the societal ramifications of mass incarceration, especially its impact on families. Her work on incarcerated fathers and their children, Black women’s prison narratives, teaching in women’s prisons, and Black women and police violence has been published in academic journals and edited collections. In 2020, Dr. Willingham was appointed Managing Editor of the Journal for Higher Education in Prison, a peer-reviewed journal that publishes on the topics and issues in higher education in prison. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-creator of the Academic Life. Listeners to this episode might also be interested in: The Journal of Higher Education in Prison The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison Ear Hustle, a podcast hosted by persons who are incarcerated at San Quentin A conversation about the Emerson Prison Initiative Dr. Erin Corbett on Beyond Prisons Abolition. Feminism. Now. edited by Angela Davis et al. Punishment and Society, by Breea Willingham Privilege and Punishment, by Matthew Clair No Mercy Here, by Sarah Haley You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you experts about everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Providing your children with a good education is one of the best gifts you can give. But it’s not straightforward. Education costs and student loan debt are skyrocketing. In some cases, college costs upwards of $300,000 for four years. And calculations for financial aid and merit awards are complex and opaque. How do you find the best education options that fit your budget and are right for your child? And how do you save for your kids’ college without wrecking your own retirement, or putting your other goals completely out of reach? Ann Garcia―known as The College Financial Lady―is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and college finance expert, and is here to help. In How to Pay for College, Ann shows you how to develop a financial plan for college that really works, including: How to save and how much to save. How to find good college choices that fit your budget. How to get scholarships and tax benefits. How to talk to your kids about the costs and benefits of going to college. Plus invaluable information and inside tricks to help you crack the college financial challenge. Detailed explanations of the key elements in planning for college―the FAFSA’s methodology, merit awards, 529 plans, AP credits, student loans, financial aid awards, budgeting, and more―are paired with worksheets and exercises to give you a full picture of your family’s college financial position. This definitive guide gives you everything you need to give your children the best education possible, at a price you can all afford. John Emrich has worked for decades years in corporate finance, business valuation and fund management. He has a podcast about the investment space called Kick the Dogma. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In the late nineteenth century, medical educators intent on transforming American physicians into scientifically trained, elite professionals recognized the value of medical school design for their reform efforts. Between 1893 and 1940, nearly every medical college in the country rebuilt or substantially renovated its facility. In Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the Modern American Physician (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022), Katherine Carroll reveals how the schools constructed during this fifty-year period did more than passively house a remodeled system of medical training; they actively participated in defining and promoting an innovative pedagogy, modern science, and the new physician. Interdisciplinary and wide ranging, her study moves architecture from the periphery of medical education to the center, uncovering a network of medical educators, architects, and philanthropists who believed that the educational environment itself shaped how students learned and the type of physicians they became. Carroll offers the first comprehensive study of the science and pedagogy formulated by the buildings, the influence of the schools’ donors and architects, the impact of the structures on the urban landscape and the local community, and the facilities’ privileging of white men within the medical profession during this formative period for physicians and medical schools. Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Archives are much more than silent repositories of historical material. They are rich sites for teaching and learning, for collaboration and for creative and critical exploration of our past, present and future. In their new book, Teaching through the Archives: Text, Collaboration, and Activism (Southern Illinois University Press, 2022), Tarez Samra Graban and Wendy Hayden bring together 37 contributors to explore the many possible uses of archival collections in the teaching of writing and history and in generating scholarly collaboration, pedagogical experimentation and community building within and beyond the university. Section I focuses on how approaching the archive primarily as text fosters habits of mind essential for creating and using archives, for critiquing or inventing knowledge-making practices, and for being good stewards of private and public collections. Section II argues for conducting archival projects as collaboration through experiential learning and for developing a preservationist consciousness through disciplined research. Section III details praxis for revealing, critiquing, and intervening in historic racial omissions and gaps in the archives. The book’s contributors see archives as sites of activism, as places where students can develop critical skills, test and question established research methodologies while also learning to appreciate the specialist knowledge of archivists. Educators in disciplines including rhetoric and composition, literature, history and archival studies will find many inspiring ideas in this book. While the chapters offer university-based case studies, many of the ideas could also be adapted to the secondary classroom and to non-institutional educational settings. In this episode, Alice Garner interviews Tarez Graban about the genesis of the book, the important lessons and possibilities she and Wendy Hayden sought to draw out from the contributors’ research, as well as Dr Graban’s recent work in transnational and postcolonial Southern African archival research and repatriation. More on the editors: Tarez Samra Graban, associate professor in the English department at Florida State University, is the author of Women’s Irony: Rewriting Feminist Rhetorical Histories and coauthor of GenAdmin: Theorizing WPA Identities in the Twenty-First Century. Wendy Hayden, associate professor at Hunter College, CUNY, is the author of Evolutionary Rhetoric: Sex, Science, and Free Love in Nineteenth-Century Feminism. Alice Garner is a historian, teacher and performer with a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Listen to this interview with Jo Mackiewicz, professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University, and with Isabelle Thompson, emerita professor of technical and professional communication and former coordinator of the English Center at Auburn University. We talk about their book Talk about Writing: The Tutoring Strategies of Experienced Writing Center Tutors (Routledge, 2018) and writing. Jo Mackiewicz : "The more I think about writing center interactions and write books about it, the more I think that the value a tutor brings to learning is this: to show students a thinking process, to show students an analysis process about writing — to show them a self-questioning of yourself as writer, and also a questioning of any sort of text, a questioning of your relationship to the text, a questioning of what you know about the subject matter, of how you evaluate your handling of that subject matter. Tutors model this process for student writers." Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Listen to this interview of Nicholas Rowe, researcher and educator based in Finland. We talk his book The Realities of Completing a PhD: How to Plan for Success (Routledge, 2021) and about what needs to change. Nicholas Rowe : "Writing for different purposes, for different audiences is a huge skill, because people are going to need this communication skill in their research proposal when they present their ideas to advisors, but also in their publications when they share their ideas with colleagues. Now, of courses, everybody's systems and processes are different, but the key communicative skills that you need are fairly much the same, and if you don't need them at one stage of a project, you're going to need them at another." Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

A special opportunity to hear from Sara Custer, editor of The Campus (Times Higher Education), about the role of journalism and reporting in higher education. Avi and Sara cover topics ranging from the role of media in increasing cross-institution collaboration and sharing during the pandemic to how universities can do a better job supporting their junior scholars. Also, don't miss out on the opportunity to learn how you can publish in Times Higher Education yourself! Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

How can a library change the world? How can an art library change the art school or the gallery? Or even an art practice? In Shelf Documents: Art Library as Practice (Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, 2021), artists, writers, curators, teachers, and librarians reflect on how they can use the beloved library as a source of inspiration or a field of action. In thinking about diversity in collections, the publication proposes art libraries as sites of intersubjective communion. shelf documents is rooted in a collaborative book acquisition project, initiated by the artist Heide Hinrichs at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, in which her group integrated over 200 new titles in art libraries as a way to fill gaps, to amplify voices, and seek out the self-initiated or the overlooked. Heide Hinrichs, Elizabeth Haines, and Jo-ey Tang speak to Pierre d’Alancaisez about working with institutions, working slowly, and working together to interfere with the permanence of libraries. Heide Hinrichs is an artist who works with found and existing materials. For the first Kathmandu Triennale, she developed the project On Some of the Birds of Nepal. In 2018, she published Silent Sisters/Stille Schwestern, an unauthorised German translation of Theresa Hak Kyng Cha’s novel Dictee. Elizabeth Haines is a historian and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Bristol. Her interdisciplinary interest in the materiality of knowledge productions draws on her education in fine arts. Jo-ey Tang is an artist, curator, and writer. He was previously the director of exhibitions at the Beeler Galery at Columbus College of Art & Design and is currently the director of Kadist, San Francisco. The list of books involved in the project is available at second-shelf.org. Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Paul A. Djupe, Anand Edward Sokhey, and Amy Erica Smith, The Knowledge Polity: Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences (Oxford UP, 2022) explores a more holistic understanding of knowledge production in the social sciences, moving beyond the publication process often required by those in tenure/tenure-track positions to thinking about the role of community in the construction of knowledge. Political Scientists Paul A. Djupe (Denison University), Anand Edward Sokhey (University of Colorado-Boulder), and Amy Erica Smith (Iowa State University) emphasize the idea of academics as citizens in communities and institutions, endowed with certain rights and responsibilities with regard to knowledge production, exchange, and promotion. These actions go beyond simply research; knowledge production incorporates teaching, reviewing, blogging, podcasting, commenting, mentoring, and other similar actions, all of which inherently depend on collaboration and community. Djupe, Smith, and Sokhey all have first-hand experience in the “publication pipeline” process. They accurately and intricately detail aspects of community that are overlooked within the academia. The collaborative nature of The Knowledge Polity speaks to the power of co-authorship in political science and sociology. The research indicates that building relationships with peers and mentors alike provides scholars with access to people whose advice is trusted, people who they consider friends, and people who know other scholars whose advice can also be trusted and valued. Similar to co-authorship, peer review is another dimension of knowledge exchange, collaboration, and the rights and responsibilities of the knowledge polity. The review process is reciprocal, and there is an innate sense that it is a duty, especially when the authors discuss “reviewer debt” (reviewing fewer papers than one is submitting) and how it is usually “paid off” when scholars reach tenure and have more time and capacity to give back to the community. Most academics would like to do more reviews, proving there is a powerful desire to participate in this important act of knowledge production. The authors use data from an extensive Professional Activity in the Social Sciences (PASS) study, which sampled responses from 1,700 sociology and political science faculty about their publications, and experiences with regard to the process. They integrate different aspects of all of these findings in each chapter, examining for differences across disciplines, methodology, gender, race, and age, among other variables. The Knowledge Polity: Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences integrates a diversity of empirical research, qualitative inputs, and sophisticated analysis to better understand knowledge production within the social sciences. It becomes clear that the idea of the solitary scholar, alone in his/her office, creating knowledge is much more of a myth, since the reality is that knowledge production is much more of a collective undertaking and experience. Emma R. Handschke assisted in the production of this podcast. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at [email protected] or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality (Routledge, 2021) is about methods for using observational data to make causal inferences. It provides an extensive discussion of causality and the variety of both obvious and subtle challenges to inferring a causal relationship between the variables, using causal diagrams. It then goes through the major techniques that economists use to address these challenges, including regression, matching, simulation, fixed effects, event studies, differences-in-differences, instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity. The book is designed to be accessible to students or practitioners without the extensive math background that is taken for granted in typical econometrics textbooks. Instead, the emphasis is on the intuition behind the techniques and how to implement them with the widely-used programming languages R, Stata, and Python. Nick C. Huntington-Klein is an Assistant Professor at Seattle University. His research focuses on econometrics and higher education. His work has been published in the Economics of Education Review, AEA Papers and Proceedings, Economic Inquiry, Empirical Economics, and the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. His book can be read online for free or purchased in print, and is accompanied by a wealth of teaching materials on the same website. Nick can also be found on Youtube and on Twitter. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new Master's program in Applied Economics focused on the digital economy. His own research focus is the political economy of governance in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope (Stanford University Press, 2022), sociologist Victoria Reyes combines her personal experiences with research findings to examine how academia creates conditional citizenship for its marginalized members. Reyes draws from her family background, experiences during routine university life, and academic scholarship to theorize the academic outsiders as those who "are constantly reminded that our presence in the academy is contingent and in constant flux" (10-11). She elaborates on how love and worth are assessed in the university and her experiences as a mother in the academy. The final chapter calls for academic justice and offers practical strategies to combat the academy's exclusionary practices. In this book Reyes contributes to important conversations in the university on the experiences of people of color, women, and those from marginalized backgrounds. This book will be of interest to those who experience the academy's conditional citizenship, those who want to understand how the university perpetuates inequality, and those who want to challenge these conditions. Victoria Reyes is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of Global Borderlands (Stanford, 2019). Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (Illinois, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Why They Hate Us: How Racist Rhetoric Impacts Education (Teachers College Press, 2021) examines how racist political rhetoric has created damaging and dangerous conditions for Students of Color in schools and higher education institutions throughout the United States. The authors show how the election of the 45th president has resulted in a defining moment in U.S. history where racist discourses, reinforced by ideologies of white supremacy, have affected the educational experiences of our most vulnerable students. This volume situates the rhetoric of the Trump presidency within a broader historical narrative and provides recommendations for those who seek to advocate for anti-racism and social justice. As we enter the uncharted waters of a global pandemic and national racial reckoning, this will be invaluable reading for scholars, educators, and administrators who want to be part of the solution. Dr. Lindsay Pérez Huber is a professor of education at California State University-Long Beach as well as a visiting scholar at the UCLA Center for Critical Race Studies. Her research analyzes racial inequities in education, the impact on marginalized urban students of color, and how students and their communities respond to those inequities through strategies of resistance. Dr. Susana Muñoz is an associate professor of education at Colorado State University. Her research focuses on issues of access, equity, and college persistence for undocumented Latina/o students. Autumn Wilke works in higher education as an ADA coordinator and diversity officer and is also an author and doctoral candidate with research/topics related to disability and higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In this episode we speak to EWP PhD graduate and EWP and ITP adjunct faculty Holly Adler from her classroom in Oakland, CA. As a teacher of underprivileged and marginalized youth, Holly discusses alternative approaches to education beyond the mythos and narratives of neoliberal normativity, which aims to help students critically engage with culturally constructed values systems based on commercial production and consumption. Holly shares her approach to an experimental pedagogy based on cultivating the classroom as a sacred space, and she considers experiences of how conscious and engaged presence in their lives can create structures of unconditional support and radical respect, an essential factor in empowering students to reconstruct themselves in their own image based on their own goals of becoming. Our discussion addresses contemporary problems of cultural disillusionment, the role of technology, and the importance of spiritual self-transcendence in overcoming hegemonic regimes of discipline and control. The podcast ends discussing how music can offer alternative models of individual and collective becoming. Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook • EWP Podcast Website Music at the end of the episode titled The Architect, from Monsoon’s Arrival by the band Monsoon, released on Monsoon-Music Record Label Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Listen to this interview of Vivian Kao, Associate Professor of Composition and Coordinator of the First-Year Writing Program, and Julia Kiernan, Assistant Professor of Communication and Coordinator of Technical and Professional Communication — both at Lawrence Technological University, Michigan. It's more than just hot air — we talk about their STEAM, and their book Writing STEAM: Composition, STEM, and a New Humanities (Routledge, 2022). Vivian Kao : "Writing is really central to the project of STEM. And I'm talking about writing very capaciously, so that is, composing in multiple modes, in multiple media — that is, learning how to communicate to many different audiences and how to utilize many different genres. Because writing is a way of thinking and a way of understanding your place in the world." Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

This episode of How To Be Wrong explores questions of leadership and humility with Dr. Bill Tsutsui, Chancellor and Professor of History at Ottawa University, a private comprehensive university with residential campuses in Kansas and Arizona. Dr. Tsutsui has written extensively on Godzilla, among other things Japanese, and has developed a distinguished career both as an historian and in higher education administration, having held positions as associate dean for international studies in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Kansas, Dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and the presidency of Hendrix College. Our conversation explores questions of diversity in higher education, as well as ways in which deeply learning about other cultures can influence approaches to leadership. We also discuss some of the major issues confronting higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to the final day of our weeklong deep dive into the politics of education. Today, we’ve got another episode of Cited for you. If you haven’t heard a Cited episode before, it’s the documentary show that came before Darts and Letters and it specialised in immersive storytelling. This piece takes us on a journey through a little-known, long-past set of debates on the nature of science in democratic society: the Science Wars. They may seem lost to time, but some scholars say the Science Wars might just explain how we got our 'post-truth' moment. Learn about the bold hoax that became a determining factor in the Science Wars and how that moment in history might have foretold the wars on science to come. Next week, we’ll be bringing you episodes on a whole new theme - activism and academia. You won’t want to miss it. And you really won’t want to miss our brand-new episodes, launching on the New Books Network from September 18th. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————- You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button. If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too. —————————-CONTACT US————————- To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to write to us, email [email protected] or tweet Gordon directly. ———-CREDITS———- Today’s episode was produced by Gordon Katic, and edited by Cited's Sam Fenn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others. Joao Souto-Maior is a PhD Student in Sociology of Education at the New York University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

John Waterbury's book Missions Impossible: Higher Education and Policymaking in the Arab World (American U in Cairo Press, 2020) is a rigorous examination of higher education policymaking in the Arab world. None of the momentous challenges Arab universities face is unique either in kind or degree. Other societies exhibit some of the same pathologies--insufficient resources, high drop-out rates, feeble contributions to research and development, inappropriate skill formation for existing job markets, weak research incentive structures, weak institutional autonomy, and co-optation into the political order. But, it may be that the concentration of these pathologies and their depth is what sets the Arab world apart. Missions Impossible seeks to explain the process of policymaking in higher education in the Arab world, a process that is shaped by the region's politics of autocratic rule. Higher education in the Arab world is directly linked to crises in economic growth, social inequality and, as a result, regime survival. If unsuccessful, higher education could be the catalyst to regime collapse. If successful, it could be the catalyst to sustained growth and innovation--but that, too, could unleash forces that the region's autocrats are unable to control. Leaders are risk-averse and therefore implement policies that tame the universities politically but in the process sap their capabilities for innovation and knowledge creation. The result is sub-optimal and, argues John Waterbury in this thought-provoking study, unsustainable. Skillfully integrating international debates on higher education with rich and empirically informed analysis of the governance and finance of higher education in the Arab world today, Missions Impossible explores and dissects the manifold dilemmas that lie at the heart of educational reform and examines possible paths forward. Shu Cao Mo's interests span continental philosophy, existential psychology and history of performance art. She previously served as the Asia representative for a global traveling university. She holds an Ed.M. in Arts in Education from Harvard and a B.A. in Political Philosophy and Theater from Duke. Her email address is [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Why is so much right-wing money being funnelled at such a furious pace into universities across the US? Libertarian-minded billionaires like the Kochs and their partners have funded scholars and think tanks across the US, and similar things go on in Canada too. The money shows us that the right spends it because they care about education, for their own ideological reasons - and universities are all too happy to sell out. For today’s episode on the politics of education, we look at how big money seeks to corrupt academic freedom and integrity - and how campus activists are fighting to un-Koch their schools. This is another instalment of our Darts and Letters summer programming here on the New Books Network. We’ll be launching brand-new episodes starting on September 18th. Until then, tune in to our favourite past episodes - each week is a new theme! ——————-FURTHER READING AND LISTENING—————— Visit UnKoch My Campus to learn about the organization and their work, including groundbreaking reports and their campaigns. Plus, read more from Jasmine Banks in The Nation, including “The Radical Capitalist Behind the Critical Race Theory Furor.” Visit James L. Turk’s academic page at the Centre for Free Expression. And check out his edited 2014 book Academic Freedom in Conflict: The Struggle Over Free Speech Rights in the University. Read the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ report on the relationships between Canadian universities and corporations Open for Business on What Terms? An Analysis of 12 Collaborations Between Canadian Universities and Corporations, Donors, and Governments. Dig into related works from the episode, and more on the Koch’s and their influence, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy Maclean and Jane Meyer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Plus, read more of Jane’s work on dark money in the New Yorker. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————- You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button. If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too. —————————-CONTACT US————————- To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to write to us, email [email protected] or tweet Gordon directly. ———-CREDITS———- Darts and Letters is hosted and edited by Gordon Katic. Our lead producer is Jay Cockburn and our assistant producer this week was Jason Cohanim. Our managing producer is Marc Apollonio. David Moscrop is our research assistant and wrote the show notes. This episode had research and advising from Franklynn Bartol and Professor Marc Spooner. Our theme song and music was created by Mike Barber, our graphic design was created by Dakota Koop, and our marketing was done by Ian Sowden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

From the president of Wesleyan University, a compassionate and provocative manifesto, Safe Enough Spaces (Yale UP, 2021) on the crises confronting higher education In this bracing book, Michael S. Roth stakes out a pragmatist path through the thicket of issues facing colleges today to carry out the mission of higher education. With great empathy, candor, subtlety, and insight, Roth offers a sane approach to the noisy debates surrounding affirmative action, political correctness, and free speech, urging us to envision college as a space in which students are empowered to engage with criticism and with a variety of ideas. Countering the increasing cynical dismissal--from both liberals and conservatives--of the traditional core values of higher education, this book champions the merits of different diversities, including intellectual diversity, with a timely call for universities to embrace boldness, rigor, and practical idealism. Michael S. Roth is president of Wesleyan University and a historian, curator, and teacher. His previous books include Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Our society is dominated by grifters. Cheats, cons, frauds: people who don’t really believe what they tell you. They’re just what they need to do to get ahead or to sell you something. Isn’t that that really what capitalism is about? The grift! We’re new here on the network, so we’re introducing Darts and Letters with some highlights of our past episodes. Each week over the summer has a different Darts theme! It’s day two of our “politics of education” themed week, and today we’re bringing back a favourite episode of ours about a pillar of our society: grifters. Wanna hear an interview with an academic paper writer-for-hire? Ever wondered just what the “professional managerial class” is? This is the show for you. And don’t forget: we’ll have new episodes coming out on the New Books Network starting on September 18th! (We promise you it’s legit.) ——————-FURTHER READING AND LISTENING—————— Abebe, Nitsuh. “Why Are We Suddenly Surrounded by Grift?” The New York Times Magazine. Dec. 4, 2018. Dante, Ed. “The Shadow Scholar.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Nov. 12, 2010. Gold, Lyta. “Presenting the 2020 ‘Griftie Awards’.” Current Affairs. Dec. 31, 2020. Liu, Catherine. Virtue Hoarders. University of Minnesota Press, 2021. Mishan, Logaya. “The Distinctly American Ethos of the Grifter.” The New York Times Style Magazine. Sept. 12, 2019. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————- You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button. If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too. —————————-CONTACT US————————- To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you’d like to write to us, email [email protected] or tweet Gordon directly. ———-CREDITS———- Darts and Letters’ lead producer is Jay Cockburn, and our chase producer is Marc Apollonio. With research and support from David Moscrop. Our theme song was created by Mike Barber, and our graphic design was created by Dakota Koop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

The protests of summer 2020 led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have been willing to rename some buildings and schools or grapple with their role in the slave trade, no one has yet asked the most uncomfortable question: Does academic freedom extend to racist professors? It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022) considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy—theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever. Approaching this question from two angles—one, the question of when a professor's intramural or extramural speech calls into question his or her fitness to serve, and two, the question of how to manage the simmering tension between the academic freedom of faculty and the antidiscrimination initiatives of campus offices of diversity, equity, and inclusion—they argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech. In recent years, those with traditional liberal ideals have had very limited effectiveness in responding to the resurgence of white supremacism in American life. It is time, Bérubé and Ruth write, to ask whether that resurgence requires us to rethink the parameters and practices of academic freedom. Touching as well on contingent faculty, whose speech is often inadequately protected, It's Not Free Speech insists that we reimagine shared governance to augment both academic freedom and antidiscrimination initiatives on campuses. Michael Bérubé (interviewed here) is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University; Jennifer Ruth is a professor of film at Portland State University. Both have served in various roles within the American Association of University Professors, and also coauthored The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments (2015). Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London, researching security and mobility in the 20-21st century United States. Her current work concerns the US Passport Office's role in the Cold War. She can be reached by email or on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

80,000 Hours provides research and support to help students and graduates switch into careers that effectively tackle the world’s most pressing problems. Benjamin Todd is the president and co-founder of 80,000 Hours. He managed the organisation while it grew from a lecture, to a student society, to the organization it is today. He also helped to get effective altruism started in Oxford in 2011. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

For The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (MIT Press, 2022), Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, and others, which were conducted at ten institutions ranging from highly selective liberal arts colleges to less-selective state schools. What they found challenged characterizations in the media: students are not preoccupied by political correctness, free speech, or even the cost of college. They are most concerned about their GPA and their resumes; they see jobs and earning potential as more important than learning. Many say they face mental health challenges, fear that they don't belong, and feel a deep sense of alienation. Given this daily reality for students, has higher education lost its way? Fischman and Gardner contend that US universities and colleges must focus sharply on their core educational mission. Fischman and Gardner, both recognized authorities on education and learning, argue that higher education in the United States has lost sight of its principal reason for existing: not vocational training, not the provision of campus amenities, but to increase what Fischman and Gardner call "higher education capital"--to help students think well and broadly, express themselves clearly, explore new areas, and be open to possible transformations. Fischman and Gardner offer cogent recommendations for how every college can become a community of learners who are open to change as thinkers, citizens, and human beings. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Dr. Ruby Tapia’s viral Cornell sweatshirt tweet. How witnessing domestic violence, and the aftermath of her father’s suicide, influenced her decision to go to college far from home. Difficulties she faced freshman year both on and off campus. The professor who called her in to office hours, and how that changed her academic path. The meaning she’s made of these experiences, and how they changed her. Her hopes for future generation of college students, including her own daughters. Our guest is: Dr. Ruby C. Tapia, who is Chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, and Associate Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. Her work engages the intersections of photography theory, feminist and critical race theory, and critical prison studies. She is co-editor of Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States, co-editor of the University of California book series Reproductive Justice: New Visions for the 21st Century, and author of American Pietàs: Visions of Race, Death and the Maternal. Her current book project, The Camera in the Cage, interrogates the intersections of prison photography and carceral humanism and puts forth an argument and methodology for abolitionist aesthetics. She has facilitated creative writing workshops via the Prison Creative Arts Project at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Michigan, is a member of the Theory Group Think Tank at Macomb Correctional Facility for men and is the lead faculty member of the Critical Carceral Visualities component of the Documenting Criminalization and Confinement project at UM's Humanities Collaboratory. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-producer of the Academic Life. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: Borderlands, by Gloria Anzaldua Academic Outsider, by Victoria Reyes The Abortionist, by Rickie Solinger Welfare, by Rickie Solinger Ruby Tapia’s Avidly article “What I Was Looking For Was Green” Ruby Tapia’s Avidly article “Never Been A Scared Bitch” A discussion of Presumed Incompetent You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work (U Illinois Press, 2021) traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its wide-ranging implications in political and social life. As Jason Resnikoff shows, the term automation expressed the conviction that industrial progress meant the inevitable abolition of manual labor from industry. But the real substance of the term reflected industry's desire to hide an intensification of human work--and labor's loss of power and protection--behind magnificent machinery and a starry-eyed faith in technological revolution. The rhetorical power of the automation ideology revealed and perpetuated a belief that the idea of freedom was incompatible with the activity of work. From there, political actors ruled out the workplace as a site of politics while some of labor's staunchest allies dismissed sped-up tasks, expanded workloads, and incipient deindustrialization in the name of technological progress. A forceful intellectual history, Labor's End challenges entrenched assumptions about automation's transformation of the American workplace. Jason Resnifoff is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Groningen (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) in the Netherlands. Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Educating the Enemy: Teaching Nazis and Mexicans in the Cold War Borderlands (U Chicago Press, 2022) begins with the 144 children of Nazi scientists who moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1946 as part of the military program called Operation Paperclip. These German children were bused daily from a military outpost to four El Paso public schools. Though born into a fascist enemy nation, the German children were quickly integrated into the schools and, by proxy, American society. Their rapid assimilation offered evidence that American public schools played a vital role in ensuring the victory of democracy over fascism. Jonna Perrillo not only tells this fascinating story of Cold War educational policy, but she draws an important contrast with another, much more numerous population of children in the El Paso public schools: Mexican Americans. Like everywhere else in the Southwest, Mexican American children in El Paso were segregated into "Mexican" schools, where the children received a vastly different educational experience. Not only were they penalized for speaking Spanish--the only language all but a few spoke due to segregation--they were tracked for low-wage and low-prestige careers, with limited opportunities for economic success. Educating the Enemy charts what two groups of children--one that might have been considered the enemy, the other that was treated as such--reveal about the ways political assimilation has been treated by schools as an easier, more viable project than racial or ethnic assimilation. Listen to an interview with the author here and read an interview in Time and a piece based on the book in the Boston Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Education for Sustainable Development in the Caribbean: Pedagogy, Processes and Practices (University of the West Indies Press, 2022) offers a unique perspective on educational approaches to creating a sustainable world. Lorna Down and Therese Ferguson complement their theoretical discussions with practical, “real world” engagements. Case studies and current research ground teaching and learning for sustainability and enable diverse communities of learners, inside and outside of classrooms, to transform their societies. With its emphasis on the crucial role of education for the transformation to a peaceful, just, inclusive and environmentally sustainable world, this book is a valuable resource for students, lecturers and researchers working in education for sustainable development across disciplines. It also is a significant text for those working in community-based, non-governmental and intergovernmental fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

This episode is the latest in the series of cases we’ve profiled focusing on mergers within higher education. We speak with Bryon Grigsby, President of Moravian University and David Rowe, who served as Interim President of Lancaster Theological Seminary (LTS) who discuss how they partnered to integrate LTS into Moravian to operate alongside the existing Moravian Seminary. Moravian is the 6th oldest college in the U.S. and was the first to admit women. They describe how the vision for the merger evolved during their initial discussions from having LTS move to Moravian’s campus in Bethlehem, to enabling LTS to retain its historic campus and expanding it to serve as a branch campus for Moravian. They share the hard-earned lessons with all of the regulatory and other hurdles that need to be cleared to complete a successful merger. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Why does gender matter in our troubled global times? In Gender in an Era of Post-truth Populism: Pedagogies, Challenges and Strategies (Bloomsbury, 2022), the editors Penny Jane Burke, Rosalind Gill, Akane Kanai, and Julia Coffey have assembled a collection of interventions that seek to think through the relationship between the populism that seems to dominate many nation’s contemporary politics and the continuing need for feminist perspectives. The chapters range from feminist philosophical and theoretical reflections on the meaning of truth, through empirical work on digital feminism, to considerations on the role and purpose of education and the university. Across 11 chapters, with an agenda setting introduction, the book is essential reading for all in the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone seeking to understand the current post-truth populist crisis and how to intervene for change. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

An indispensable manual for the most demanding position in higher education, The College President Handbook: A Sustainable and Practical Guide for Emerging Leaders (Harvard Education Press, 2022) supports campus leaders in becoming powerful and effective stewards of their institutions. This comprehensive guidebook offers clear counsel in the form of candid essays by highly regarded current and former college and university presidents from across the nation. It pairs their expert appraisals with research and data to examine the critical issues that define the role today. The book's contributors acknowledge the broad skill set that presidents, and their executive teams, must cultivate in order to achieve success. Beginning with a macro view, the contributors address the universal questions of vision that each higher education leader must consider critically and understand strategically: Why be a president? How should campus leadership engage with our board of trustees? What tone should our actions communicate to stakeholders? The book's chapters offer concrete tactical advice in a range of key leadership areas and emphasize essential career skills such as managing financial resources and strategic planning. The contributors speak to student-facing concerns as well as institutional interests, and discuss personal issues specific to the office, such as weathering controversy, attaining work–life balance, and planning for post-presidential life. Drawing on the unique expertise of peers and predecessors, this work will prove to be a core resource for anyone who is or aspires to become a president or chancellor in higher education. Shu Cao Mo's interests span continental philosophy, existential psychology and history of performance art. She previously served as the Asia representative for a global traveling university. She holds an Ed.M. in Arts in Education from Harvard and a B.A. in Political Philosophy and Theater from Duke. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In this episode, Dr. Nilanjana Paul of the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley speaks about her new monograph, Bengal Muslims and Colonial Education, 1854-1947: A Study of Curriculum, Educational Institutions and Communal Politics (Routledge, 2022). The book is a micro history of the spread of education among Muslims in Colonial Bengal. Dr. Paul discusses the role played by Muslim leaders such as Abdul Latif and Fazlul Huq in the spread of education and examines how segregation in education, supported by the British fueled Muslim anxiety and separatism. By examining the conflict of interest between Hindu elites and Muslim aristocrats over education and employment, Dr. Paul shows how discriminatory colonial education policies and pedagogy amplified religious separatism that would eventually culminate in the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. Bekeh Ukelina is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center of Gender and Intercultural Studies at State University of New York, Cortland. Twitter: @bekeh/ Instagram @mwalimuwakusafiri/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Plantation Politics and Campus Rebellions: Power, Diversity, and the Emancipatory Struggle in Higher Education (SUNY Press, 2021) provides a multidisciplinary exploration of the contemporary university's entanglement with the history of slavery and settler colonialism in the United States. Inspired by more than a hundred student-led protests during the Movement for Black Lives, contributors examine how campus rebellions—and university responses to them—expose the racialized inequities at the core of higher education. Plantation politics are embedded in the everyday workings of universities—in not only the physical structures and spaces of academic institutions, but in its recruitment and attainment strategies, hiring practices, curriculum, and notions of sociality, safety, and community. The book is comprised of three sections that highlight how white supremacy shapes campus communities and classrooms; how current diversity and inclusion initiatives perpetuate inequality; and how students, staff, and faculty practice resistance in the face of institutional and legislative repression. Each chapter interrogates a connection between the academy and the plantation, exploring how Black people and their labor are viewed as simultaneously essential and disruptive to university cultures and economies. The volume is an indispensable read for students, faculty, student affairs professionals, and administrators invested in learning more about how power operates within education and imagining emancipatory futures. Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why the AAUP was formed. Their role in supporting academic freedom. Why the threat to tenure is a threat to higher education. The importance of collective bargaining, and of transparency in academic salaries. Our guest is: Dr. Irene Mulvey, who is a Professor of Mathematics at Fairfield University where she has been teaching for 37 years. She has been fighting to protect academic freedom, to promote shared governance, and to uphold AAUP principles and standards at the campus, state and national level for over 30 years. In 2020, she was elected to a four-year term as President of the AAUP on a platform pledging progress toward making the AAUP an anti-racist organization and dismantling structural racism in all aspects of higher education. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-creator of the Academic Life. Listeners to this episode might also be interested in: The AAUP The AAUP Foundation Chronicle of Higher Education article on the Adjunct Problem LA Times editorial about the adjunct crisis in California and how that affects Academic Freedom Statement on academic freedom from the American Federation of Teachers Academic Life interview with an Adjunct Professor NBN episode on the future of tenure You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you experts about everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Amid a vast influx of rural migrants into urban areas, China has allowed cities wide latitude in providing education and other social services. While millions of people have been welcomed into the megacities as a source of cheap labor, local governments have used various tools to limit their access to full citizenship. The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City (Columbia University Press, 2022) by Eli D. Friedman reveals how cities in China have granted public goods to the privileged while condemning poor and working-class migrants to insecurity, constant mobility, and degraded educational opportunities. Using the school as a lens on urban life, Eli Friedman investigates how the state manages flows of people into the city. He demonstrates that urban governments are providing quality public education to those who need it least: school admissions for nonlocals heavily favor families with high levels of economic and cultural capital. Those deemed not useful are left to enroll their children in precarious resource-starved private schools that sometimes are subjected to forced demolition. Over time, these populations are shunted away to smaller locales with inferior public services. Based on extensive ethnographic research and hundreds of in-depth interviews, this interdisciplinary book details the policy framework that produces unequal outcomes as well as providing a fine-grained account of the life experiences of people drawn into the cities as workers but excluded as full citizens. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. His most recent research, “The Queen and Her Royal Court: A Content Analysis of Doing Gender at a Tulip Queen Pageant,” was published in Gender Issues Journal. He researches culture, social identity, placemaking, and media representations of social life at festivals and celebrations. He is currently working on a book titled Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River. You can learn more about Dr. Johnston on his website, Google Scholar, on Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

A Primer for Teaching Digital History: Ten Design Principles (Duke UP, 2022) is a guide for college and high school teachers who are teaching digital history for the first time or for experienced teachers who want to reinvigorate their pedagogy. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi, as well as teachers who want to incorporate digital history into their history courses. Offering design principles for approaching digital history that represent the possibilities that digital research and scholarship can take, Jennifer Guiliano outlines potential strategies and methods for building syllabi and curricula. Taking readers through the process of selecting data, identifying learning outcomes, and determining which tools students will use in the classroom, Guiliano outlines popular research methods including digital source criticism, text analysis, and visualization. She also discusses digital archives, exhibits, and collections as well as audiovisual and mixed-media narratives such as short documentaries, podcasts, and multimodal storytelling. Throughout, Guiliano illuminates how digital history can enhance understandings of not just what histories are told but how they are told and who has access to them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Our guest Eric Frans’ career path into, out of, and around higher education Key factors that influenced his decision to pursue employment outside the academy The transition from higher education to a different industry How he plans to use his doctorate in the future His advice to those inside higher ed considering switching to other industries Our guest is: Eric Frans, a career development professional currently working as a Talent Acquisition Manager for PrimePay, a human resources software company. Eric holds a master’s degree in Higher Education Counseling/Student Affairs from West Chester University (WCU) and is pursuing a doctorate in Higher Education Policy, Planning, and Administration from WCU. Eric worked as a career development professional at SUNY Oswego and WCU before moving into his current role at PrimePay. Eric was born in Ghana and raised in Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate student, Eric studied psychology at WCU and was highly engaged in campus life; he was a member of the men’s basketball team, a resident assistant, and an orientation leader. Our host is: Dr. Dana M. Malone, a higher education scholar and practitioner energized by facilitating meaningful conversations and educational experiences. She specializes in college student relationships, gender, sexuality, and religious identities as well as student success and assessment planning. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: Inside Higher Ed article: 7 Steps for Discerning Whether to Leave Higher Ed by Beth Godbee Chronicle article: Many Student Affairs Officials are Considering Leaving the Field Jenny Blake’s Book: Pivot: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One (Portfolio/Penguin) - https://www.pivotmethod.com/ Dawn Graham’s book: Switchers: How Smart Professionals Change Careers and Seize Success (Harper Collins Leadership) The Academic Life episode: The Self-Care Stuff: Considering Whether to Stay or Drop Out You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Black or Right: Anti/Racist Campus Rhetorics (Utah State University Press, 2020) explores notions of Blackness in white institutional—particularly educational—spaces. In it, Louis M. Maraj theorizes how Black identity operates with/against ideas of difference in the age of #BlackLivesMatter. Centering Blackness in frameworks for antiracist agency through interdisciplinary Black feminist lenses, Black or Right asks how those racially signifying “diversity” in US higher education (and beyond) make meaning in the everyday. Offering four Black rhetorics as antiracist means for rhetorical reclamation—autoethnography, hashtagging, inter(con)textual reading, and reconceptualized disruption—the book uses Black feminist relationality via an African indigenous approach. Maraj examines fluid, quotidian ways Black folk engage anti/racism at historically white institutions in the United States in response to violent campus spaces, educational structures, protest movements, and policy practice. Black or Right’s experimental, creative style strives to undiscipline knowledge from academic confinement. Exercising different vantage points in each chapter—autoethnographer, digital media scholar/pedagogue, cultural rhetorician, and critical discourse analyst—Maraj challenges readers to ecologically understand shifting, multiple meanings of Blackness in knowledge-making. Black or Right’s expressive form, organization, narratives, and poetics intimately interweave with its argument that Black folk must continuously invent “otherwise” in reiterative escape from oppressive white spaces. In centering Black experiences, Black theory, and diasporic Blackness, Black or Right mobilizes generative approaches to destabilizing institutional whiteness, as opposed to reparative attempts to “fix racism,” which often paradoxically center whiteness. It will be of interest to both academic and general readers and significant for specialists in cultural rhetorics, Black studies, and critical theory. Anna E. Lindner is a doctoral candidate in the Communication Department at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. On Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

This episode features a wide-ranging discussion with Dr. Lynn Pasquerella, the President of the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). She shares her experience as a community college student that launched her on a successful academic career as a philosopher and medical ethicist, and how she became president of Mt. Holyoke College. We also discuss her new book, What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice, and Educating for Democracy (U Virginia Press, 2022), which summarizes many of the hot button issues on today’s college campuses and provides a robust defense of the central importance of a liberal arts education to both prepare individuals for a highly uncertain economic future and to help safeguard our democracy. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

A detailed exploration of parents' fight for a safe environment for their kids, interrogating how race, class, and gender shape health advocacy The success of food allergy activism in highlighting the dangers of foodborne allergens shows how illness communities can effectively advocate for the needs of their members. In Food Allergy Advocacy: Parenting and the Politics of Care (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Danya Glabau follows parents and activists as they fight for allergen-free environments, accurate labeling, the fair application of disability law, and access to life-saving medications for food-allergic children in the United States. At the same time, she shows how this activism also reproduces the culturally dominant politics of personhood and responsibility, based on an idealized version of the American family, centered around white, middle-class, and heteronormative motherhood. By holding up the threat of food allergens to the white nuclear family to galvanize political and scientific action, Glabau shows, the movement excludes many, including Black women and disabled adults, whose families and health have too often been marginalized from public health and social safety net programs. Further, its strategies are founded on the assumption that market-based solutions will address issues of social exclusion and equal access to healthcare. Sharing the personal experiences of a wide spectrum of people, including parents, support group leaders, physicians, entrepreneurs, and scientists, Food Allergy Advocacy raises important questions about who controls illness activism. Using critical, intersectional feminism to interrogate how race, class, and gender shape activist priorities and platforms, it shows the way to new, justice-focused models of advocacy. Danya Glabau is a medical anthropologist and science and technology studies scholar who researches patient activism, the political economy of the global pharmaceutical industry, and feminist cybercultures. She is a faculty member at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the Director of the Science and Technology Studies Program. Autumn Wilke works in higher education as an ADA coordinator and diversity officer and am also an author and doctoral candidate with research/topics related to disability and higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Dr. Karin Lewis’s experience pitching and winning the book bid Karin and the editorial team’s vision for an inclusive and diverse collection The process of working as a team to develop an idea into a book The realities of editing a large volume with many authors Blurring the lines of traditional scholarship with artistic and creative submissions Her advice to other scholars considering editing an established collection Our guest is: Dr. Karin A. Lewis, an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley. She teaches educational psychology in the areas of cognition, learning, human development, and adult learning at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. Her scholarship explores complexities of identity and agency from a multicultural, social justice perspective via transdisciplinary discourses and collaborative, collective ethnographic methodologies. Dr. Lewis is the Lead Editor for The Kaleidoscope of Lived Curriculum: Learning Through a Confluence of Crisis, 13th Annual Curriculum and Pedagogy Group, 2021 Edited Collection, published through Information Age Publishing. Our host is: Dr. Dana M. Malone, a higher education scholar and practitioner specializing in college student relationships, gender, sexuality, and religious identities as well as student success and assessment planning. Dana first met Karin as a doctorate student at the University of Kentucky when Karin hired her as a graduate TA to teach courses offered through the university’s academic success unit. Dana has always been impressed with Karin’s dedication to students, love of teaching, and the grace with which she moves through the world. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: Curriculum and Pedagogy Group Edited Collections Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy About the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group The Academic Life episode on writing a book proposal You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Dr. Chris Jones holds a Bachelor of Arts from Oklahoma Baptist University, a Master of Theology from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and a PhD from Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the sole religious studies professor at Washburn University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education