Attention to the Unseen

Anonymous write: When we walked into school on the morning of 6 November, we exchanged quick glances with the other girls in our social circle – looks filled with uncertainty and dread about the future. Because we are applying to colleges all around the country and about to leave our homes in the Hudson Valley, political issues suddenly have begun to feel a lot more personal. Access to abortion and contraception, protection of the environment, and the growing hate and…

Read More Read More

Will Bunch writes: Years later, somebody would dub them “the Silent Generation.” But on Oct. 1, 1964 — 60 years ago this Tuesday — a cohort of young people born mostly during World War II, raised in consumer affluence and under the threat of nuclear annihilation, could not keep it bottled up any longer. The place was the University of California, Berkeley, and the trigger was school administrators telling students that the strip where students passed out political literature —…

Read More Read More

An editorial in The Cornell Daily Sun says: Momodou Taal, an international student from the United Kingdom and outspoken pro-Palestinian activist, received a startling email from the University Monday morning informing him that he had been suspended. The email directed Taal to a same-day noon meeting at Day Hall, where he would be handed a no-trespass order barring him from campus. The reason for Taal’s suspension? Cornell University Police Department Lieutenant Scott Grantz ’99 picked Taal out of a crowd…

Read More Read More

Masha Gessen writes: On the surface, this is a small story: A college canceled an event planned by a magazine. But it seems to be a story about something bigger: fear. Rather, it’s a story about many fears — including the fear of antisemitism, the fear of being accused of antisemitism, and the fear of controversy generally — and how they can combine to turn an institution designed to facilitate open discussion into something that makes open discussion impossible. The…

Read More Read More

Michael S. Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, writes: Last year was a tough one on college campuses, so over the summer a lot of people asked me if I was hoping things would be less political this fall. Actually, I’m hoping they will be more political. That’s not to say that I yearn for entrenched conflict or to once again hear chants telling me that I “can’t hide from genocide,” much less anything that might devolve into antisemitic or…

Read More Read More

The Intercept reports: In early August, Columbia University told Congress that most of the students arrested in the past year for protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza would be allowed to return to campus for the fall. Then a congressional inquiry applied pressure. Last week, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has been conducting an inquiry into Columbia’s handling of the protests since this spring, published a letter blasting the school for not…

Read More Read More

Ryan Calo and Kate Starbird write: Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. They face a concerted effort—including by members of Congress—to undermine or silence their work documenting false and misleading internet content. The claim is that online misinformation researchers are trying to silence conservative voices. The evidence suggests just the opposite. It’s sobering to remember that the principle of academic freedom scarcely existed in the United States…

Read More Read More