BY KATIE RAINWATER In 2011, Eric Barron, the then-president of Florida State University, gave a presentation to FSU’s board of trustees. His talk concerned how Florida could adopt and exceed the “7 Breakthrough Solutions” that the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative, market-fundamentalist think tank, had put forward to reform higher education. The seventh…
BY BRITT PARIS As AI companies are flailing, financial forecasters warn of an AI bubble. There is an extensive list of harms AI poses to workers, students, communities, the environment, and the social contract, yet campus leaders press forward with AI partnerships and initiatives. Administrators and technology officers have signed multimillion dollar contracts with technology…
BY MARTHA LINCOLN AND MARTHA KENNEY Earlier this spring, we published an essay in Academe about the California State University’s secretive and costly initiative to provide ChatGPT Edu, a general-purpose AI chatbot, to all CSU faculty, students, and staff. With many colleagues at Cal State, we have spent the past year organizing against the “AI-Empowered…
BY JONATHAN REES I wrote the first draft of “The AI Nuisance,” my contribution to the latest issue of Academe on artificial intelligence, back in November. The AI news kept coming at such a fast pace that I felt the need to revise it again in mid-January, just before it was due at the end…
BY DESIREE ZERQUERA I am often home alone in the evening with our two young children, carrying the weight of after school activities, dinner, bathtime all alone, holding our lives together while my husband, the professor, teaches late at another lecture or event or seminar or student meeting. I’m often up alone in the mornings,…
BY HANK REICHMAN The Andrei Sakharov Prize, awarded biennially by the American Physical Society (APS), “recognizes outstanding leadership and achievements of scientists in upholding human rights.” The Prize is named in honor of the late Soviet physicist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov and endowed by contributions from friends of Sakharov. In March, the APS…
BY JAMES THOMPSON Think of the term “huddle” and you probably think of professional athletes gathered shoulder to shoulder in a circle, intensely discussing their next play strategy, often at critical junctures of the game. If we explore some of the core elements present, themes of communication, problem solving, strategizing, teamwork, and uniting members in…
BY MICHAEL LaGIER Lights, camera, action. In more and more workplaces, leaders unintentionally reward visible busyness over meaningful results, a dynamic often called productivity theater, a term popularized by organizational psychologist Adam Grant. In colleges and universities, this phenomenon can be especially damaging. When faculty and staff are evaluated primarily on how much they appear…
BY MICHAEL FERGUSON Following is the editor’s introduction to the spring 2026 issue of Academe, “AI in the Corporate University,” out this week. The full issue and table of contents can be found here. The AAUP’S 2025 report Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions concludes with a call for faculty members to assert authority over their working conditions and their…
BY MARJORIE HEINS Harry Keyishian, the last surviving plaintiff in the most important Supreme Court academic freedom case of the twentieth century, died on April 4 at the age of 93. He was one of only five University of Buffalo professors who in 1964 refused to sign an anti-communist loyalty oath and was the first…
BY B. M. RYAN Imagine a junior scholar, anxious about tenure, grants, and professional recognition, carefully preparing a manuscript that sits at the intersection of two fields, seeking to connect them in a way that could advance knowledge. The scholar submits the work to a journal affiliated with a public university. That journal is staffed…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL At this dire moment of relentless attacks on academic freedom, educational excellence, and rights of campus speech and assembly, we still have big-time college athletics—gridiron football, in particular. This is especially visible at Indiana University. Even more than at most colleges and universities, the administration of IU’s President Pamela Whitten has…
BY MINOLI PERERA This piece was first published in The Daily Northwestern. At the beginning of 2025, my lab and my science were flying high. We had recently been awarded a R01 grant by the National Institutes of Health to study genetic predictors of cardiovascular drug response in Puerto Ricans. I knew as a scientist…
BY ROBERT M. KAPLAN Peer-reviewed scholarship remains the central currency of academic life. It advances careers, drives innovation, informs policy, stimulates economies, and lays the groundwork for the next generation of inquiry. Yet the very system designed to vet and disseminate knowledge increasingly drains enthusiasm from scholars—especially early-career investigators—by subjecting them to burdensome, time-consuming, and…
BY PAULA LEZAMA I am a product of public education across borders. Its fragility is not theoretical to me. I come from a context marked by extreme precarity. I was the first in my family to attend college, earned an MA, and this coming May, I will be the first in my family to earn…
