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E. GORDON GEE likes to tell a joke that goes like this: When he first became a university president, in 1981, at age 37, he was doing a bad job. [...]

ON THIS MUCH, Claudine Gay, now the former president of Harvard University, and Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative activist who crusaded for her ouster, can agree: Her resignation is about [...]

ON THE FIFTH EPISODE of the fifth season of the reality-television show The Real Housewives of Potomac, seven glamorous Black women sit for an elegant dinner at a cast member's [...]

OVER the past two and a half years, combating perceived out-of-control leftism in higher education has become not only a salient conservative talking point but a legislative priority in some [...]

MARY MCCLUNG was walking her dogs one day last year when she came across a mud puddle filled with tadpoles. She worried they wouldn't last under the hot sun. So [...]

GOOGLE AROUND long enough, and the teaching of college students can seem like an exercise in avoiding a tripwire. Last year, Hamline University did not renew an art-history lecturer's contract [...]

EARLY LAST YEAR, a provocative proposal landed in the inbox of a senior administrator at the University of Florida. The six-page Word document argued that the fundamental mission of a [...]

ART COPLESTON didn't notice the man's stares at first. It was a summer night in Gainesville, Fla., in 1958. Copleston, then in his mid-20s, was hanging out with some friends [...]

IN THE EARLY 1960S, a Florida housewife named Jane Tarr Smith heard a frightening story about what a professor's unbridled academic freedom could do to a student. The story went [...]

JAMES E. CONGLETON led a careful life. The 57-year-old English professor never smoked cigarettes. He never drank to excess. A slightly built man with glasses who wore his hair neatly [...]

ALLYN WALKER PREDICTED the backlash--its likelihood, if not its extent. Walker's book, A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity, examines adults who are sexually attracted to [...]

THE DEMONSTRATORS are calling for a vaccine mandate. In the center of the frame is a counterprotester. He's conspicuous, wearing a neon vest. He walks through the crowd, holding a [...]

ON TOP OF A LANDFILL, watching birds gobble up garbage, Shawn R. SmolenMorton got to talking about tenure. Smolen-Morton is president of the South Carolina Conference of the American Association [...]

ERICA COPE admits it wasn't a great lesson. In the fall of 2020, Cope, like faculty members across the country, was teaching virtually, from her kitchen table. None of her [...]

THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA is investigating whether a half-dozen professors in its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 'interfered' with a Western-civilization center's ability to establish its curriculum 'or otherwise [...]

IT'S NOT just three professors. An effort by the University of Florida to deny professors the ability to testify in litigation against the state extends beyond the previously known political-science [...]

PART OF WILL NORTON'S JOB was appeasing donors, and he was good at it. At least for a while. As dean of the School of Journalism and New Media at [...]

ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON in late April, Michael Lauzardo greeted his patient. 'I'm Dr. Lauzardo,' he said, ushering the woman to his station. 'Nice to meetcha.' He was warm but [...]

AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE, yard signs have popped up, telling passersby to 'Save Our Children.' How? By not allowing 'critical race theory' in our schools, they say. The signs, paid for [...]

DAYS AFTER drawing national attention--including robust criticism and calls to resign --for her comments during a congressional hearing last month on antisemitism, Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University, was [...]

ON A FRIDAY MORNING IN JANUARY, the new board chair unloaded his requests of the college president rapid fire. 'Per your contract,' Todd Banducci wrote in an 8:44 a.m. email [...]

THAT THE STUDENTS in his book club wanted to meet over winter break took Ricardo Rico by surprise. He realized that their usual Thursday meeting would fall on Christmas Eve, [...]

A COUPLE of Robin D.G. Kelley's colleagues are not speaking to him right now--colleagues for whom he's written book blurbs and recommendation letters, colleagues he's known for years. Those relationships [...]

IN 2011, Benjamin Ginsberg, a political-science professor at the Johns Hopkins University, published The Fall of the Faculty, a blistering argument that over the previous three decades, administrators without serious [...]

After years of silence, they're speaking up for their contingent colleagues. Is it too late? SETH KAHN remembers saying some pretty inflammatory things about higher ed's reliance on contingent labor [...]

LAST YEAR, student activists at New York University reached a conclusion. A professor who'd harassed a graduate student was returning. And that was untenable. A university investigation had found that [...]

SAN ANTONIO ADAM P. JOHNSON is an anthropologist. He spends his time thinking about how environments shape living things. It's more complicated than many people realize, Johnson tells his students. [...]

EIGHTEEN low-enrollment undergraduate majors at Miami University, in Ohio, many of which are in the humanities, have been directed to reinvent themselves, potentially by merging with other programs. Faculty members [...]

KATHLEEN O'GORMAN noticed the teenage mother as she was wheeled into the conference room. At eight months pregnant, the 17-year-old had fled her home in Guatemala, had an emergency C-section [...]

LAUREN MCCLUSKEY had a new boyfriend, and her friends were worried. The University of Utah track-and-field star wasn't going out as much as before. When she did, he would demand [...]

KEVIN M. Kruse is swamped. Hunched over his desk on a Wednesday in October, fresh off a lecture that morning, the Princeton University history professor needs to prep for a [...]

THE GOVERNING BOARD overseeing Florida's public universities last month approved a post-tenure-review process that allows for poorly performing professors to be fired. About 10 Florida professors and students urged the [...]

STANDING AT A LECTERN labeled 'Higher Education Reform,' Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida late last month announced a wide-ranging plan to shake up the state's colleges. The plan includes a [...]

IN LATE DECEMBER, Gov. Ron DeSantis's office asked Florida's public colleges to detail their spending on diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory, sending institutions into a hurried accounting of [...]

AMY PARSONS, a former senior administrator at Colorado State University at Fort Collins, will become the flagship's next president, a selection that some professors view as misguided. Adding to the [...]

ONE EVENING in the University of Chicago's student union, as hundreds of angry eyes looked on and protesters chanted nearby, two students tried to talk about abortion. At center stage [...]

EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY got permission this month to fire employees, including tenured professors, for any of a host of reasons, including 'current or future market considerations.' Many faculty members there [...]

NATIONWIDE, public higher education has often been a target of partisan meddling. But North Carolina's university system is in a league of its own, according to a report released last [...]

ZOE FOX, says they realized 'embarrassingly late' that they would not, in fact, be rehired at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Fox, whose pronouns are they, their, and them, [...]

UNDER A TORRENT of criticism for barring professors from testifying in a voting-rights case, the University of Florida had an explanation: This wasn't about free speech or academic freedom, university [...]