New Books in 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education