Articles

The Human Story

Roger Berkowitz
The Crisis of the humanities is one of those perennial crises that pops up every year, every decade, seemingly every century. In the last decade, there are now one-third as many as English majors as there were a decade ago and nearly 20% fewer students are taking humanities courses as were 10 years earlier. Nathan Heller sets out to ask why the humanities are in crisis.

Equity Language Guides

George Packer argues that the proliferation of “Equity Language Guides” is a misguided attempt at salvation, one with negative consequences. The guides are being issued by colleges, non-profits, and corporations. They are largely lists of banned words often with suggested replacements.
 

Academic Freedom in Florida

Roger Berkowitz
On the very same day that Florida Governor Ron Desantis was coming to speak at Palm Beach Atlantic University, the university put a beloved and experienced Professor’s  teaching contract on hold because of complaints about his teaching about racial justice. The professor, Samuel Joeckel, has been teaching his racial-justice unit for twelve years without issue.

Le Wokism in France

Roger Berkowitz
Thomas Chatterton Williams explores the strong French disdain for American woke ideology, and finds that both the American and the French approaches are lacking.

The Friendship Recession

Addie Page describes her search for new friends amidst what is increasingly being seen as a crisis of friendship.

Our Friend/Enemy Politics

Roger Berkowitz
In my seminar on “Truth and Politics” this semester we are grappling with the pure weaponization of claims to truthfulness and lying. And this this weekend I’m at colloquium on federalism where one theme is how federalism is embraced by whichever party or group doesn’t control political power. Principled ideas of governance and politics are fully sacrificed to the overriding goal of winning. These ideas are grounded in a larger nihilist worldview, and one thinker who understood the full implications of nihilist politics was Carl Schmitt. 

Waking Up

Roger Berkowitz
Vincent Lloyd was teaching a seminar at the Telluride Association on “Race and the Limits of Law in America.” By the end of the seminar, his students had either been expelled for being racists or had accused him of being racist and walked out of the class. Lloyd, who says he has been suspicious of the critique of woke movements, came to see the behavior of the students not as a religion, but rather as a cult.

Theory Has Deconstructed Objectivity

Mark Goldblatt argues that academia is heading for a showdown between the STEM fields that believe in objectivity and the social sciences and the humanities that do not. But Goldblatt’s real concern should be the loss of impartiality in the humanities and social sciences, not the loss of objectivity. 

Impartiality and Objectivity 

Roger Berkowitz
Hannah Arendt reminded us of the importance of impartiality in history, journalism, and scholarship. For Arendt, every selection of facts is, as a selection, partial. Bret Stephens writes about the crisis of confidence in journalism.