Top Book News provided by The New York Review of Books©

• The Good Guy
  In August 2017 Ronan Farrow, then an investigative correspondent at NBC News, attended a meeting with Kim Harris, the general counsel of NBCUniversal, regarding the status of his story on sexual harassment and assault by the renowned film producer Harvey Weinstein. In the meeting, Farrow writes in his book Catch and Kill, Harris warned that the network might be “open to a tortious interference argument,” as several of Farrow’s sources, including the actress Rose McGowan and an Italian model named Ambra Gutierrez, apparently had breached their confidentiality agreements by speaking to him. Farrow was aghast at this warning.
• Among the Syrian Militiamen of Turkey’s Intervention in Libya
  I asked the Syrians how long they expected to stay in Libya. “As long as we are needed,” their commander replied. “We don’t want Libya to be destroyed like Syria.” Preventing this outcome, he said, meant confronting the foreign state that had tipped the scales of the Tripoli battle in General Haftar’s favor late last year—a bitter foe they know all too well. “For us, Russia is the biggest enemy,” he said. Just two days earlier, he claimed, his fighters had killed a Russian sniper not far from their villa near the front line. It was a form of payback for these Syrians, who had watched their cities being destroyed by Russian bombs.
• Learning to Fight
  Ben Lerner is the author of three novels, three books of poetry, and numerous critical essays, including the book-length monograph The Hatred of Poetry. The more books of prose he writes, the more clearly a kind of common persona, singular yet plural, emerges across his work: his narrators, whether fictional or not, share some facts of their background with one another, while also writing Lerner’s poems and thinking lines from Lerner’s essays. Together, they—or the plural he, a poet and reluctant novelist, born in Kansas and housed in Brooklyn—sprawl easily across the fiction-nonfiction divide.
• The Year of the Amazon?
  In September, a group of environmental activists and artists, alarmed by fires raging out of control in the Amazon rainforest, and by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s ruinous policy of encouraging commercial development there, urged the notoriously chintzy Bezos to buy the Amazon rainforest. “So, do it, Jeff,” they wrote. “Invest in your legacy, before everyone figures out where all the cardboard comes from.” Those ubiquitous Prime delivery vans during the holidays are part of Amazon’s burgeoning “fulfillment industry.” First "procurement," then "fulfillment." Exactly what kind of "customer satisfaction" is Amazon aiming for? If Bezos named his firm after the Amazon River, how did the river itself come to be called the Amazon? Was the rainforest once inhabited by golden-crowned women warriors mounted on fleet-footed steeds?
• ‘Collapsologie’: Constructing an Idea of How Things Fall Apart
  Heat waves, droughts, and other forms of extreme weather will increase in frequency and severity. Agriculture will become less reliable and suffer declining yields. Rising sea-levels will mean the submersion of many coastal regions. Most discussions of the environmental crisis stop there, however. We then go on to demand an end to fossil-fuel extraction and the redoubling of efforts to convert our economies to renewable forms of energy. The collapsologues go further. The flippancy with which they declare that a future of economic meltdown and societal failure is just around the corner can be quite chilling: “By 2035, the French Republic, the European Union, will not exist.”
• Ruth Glass: Beyond ‘Gentrification’
  In her introduction to London: Aspects of Change (1964), Ruth Glass wrote that the city was “too vast, too complex, too contrary and too moody” to be known entirely. The same could be said about Glass herself, an urban sociologist based at University College London from the 1950s to her death in 1990. She left no archive for scholars to sift through. The term she coined, gentrification, has become ubiquitous, but she remains out of sight. Her longtime friend, the late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, described her as a “tiny, combative, bird-like woman.” Yet even beyond coining gentrification—the term that outlived her—Glass set the agenda for a generation of postwar social scientists, breaking new ground in both the study of race relations and in community studies. 
• Ghana’s Handmade Movie Poster Boom
  When you walk into “Baptized by Beefcake: The Golden Age of Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana,” an exhibition now at New York City’s Poster House, you are confronted by the stares of film heroes of the late Eighties and early Nineties—each with a distinctly Ghanaian rendering. For over a decade beginning in the 1980s, paintings like these—typically made using acrylic paints on recycled flour sacks—were an answer to the country’s lack of large-scale commercial color printing. Local interpretations of the original Hollywood VHS sleeves, or representations of scenes from the movies embedded with local symbolism, ushered in this genre of “Africanized” Hollywood aesthetics. Across a continent reeling from revolutions and counterrevolutions, characters like Rambo, Conan, and Commando particularly resonated with viewers inspired by their exaggerated strength and daring confrontation with the powers that be.
• The Middle East: Trump Blunders In
  As the United States under Trump lurches between withdrawal of its troops from Iraq and Syria and sending more, between reasonable restraint in its use of force and then suddenly assassinating a regional leader, it has worsened the anarchic conditions that have waxed and waned in the region since the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the Gulf War that followed six months later. In the intervening years the US destroyed an already fragile society and unleashed sectarian violence in Iraq, prolonged a devastating civil war in Syria while inadvertently arming jihadists, negotiated then revoked a historic nuclear deal with Iran and sought to provoke a civil war there by strangling its economy, whipsawed its Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS, helped Saudis and Emiratis wreak havoc in Yemen, and along with its NATO allies contributed to the fragmentation of Libya. In the process, it has left the long-standing competition between Israel and Iran for regional primacy unmediated and unresolved.
• Do the Democrats Have a Foreign Policy?
  Trump’s successor, whether in 2021 or 2025, will inherit a uniquely demanding international agenda both with respect to specific policies that need to be reversed and, for the first time in many decades, real uncertainty about what priorities—what strategic vision—Washington should adopt in their place.
• Why Macron Refuses to Retire in France’s Pensions Battle
  Macron’s overhaul of pensions is a response to what the French conservative right has wanted to accomplish for two decades, without success. De Gaulle used to say, “Between me and the Communists, nothing,” by which he meant: as long as his only opponent was the Communist Party, he would always keep power. Macron believes that social democracy is no longer a threat to his rule. So, if he succeeds in siphoning off most of the old conservative and center-right voters, the Gaullists and the Sarkozy-ites, then there will be nothing between him and Marine Le Pen. If populist far right is his only opponent, he will always win. It’s a risky game.
• Australia: The Fires and Our Future
  Australia is no stranger to bushfire. In 1994, in Sydney, I lost a house to one, and in 2002, just north of Sydney, I fought off another. But I’ve never experienced anything like the current fire season before. These bushfires have been burning since September, taking lives and property across the nation, but the worst came in late December, just as families were settling into their holidays. Our country is the world’s fifteenth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and at the back of the pack for climate action, as its emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continue to grow. Australians now understand that each ton of CO2 we emit will fuel tomorrow’s fires. As a result of the last decade of lost opportunities, much future damage is already locked in. But things can always get worse—and only decisive global action on climate change, with Australia playing a central role—can avert that.
• William Barr: The Carl Schmitt of Our Time
  For Carl Schmitt, laws and constitutions didn’t arise from moral principles. At their basis, there was always a sovereign authority, a decision-maker. US Attorney General William Barr’s defense of unchecked executive authority in his recent speech to the Federalist Society thus had an unpleasant familiarity. Barr’s view is the final reductio ad Schmitt of our political era. As US attorney general, at the head of the Justice Department, he is charged with upholding the rule of law, but he admires only lawlessness in moments of crisis. At these “critical junctures,” which “demand speed, secrecy, unity of purpose, and prudent judgment,” Barr sees the presidency, the vital heart of American power, acting decisively in order to bring a wider reckoning with “final things.”
• How China Threatens Human Rights Worldwide
  The Chinese government is not the only threat to human rights today, but it stands out for its reach and influence. The cause of human rights today faces a dangerously destructive combination of a powerful centralized state, a coterie of like-minded rulers, a void of leadership among countries that might have stood for human rights, and a disappointing collection of democracies willing to sell the rope that is strangling the system of rights that they purport to uphold. Only if governments band together to address China’s flouting of human rights will the power balance shift. Decades of progress are now at stake.
• The Center Blows Itself Up: Care and Spite in the ‘Brexit Election’
  The simultaneous embrace of markets, and of rules and regulations, represents the soul of what’s sometimes called “centrism.” It’s a decidedly unlovely combination. Nobody truly likes it. But the talking classes had reached an absolute consensus that no politicians who departed significantly from it could possibly win elections. Labour’s left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was thus declared “unelectable.” Former leader Tony Blair even openly stated that he would rather see his own party defeated than come into power on Corbyn’s leftist platform. But if the results of the 2019 election mean anything, they reveal an overwhelming rejection of centrism. The center of British politics has become a smoldering pit.
• ‘Three Christs,’ Schizophrenia & Us
  Arguably, there is no Other, in all contemporary film and literature, that is as firmly lodged in the category of Outsider as the contemporary schizophrenic. You know you are seeing a film that will deal with schizophrenics by virtue of a bundle of tired repetitions: electroconvulsive shock therapy, screaming in the corridors, people being sprayed with a hose in lieu of showering themselves, straitjackets, solitary confinement. All these signal that we have left the place of civilization entirely. But, in actual fact, civilization can and does contain their suffering, a suffering much more complex than one film can manage. And yet the film that contends with this does us all a real service. 
• ‘That Single Fleeting Moment’: Merce Cunningham in Images
  Merce Cunningham: Redux, James Klosty’s exceptional collection of over 270 photographs of Cunningham, as well as of the dancers, composers, and visual artists who worked with him, is a stunning accomplishment. Cunningham usually evaded the camera lens. But perhaps he understood Klosty's commitment to presenting the company in a nuanced and rigorous way. Perhaps it was because the dancers seemed comfortable in his presence. Or maybe it was a matter of habituation—how a photojournalist, or scientist, studying animals in the wild may, with sensitivity and patience, be accepted, or at least tolerated, over time. Or maybe John Cage, who was always looking out for Cunningham, as well as considering what might benefit the work in some way, liked and appreciated Klosty and his talent, and encouraged Cunningham to be open to the idea. I imagine that Cunningham came to understand not only the value of this kind of in-depth documentation, but the independent strength of the photographs as well.
• A Lark in West Indian London
  That plot, roughly, involves the “lark” or quixotic idea of buying a home together. Each of the novel’s main characters has encountered variations of racist and predatory rental markets, and together they scheme to find a literal and figurative place of their own. From its opening scene, The Housing Lark poses the question of whether the lark can become a reality: Will these motley folks, male and female, black and Indian, from Trinidad and Jamaica, prostitutes, housecleaners, factory workers, and hustlers, be able to achieve this milestone of upward mobility? More than any other of Selvon’s novels, The Housing Lark explores the possibility of unity in difference.
• The Minimal Value of Trump’s ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran
  During his presidency, Trump’s strategy of “maximum pressure” and “restoring deterrence” have weakened America’s position on every count of its stated policy objectives in the region, while simultaneously, at least in the short run, strengthening the most conservative elements within the Iranian regime. Compared to three years ago: we have no nuclear agreement with Iran, let alone a more comprehensive one; we have enabled greater Iranian influence in the region, especially in Syria and Iraq, not less; and we have seen the Islamic Republic’s theocratic order become more repressive and entrenched, not more open or democratic.
• Among Syria’s Exiles in Jordan
  Although the part Jordan has played as a war refugee destination has been less publicized, its contribution among Syria’s Arab neighbors has been extremely significant. Some estimates put the number of Syrian refugees there at 1.3 million. Here, then, is the future of Syria: the children in the big refugee camps and in the tented migrant communities, though too many of them are growing up without enough education, support, or even food. Yet in this constrained present, the parents’ hopes are invested in the future of their children. They want their children to study, maybe go to university, get professional qualifications, but there is a haziness about their ambitions for the next generation. It’s like getting to the West: a dream, perhaps a mirage.
• Why Historical Analogy Matters
  If this idea of historical incommensurability is right, then analogical reasoning in history becomes an impossibility. If I sincerely believe that a given event in the past belongs not just to a foreign country but to a world so different from my own as to break all ties of communication between them, then I have no license to speak about the past at all—and all its events become in effect unknowable. A past that is utterly different is more than merely past; it has no claim on my knowledge and it might as well blink out of existence altogether. This is more than merely a matter of logic; it has political consequences. If every crime is unique and the moral imagination is forbidden from comparison, then the injunction “Never Again” itself loses its meaning, since nothing can ever happen “again.”
• Why Hindu Nationalists Trialed India’s Citizenship Law in Assam
  Despite causing mayhem, Home Minister Amit Shah has promised to take the citizenship register process piloted in Assam nationwide—in order to rid the nation of its largely imaginary “infiltrators” before the next general election, scheduled for 2024. Thousands have already been detained in protests against the citizenship laws across the nation, with police responding on occasion with deadly force. The very act of protesting, along with certain religious identities, have seemingly become anathema to the country’s rulers in what was once the great liberal hope of South Asia.
• The Slog Comes in on Little Cat Feet
  It is important to remember that the conceit of Cats, the era-spanning musical adapted into a film this winter, is that all the characters are cats—singing cats, dancing cats, fat cats, skinny cats, cats that prowl the docks: cats. The show is dogged in reminding us. The songs, when not explicating the wisp of a story, describe varieties of cat, such as the Gum­­bie Cat and the Railway Cat, while the cast, on-screen as on-stage, have cat ears, fur, and tails. But whatever else it was, Cats the musical, which premiered in London in 1981, was primarily a human variety show: a pastiche of twentieth-century music and dance tethered to some of T.S. Eliot’s lightest verse. Amid the jazz choreography and leg-warmers, the trash-strewn Thatcherite dystopia of the set and the guileless pizzazz of the performances, the stars of the Broadway run were never convincingly cats, just particularly exuberant humans. In Cats the movie, they are not even convincingly human.
• Elena Ferrante’s Form and Unform
  In a way, thinking and feeling through Ferrante make me wonder if the whole project of literary criticism, for some of us, might be one of un-pleasure reading. To me, the joy of writing about a text is the twisting, rupturing, pleasurable unpleasure of unforming and being unformed as I work to shape an argument. To read a book to its core, to get under its skin and let it get under yours, is to engage with it in a mutual process of transformation and sometimes-ecstatic contortion. In my life as a critic, as in Ferrante, this is an impossible yet irresistible desire: the little stories I’ve told you along the way here, my shape-making narrative impulses, are the legible coverings that skim over the roiling blurriness of ongoing forming-unforming beneath, the frantumaglia—that dialect word that Ferrante uses to mean “bits and pieces,” magma, a jumbled tangle that refuses reduction—of reading and being read. This is the last thing I’d call pleasure—and yet...
• Driss Chraïbi & the Novel Morocco Had to Ban
  Laila Lalami, a Moroccan American novelist who grew up in Rabat, has praised Chraïbi as “the first writer I read as a child who created Moroccan characters that were believable.” But they were perhaps all too believable, and certainly too troubling, when The Simple Past (Le Passé simple) was published in 1954. Some Moroccan readers claimed that Chraïbi’s portrait of Moroccan traditional society was consumed by self-hatred, even a betrayal of the independence struggle. The novel was banned in Morocco until 1977. 
• How New York Is Zoning Out the Human-Scale City
  “The cities and the economies we have,” Jane Jacobs observed, “have been created by ordinary people who didn’t have to have a big plan. It is good to remember in the culture that ordinary people can do these things and still do them.” Public-private enclaves and supertall towers are antithetical to that vision. The more a city gives over its organically evolved urban fabric to this kind of development, the more it diminishes the human-scale, bricks-and-mortar substance of the real city. The fate of 270 Park exemplifies how the real estate interests hold the city captive and foist on us Singapore-style, glass-and-steel mega-buildings.
• Lubaina Himid: Labor and the Art of Becoming
  This past summer, fifteen new paintings and an installation by the British artist Lubaina Himid were on display at the New Museum in an exhibition called “Works from Underneath.” Curated by Natalie Bell and accompanied by a pair of sound collages by Magda Stawarska-Beavan, the show was a slow-rolling wave of meditations on labor and whether toiling on our own terms can subvert a history of exploitation. Each work, a kind of odyssey through the precarious conditions of migration, revealed tangled and fraught histories of the work black people have done to build empire. What Himid deserves is a major retrospective that fully recognizes her not solely as an artist but also as a political strategist who blew open the gates of British art to make space for herself as well as her forebears, peers, and those who will come next. 
• Not So Glorious
  To the Editors: Robert Kuttner is only half right when he says, “But the bloodless Glorious Revolution went beyond those concessions and began the tradition of constitutional democracy.”

New York Times Books©

• With His Fourth Book, Charles Yu Finally Feels Like a Writer
  “Interior Chinatown” explores Asian-American stereotypes, something that captivated the novelist and TV writer as he thought about stars, supporting characters and who gets to play the lead.
• In ‘My War Criminal,’ the Bad Guy Controls the Conversation
  Jessica Stern’s new book recounts her series of meetings with Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader who is serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.
• Reagan Arthur Named Publisher at Knopf
  Ms. Arthur, previously the publisher at Little, Brown, succeeds Sonny Mehta, who died late last year.
• ‘The Longing for Less’ Gets at the Big Appeal of Minimalism
  Kyle Chayka’s book delves into art, architecture, music and philosophy to learn why the idea of “less is more” keeps resurfacing.
• Diane Ravitch Declares the Education Reform Movement Dead
  In “Slaying Goliath,” the veteran public-education activist celebrates the defeat of efforts to introduce federal education standards and testing into public schools and expand charters.
• English’s Pronoun Problem Is Centuries Old
  In “What’s Your Pronoun?” Dennis Baron argues that the language’s lack of a third-person singular gender-neutral pronoun has dogged writers and speakers since at least the Middle Ages.
• Americans on a Financial ‘Tightrope’
  Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn talk about their new book, and Daniel Susskind discusses “A World Without Work.”
• Roxane Gay Revisits ‘Darkness’ as a Graphic Novel
  The author’s latest comic book endeavor adapts a short story, “The Sacrifice of Darkness,” from her 2017 collection “Difficult Women.”
• The Meaning of a Book is in the Eye of Its Beholder
  And there are so many kinds of beholders!
• Marlon James to Host New Literary Podcast
  The Booker Prize winner is teaming up with his editor, Jake Morrissey, on “Marlon and Jake Read Dead People.”
• Considering Zora Neale Hurston and the Legacy of Fiction
  This week, Jabari Asim reviews a collection of short stories by Zora Neale Hurston. In 1978, Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote for the Book Review about Robert Hemenway’s “Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography.”
• Contemporary Brazil, Captured in Two Novels and a Journalist’s Collection
  Heartbreak, exile, lethal violence and the gold rush in the Amazon are some of the themes explored in three newly translated works.
• Four High-Octane New Thrillers
  The bodies pile up at the hands of hit men, henchmen, doctors, arms dealers and White House interns.
• ‘Dear Me’: A Novelist Writes to Her Future Self
  Inspired by a character in a classic children’s book, Ann Napolitano began writing herself letters to be read only 10 years later.
• New in Paperback: ‘Prisoner’ and ‘All My Puny Sorrows’
  Six new paperbacks to check out this week.
• Ouch, Oh and Oh No!
  Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.
• 12 New Books We Recommend This Week
  Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
• The Boys Return to Their Comic Book Roots
  A new story will reveal more about the characters before the Amazon Prime TV superhero series returns this year.
• Charles Yu Loves Reading With His Children. Don’t Tell Them.
  “I try not to smile too hard — if they ever realized how happy it makes me, they might start feeling like they’re being duped.”
• Before Michael B. Jordan Played Him in ‘Just Mercy,’ Bryan Stevenson Was a Kid Who Loved to Read
  The best-selling author and public interest lawyer grew up in a home where words mattered. A lot.
• Terry Jones, Monty Python Founder and Scholar, Is Dead at 77
  In addition to being a charter member of the celebrated British sketch troupe, he was a director, a screenwriter and an authority on Chaucer.
• In South India, a Fragmented Family Turns Into an Overflowing One
  Tishani Doshi’s novel “Small Days and Nights” sends an unhappy expat home to Tamil Nadu to start a new life with a sister she never knew she had.
• ‘Processed Cheese,’ by Stephen Wright: An Excerpt
  An excerpt from “Processed Cheese,” by Stephen Wright
• New & Noteworthy Visual Books, From Anne Brontë to Federico Fellini
  A selection of recent visual books of note; plus, a peek at what our colleagues around the newsroom are reading.
• After Culinary and Literary Acclaim, She’s Moving to the Woods
  The chef Iliana Regan created a hit Chicago restaurant and wrote a tough, award-winning memoir. But her real dream lives in a cabin in northern Michigan.
• A Bag of Cash Falls From the Sky. Trouble Is Close Behind.
  Stephen Wright’s satirical novel “Processed Cheese” takes on the excesses of the superrich.
• Teenage Heroes in a Mythical Land Fight Monsters, and Stereotypes
  “The Good Hawk,” a thrilling adventure fantasy debut by Joseph Elliott, has a heroine with intellectual disabilities. It’s about time.
• A Compassionate Children’s Book From the NPR Host Scott Simon
  In “Sunnyside Plaza,” Simon’s funny, observant protagonist solves a mystery. She also has developmental disabilities.
• 40 of America’s Greatest Writers on Key Supreme Court Decisions
  In “Fight of the Century,” edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, contributors including Jacqueline Woodson, Dave Eggers and Scott Turow explicate landmark A.C.L.U. cases.
• The Pain of the Holocaust Echoes Through Three Israeli Novels
  A solitary woman who leaps from her balcony to her death and a writer who uncovers a family secret hidden by the war figure in these new works by Israeli authors.
• Happy Wife, Happy Life, and Other Maddening Notions to Live By
  A new novel uses old recipes and retro advice to connect the lives of women in different centuries.
• A Mystical Healer, Her Ailing Crush and the Desire That Undoes Them Both
  Love literally hurts in Sue Rainsford’s haunting debut novel, “Follow Me to Ground.”
• ‘American Dirt,’ by Jeanine Cummins: An Excerpt
  An excerpt from “American Dirt,” by Jeanine Cummins
• ‘A Long Petal of the Sea,’ by Isabel Allende: An Excerpt
  An excerpt from “A Long Petal of the Sea,” by Isabel Allende
• Decades After Two Murders, an Appalachian Town Grapples With the Crimes
  In “The Third Rainbow Girl,” Emma Copley Eisenberg investigates the 1980 killings of two women hitchhiking to a festival in West Virginia.
• Pablo Neruda Saved Thousands of War Refugees. Isabel Allende Imagines Two of Them.
  Based on true events around the Spanish Civil War, Allende’s novel “A Long Petal of the Sea” explores the lives of exiles.
• Edith Kunhardt Davis, Author of ‘Pat the Bunny’ Sequels, Dies at 82
  She also wrote about the death of her son at 27, for which she blamed herself because she had been an alcoholic when she was pregnant with him.
• ‘American Dirt’ Plunges Readers Into the Border Crisis
  Jeanine Cummins’s third novel follows a mother and son on their harrowing attempt to escape from Mexico, cartel assassins at their heels.
• 9 Books to Help Calm an Anxious Toddler
  These books will help little ones slow down and breathe easy, even during rough moments.
• 7 Great Contemporary Novels for Teenagers
  These books about teenagers growing up today combine literary chops with the special sauce that keeps adolescent readers turning the pages.

The Chronicle of Higher Education©

• Tenure Is Not Worth Fighting For
  At least not in its current form.  
• Hanging Out — and Hanging On — at the MLA
  Literary scholars discuss a future in peril.
• How College Became a Commodity
  Market-based thinking is at the heart of how academe thinks of itself. That’s a travesty.
• The Law School Crash
  What’s worse than a decade of financial turmoil? Not learning anything from it.
• Top Reads of 2019
  Here are 10 articles that strongly connected with readers in 2019. We think they’re worth another look.
• Losing Faith in the Humanities
  The decline of religion and the decline of the canon are part of the same big story.
• The Disgusting New Campus Novel
  Burping and vomiting on the way to academe’s collapse.
• ‘The Administration Is Assuming That We Are Going to Do Their Dirty Work’
  Graduate workers at Harvard are striking. Here’s what they want, and how they plan to get it.
• In Defense of Plagiarism, Sort Of
  Is stealing ideas immoral?
• The Free-College Fantasy
  The proposals floated by presidential candidates are nonsensical. There’s a better way.
• I Told My Mentor I Was a Dominatrix
  She rescinded her letters of recommendation.
• How Elitism Marginalizes Academics
  When applying for grant money is a ritual of rejection.
• The Unbearable Virtue-Mongering of Academics
  Stanley Fish is skeptical of free speech, and dismayed by the ubiquity of Subarus.
• Why Are Campuses So Tense?
  Identity, stereotypes, and the fraying of the college experience.
• Can a University Save the World?
  A new movement is underway to find out.
• The New Humanities
  Once-robust fields are being broken up and stripped for parts.
• The Philosopher of #MeToo
  Has Kate Manne become a prisoner of her own activism? The Cornell University philosopher’s book on misogyny catapulted her into public life. But her battle against patriarchy has taken a personal toll.
• From Low Wage to No Wage
  Think adjuncts are underpaid now? Soon, they might not get paid at all.
• How Ed Schools Became a Bastion of Bad Ideas
  A tale of assessment, learning styles, and other notorious concepts.
• Why Diversity Initiatives Fail
  Symbolic gestures and millions of dollars can’t overcome apathy.