The rest of the journalism Internal Advanced EDHis co-founder Doug Lederman rarely had time to read anything other than that, so last summer, when he left his 90-hour work week, he told me he wanted to see less Netflix. I said, “Friend, come to the right place.” Recommended reading is almost the only area I can make a reliable contribution these days.
I started with Doug knowing what he wanted. Chad Harbach Field Art It was an early favorite. I moved him to Jesse Walter’s Beautiful ruins,,,,, friend By Sigrid Nunez, James (Percival Everett, not Henry), Meg Wolitzer’s interest And loaded him on the Louise Penny train.
But before I headed to DC for his official farewell party last March, I assigned him a novel I wanted to reread and liked with the idea of his recording: The Beauty and Heartbreaking of John Williams Stoner. I often give Doug a tough moment – well, everything – especially the fact that he has never really been subjected to the advanced stage. He stared at the reporter’s magnifying glass from the outside, revealing our flaws and fault lines, his indispensable duty as a reporter.
When Doug asked me to work with him as a thought partner to create newsletters for senior executives, he wanted to bring tough love to leaders. He admitted that there was a fucking case, and was so slow to change for Senior Ed, unwilling to be responsible for certain mistakes. As we all know, disappointment can only come from love, and for the recipient, disappointment is difficult.
I responded in my usual witty way and asked him, “Who the fuck is it? you Is there a fucking case? Don’t say I damn it! Do you have to read millions of pages of academic monograph? Have you heard scholars complain that their names are too small on the cover? Do you reject thousands of qualified applicants into their dream academy or sit in the unlimited faculty meeting of the Senate Conference panel copying policy? Have you taught a class or graduate student Just can’t? ”
In other words, I told the co-founder IHE He barely knew what it felt like at the advanced stage, especially from the perspective of the faculty. Given his role and prominence in the industry, Doug’s attention is always sought after, which is a high value enjoyment. In our world, he is beef jerky, not milk bone.
I think it’s time for him to use his casual reading to get a deeper look at what it’s like to be an average professor. Not a huge character like Morris Zapp (my old boss, Stanley), or even the lucky Hank Devereaux (or Lucky Jim).
Stoner Following the fictional life and career that taught English at the University of Missouri at the beginning of the last century. Early in the novel, just before sinking Lusitaniathe sharpest of the three young scholars asked his fellow researcher: “Have gentlemen ever considered the true nature of universities?”
Mr. Stoner “sees it as a great repository, like a library or brothel, where people enjoy free will and choose what will complete them, all working together like little bees in ordinary bees.” Mr. Fincher sees it as “a kind of spiritual sulfur and syrup you manage each fall to make the little asshole spend another winter.” Fincher naturally continues to be the dean.
But they are both wrong, called the role of Masters. The university is a shelter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . His self-diagnosis: “I’m too smart about the world, I won’t shut up.” He concluded: “But despite this, we’re more than those outside, in the mud, poor assholes in the world. We didn’t hurt, we said what we wanted, and we were paid for it.”
The book, published in 1965, introduces people who feel so latest and vibrant, you can imagine having a cocktail with them. In this era, we now find ourselves Stoner It may be popular again, but not for all the right reasons.
I’ve been saying for a long time that they’ve finished the dead white guy stuff. When Doug and I went to college, it was almost the whole course, except for the 19th-century Gals, where Emily Dickinson was Frederick Douglass. Given that Canon ruled out the previously silent voice, this reluctance is understandable. However, I do not discriminate. Stoner Provide profound insights into the ongoing institutional structure today.
These thoughts are in my mind when I finish the reread before flying to Washington, D.C. to celebrate Doug’s plane, retire Next chapter, another institutional structure awaits us in marble and glass.
Half a day before the event started, my husband Toby, I wanted to be a tourist. I’m not going to speed up four museums in five hours. (Toby can spend hours in front of a picture, but he loves me and it is a good sport.)
My childhood included traveling downtown, meeting grandparents in New York City, which often involved visits to museums. My favorite is the person who hosts squids and whales. I unconsciously embraced Donna Haraway’s vision of primates described by hierarchy, a narrative of how science museums construct capabilities and evolution to shape our understanding.
Fifty years later, I long to see what has changed. We started with natural history, turned to American history, then African Americans, and eventually entered the Holocaust. In March 2025, this journey is not the case, and the learning experience is exciting. The museum, like higher education itself, tells a complex story of American identity, now under severe threats.
I quickly parsed the presentation. How do curators choose to tell stories, some of which I know well, and as an adult, I always prefer reading? I’ve absorbed a good scholarship since I started my career in publishing books in American history at Oxford University Press.
When I became the acquisition editor of Duke University Press in 1991, I was interested in the work of scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, Mari Matsuda, Derrick Bell, Derrick Bell and other theorists who used narratives to study how our legal system makes structural permanent structural permanent. Most people hadn’t read legal journals at the time, and these ideas took a while to become mainstream
Academe Crank opens up the lessons of facing historical truths and not always self-evident: We are a nation based on a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Sometimes we don’t reach the trace, but the arc of the universe is long and we are taught the direction of bending.
Apart from. The power of the rise recorded in the last somber building we visited recorded my readings, like the blueprints that happened today. Before I remember not knowing this, my father got into me and what it means to be Jewish, there was always someone who wanted to put you in the oven. This is what I see as the numbers of great-great-great-great-grandfather’s arm make this obvious.
How long will the large number of lively students around these repositories of cultures be able to learn our history? Was whitewashing when will the idea contained in the curator’s vision (in our work since the late century) frustrated by the mummy?
One of many frightening moments: A little story I know from the movie Who will write our history? Historian Emanuel Ringelblum organized Jews in Warsaw slums in 1939 to record unprecedented actions. He collected the materials, placed them in milk jugs, and buried them throughout the city. The archive, known as Oneg Shabbat, is located in Jerusalem in Yad Vashem.
It is impossible to feel my colleagues are there in March IHE Other media broke their butts on a similar mission: documenting the last few days of the era of inclusion.
How long did these exhibitions fall and were replaced by gold toilets in buildings converted into hotels and casinos?
Just as the bright shining moments of the previous generation Camelot disappeared, many of us have already reviewed it Hamilton Nostalgia. The museums in our national capital are too controversial, and my love for America and the things that make us great are filled with love. When I left, all I felt was sad. What would happen if we didn’t challenge today’s challenge?
In DC, this sober experience brought me back to a conversation with Doug about the resistance of higher education to change. read Stoner It should not be resonant and familiar like this. The structure of teachers and the spirit of academia have hardly developed in the last century.
What Doug has long said to leaders, traveling through the endangered halls of American Memory: We need not only better tell stories about higher education, but we also need to fundamentally reimagine it. We need to do it now.
One day, our buried milk jug will be unearthed. Articles, reports and assessments documenting the struggles in higher education will demonstrate what we have done (or not done) during this critical period. My only hope is that they will reveal how colleges and universities finally get rid of institutional inertia and continue to do their work in educating truth and justice for all.
Note: This reflection was published as a sandbox issue on March 22, 2025. I want to share it here as part of the new column for two reasons (and apologize to subscribers). First, if you keep reading the news, you will find that I wish I was wrong. The demolition began just one week after the first time. Now we see the scrub of national history in basic cultural institutions, not just in DC
Also, I have received a lot of responses from readers, thanks for putting them in Stoner. So now, you’re welcome, my friend.
