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Sharon Otterman
New York Times
In May 2024, a pro-Palestinian encampment formed on a campus lawn at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When the students refused to leave, Jennifer Mnookin, who was then the chancellor of the flagship state university, called in the police to remove their tents. Thirty-four people were arrested. But after the students set up their tents again, Dr. Mnookin pivoted. She decided “there were limits to the extent of policing that I was prepared to authorize,” she said, and spent the next nine days negotiating with the students.
Her confidence in handling that potential tinderbox, and others like it, impressed the trustees of Columbia University, who appointed Dr. Mnookin to be the 21st president, a role she starts on Wednesday. It is also emblematic of the deliberative leadership style she will seek to pursue at Columbia, she said in a wide-ranging interview last week.
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At a time when the average tenure of a college president has dipped below six years, Ronald J. Daniels is beginning his 18th year at the helm of the Johns Hopkins University. He’s weathered numerous crises, though perhaps none as severe as the second Trump administration.
As part of the leadership of the Association of American Universities, Daniels had several discussions with members of the Trump administration about its recent open letter, “A National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards.” I spoke to Daniels over Zoom about his decision to advise on that open letter, how conservative scholars have been “systematically excluded” from the academy, and whether his emphasis on political diversity has come at the expense of racial diversity.
Questioning colleges is normal. There are outstanding concerns about the experience, the education, and the enterprise of higher education: How much does it cost, and is that more than families can pay? Who gets in, and why? Are faculty members treated with dignity? What is college even for? So, although college leaders argue that a few of the concerns voiced in the document are legitimate, they also see within it the bane of Ilium.
On this week’s Radio Atlantic, I’m joined by Jack Stripling, the host of the College Matters podcast at The Chronicle of Higher Education, to consider higher education in the Trump era, and the purpose of college itself.
What is college for? If you ask four different people, you’re likely to get four different answers. Universities teach students how to think. They produce groundbreaking research. They create citizens. They prepare students for jobs. They archive the wisdom of the past. And so on.
However, beneath the veneer of diversity, all university goals ultimately come down to the same thing. At their core, universities are epistemic institutions, committed to the creation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge.
