September 18, 2023
West Virginia Budget Cuts Are a Taste of Higher Ed’s Future
Gordon Gee thinks higher education is at a “crossroads.” If it takes the wrong turn, it will head over a demographic and financial cliff. To save West Virginia University, of which he is president, in February he announced significant cuts, including the elimination of 169 faculty positions and some 30 academic programs and departments that were…
September 18, 2023
No Culture Wars, Please, We’re Academics
A few years ago, Melissa S. Kearney got into a taxi cab and asked the driver about a photo of a young girl on his dashboard. The driver confirmed it was his daughter and then proudly showed her more pictures. The girl lived with her mother, he explained. Kearney, a professor of economics at the…
August 14, 2023
What ‘Earth Mama’ Doesn’t Tell Us About Foster Care
There are plenty of movies that start in the middle of the story. But typically the director will eventually go back and tell you what happened at the beginning. This is not true of “Earth Mama,” a recently released film by first-time director Savanah Leaf. The story is about a pregnant woman, Gia, whose two…
August 14, 2023
The Narcissism of Small Diffidences
Catherine, a mother living in the New York City suburbs, has a son who flunked out of college. Her story is one of the cautionary tales offered up in Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It. Catherine left the workforce to raise her two children. The…
August 13, 2023
‘The Death of Public School’ Review: Find a Place to Learn
What is a public school? Is it an institution that is paid for by the public? One staffed by government employees? One that teaches a publicly approved curriculum? One that educates a broad swath of the public’s children? In the view of Cara Fitzpatrick, the author of “The Death of Public School,” it possesses all…
August 12, 2023
Why Ending Child Services Is the New Defund the Police
Can you imagine if the New York Police Department invited Defund the Police activists to train their officers? That’s what the New York State Family Court and the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) are doing. In a June webinar for almost 400 ACS workers, parents, child attorneys and family court judges, advocates who want to…
August 3, 2023
Philanthropists Discover the Value of “Sunsetting”
This year, the William E. Simon Foundation is closing its doors, or “sunsetting,” in the parlance of modern philanthropy. Since it was founded in 1967 by former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon and his wife Carol, the foundation has given away almost $300 million to the causes that mattered to them—faith, family and education. It…
August 1, 2023
Can AI Make People Want to Have Children?
Self-help gurus love to tell people to visualize their goals. Tony Robbins says, “Starting your day without visualizing your goal is like starting your day without breakfast.” In this space, it’s not just about figuring out where you’re going, but actually picturing your future self — how that person will feel, what that person might…
July 25, 2023
What Relationship Outsourcing Says About Our Culture
How many of our relationships can we outsource? Apparently, there’s no end. A recent article in The New York Times describes a new kind of professional, a “surrogate partner,” who helps people become more comfortable with intimate relationships. As the article notes, “Unlike in more traditional forms of therapy, in which practitioners are usually careful…
July 17, 2023
The Problem with Lived Experience
“The shift among nonprofits and funders towards valuing lived experience has been a journey,” Anna Verghese, executive director of the Audacious Group, told the Chronicle of Philanthropy earlier this spring. Verghese, whose group includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MacKenzie Scott, and the Skoll Foundation, says this shift has been “the result of generations…