Newsroom

Becoming an Academic is the result of nearly 10 years of blogging on The Thesis Whisperer. The blog has become popular with PhD students and faculty in Australia and the UK as a trusted source of advice for people struggling with the “academic hunger games.”...

Over the past year, I have issued short descriptions of the topics covered in How University Boards Work: A Guide for Trustees, Officers, and Leaders in Higher Education. In this post, I discuss the role of the campus president as Chief Mission Officer as well...

Ballyhoo, as a word and as a title, is a paradox. What joy in saying it—Ballyhoo!—and yet, what performance and emptiness—O.E.D.: “ a showman’s touting speech.” For several years now, I’ve been interested in the cultural, personal, and even political (and...

When Howard Dean visited the Democratic headquarters where I was volunteering in 2016, I asked: “Hillary has promised to set aside $25 billion for HBCUs and to make public universities tuition-free. What is she going to do for the numerous small private...

Today marks the 503rd anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. The Bard changed the world of theater and literature in his 52 years. We are very fortunate to have copious Shakespeare scholarship in our collection, including the journal Shakespeare Bulletin...

Emily Folger née Jordan was a bluestocking: an educated, intellectual woman with a scholarly bent. In 1875, she followed her two sisters to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Elected president for life of her class of 36 women, she went home to Brooklyn...

April 22 (1899) is the birthday of Vladmir Nabokov, the Russian-American author who died in 1977 and is most remembered for his controversial novel Lolita. What is extraordinary–Jerry Griswold suggests in this edited excerpt from his Audacious Kids: The...

Mollusks, which include mussels, clams, octopus, squid, chitons, snails, slugs, and a few less familiar groups, are the second most diverse animal phylum (arthropods are number one, which includes the hyper-diverse class of insects). Estimates of the total...

Public health officials across the United States find themselves grappling with a surge in cases of the measles. New York City has declared a public health emergency, and the Centers for Disease Control have confirmed more cases in the first 14 weeks of 2019...

By the time of publication of the first edition of Governing Health: The Politics of Health Policy in 1996, the possibility of national health care reform – which had not long before seemed so bright – had severely dimmed. The Clinton Administration’s proposed...