New: Rema Vassar, a Michigan State University trustee, is suing several of her colleagues and other MSU leaders, claiming they retaliated and intentionally discriminated against her. Vassar, a former board chair, has been at the center of controversy at MSU since her election. chroni.cl/488R040
This week in our Jagged Intelligence newsletter: Religious colleges are making a case that higher education should be about more than skills AI can automate, things like character, meaning, and human dignity.
Subscribe for free here: chroni.cl/4BjfRiX
Humanities dissertations have fallen by 49 percent since 2015, compared with a drop of 4.5 percent in the social sciences, according to a new analysis of nearly 445,000 dissertations in these two fields over 65 years. Explore the data: chroni.cl/4yxUZ4S
Some college accreditation upstarts begin with big ideas about ending "political correctness" and "wokeness." But as they start trying to attract members, they talk less about hot-button politics and more about the decidedly unsexy work of accreditation. chroni.cl/4BjWhTS
Opinion: After leaks about the AHA’s lobbying strategy, its leaders asked council members to sign a confidentiality certificate then hired a corporate law firm to investigate who shared internal material. chroni.cl/4z2RK6N
From 2025: Four candidates. One slot for student body president. And an untold number of complaints filed between them. This is the story of how the pursuit of power at Ohio State University went totally off-the-rails. chroni.cl/4eGaWik
Opinion: A journal editor tested AI-generated peer reviews and found them detailed, constructive — and sometimes bracingly critical. The harder question: not whether AI is perfect, but whether it can outperform the system academics already distrust. chroni.cl/4sf8h4J
A Ku Klux Klan-themed image shared by students at the University of Maryland’s flagship has put a fresh spotlight on an institution that’s spent much of the past decade confronting charges of racism. chroni.cl/4dPwh8L
UNC-Chapel Hill has settled antisemitism and admissions claims with the Trump administration. Under the agreement announced Monday, the government found no civil-rights violations, and the university paid no money. chroni.cl/4k6l5Zh
Computer-science departments have seen their own enrollment cliffs over the last year, driven by fears that AI is making entry-level programming jobs obsolete. Oregon State lost nearly 1,000 computer-science majors in a year. chroni.cl/4yQjoDf
From 2025: Jill Lepore said Harvard’s culture became “incredibly prosecutorial” around 2014 so much so that she nearly left academe. In this interview, she discusses regret, civics, constitutional history, and what universities are for. chroni.cl/4i41nuC
No more out-of-state tuition for the University of Alaska starting in fall 2027. The bet: a clearer price, more students, and a stronger state work force. The risk: proving the numbers work over time. Read about it in our new, free newsletter: chroni.cl/480C4VD
What do your peers think about AI use and publishing? We surveyed 460 academics about AI use, how they use the technology, what they find acceptable use-cases in writing, and more.
Here's what we found: chroni.cl/481dLH6
As families and policymakers demand clearer proof of college’s value, more institutions are creating a new senior role: the chief career officer. The challenge is whether authority, data, and faculty buy-in can turn a title into better outcomes for students. chroni.cl/4k1MPhA
I was featured in the "Daily Briefing" at the @chronicle of higher education on fraternities. My point: Teaching and showing college men how to be great men is 10x more effective than banning fraternities and leaving young men formed by the internet & the manosphere.
A Harvard professor’s Financial times essay got an AI-use note. A Nature Africa author said AI did almost all the writing. A philosophy journal published a paper written largely by Claude.
Academe still hasn’t settled the basic question: What counts as authorship now? chroni.cl/4jX1PNO
A USC law dean says her viral post about now-former Trump spokeswoman Katie Zacharia’s legal credentials was misinterpreted. Zacharia, who never passed the bar, was ousted Friday. chroni.cl/3UxEzf2
Opinion: If AI is now part of academic writing, what should institutions actually evaluate? This essay argues that analytical writing should be judged by evidence, structure, argument, and accountability not by guesses about how each sentence was produced. chroni.cl/4eDRdjg
In this week's Review newsletter: Jill Lepore warns that “the artificial state” alienates citizens from one another and weakens civic obligation. Subscribe here, it's free: chroni.cl/4srYE37
When a Wyoming microbiology student came down with troubling symptoms, his wife teamed up with chemistry professors to test the water in his coffee pot. Now, a grad-school colleague faces charges that she tried to poison him before attempting to escape to China. chroni.cl/4ynYoDi