In Celebration of Excellence: Glenn Loury, Rick Hess, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and a rowdy collection of hot spots in our Shortstack

When Joe Klein exclaimed (see here) that the “E” in DEI should stand for excellence, I thought of PTW's mission statement, attributed to Aristotle: “Excellence doesn' happen by accident." We're off.

Apr 03, 2024

Glenn Loury on race, racism—and all the rest

This man has been around the academic block a few times, and when he says, “I hate affirmative action. I don’t just disagree with it, I don’t just think it’s against the 14th amendment. I hate it,” you’ll want to sit up and pay attention. And next you’ll want to read his new book, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. Loury is a professor of economics at Brown, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a frequent podcaster at Substack, and a pater noster of things Black—and white—in both higher and lower education. His recent conversation with Amy Wax, the University of Pennsylvania law professor just censured by a faculty committee for words creating a “hostile learning environment” (see here), is an amazingly in-depth discussion of what’s wrong and right— mostly wrong, in their view —about DEI and identity politics and what they believe these two concepts are doing to academic freedom. (For background, see here.) Loury calls the Penn report on Wax “a primitive shambolic report that they should be ashamed of,” and shows himself ready to engage the fiery Wax on all the substantive issues, inviting her to rise above her “racist comments” problem. Loury’s podcast later that week, Colorblind Law in a Race-Obsessed Nation with frequent podcast partner John McWhorter, a New York Times columnist and author of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021), starts fast as these two Black academics (McWhorter teaches at Columbia) immediately take up substantive questions by way of small talk—speaking of McWhorter’s lack of a good mic because he’s vacationing in Key West (“at a very nice rental property”), critiquing the Oscars (neither very good on celebrity shenanigans or “ the dresses”) by digging into American Fiction (minute 6:50) in a knowledgeable, nuanced, and lively way, among many other topics; conversation between two successful, articulate Black academics about racial issues of our times. In short, Loury’s voice—and mind—should not be missed in these parlous times for education.

Sources

I hate affirmative action (Substack)

Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative (Marginal Revolution)

The DEI Witch Hunt at Penn Law | Glenn Loury & Amy Wax (Glenn Show)

Dear President Magill (U of Pennsylvania Faculty Senate)

Leaked documents shed new light on recommended Amy Wax sanctions (Daily Pennsylvanian)

Prof. Amy Wax is back at it again with her racist takes (Reddit)

Colorblind Law in a Race-Obsessed Nation (Substack)

PUBLIC TRUST

Great Journalism Goes to College

Paideia Times Weekly, the recent heir to Paideia Times Quarterly, monitors dozens of publications and organizations, mostly American, from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to Time magazine (see here for the official list, which needs updating, for news about higher education and its related disciplines (see here for those sections, including my favorite, External Orders.) In the quarterly days (see here for past issues), our small team of “clippers” selected some 500 stories per issue, nearly 100 of which were chosen to create our 30 “stories” for a single issue. Our writers have become expert at the art of summary, an alchemy in the writing world (there should be a Pulitzer!) of turning about five published articles, sometimes containing several thousand words, into several hundred of them, hopefully fewer, to convey the best of the best. Nowhere in this process do we close our eyes and roll the dice (well, maybe once or twice). As we say in our mission statement (here in full), thank you, Aristotle, Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives— choice, not chance, determines your destiny. Choice. A bete noir for teacher unions -- an opportunity for both reformers and the Aristotle of baseball, Yogi Berra: “I came to a fork in the road and took it.”

In this issue’s celebration of excellence, we give shout-outs to the hundreds of shoe-leather reporters—and their digerati brothers and sisters—who bring the stories of higher education home. But we also want to call attention to two very special national magazines whose pages this past year have been on fire with their attentiveness to America’s singular national treasure, its colleges and universities and their importance to our national security: The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

The main point here is how these two prominent magazines—The Atlantic, founded in 1857, and The New Yorker, founded in 1925—have jumped on education, publishing over 30 stories between the two of them, by PTW’s informal count (15 each) in just the last year. The Further Reading list below—from newest (The Atlantic on March 27 and The New Yorker on March 11) to oldest (New Yorker on April 3, 2023, and Atlantic on November 21, 2023), provides an exquisite year in review of America’s education system, including of course, one of the more historic events in higher education, when a congressional committee, last December, drove three ivy league college presidents, all women, out of their presidential suites.

EXTERNAL ORDERS

Shortstack: 2U may leave Nasdaq, $31m in cuts at Marquette, Craziest college admissions season ever, and more.

2U at risk of being removed from Nasdaq (Higher Ed Dive)
School Closures During Pandemic Set Students Back More Than Half a Year in Math, Analysis Finds (Daily Signal)
Third Way Statement on the Postsecondary Student Success Act (Third Way)
On campus, Jewish and Muslim students fear for their safety (GBH News)
Are NCAA Athletes Amateurs Anymore? (Wall Street Journal)
Education Department Botches College Financial Aid. Again. (Wall Street Journal)
These are the states with the highest student enrollment rates (University Business)

New Mexico Governor signs nearly $1 billion college trust fund into law (Denver Gazette)

More students are applying to NC’s HBCUs. What’s driving the trend? (News&Observer)

College is still worth it, research finds—although these majors have the lowest rate of return (CNBC)

What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later (New York Times)
Inside the Craziest College-Admissions Season Ever (New York)
Who Would Want to Go to a College Like This? (New York Times)
Marquette announces $31M in cuts over 6 years (Higher Ed Dive)

GOVERNANCE

A Reformer’s Reformer: Rick Hess Seeks a ‘Substantive Path for American Education’

Frederick M. Hess, a leading education reformer, author, and political scientist, writing with his research assistant Michael Q. McShane in the March 5 Washington Examiner Magazine, talk about “the need for a conservative vision for education.” But that vision may not be what many educators would expect. “In our polarized, very online world,” they write, “it’s all too easy to imagine that those who disagree with us are not just wrong but evil.” The writers, who started their careers as high school teachers, decades apart, want to “cut through today’s shoutfests and sloganeering and steer our way toward a more serious, substantive path for American education.”

If PTW were giving awards, Hess, like Loury, would receive one for excellence. A senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), he is also one of the nation’s senior education policy wonks. He is also an executive editor of Education Next (featured in our TK issue), host of the popular Education Week blog Rick Hess Straight Up, a Forbes senior contributor, and contributing editor to National Review. He holds a Ph.D. in Government and an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum from Harvard and is author of many books, including The Same Thing Over and Over, Education Unbound, Common Sense School Reform, Revolution at the Margins, and, just published last month, Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K-12, and College, also with McShane as co-author (see here for a wonderful interview with Hess, his powerful practicality on full display).

Hess, in The Dispatch, writes about critical problems facing Harvard University, long considered the gold standard, while headlining his story, “Don’t Burn Down Harvard.” His is practical advice, where leading institutions “should be places where knowledge is preserved, truth is pursued, ideas are debated, and accomplished scholars tutor talented students.” Also in March, in Education Week, Hess says that one significant problem is the education community’s “trouble understanding or engaging with those on the right.” While progressives often seek to “make students agents of social change,” conservatives believe that teachers should “help students master academic knowledge, cultivate character, and become responsible citizens.”

Finally, it is worth remembering what the humble Hess just tweeted the other day, “It’s useful to recognize that those regarded as education oracles can be as conflicted and uncertain as the rest of us.”

---Patrick Keeffe

Sources

A Conservative Vision for Education Reform (Washington Examiner Magazine)

Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K-12, and College (Teachers College Press)

Defending Ideas (Sutherland Institute)

Don’t Burn Down Harvard (The Dispatch)

Why Educators Often Have It Wrong About Right-Leaning Parents (Education Week)

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