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Stephanie M. Lee
Chronicle of Higher Education
A month ago, 10 high-profile scholars released a document — titled “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences” — that lit up a million scholarly group chats.
Six days after the report went online, the AAA fired back with a full-throated defense. “Anthropologists welcome rigorous critique of the discipline,” wrote its president, [Princeton anthropology professor] Carolyn M. Rouse. “What we cannot accept is a sweeping verdict about anthropology’s intellectual culture, scholarly practices, and professional norms built on selective evidence and issued without consultation. The Chronicle asked her about her views on the Vanderbilt report and the questions it raises about her field.
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Faith in higher education continues to plummet, and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)—the nation’s leading organization representing faculty interests and a longstanding voice on academic freedom and university governance—has decided to train its guns on the growing movement to establish civic education centers at public universities. The AAUP’s objections amount to a single, unlovely demand: we get to decide what students learn, and nobody else gets a vote.
Since faculty voted in may to proctor in-person exams, national news outlets and some alumni have decried the end of Princeton’s 133-year-old tradition of unsupervised testing, but students, faculty, and recent graduates say the conversation within the campus community has been mild.
Professor George explained that he does not believe there is “one single uniquely correct model for colleges and universities.” The success of College of the Ozarks demonstrates the strength of its distinctive mission—not the need for every college to adopt the same model.
