Whether or not madness seems like the right word for such a state of mind, Barbara K. Lipska's The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery is likely to make a certain impression on the reader approaching middle age or well into it, writes Scott McLemee. More...
A Mind at the End of Its Tether
The Hunger Project
You do not expect to find much good news in a book with the words “mass starvation” in the title. Dread feels appropriate, maybe obligatory. But Alex de Waal’s Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Polity) makes some encouraging points, and it seems appropriate to start with them, just to deprive pessimism of its home-court advantage. More...
Race and Foreign Language
Deborah Parker describes how it feels to be an Asian faculty member in Italian, a field in which there are very few minorities, and how greater diversification offers a way forward. More...
The Costly Downside to Ditching AP
While the program has its downsides, schools looking to give their students a more equal footing as college candidates shouldn’t overlook the benefits, argues Ali Lincoln. More...
The Problem That Would Not Be Tolerated Elsewhere
Despite a silence that is “brutal,” the medical profession has known for decades that significant numbers are being sexually harassed on campuses, argues Billie Wright Dziech. More...
Snowflakes and Free Speech on Campuses
Shawna Shapiro surveys students in the wake of a controversy at her institution and discovers insights into what’s missing in the discourse. More...
For refugees in Kenya, an education in hope
Techno-News Blog. The Kakuma Refugee Camp, 80 miles from anywhere in northwest Kenya, is a world apart, a holding center for thousands dispossessed by war and conflict. Opportunity knocks rarely here, but a once-obscure New Hampshire university has made it the idealistic focus of its global plans. More...
A college program that ‘never ends’
Techno-News Blog. College that “never ends” may be the future, according to a Washington Post story describing a new University of Michigan program that offers scholarships for students to come back and take courses throughout their lives. More...
Canvas Catches, and Maybe Passes, Blackboard
Techno-News Blog. Canvas has unseated Blackboard Learn as the leading LMS at U.S. colleges and universities, according to new data from MindWires Consulting. More...
Who shoulders most of nation’s ~$1.5 trillion in student debt? Women
Techno-News Blog. Women owe about $890 billion of the country’s $1.48 trillion student loan debt, nearly double the $490 billion owed by men, placing them at a financial disadvantage as they begin their careers, according to a recently released report from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). More...