By Margaret Olin. In the second meeting of my first graduate seminar at the art school in Chicago where I taught for more than two decades, the students became so enraged with one another over the interpretation of a story by Franz Kafka that bits of wadded-up paper began to fly about the room while I watched blissfully. More...

By Kathleen Dean Moore. It pains this old logic professor to read university officials’ arguments against divesting their institutions of investments in fossil fuels, not because their refusal to divest is wrong-headed, although I believe it is, but because their logic is so awful. More...

By Robert Zaretsky. "NO PHD."
So announced a license plate I glimpsed the other day — nestled, it so happened, in the rear end of a sinister, black Lamborghini. More...

By Richard Wolin. The philosopher Markus Gabriel is something of a wunderkind. Six years ago, at the tender age of 29, he was appointed to his current position as a professor of philosophy and chair of epistemology at the University of Bonn, making him the youngest holder of a philosophy chair in Germany. He is also at the forefront of an innovative, transnational philosophical current known as the new realism (loosely affiliated with speculative realism, whose foremost representative is the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux). With the English translation of his provocatively titled recent book, Why the World Does Not Exist, it won’t be long before his nimble mind makes a distinct imprint on North American philosophical circles. More...

By Keith Kahn-Harris. Well over a year since the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign withdrew its job offer to Steven Salaita, citing intemperate tweets and statements he made about the 2014 Gaza war, the decision continues to reverberate. More...

By Craig Lambert. George Scialabba is no wild man. A soft-spoken, introverted soul, he doesn’t drink or smoke; no alcohol, tobacco, or recreational drugs. Healthy, moderate eating (no red meat, and "a kind of cerebral Mediterranean diet") keeps Scialabba, at age 67, lean to a degree that is downright un-American. More...

By Karen MacGregor. With graduate joblessness rising and state funding dwindling, universities of technology are confronted by dual challenges – delivering entrepreneurship education and work-integrated learning to students, and themselves becoming more entrepreneurial – says Professor Irene Moutlana, vice-chancellor of Vaal University of Technology and deputy chair of the South African Technology Network, or SATN. More...

By Nick DeSantis and Goldie Blumenstyk. The U.S. Department of Education on Monday notified ITT Educational Services Inc. that it was placing the giant for-profit educator under tighter restrictions for access to federal student-aid money, saying the company had failed "to meet its fiduciary obligations." More...

By Katherine Mangan. For too many students, high-school diplomas are "tickets to nowhere" that offer "false assurances" that graduates are ready for college or a job, according to a report released on Monday. More...

By Kelly Field. If the departing secretary of education, Arne Duncan, has any regrets about his supervision of higher education, it’s not cracking down on "bad actors" in the for-profit-college sector sooner. More...