By . A couple of years ago, Lila McDowell wrote a piece for The Chronicle that described “critical friends” as an essential part of managing the division inherent in interdisciplinary research. Critical friends, she wrote, are the people who challenge us to reconceptualize the obvious—the colleagues and mentors we rely on most, the ones who pay us the courtesy of letting us know when our writing is fuzzy or our arguments are weak. I’ve remembered this phrase during recent discussions in Professor Davidson’s MOOC on the history and future of higher education. More...