The University Has a Problem
Grad school sexual harassment, "Gym Crow" on campus, and more
February 17, 2022
Sexual Harassment and Higher Ed
“My own experience of sexual harassment never materialized into a full-blown investigation, although I was offered that choice. But that is part of the problem: it was made clear to me that the decision to follow through was entirely up to me—the ultimate neoliberal gesture of resignation by an elite university with nothing but resources at their disposal.” A culture of abuse is an all-too-familiar story in academia, Hannah Leffingwell writes. What are we going to do about it? (February 15, 2022)
Remembering bell hooks
“Walking up and down Sixth Avenue, two Black feminist flaneurs , we moved through New York City’s West Village arm-in-arm.” Judy Pryor-Ramirez pays tribute to her friend bell hooks, the public intellectual for whom love was an action and reading was a call to participate. (February 16, 2022)
Monica Gehlawat shares how hooks’s theory of beauty aligns art with broader social responsibility. “With singular examples from her own life—her grandmother’s quilt-making, the luxurious feel of fine fabrics like cashmere or silk, the care given to the planting of flowers, or the intoxicating smell of lemon verbena soap—hooks demonstrates that the discovery and cultivation of beauty in everyday life start with volition to recognize its value.” (February 14, 2022)
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Campus versus City
“Campus security is not about safety. It’s about brand management. For example, when I talked to students at the University of Chicago, they said, ‘Right now, there is a two-tier policing system whereby, if a campus student and a community member commit the same infraction, the student would see the Dean of Students and the resident would go through the criminal justice system.’” Davarian L. Baldwin talks to Claire Potter about the troubled relationship between universities and neighborhoods. (February 15, 2022)
Read an excerpt from Davarian L. Baldwin’s new book, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities, out now with Bold Type Books. (February 15, 2022)
Loneliness
Faced by the solitude of a socially distanced ballgame, Christian Sheppard finds companionship in Hannah Arendt’s analysis of loneliness as an intellectual experience—a problem of thinking as well as feeling. “Loneliness makes you sad, but also dull, or to use Arendt’s favored term, ‘banal.’” (February 16, 2022)
In Memoriam
“He never flinched, nor did he ever cease trying to nudge the American left away from the recurrent tendency of its most militant members to snatch, through infighting, defeat from the jaws of a potential, albeit incremental victory.” Jim Miller remembers the late Todd Gitlin, in a preface to Gitlin’s 2020 argument for left-wing solidarity. (February 15, 2022)