Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher...

Since 1925, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has been a pioneer in the field of Jewish studies. At the core of YIVO since its founding was its commitment to scholarship which supported the Jewish “folk.” This manifested in a variety of initiatives, including youth autobiogr ...  Show more

In this episode I discuss the book Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology (Berghahn, 2025) with co-editors David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab, a posthumous collection of writings by the late anthropologist Marcus Banks. Banks was a key t ...  Show more

Academic careers have long been associated with stability, prestige, and a clear path from graduate school to tenure. But in today’s universities, an increasing number of scholars find themselves trapped in precarious, low-paid sessional contracts - far from the secure careers th ...  Show more

How can traditional academic scholarship be disrupted by activist academics? How can we make space for those who are underrepresented and historically oppressed to come to academia as their authentic selves? How can the platform of academia create space for change in the world? I ...  Show more

Economist Michael D. Smith says universities are scrambling to protect a status quo that deserves to die. He tells Steve why the current system is unsustainable, and what’s at stake if nothing changes.

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Sam Harris speaks with Michael Roth about the state of higher education in the U.S. They discuss whether concerns about wokeness were overblown, how colleges should handle campus protests, where universities should draw the line on extreme political views, DEI, why Jews should be ...  Show more