August 19, 2025

This AI tool helps students learn constructive disagreement. While academics continue to consider the possible positive and negative implications of AI for university-based teaching and learning, there’s one AI tool that has educators very excited about its power: Sway. This is a tool that can not only help students engage in dialogue with each other about difficult subjects but that can in the process help them learn how to speak and listen in more respectful, productive ways. Learn more.

The censorious left has handed the baton to the censorious right. For years, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has been documenting cases of campus figures who are targeted for constitutionally protected speech. But the absolute numbers obscure a fascinating hand-off occurring between the political left and right that started around 2020: since then, documented attacks from the left have plummeted, while those from the right have trended upwards – especially since 2023. Read more.

HxA kicks off regional conferences with the first stop at CSU. More than 60 faculty, staff, and administrators from colleges and universities across the mountain west convened at Colorado State University in Fort Collins last week to discuss how to foster cultures of open inquiry across their campuses. Next up, HxA is heading to University of Maryland September 26-27 and Simon Fraser University on October 27. Learn more.

Member Perspectives

What Heterodox Academy Can Bring to a Campus - John McMillian & Andrew J. Cohen, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Performative Virtue-Signaling Has Become a Threat to Higher Ed - Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman, The Hill

The University Presidents Who Want to Fix Universities Before They Get Fixed - Jonathan H. Adler, Reason

The Myth of Antisemitism at Harvard - John K. Wilson, Inside Higher Ed

How to Tell if Something is AI-Written - Hollis Robbins, Anecdotal Value

For Your Eyes and Ears

David Stoll (Middlebury College), Rachel Adler (University of Texas Health Dan Antonio), Michael Jindra (Boston University), and Andrew Garder (University of Puget Sound) explore how anthropology can contribute to rebuilding a heterodox academic landscape by addressing challenges in contemporary American academia. Drawing on experiences across the discipline’s subfields, panelists highlight enduring principles and pathways to transcend current issues and envision anthropology’s role in fostering a vibrant, diverse, and heterodox future for higher education.

Something Extra

The AAUP’s 2024-25 Faculty Compensation Survey with data from 450,000 faculty members shows continuing decline of tenured and tenure-track faculty with corresponding increases in contingent faculty.

Bookmark for Later

• The Rapid Rise — and Precarious Future — of the Medical University [The Chronicle of Higher Education]
• Trump Order Aims to Politicize Decisions on Federal Science Grants [Science]
• A Better Model for College Accreditation [City Journal]
• Diversity Training Is Out. Dialogue Workshops Are In. [The Chronicle of Higher Education]
• The Elite-University Presidents Who Despise One Another [The Atlantic]

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