Nicolai J. Foss’ Post

In a heated higher education environment due to polarization and balancing academic freedom, inclusion, and freedom of speech, Danielle Allen gives practical advice for enhancing understanding and fostering intellectual debate in college campuses as well as for resolving conflict and steering collective organizations and workplaces into a common vision. 1. The purpose of an academic institution is to promote free inquiry Finding the best argument on any given question, hearing all different perspectives on different sides. Ensuring no partisan views take up more time. 2. Conflict resolution at college campuses and at the workplace The end is not to rectify past wrongs, but to move forward for greater understanding. Accusation is not a path to collaboration. What and how questions engage. Why questions - why are you saying this, why are you doing this - yield defensive reactions. 3. Before replying, you have to understand what you just heard. Students in Allen's class address each other by name and they have to repeat back what they heard from a classmate. You can't respond unless you have understood, and confirmed it, correctly. Unsurprisingly, most of the time people haven't understood each other correctly. 4. Socratic questions provide explanatory depth. It usually allows for people to self-correct. The right kind of question results in an articulation that allows to see flaws in an argument (or shallow or wrong understanding). 5. Vivid vision to connect abstract answers to personal experiences How to communicate abstract thinking to an audience: use mental time travel. Your vision was implemented successfully - how does the world look different? Or a quick story or anecdote that will illustrate what it would look like.

Physical distance from a college can be a significant barrier to enrollment, and even more so for Black, Hispanic and lower-income students. This is smart research by Riley Acton and her coauthors. For me, it offers yet another reason why diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and professionals are so critical, as they can offer tailored strategies to help these students access #highered. https://lnkd.in/exUjZmZs

🚨NEW: Self-censorship by faculty isn’t just for conservatives anymore. Liberal faculty are feeling the pressure now, too. Academic freedom is “deteriorating” according to a new survey from Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research. These new data signal that the dominant trend of conservative faculty being more likely to self-censor than liberal faculty may be changing. 🎓 What will the future of academic freedom look like? Get the full story from Nicole Barbaro Simovski, Ph.D. and stay updated on academic freedom trends via our newsletter (linked below). #HigherEducation #AcademicFreedom #EducationReform #Newsupdates #Selfcensorship #Academicnews #Politicalnews

Thank you to Scholars at Risk for compiling Free to Think, the annual report of its Academic Freedom Monitoring Project. This year's report details 391 attacks on scholars, students, and institutions in 51 countries, including the United States. As the report notes, these attacks "impact all of us by damaging higher education’s unique capacity to drive the social, political, cultural, and economic development from which we all benefit." Read the report at https://lnkd.in/eBV_Qrp2.

Why Are Graduates More Socially Liberal? Estimating the Effect of Higher Education on Political Values Through Variation in University Experience "Using panel estimation methods, it finds that graduates of arts, humanities and social science subjects become more socially liberal than those studying other subjects, even when accounting for institutional variation, mobility, contextual effects and time-invariant confounding. It therefore makes the case that the effect of university on political values should be considered in part a learning effect: whereby disciplines affect individuals’ worldviews during the ‘impressionable years’." https://lnkd.in/d7NvcxQM

With deep concern and anxiety, I share with you, my latest newspaper piece on how the Departmental Committees of the BCL may eventually bring North South University down to its knees. Party based student politics in private universities is alarming, and I can only hope that the article is sufficiently convincing. I humbly request that you please share the write-up, with private university high-ups or anyone it may concern.

From PRI’s 2024 Sacramento policy conference, listen to this panel discussing the implosion of academic rigor in California’s schools, and how that affects California’s students – particularly those most vulnerable – and impacts the state’s economic competitiveness:

A new PACE brief by Alexandria Hurtt and Michal Kurlaender at University of California, Davis - School of Education along with Christina Sun and Baiyu Zhou at University of California, Davis - Department of Economics examines California high school seniors’ preparation, plans, and concerns for college, drawing on responses to a May 2023 survey. Of the 9,200 seniors planning to enroll in college the following fall, most felt adequately prepared for college, but many were concerned about being able to afford tuition and living expenses or worried about academic performance. https://lnkd.in/g8KPzDNE

Tomorrow! Don’t miss this important conversation with PEN America and Magna Charta Observatory, hosted at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center. Hear from experts about challenges facing university autonomy and academic freedom, and successful responses that will enable higher education institutions to persevere. Learn more and register here: https://lnkd.in/e4sJyRHR #academicfreedom #freedomtolearn

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