New Books in Higher Education

The Discourse of Scholarly Communication (Lexington Books, 2023) examines the place and purpose of modern scholarship and its dialectical relationship with the ethos of Enlightenment. Patrick Gamsby argues that while Enlightenment/enlightenment is often used in the mottos of numerous academic institutions, its historical, social, and philosophical elements are largely obscured. Using a theoretical lens, Gamsby revisits the ideals of the Enlightenment alongside the often-contradictory issues of disciplinary boundaries, access to research, academic labor in the production of scholarship (author, peer reviewer, editor, and translator), the interrelationship of form and content (lectures, textbooks, books, and essays), and the stewardship of scholarship in academic libraries and archives. It is ultimately argued that for the betterment of the scholarly communication ecosystem and the betterment of society, anti-Enlightenment rules of scholarship such as ‘publish or perish’ should be dispensed with in favor of the formulation of a New Enlightenment.Patrick Gamsby is the Scholarly Communication Librarian and Cross-Appointed to the Department of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He previously worked in scholarly communications at Brandeis University and Duke University. Patrick holds a MLIS degree from the University of Western Ontario, a MES degree from York University, and a Ph.D. from Laurentian University. He is the author of two books - Henri Lefebvre, Boredom, and Everyday Life and The Discourse of Scholarly Communication - and he lives in St. John's, Newfoundland with his wife and two daughters.Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program and Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Containing research conducted and published over a half century, Negotiation, Identity and Justice: Pathways to Agreement (Routledge, 2023) by Dr. Daniel Druckman is divided into seven thematic parts that cover: the multifaceted career, flexibility in negotiation, values and interests, turning points, national identity, and process and outcome justice. It rounds off with a reflective and forward-looking conclusion. Each part is prefaced with an introduction that highlights the chapters to follow and the author has recorded a short video introduction to the book.The chapters comprise empirical, theoretical, and state-of-the-art articles. These essays offer an array of research approaches, which include experiments, simulations, and case studies, with topics ranging from boundary roles and turning points in negotiation to nationalism and war, and the way that research is used in skills training for diplomats and in the development of government policies. In addition, the book provides rare glimpses of behind-the-scenes networks, sponsors, and events, with personal stories that also make evident that there is more to a career than what appears in print. The articles chosen for inclusion are a small set of the total number of career publications by the author but are the ones that made a substantial impact in their respective fields. The concluding section looks back at how the author’s career connects to classical ideas and the value of an evidence-based approach to scholarship and practice. It also looks forward to directions for future research in six areas.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We speak with Richard Detweiler about his new book The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry and Accomplishment (MIT Press, 2021). This multi-year project, which entailed interviews with a national sample of over 1,000 college graduates aged 25-64, provides convincing evidence of the benefits the liberal arts in enabling individuals to lead more fulfilling lives and successful careers. He uses an innovative definition of the liberal arts which focuses on the distinctive: 1) purpose, 2) context, and 3) content of a liberal arts education, measuring the frequency and intensity of these elements across different higher education institutions. He also shares insights from his tenure as President of Hartwick College and the head of the Great Lakes College Association.David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Katherine Firth, academic at, Australia. We talk about the necessary trouble that people have when they write new knowledge. We also talk about the unnecessary trouble that people have when they imagine that this first sort doesn't exist. Firth is the co-author of How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble: A Practical Guide (Open UP, 2018).Katherine Firth : "Most people write to the computer screen. They write perhaps to their supervisor. But they don't actually have a concept of an audience beyond that, or their concept is just so huge and diffuse — Everybody in the whole wide world! Well, I really don't think that everybody in the whole wide world is particularly interested in this very technical paper on, you know, electromagnetic radiation. But there are, of course, people who care about this. You just need to identify who those people are, and then write to them. Expect those people to listen to you. Maybe go, when you're at conferences — go and talk to those people and see how when you explain things in one way, they really get it, but when you explain it in another way, they really don't. Then use in your writing the way that works." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drawing from his experiences of having belonged to the faculty, administrative, and presidential circles of the university, author Nicholas B. Dirks offers his nuanced and comprehensive reflections on the solutions for the most pressing issues facing universities today. These range from issues with free speech, interdisciplinary work, budgeting costs, internal politics, and the devaluing of the liberal arts. In a time where universities face fierce attacks from the political right and left and a distrust from the general public, Dirks defends their role in society, as key institutions that guard and create new knowledge to understand the world at large and drive meaningful change. In City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University (Cambridge UP, 2024), Dirks argues for a reimagination of the university to ensure its survival and relevance in the years to come, positioning him as a visionary leader in a time where higher education needs it the most.Nicholas B. Dirks is the current president and CEO of the renowned New York Academy of Sciences, one of the oldest scientific organizations in the United States. His notable past appointments include serving as the 10th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley from 2013 to 2017, and as the Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculty for Arts and Sciences at Columbia University.Ariadna Obregon is a PhD student at the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. On Twitter/X: @AriadnaObregn1  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode, which is co-hosted with Tandee Wang, features a conversation with Dr. Wendy Cheng, author of Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism. Published in November 2023 by the University of Washington Press, Island X delves into the compelling political lives of Taiwanese migrants who came to the United States as students from the 1960s through the 1980s.Often depicted as compliant model minorities, Island X reveals that many Taiwanese students were deeply political, shaped by Taiwan's colonial history, and influenced by the global social movements of their times. As activists, they fought to make Taiwanese people visible as subjects of injustice and deserving of self-determination. Under the distorting shadows of Cold War geopolitics, the Kuomintang regime and collaborators across US campuses attempted to control Taiwanese in the diaspora through extralegal surveillance and violence, including harassment, blacklisting, imprisonment, and even murder. Drawing on interviews with student activists and extensive archival research, Cheng documents how Taiwanese Americans developed tight-knit social networks as infrastructures for identity formation, consciousness development, and anticolonial activism. They fought for Taiwanese independence, opposed state persecution and oppression, and participated in global political movements.Raising questions about historical memory and Cold War circuits of power, Island X is a testament to the lives and advocacy of a generation of Taiwanese American activists. Our conversation today focuses on contextualizing Taiwanese student activism during the Cold War to provide greater nuance to existing frameworks of Asian American activism within Asian American studies.Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Tandee Wang (he/him) is a PhD student in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Larry Summers, Harvard economics professor and 71st US Secretary of the Treasury, joins the podcast for an in-depth discussion of his career at the highest levels of academic economics, economic policy, university leadership, and corporate America.Jon Hartley is an economics researcher with interests in international macroeconomics, finance, and labor economics and is currently an economics PhD student at Stanford University. He is also currently a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a research associate at the Hoover Institution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the late 1960s, as the United States was wracked by protests, assassinations, and political unrest, students in Washington State seized the moment. In Washington State Rising: Black Power on Campus in the Pacific Northwest (NYU Press, 2023), California State University, Bernardino, history professor Marc Robinson tells the story of African American students at Washington State University and the University of Washington, and how their activism transformed their campuses in from 1967 thru the early 1970s. By founding Black Student Unions and engaging in various forms of direct action, student Black Power activists at these two campuses confronted racism and inequality both on campus and in the surrounding cities of Seattle and Pullman. Robinson also describes how the very different contexts of the two campuses - one in a city with a politically active Black community, the other in an overwhelmingly white, rural, small town - shaped activist strategies and outcomes. While many histories of student activism in the 1960s focus on Berkeley and Columbia, Washington State Rising makes a strong case for looking at less well studied college protests to understand both Black history in the West and as a window into a tumultuous era in American history.Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and is the Assistant Director of the American Society for Environmental History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Claiming Space: Performing the Personal through Decorated Mortarboards (Utah State University Press, 2023) by Dr. Sheila Bock examines the growing tradition of decorating mortarboards at college graduations, offering a performance-centred approach to these material sites of display. Taking mortarboard displays seriously as public performances of the personal, this book highlights the creative, playful, and powerful ways graduates use their caps to fashion their personal engagement with notions of self, community, education, and the unknown future.The forms and meanings of these material displays take shape in relation to broader, ongoing conversations about higher education in the United States, conversations grounded in discourses of belonging, citizenship, and the promises of the American Dream. Integrating observational fieldwork with extensive interviews and surveys, Dr. Bock highlights the interpretations of individuals participating in this tradition. She also attends to the public framings of this tradition, including how images of mortarboards have grounded online enactments of community through hashtags such as #LatinxGradCaps and #LetTheFeathersFly, as well as what rhetorical framings are employed in news coverage and legal documents in cases where the value of the practice is both called into question and justified.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s book is: Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education (Broadleaf Books, 2024), by Dr. Jasmine L. Harris, which is an exploration of what it means to be a Black woman in higher education. Dr. Jasmine Harris shares her own experiences attempting to be a Vassar girl and reckoning with a lack of legacy and agency, while examining the day-to-day impacts on Black women as individuals, and the longer-term consequences to their professional lives, and the generational costs to entire families. Trial and error has been required of Black students to navigate systems of discrimination and disadvantage. But this book now offers useful support, illuminating the community of Black women dealing with similar issues. The author's story is not unusual, nor are her interactions anomalies. Black Women, Ivory Tower explores why.Our guest is: Dr. Jasmine L. Harris, who is associate professor of African American Studies and coordinator of the African American Studies Program in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio. A rising voice in the study of Black lives in the US, Dr. Harris's research and teaching focus on the experiences of Black people in predominantly white schools, specifically the social, physical, and economic impacts of their presence there. She has been published in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Women's Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also be interested in: Black Women, Ivory Tower discussion guide Microaggressions in the Classroom The Academic Life discussion of the book Presumed Incompetent Two Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices