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Student watching smoke emanating from the student center after 1969 protests.

The CUNY Experiment

The City University of New York has long stood at once for meritocratic uplift and for civil disobedience.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via New York Review of Books on May 23, 2024
Oil pumpjack in the rural southwest.

Public Universities Are Profiting In Billions From Industries On Stolen Indigenous Land

Extractive industries filling public university coffers on stolen land. Here's how 14 land-grant colleges took 8.2 million acres from 123 Indigenous nations.
by Robert Lee, Tristan Ahtone, Amanda Tachine, An Garagiola, Audrianna Goodwin, Maria Parazo Rose, Clayton Aldern via Grist on February 7, 2024
Deborah Taylor Mapp at her home in the Broad Creek neighborhood of Norfolk, Va.

The Long History of Universities Displacing Black People

The expansion of higher education in Virginia uprooted hundreds of black families.
by Louis Hansen via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 11, 2023
Christopher Newport University.

Erasing the “Black Spot”: How a Virginia College Expanded by Uprooting a Black Neighborhood

Sixty-plus years ago, the white leaders of Newport News, Virginia, seized the core of a thriving Black community to build a college.
by Brandi Kellam, Louis Hansen via ProPublica on September 5, 2023
Women with field hockey sticks in a physical education class circa 1920.

How the US College Went from Pitiful to Powerful

In its first century the American higher-education system was a messy, disorganised joke. How did it rise to world dominance?
by David Labaree via Aeon on October 11, 2017
A man tacks applications to Princeton University on a bulletin board
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The Rise of the College Application Essay

The essay component of American college applications has a long history, but its purpose has changed over time.
by Sarah Stoller via Made By History on July 11, 2024
Pro-Palestinian campus protest.
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Why Colleges Don’t Know What to Do About Campus Protests

Despite frequent litigation, U.S. courts have created a blurry line that puts administrators in an impossible situation.
by Jack Hodgson via Made By History on April 29, 2024
Sign reading "Welcome to the People's University for Palestine" at Harvard protest encampment

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

It’s not that there has been too much student protest. It’s that there has not been much, much more of it.
by Erik Baker via Boston Review on April 25, 2024
Black mother and son in front of their suburban house.

The Family Photographs That Helped Us Investigate How a University Displaced a Black Community

A longtime resident of Shoe Lane chronicled the life of his community as it was demolished by Christopher Newport University. His photographs helped a reporter seek accountability.
by Logan Jaffe via ProPublica on April 23, 2024
A view of the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla,. on Jan. 19, 2023.
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The History Behind the Right's Effort to Take Over Universities

The right has had qualms about universities since the 1930s.
by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd via Made By History on October 23, 2023
Signs on the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota last month.
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Florida is Trying to Roll Back a Century of Gains for Academic Freedom

The state wants to severely limit what professors can say in the classroom.
by Glenn C. Altschuler, David Wippman via Made By History on February 6, 2023
Illustration of a fist smashing a tiny blue academic building.

The 50-Year War on Higher Education

To understand today’s political battles, you need to know how they began.
by Ellen Schrecker via The Chronicle of Higher Education on October 14, 2022
Governor Ronald Reagan speaking to an audience about the higher education system.

The Origin of Student Debt

In 1970 Roger Freeman, who also worked for Nixon, revealed the right’s motivation for coming decades of attacks on higher education.
by Jon Schwarz via The Intercept on August 25, 2022
Billionaire Charlie Munger and the UCSB dorm "Charlie's Vision"

California’s Hell Dorm Is What Happens When You Outsource Public Space to Billionaires

You get no windows. You take what you can get.
by Alexander Luckmann via Slate on November 2, 2021
UC Berkeley campus

The Prophet of Academic Doom

Robert Nisbet predicted the managerialism that has brought universities low. But he also saw a way out.
by Ethan Schrum via The Chronicle of Higher Education on October 19, 2021
The 1.25-million-square-foot USC Village residential complex in Los Angeles.

The Rise of the UniverCity

Historian Davarian Baldwin explains how universities have come to wield the kind of power that were once hallmarks of ruthless employers in company towns.
by Davarian L. Baldwin, Meagan Day via Jacobin on September 2, 2021
Students at Colby College

Harvard–Riverside, Round Trip

In the contemporary United States, higher education does more to exaggerate than relieve class and cultural divisions.
by Mitchell L. Stevens via Public Books on August 11, 2021

It’s Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel

Democracy requires something more than a handful of super-rich universities.
by Matt Stoller, Sam Haselby via The Chronicle of Higher Education on May 28, 2021
UNC president with Eleanor Roosevelt
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A Legendary UNC Leader Displayed the Benefit of Academic Freedom — And the Limits

Academic freedom can help universities flourish, while political compromises can hold them back.
by William A. Link via Made By History on May 26, 2021
Deserted farm road through corn fields.

Land-Grab Universities

Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system.
by Tristan Ahtone, Robert Lee via High Country News on March 30, 2020
U.V.A. Inauguration Day 1921

Jefferson’s Shadow

On the occasion of its bicentennial, and in the wake of racist violence in Charlottesville, UVA confronts its history.
by Brendan Wolfe via Medium on January 29, 2020

GMU to Erect Memorial Honoring More Than 100 People Enslaved by George Mason

The structure will span 300 feet and is expected to be unveiled on the Fairfax City campus in 2021.
by Lauren Lumpkin via Washington Post on September 28, 2019

The Experience That Taught Me Blackface and Klan Hoods Are Forms of Racial Terror

A childhood lesson in the backseat of a 1973 Mustang.
by Tanisha C. Ford via Tanisha C. Ford on February 6, 2019

The Decline of Historical Thinking

For the past decade, history has been declining more rapidly than any other major, even as more and more students attend college.
by Eric Alterman via The New Yorker on February 4, 2019

How Big Bonuses for Winning Coaches Became a Tradition in College Football

These bonuses are not a reaction to a multi-billion-dollar market that rewards winning – they are the foundation of it.
by Jasmine E. Harris via The Conversation on December 20, 2018

The Dramatic Fall of Silent Sam, UNC’s Confederate Monument

Protesters toppled the 1913 statue Monday, making it the latest Civil War memorial to be removed by government or demonstrators.
by David A. Graham via The Atlantic on August 21, 2018

Have Elite US Colleges Lost Their Moral Purpose Altogether?

The ethical formation of citizens was once at the heart of the US elite college. Has this moral purpose gone altogether?
by Chad Wellmon via Aeon on August 16, 2018
The April 1966 cover of “Ramparts," featuring a caricature of Madame Nhu dressed as a Michigan State University cheerleader

The University That Launched a CIA Front Operation in Vietnam

A Vietnamese politician and an American academic led Michigan State University into a nation-building experiment and pulled America deeper into war.
by Eric Scigliano via Politico Magazine on March 25, 2018

The GOP’s Long History With Black Colleges

Could President Trump actually win over the leaders of historically black colleges and universities?
by Leah Wright Rigueur, Theodore R. Johnson III via Politico Magazine on February 27, 2017
Typewriter with keys that have the letters "IA" on each of them.

How Iowa Flattened Literature

With help from the CIA, Paul Engle’s writing students battled Communism and eggheaded abstraction. The damage to writing still lingers.
by Eric Bennett via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 10, 2014
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