President of Wesleyan University. (grand)father, husband, author, professor. Defender of academic freedom, liberal education and democracy.
"Authoritarianism doesn’t have to involve men in suits dragging people into cars...Orban showed that critics — or pockets of independence — can be rendered pliable by making them believe that the smart move is to affirmatively sacrifice some of their independence" @yale.edu wapo.st/3RW4HPo
Opinion | Yale trustees, history is watching youA lesson from Hungary: Boards don't capitulate to authoritarians. The people on them do.wapo.stRead @bardcollege.bsky.social prez @jabannandale.bsky.social "One fears that by the time US academic leaders understand the implications of our current retreat, the country’s leadership in higher education, like in so many other fields, will be lost." www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/even...
Even in the Trump era, abandoning HE’s civic mission is not an optionA room full of international educators half a world away reminded me what my priorities as an acting college president should be, says Jonathan Beckerwww.timeshighereducation.comWhite House authoritarian vision for #HigherEd clear at @Smithsonian @SmithsonianSec notes “It scares me when people aren’t brave enough to face their history. And in some ways you have to face it anyway.” @historians.org @Aacu.org @theFIREorg.bsky.org @aaup.org www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/u...
Inside Trump’s Ideological Fight With the Smithsonianwww.nytimes.comOn July 4 I’ll participate in a public reading of the Declaration, & I’ll thank my lucky stars that I live in a country where the links between learning & civic participation are broadly valued & where freedom of speech—linked to freedom of thought—is still cherished www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2...
Higher Education at America’s 250thwww.wesleyan.edu“I’m an original,” he said. “What I’m going to wear is something that says freedom.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/04/u...
How Do You Celebrate America’s 250-Year Experiment? However You Want.www.nytimes.comRead @jenszalai.bsky.social “After all, putting [cruelty]… first doesn’t have to mean that you give up imagining what could come after you denounce it. One can stare hard at reality as it currently exists and still propose a way forward.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/b... via @nytimes.com
Liberals Are Preaching Moral Values. What Took Them So Long?www.nytimes.comRead @mollyjongfast.bsky.social “When Mr. Trump’s authoritarianism is all but underwritten by well-liked public figures and all but ignored by others, its toxic tenets start to look like politics as usual.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/o...
Opinion | If These Celebrities Are Democracy’s Last Hope, We’re in Troublewww.nytimes.comA basic educational idea (in France) “What counts most,” he said, “is an individual’s capacity to understand and grasp ideas.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/w...
What Does It All Mean? Once a Year, French Students Try to Explain.www.nytimes.comRead @fieldsmeyer.com & @juliaangwin.com : “At precisely the moment conventional wisdom would say to retreat into the ease of a smaller, more cautious, more guarded life, people facing authoritarianism made their community bigger.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/o... via @nytopinion.nytimes.com
Opinion | The State of American Resistance Is Stronger Than You Thinkwww.nytimes.comLobbying against Derrida and relativism, no doubt: “Every Ivy League institution reported increases in legal fees, lobbying bills or both….Vanderbilt’s chancellor, estimated his time in Washington had roughly tripled in 2025.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/u...
Legal and Lobbying Costs Surge as Universities Face Trump Pressurewww.nytimes.comAn extraordinary memory, a more extraordinary heart. “Each book of “Paradise Lost” was like a “gothic cathedral,” he said, that he could enter by closing his eyes. “I’ll tell you,” he added, “it’s very useful at the dentist.” @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/a...
John Basinger, Who Memorized All 12 Books of ‘Paradise Lost,’ Dies at 92www.nytimes.com"Practicing education..is like practicing democracy: Both are collaborative, experimental paths of improvement. Both depend on inclusion rather segregation. Both are very much now endangered. If we don’t defend education and protect democracy, we will lose them" www.wesleyan.edu/about/news/2...
President Michael S. Roth ’78: ’Expanding Your Circles of Curiosity and Wonder Enhances Your Lives’www.wesleyan.eduRead @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social prof Andrew Curran “On one level, this is admirable: We are, after all, one species. Yet this powerful ideal has sometimes served as a shield against self-examination. The logic is simple: no race, no problem.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/o...
Opinion | The Brutal History That France Prefers to Ignore Is Being Heard at Lastwww.nytimes.comSkylar Mitchell “When the pendulum appears to have swung back to antagonism toward racial equity, H.B.C.U.s like Spelman preserve the intellectual and civic inheritance of Black Americans precisely when the broader culture moves to forget it.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/o...
Opinion | The College Where I Wasn’t an Afterthoughtwww.nytimes.comRead @dsallentess.bsky.social “The reflective patriot appreciates the power of free institutions to open pathways of possibility, while bringing cleareyed realism to where the country has and hasn’t lived up to its ideals, along with embracing correction and reform” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/o...
Opinion | Nothing Beats Polarization Like Civics Educationwww.nytimes.comCarla Sosenko on “proximity without belonging” on Long Island: a “place forever caught, like the whole country, between a vision of who we aspire to be and an anxiety about who we really are.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/o... via @nytopinion.nytimes.com
Opinion | Why So Many TV Bad Guys Come From Long Islandwww.nytimes.comGeorge Orwell: “Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves?” www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...
Some Thoughts on the Common Toad | The Orwell Foundation"Is it wicked to take a pleasure in Spring and other seasonal changes?"www.orwellfoundation.com