Academe Today

Administration

Behind Trump’s Alleged Loyalty Push, a Leadership Lesson

The president’s purported effort to secure personal allegiance from the FBI director, whom he would later fire, illustrates the delicate and fraught practice of cultivating loyalty.

Faculty

Laura Kipnis Is Sued Over Portrayal of Graduate Student in Book on Campus ‘Sexual Paranoia’

A chapter of the book discusses the plaintiff’s relationship with a philosopher who later resigned from Northwestern. The plaintiff accuses Ms. Kipnis of falsely portraying her as "lying, manipulative, and litigious."

Curriculum

Struggling Mills College Looks to a ‘Signature Experience’ to Boost Its Fortunes

The California women’s college, facing a financial emergency, is turning to a curricular strategy that a number of other small colleges have employed to sharpen their profiles among prospective students.

Teaching

Do Your Students Learn by Rote? Or Can They Recognize Patterns?

A tool developed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis shows whether chemistry students tend to extrapolate from concepts or rely on memorization. The difference can predict how well they fare academically.

The Ticker

Trump’s Budget Could Eliminate Public-Service Loan Forgiveness. Here’s What to Know.

In addition, the proposed budget would reportedly cut funding in half for the federal work-study program and would sharply reduce grants focused on career and technical education.

Research

NIH Is Firm on Plan to Limit Per-Person Grant Awards

The agency’s director says new data show that researchers’ productivity tends to decline once they hold at least three major grants.

Chronicle Focus

In a new feature, available to individual subscribers only, The Chronicle offers carefully curated collections of articles on important issues in higher education. So far, there are nearly 25. Here are a couple of examples:

Dealing With Controversial Speakers on Campus

Presentations of provocative ideas have led to debates over free speech and have sometimes even sparked violence on campuses. This 32-page collection gives an overview of how college leaders have responded.

What’s Happening in Remedial Education

Concerns about remedial courses have led to new strategies for preparing students for college-level coursework. The 10 articles in this collection examine how some of those ideas are working.

Commentary

How Missouri Used Shared Governance to Preserve Free Speech on Campus

The university, torn by conflict, built trust and crafted a workable campus-speech policy by relying on openness and the combined wisdom of faculty and administrators.

The Chronicle Review

The Myth of the Muslim World

The 19th-century European project of constructing a monolithic “Muslim world” was bolstered by Muslim intellectuals themselves, a new book explains.

Lingua Franca

Fulsome Praisin’ Blues

Ben Yagoda examines the changing meaning of “fulsome.”  

The Two-Year Track

The ‘Realistic’ Research Paper

How to use problem-solving and role-playing to help students write about something that matters to them.

Vitae

We Keep Ignoring the Audience

Teaching graduate students to pay attention to whom they’re writing for could go a long way toward improving academic writing.