Education

By Wendy Brown, UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science:

"In 1917 and 1919, at the invitation of University of Munich students, Max Weber delivered two public lectures, 'Science as a Vocation' and 'Politics as a Vocation.'"

By Jennifer Lee, current Member in the School of Social Science: 

"Affirmative action is on trial again. This time, opponents of race-conscious college admission practices are claiming that Asian Americans are hurt by it. The plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which presented oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Monday, allege that Harvard holds Asian American applicants to higher academic standards and rates them lower than other students on personal characteristics, such as fit, courage and likability."

By Joan Wallach Scott, Professor Emerita in the School of Social Science:

"In his recent essay in these pages on the vexed question of 'presentism' in the discipline of history, David Bell offers a soothing alternative to the American Historical Association president James Sweet’s clumsy dismissal of 'presentism' as a deviation from the true path of historical scholarship."

"The halls of academia may appear to be overrun by battles over academic freedom, free speech, identity politics, cancel culture and overreaching wokeness. But why does it look that way? And what are the real causes? The influential political theorist Wendy Brown has spent her career studying the very ideas — those of identity, freedom and tolerance — that are central to current debates about what’s happening on college campuses across the country, as well as to the attacks they’re undergoing from within and without."

"Published in 2015, Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos was a major theoretical contribution to the study of neoliberalism. Since then, the neoliberal order has been rocked by a series of crises: among them the rise of right-wing, authoritarian regimes across the world; rapidly intensifying ecological devastation; and the COVID-19 pandemic that is now entering its third year."

“Our whole education is a process of confrontation between our imagination and the reality of established facts,” Institute Director and Leon Levy Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf tells the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. “I think the greatest scientists have such an intense curiosity that they’re not discouraged by the current practice of the field and they push the boundaries of knowledge.”

Four science writers, including frequent Director's Visitor Siobhan Roberts, explain how the impasse in math and science instruction runs deeper than test scores or the latest educational theory. What can we learn from the best teachers on the front...

Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences, discusses math, war, the human brain, the education system, and the Orion Project in an interview with Business Insider. Read more http://ow.ly/mI6i3044d4h.

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Institute Director and Leon Levy Professor, discusses theoretical physics, art, and education in an interview with Nautilus magazine.