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Bylines
Below are links to some recent bylines by Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth.
Go Positive!
It's been more than a little depressing to listen to debate performances over the last couple of months, in which candidates seem to gain in popularity by refining a formula of indignation and hostility. "How dare you," says the candidate, puffing out his chest, wondering how any questioner could sink so low to ask about a character flaw. The same candidate then dives even lower to cast aspersions on anyone who might be considered a rival. [ Read More ]
Opportunity, Engagement and Confidence: Cures for the Civic Recession
The news about the American education system has been bleak over the last year—from elementary schools that seem “designed to fail” to for-profit universities that are scooping up borrowed tuition dollars without providing their graduates with much hope of gainful employment. No surprise then that the American public has grown increasingly suspicious of educators and their institutions. [ Read More ]
2011: Deficits, Equality and Innovation
In the first half of 2011, we heard the word “deficit” in wave after wave of political discourse. The Republicans used it as a signifier of Washington’s lack of fiscal self-control—of an intellectually and morally bankrupt government that spent our money without concern for the views of those who had earned it in the first place. The “deficit” was real, and it was also symbolic of a failure to maintain an economy that promised a reasonable opportunity for creating a better future. [ Read More ]
Resisting Inequality: Occupy Wall Street and Education
The Occupy Wall Street protests have become an important topic on college campuses. At Wesleyan, some of our students have joined the group in Zuccotti Park in New York, and others have found a variety of ways of expressing their support. Given the mainstream media's treatment of the movement, it's easy to mock the lack of clear policy initiatives or to roll one's eyes at the absence of leaders to express a neat list of demands. But in talking with students and reading some of the statements from the Occupy Wall Street participants, it seems to me that we get a pretty clear picture of their discontent. [ Read More ]
Innovative University
The free inquiry and experimentation of our education helps us to think for ourselves, take responsibility for our beliefs and actions, and be better acquainted with our own desires, our own hopes. [ Read More ]
Ten Years After: Commemoration Without Agenda
On this 10th anniversary of 9/11 let us simply acknowledge the claim that our painful memories still have on us. Let us recognize with piety that we still carry the traces of those traumatic events with us, and that we acknowledge their importance to us without trying to use them. [ Read More ]
Happy First (Labor) Day of Classes!
1 day ago ... Labor is on the mind of our students and their families in a more general sense this year. The awful job situation in the United States has lasted ... [ Read More ]
Budgeting for Greater Inequality
This week, while President Obama and House Speaker Boehner gave dueling speeches of blame and recrimination, a new report was released showing the extraordinary increase in the disparity of wealth between whites and nonwhites in the United States. The new data allows us to understand the stalemate in Washington over raising the debt ceiling from another perspective. And it indicates that the defense of racial and economic privilege under the rhetoric of "taking back our country" or of "living within our means" further undermines our political culture today as it starves future generations of cultural and economic opportunity. [ Read More ]
"Preach a Crusade Against Ignorance" -- Don't Sacrifice the Future!
Let us not ignore our responsibility to invest in the future by supporting education. We must not allow our representatives to protect tax breaks for the most advantaged while ignoring our responsibility to give the next generation the education they need. [ Read More ]
Our Desperate Need for Honest Leadership
Sensible government seems to have become a contradiction in terms. Democratic leaders have no ideas of their own, while Republican leaders are dedicated to protecting the rich -- not to fiscal responsibility. [ Read More ]
Midnight in America: Renewing the Pantheon
... I am hopeful that those who will shape the future will also have cultivated the ability to renew the pantheon of great work from the past ... [ Read More ]
America's Higher Education Resource
When it works well, our higher education sector offers a wide range of choices to students who hope to build on their education in different ... [ Read More ]
Colleges Must Ensure Quality Not Inequality
... Cultivation of specialization, powerful departments, and intellectual fragmentation are linked in an unholy alliance that undermines the ... [ Read More ]
A College Education: It's Not a Product; It's a Platform
Bill Gates has been calling for a targeted investment in the sciences and engineering. Steve Jobs recently emphasized the arts and ... [ Read More ]
Math and Science Study Alone Will Not Make Students More Competitive
... President Obama should realize that innovation in technology companies, automobile design, medicine or food production does not come only ... [ Read More ]
On Scholarship and Public Life
... I returned to Wesleyan University as president more than four years ago, and even though now some of this activism is directed against me, ... [ Read More ]
Allen Shawn's Twin: Overcoming Remoteness
... While acknowledging our separation from one another, Allen Shawn has made a brotherly gift that recalls the possibilities of connection ... [ Read More ]
Investing in Educated Innovation
... Obama has often repeated his goal for K-12 education: college preparedness -- but why make college the goal if students aren't going to ... [ Read More ]
Sowing The Rage
... Anger is routinely mistaken for caring, for intelligence, and, worst of all, for courage. But when you sow rage, you reap violence. [ Read More ]
Why We Teach
... Although as a university president I spent much of my time in meetings, my colleagues tell me that I'm happiest just after I come back from ... [ Read More ]
We Need to Create Trust
... Our frustration with Obama's leadership has not just been disappointment with specific policies that haven't worked. The frustration and the ... [ Read More ]
Cynics Need to Drop Their Fear, Contempt
... In this age of degraded political discourse and anonymously funded attack ads, it's easy to see the reasons for the cynical withdrawal from ... [ Read More ]
Virtuous Circle of Teaching and Research
Over the last thirty to forty years, higher education in America has viewed contributions to research as an essential part of its mission. In recent years the folly of this system has become increasingly evident… [ Read More ]
Labor Day and the Start of the Semester
On this Labor Day all of us working in higher education should remember those who won’t have to report this week at all because there aren’t enough jobs… [ Read More ]
The Arar Affair: Shades of Dreyfus
This week the Supreme Court refused without comment to hear the appeal of Maher Arar, a Canadian-Syrian citizen detained while changing planes in JFK, held in solitary confinement in the US before being shipped by our government to Syria, where he would be tortured repeatedly. [ Read More ]
Coming to the Defense of Liberal Education
It's a curious week when the New York Times runs two stories that defend traditional liberal arts education. And it's only Wednesday! [ Read More ]
Now That You've Been Admitted: Choose the Student Culture That Energizes You
In thousands of homes with high school seniors aspiring to study at selective schools, the time has come for making tough choices. The thick envelopes (or weighty emails) arrived a couple of weeks ago, and the month of April is decision time. Of course, for many the decision will be made on an economic basis. [ Read More ]
Remembering American Heroes
When we were kids, our aunt told us to "clean our plates, children are starving in Europe." In Europe? Where did she ever get that crazy idea, I wondered. Halfway through Richard Reeves' excellent Daring Young Men, I learned that all across America in the late 1940s mothers were saying something similar to their children. [ Read More ]
Cruelty, Freedom and the Politics of Health Care Reform
On the eve of the health care vote liberal columnist Paul Krugman wrote in the Times that "our system is unique in its cruelty," as he urged passage of the imperfect but still progressive bill. [ Read More ]
The Proper Role of Interdisciplinary Studies
A strategic planning process is valuable when it brings to the fore ideas that people already have about the direction of an institution but haven't articulated clearly. As our Chair of the Board Joshua Boger likes to say, "You don't make up a strategy, you discover the one you really mean to have." [ Read More ]
American Virtue?
When I began reading The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, I had the feeling of reliving a bad dream. The sordid and the sanctimonious, the crazy and the corrupt, the hypocrisy of those last years of the Clinton administration and, well, especially the hypocrisy were just awful to recall. [ Read More ]
Education: From Condescension to Respect
This week political science professor Gerard Alexander hit a chord (or was it a nerve?) with his Washington Post essay on "why liberals are so condescending." Despite the recent successes of the Tea Party movement, Scott Brown, and a filibuster-happy Senate, Alexander repeats the old refrain: We conservatives get no respect. [ Read More ]
For the State of the Union: Let's Learn from the Anger
Last week's election of the photogenic Scott Brown in Massachusetts has been greeted with stupefaction. How could the unaccomplished Brown take over the seat of the Lion of the Senate? [ Read More ]
Beyond Critical Thinking
The antivocational dimension of the humanities has been a source of pride and embarrassment for generations. The persistence of this reputed uselessness is puzzling given the fact that an education in the humanities allows one to develop skills in reading, writing, reflection, and interpretation that are highly prized in our economy and culture. [ Read More ]
College Admissions Anxieties
A couple of days ago on my university Blog someone wrote in: "The fact that being admitted into Wesleyan is even more difficult this year is great for Wes, but terrifying for people like me. Even though I applied ED 1 and will know in less than two weeks, it still is terrifying." [ Read More ]
Liberal Arts Education: From Clubbiness to Cosmopolitanism
Lately there has been much talk about a crisis in American higher education. Business leaders and army generals, artists and scientists are all trying to figure out how to build on what is working in our universities and to get rid of those things that have outlived their usefulness. What kind of college experience best prepares our young men and women for the challenges ahead? [ Read More ]
Remember the Maine Elections
The disappointment was clear enough. The turnout in Virginia and New Jersey ensured that the progressive wave some of us last year thought might wash across the country had a strong undertow, or at least a rip current. The noise came from the shrill predictions that now there is a fresh conservative tide returning to wash away the hopes for change. [ Read More ]
Bringing the Stories Together
The day before the election I attended our local Chamber of Commerce's annual Veterans' breakfast. One of our students who has received a new scholarship for vets was kind enough to attend with our Wesleyan University contingent... [ Read More ]
Participation as Education
Although universities have often been sites of great political agitation, students have rarely played such an important a role in electoral politics. Part of the reason this has changed, we know, is that Barack Obama has generated enormous excitement among young people across the country. [ Read More ]
In Praise of Poise
It was obvious that Senator McCain was doing whatever he could to get a rise out of his opponent, throwing everything from terrorist associations to the specter of class warfare (socialism!) at Barack. Obama smiled, occasionally shook his head with an air of bemusement, but generally refused to take the bait. [ Read More ]
"Trust" in the Economy and Electoral Politics
Nowadays we hear the word "trust" used all the time in relation to the credit crunch and the steep decline in stock markets. It's bad enough for the economy when a business can't provide credit to a consumer. No car loan, no sales; no sales, no dealership; no dealership, no factory and so on. [ Read More ]
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