Wesleyan in the News: October 2025
President Michael S. Roth ’78 appeared on CNN This Morning to discuss the White House’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” on Oct. 23. “The White House wants schools to say they agree with the White House’s approach to education, speech, and research,” Roth said. “That kind of loyalty oath in exchange for preferential treatment for research is really an anathema to American values and it goes against the grain of the cooperation between the government and research universities that has existed and done so well in the last several decades.”
Roth wrote about the Trump administration’s attempts to exert control over higher education for The Bulwark: “We must be steadfast in opposition to extortion under the guise of dealmaking, and we must create alliances rooted in a common devotion to freedom of inquiry, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.”
For The Nation, Roth analyzed historical precedents to the government’s plans for a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” Roth said, “those who resist the new Gleichschaltung will argue that faculty and students should never have to sacrifice their freedom and autonomy to align with the leader in the White House. They will claim that American universities have attracted students from around the world when we have protected free speech and the ability to teach and conduct research without political interference.”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency profiled Roth as he remains one of the most vocal opponents to Trump’s policies and the administration’s use of claims of antisemitism to crack down on higher education institutions.
“It’s a Vichy, France, moment,” Roth said to Air Mail for an article examining university leaders’ responses to the Trump administration’s demands. “You wind up sliding back and back, appeasing the tyrant. And I don’t think that ends well.”
In a review of After the Hunt, director Luca Guadagnino’s new psychodrama, The New York Times quoted Roth about the impact that the sensationalization of scandals in higher education would have on universities in a time of political strife. “It couldn’t come at a worse time,” Roth said. “The only way this would be beneficial is if it reminded people of what these places should be like.”
In The Wall Street Journal, Roth spoke out against President Donald Trump’s proposal to reform campus operations in exchange for priority access to federal funds. “Federal funding for universities should never depend on a loyalty oath,” Roth said. “The health of our democracy depends on the freedom to work with the federal government without having to follow the ideological dictates of those in power.”
John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, emeritus, and former provost Rob Rosenthal wrote an op-ed for The Hill on the need for the Democratic Party to lean left in order to engage a greater number of voters. “The dominant faction of the Democratic Party has believed for so long that victory lies in moving to the middle that it’s hard to shake that belief,” Rosenthal wrote. “But that’s what’s necessary for the party to climb out of the deep hole of mistrust—and electoral failure—it’s dug itself. Both the historical record and the most up-to-date polling agree: moving to the left is the path to victory.”
Victoria Pitts-Taylor, professor of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies and Science and Technology Studies, discussed the history of political pressure on gender studies in a co-authored piece for The Conversation. “Political attacks on teaching about gender in colleges and universities are about more than just gender: They are part of a grander project of eroding civil and human rights, limiting personal freedoms and undermining democracy in the name of ‘traditional’ values,” the authors wrote.
Bradley Whitford ’81 appeared on The View to discuss reuniting with old co-stars from The West Wing on the new season of The Diplomat and acting in a political drama that celebrates public service while public servants are under attack, he said.
According to Deadline, Amy Bloom ’75, Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, emerita, will be adapting her memoir In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss into a film starring acclaimed actors George Clooney and Annette Bening. Bloom co-wrote the script with the film’s director, Paul Weitz.
Attorney Michael Bloch ’00, one of the lawyers who sued the organizers of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina in 2017, co-wrote a piece in The New York Times detailing the similarities between messages sent by rally organizers then and messages from members of Young Republican group chats that were revealed by a recent POLITICO investigation.
The New York Times spoke to Annie Coombs ’03 about her efforts to address the housing crisis in the Cheyenne River Reservation. As part of a partnership between her Brooklyn-based architecture firm and the Y.M.C.A. chapter in Dupree, South Dakota, Coombs and her team built four tiny homes in the region.
Far Out Magazine interviewed Neo Sora ’14 as Happyend, his sci-fi coming-of-age film, was released in the United States in September of this year following its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in 2024. The film grapples with artificial intelligence and the modern surveillance state against the backdrop of Japanese identity and xenophobia: “This idea of surveilling those not deemed worthy to stay, or surveilling people for criminal activity, originates with the notion that Japanese people are allowed to stay, but not foreigners,” Sora said. “It’s all wrapped up into the same theme of colonialism forming a nation state today, and that’s kind of the backbone underpinning the film.”
Other headlines
Bozoma Saint John ’99 was profiled by NBC as she steps into her role as chief marketing officer who mentors contestants in the new competition reality show On Brand with Jimmy Fallon.
Forbes featured Herriot Tabuteau ’89 and his work building Axsome Therapeutics, a drug development company that currently trades on the Nasdaq with a market cap of $6.1 billion. “There is so much ahead of us right now in terms of the pipeline and the number of patients we’re able to address,” Tabuteau says. “We might be a small company in terms of size, but we’re not a small company in terms of fundamentals or in terms of ambition.”
Zachary Fine, postdoctoral fellow in criticism, wrote about the career and legacy of photographer Man Ray for The New Yorker. A new exhibition of Man Ray’s work focusing on his rayograph technique, Man Ray: When Objects Dream, recently opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Peter Rutland, professor of government and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, spoke to CNN about the rise in the practice of sending political messages through bullet casings. “These folks are kind of learning from each other,” Rutland said. “They’re watching through social media, on the dark web, what these other killers did, and they’re trying to emulate them and kind of advance the cause.”
The late Alvin Lucier, emeritus professor of music, is still composing music years after his death. The Scientific American wrote about a recent exhibition in an Australian museum that allowed visitors to hear sounds generated by neurons derived from Lucier’s blood.
Tan Siyou ’12 spoke to Deadline as her award-winning feature Amoeba appears in film festivals around the world. Tan said she aimed to unpack some of the “Chinese-ness of Singapore” in her film, which is set against the backdrop of a Singaporean girls’ school.
Barn Raiser tapped Joseph Slaughter, assistant professor of history and religion for his expertise on the blurring of the boundaries between capitalism and Christianity in the United States. Slaughter researched businesses that emulate American Christian entities for his book, Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in the Early American Republic (Columbia University Press, 2023).
Pedro Bermudez, assistant professor of the practice in video and audio production, was featured on FOX61 as he prepares to adapt Carmen Maria Machado’s short story, Mary When You Follow Her, for the screen. The project will be filmed in his hometown of Hartford, Connecticut, as well as in Bridgeport. “I love the city in which I was raised, in which I continue to live, and I've always been looking for opportunities to tell stories that were relatable to my community, where people could see themselves represented on the big screen,” Bermudez said.
