Wesleyan in the News: November 2025
President Michael S. Roth ’78 and two other college presidents had an in-depth conversation with The New York Times on the state of higher education. Their discussion spans from the Trump administration’s pressure on the industry to college athletics to admissions challenges. Roth said the White House has, “given viewpoint diversity a bad odor because it’s being imposed on us, not because the federal government is looking for ideological diversity, but because they’re looking for loyalty…How do you negotiate with a partner who’s willing to actually destroy what we do well?”
In response to a survey conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education with Quinnipiac about the proposed White House compact for higher education, Roth offered his thoughts about White House efforts to control colleges and universities. “We would do well to remember that American civil society has long been the guardian of our freedoms,” Roth said. “Leaders in civil society must be steadfast in opposition to extortion under the guise of dealmaking.”
Roth joined Commonwealth Club World Affairs to encourage higher education leaders to speak out against the Trump administration as it cuts billions in research grants, detains student activists, and threatens to cancel accreditation. “When the government now is behaving so irrationally by trying to destroy or undermine some of the most successful parts of the American economy and culture, it’s hard to know how to deal with that kind of power,” Roth said during the event. “I do think the worst way to deal with it is to appease the aggressor—because this is not just about colleges and universities, this is about civil society more generally.”
A.O. Scott, distinguished professor of film criticism, wrote about why he loves Robert Hayden’s “Monet’s ‘Waterlilies,’” in The New York Times. “Hayden isn’t trying to duplicate Monet’s brushstrokes or to describe their sublime results, but rather to communicate—and at the same time, to analyze—the experience of looking,” Scott wrote.
Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon and actor Scott Eastwood are joining Rosario Dawson in the supernatural thriller Unmerciful Good Fortune, according to Deadline. The film is adapted from a play written by playwright and Associate Professor of Theater Edwin Sánchez, which shares the same name as the film.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, assistant professor in the College of Social Studies and history, wrote about the political moment and philosopher William James’ famous speech “The Moral Equivalent of War,” in a piece for Commonweal. “Now that liberalism is in a period of soul-searching—looking for a way out of the current political darkness but also for a new vision for the future—it is worth reconsidering James’s speech,” Steinmetz-Jenkins wrote.
Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, joined WNPR’s “Where We Live” on Nov. 4 to discuss the ways political advertising is evolving within a constantly changing media environment.
Ruben Fleischer ’97, who directed the newly released film Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, will now direct the third installment of the Zombieland franchise, according to a recent interview he did with Deadline. Zombieland 3 is set to hit theaters in 2029.
David Kohan ’86, P’17 traced his path from his early career after Wesleyan to co-creating the Emmy-winning sitcom Will & Grace for an interview in The Good Men Project. “I’m a huge advocate of liberal arts,” Kohan said. “I 100 percent believe that if you are an interested person with a broad scope of interests, you will be better at whatever you do. You’ll bring greater depth and breadth of knowledge to whatever you’re doing. You’ll be able to think outside the conventions of your field because you have other sources to draw from.”
Brendan Barrington ’94, founder of the Dublin Review, wrote a piece in The Irish Times reflecting on its 100th issue, Ireland’s literary culture, and his career journey.
Galerie Urs Meile, an art gallery in Zurich, will exhibit “skin in my stomach” by artist Lêna Bùi ’07 from Nov. 13 to Jan. 17, according to a piece in ArtDaily. The ink and watercolor painting is informed by ecologist David Abrams’ concept of the body as “the locus of change.” It is the first solo presentation of Bùi at the gallery.
Other headlines
The Gordon Career Center received a 2025 Handshake Career Spark Award, signifying Wesleyan is in the top two percent of Handshake’s more than 1500 member schools and one of 10 private, 4-year universities in the country to get this recognition.
Victoria Pitts-Taylor, chair and professor of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, was quoted in The Washington Post on the decrease in breast augmentation surgeries in Hollywood and beyond. “It’s really no surprise to me that for a time, breast implants were hugely popular, but they’ve lost their appeal,” Pitts-Taylor said. “They’ve become over-present, passé and they’re not compatible with wellness and detoxifying lifestyles people are moving toward.”
Amherst Wire spotlighted Tammy Ngyuen, assistant professor of art, as her new exhibit, “Political Uses of Madness,” goes up at the UMass Museum of Contemporary Art. Pulling from the archives of Daniel Ellsberg, the exhibit features nine abstract paintings and is soundtracked by a record of a Vietnamese woman and Ellsberg singing a capella. “There’s an invitation for you to suspend yourself in this imaginative space that borrows from a lot of disparate histories put together,” Nguyen said.
Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, and Leo Bader ’26 wrote an article for Responsible Statecraft, which detailed the historical and modern political context of the German government’s recent cancelling of a new bill expanding military conscription.
Rutland also co-wrote a piece for The Conversation on the use of the “Anglo-Saxon” as a derogatory term for western nations in Kremlin-controlled media. “As experts in Russian discourse and post-Soviet nations, we see the increased use of ‘Anglo-Saxons’ as reflecting deeper trends that tap into Putin’s use of history to justify the invasion of Ukraine and smear his perceived enemies, while exploiting political divisions in Europe and America,” said Rutland and co-author Elizaveta Gaufman, professor from the University of Groningen.
TheWrap Magazine quoted Scott Higgins, director of the College of Film and the Moving Image, in a story on the White House’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. Higgins said, “they’re going after students, they’re going after immigrants, they’re going after non-citizens, but they are also going after the intellectual enterprise. So just being on campus, being a professor, being a student puts you in kind of a precarious place, no matter how supportive the campus is.”
According to The Los Angeles Times, immigration lawyer Cynthia Santiago ’07 is representing CLEAN Carwash Worker Center after one of its employees suffered severe leg injuries and was detained at a hospital for 37 days without charges after an encounter with ICE agents in Carson, California.
American Songwriter spotlighted The Highwaymen—a folk quintet founded at Wesleyan by Dave Fisher ’62, Bob Burnett ’62, Chan Daniels ’62, Steve Trott ’62, and Steve Butts ’62 during their first year.
Nicole Lesperance ’00 was interviewed by The Boston Globe about her fifth novel, A Spell to Wake the Dead, which follows two teenage girls as they uncover secrets about their Cape Cod town in the wake of a series of murders. “When I was a teenager myself, I needed to learn how to speak up for myself, how to trust myself. That’s what I would hope a reader would take away—that you are stronger than you think you are,” Lesperance said. “You have the ability to make your life be what you want it to be.”
Matthew Burrows ’76 appeared on the Stimson Center’s Trialogue Podcast to discuss his career in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Intelligence Council. Burrows, who currently serves as the Program Lead of the Stimson Center’s Strategic Foresight Hub, spoke about several high-profile political events and the prediction of global sociopolitical trends.
Richie Zweigenhaft ’67, professor of psychology, emeritus, at Guilford College, explained a link between signature size and a person’s ego in a piece for The Conversation. “A long-time social psychologist who has studied America’s elite, I made an unintentional empirical discovery as an undergraduate more than 50 years ago,” Zweigenhaft said. “The link that I found then—and that numerous studies have since echoed—is that signature size is related to status and one’s sense of self.”
Jewish News profiled Aviva Schnitzer ’28 in her capacity as guard for the Cardinals women’s basketball team and a member of Tribe NIL, which a collective founded in 2025 to amplify Jewish voices in college athletics. She will be representing Team USA in the 2026 Maccabi Games. “Tribe NIL helps remind me, and other Jewish players, that being Jewish isn’t separate from being an athlete,” Schnitzer said. “It’s part of who we are, on and off the court.”
