Below are links to some recent bylines by Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth.
March 17, 2023 - Times Higher Education
University leaders must defend freedom against DeSantis’ overreach
We don’t need the government to tell college students and their teachers what to think or what they can study. All members of a campus community should feel that they can enter into controversy without fear of being silenced or constrained. A commitment to the free exchange of ideas and pursuit of knowledge involves a wide range of protections for speech and expression, even when noxious or offensive. This commitment does not allow for interventions by government into what values must guide research. [ Read More ]
February 5, 2023 - Washington Post
Some see liberal arts education as elitist. Why it’s really pragmatic.
Our pragmatic approach to liberal education is one of the reasons more than a million students from outside our borders flock to U.S. colleges and universities each year. Their confidence in our institutions is no replacement, though, for the trust of our fellow citizens. To strengthen that trust, we must demonstrate that our educational institutions foster open inquiry, deep research, and pragmatic approaches to the pressing problems and opportunities before us. If our colleges and universities graduate practical idealists rather than narrow-minded conformists, we will be serving our nation and the world. [ Read More ]
December 28, 2022 - Washington Post
How success gets in the way of a meaningful life
(Bradatan) looks at how various thinkers — Seneca, Mohandas Gandhi, Simone Weil, Emil Cioran, Yukio Mishima — detached themselves from an obsessive drive for worldly success by reckoning with failure and death. Bradatan wants us to grasp how striving to succeed prevents us from dealing with our mortality and hence from living a more meaningful life. [ Read More ]
Read older bylines here.
