Below are links to some recent bylines by Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth.
September 10, 2024 - The Washington Post
The real cost of the student debt crisis
People have now borrowed more for education than for anything else except houses. Ryann Liebenthal is one of those borrowers, and she is very angry. Indeed, the author’s outrage is palpable throughout Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis...Our loan system has enabled some, like Liebenthal, to get a college education. But sadly, it has all too often sacrificed educational opportunity in favor of market solutions that work for bankers, not students. [ Read More ]
September 2, 2024 - The New Republic
The Campus Protests Over Gaza Are All Part of a Good Education
With college students returning to campus, and the brutal war in Gaza continuing unabated, many schools—including mine—are bracing for renewed protests...That’s a good thing. Colleges and universities should not retreat into some fantasy of neutrality. They should help students practice something that has become a prominent theme in the presidential race: freedom. [ Read More ]
July 23, 2024 - The Wall Street Journal
‘Final Verdict’ Review: Confronting Complicity
“Final Verdict” doesn’t present new information about the Holocaust, but it does provide a fresh perspective on how Germans have negotiated their sense of historical and individual responsibility. Mr. Buck shows that as memories of World War II dim, and as the country increasingly becomes a nation of immigrants, Germany must redefine its relation to its past, especially the Holocaust. How should one remember atrocities committed long ago? How should that memory inform contemporary political decisions? [ Read More ]
May 7, 2024 - The New Republic
Why I’m Not Calling the Police on My Students’ Encampment
Ultimately, it is the Board of Trustees that will decide about investment policy. Myself, I am eager to find ways of supporting Gazan relief efforts, and of doing whatever we can to promote a sustainable peace in the region that would acknowledge the rights of all parties. I’d like to think students know that. [ Read More ]
May 5, 2024 - The New York Times
The Best College Is One Where You Don’t Fit In
A college education should enable you to discover capabilities you didn’t even know you had while deepening those that provide you with meaning and direction. To discover these capabilities is to practice freedom, the opposite of trying to figure out how to conform to the world as it is. [ Read More ]
April 27, 2024 - The Forward
This Passover, college campuses like mine are caught in a very narrow place
This Passover, more than any I can remember, feels like we are stuck in a narrow place amid the crisis in the Middle East and the rise of antisemitism around the world. Campuses are boiling with unrest because many students feel that their institutions are participating in patterns of murderous oppression. [ Read More ]
April 23, 2024 - Time
Academic Freedom Is More Important Now Than Ever
On campuses across the country, Islamophobia and antisemitic harassment can destroy the conditions for learning, but mass arrests of peaceful protestors and the censorship of speakers for their political views only undermine academic freedom in the long run. [ Read More ]
April 22, 2024 - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Happy Birthday, Kant!
Immanuel Kant turns 300 this week, and those of us in higher education should take a moment to salute this grand old man of modern philosophy...as a college president and teacher, I will be celebrating Kant’s idea of the modern student: someone in the process of learning to think for oneself in the company of others. [ Read More ]
March 25, 2024 - Inside Higher Ed
Cease-Fire Now
Silence at a time of humanitarian catastrophe isn’t neutrality; it’s either cowardice or collaboration. We don’t need institution-speak, but we do need leaders of academic and cultural institutions to call on our government and our fellow citizens to address this crisis. [ Read More ]
Read older bylines here.
