Below are links to some recent bylines by Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth.
April 11, 2025 - U.S. News
College Presidents Like Me Must Stand Up Against Campus Deportations
These brutal actions against people who are in the United States legally have little to do with national security. They are designed to silence foreign researchers, professors and students — especially Muslims, to frighten international visitors and to instill fear in academic institutions. Our government is running a campaign of fear, and we must resist it. [ Read More ]
April 7, 2025 - The New York Times
Trump Is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie
As the first Jewish president of a formerly Methodist university, I find no comfort in the Trump administration’s embrace of my people, on college campuses or elsewhere. Jew hatred is real, but today’s anti-antisemitism isn’t a legitimate effort to fight it. It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people. [ Read More ]
March 28, 2025 - Time
Appeasing President Donald Trump Won’t Work
Leaders today must shine a bright light on abuses of power and challenge them through political channels and the courts. We must underscore that our freedoms are worth defending. Many decision makers are afraid, and so they choose a path of appeasement with a White House bent on revenge and aggrandizing power, hoping it will work. It won’t. [ Read More ]
March 11, 2025 - Slate
A Turning Point for University Leadership
The content of your views (unless they veer into harassment and intimidation) should have no bearing on the restrictions you face. This is fundamental to freedom of speech. The federal government violated this principle when it sent agents to arrest Columbia University alumnus Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who was politically engaged on the Columbia campus before graduating last spring. [ Read More ]
March 6, 2025 - Inside Higher Ed
Free Speech Matters. So Does DEI.
Freedom of expression is vital for educational institutions—as are diversity, inclusion and equity. That’s why the recent Dear Colleague letter attacking DEI is so misguided. Of course, we should practice antidiscrimination, but just being “race neutral” won’t alone create the heterogeneity out of which a robust education grows. We need safe enough spaces for people from diverse backgrounds with a mix of ideas to learn from one another with courage and resilience, and we must ensure that access to those spaces and conduct within them are fair. [ Read More ]
March 5, 2025 - Los Angeles Times
A transformative education for my trans students and me
Simple words of compassion from a government official to a vulnerable population...That seems so distant now. That government-level recognition and reassurance were so important then. It’s even more important that we stand with trans people today. [ Read More ]
February 8, 2025 - Slate
Say Something
Leaders in civil society shouldn’t be “demure” in the face of authoritarian attempts to align all power with a president’s agenda, civil society be damned. Business and civic officials, religious authorities and college presidents should weigh in when they see the missions of their institutions—not to speak of the health of their country—compromised. This wouldn’t be a novelty. [ Read More ]
December 27, 2024 - The New York Times
How Higher Education Can Win Back America
Like the founders, we can be anti-elitists without falling into the trap of being anti-education. We’ll have to create pathways that change the opportunity structures for our fellow citizens, wherever they live and wherever, or whether, their parents went to school. [ Read More ]
December 24, 2024 - Los Angeles Review of Books
From Woke to Solidarity
Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi doesn’t want his readers to think he’s just another player taking shots at woke fish in a barrel. He conceives his new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite as belonging to “a tradition of Black critique […] highlighting how liberals exploit social justice advocacy to make themselves feel good.” ... In Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis (2024), James Davison Hunter offers another diagnosis of what is wrong with contemporary American culture. [ Read More ]
December 16, 2024 - The Atlantic
Oliver Sacks’s Lifelong Search for Recognition
His letters show a man who feared abandonment and craved acknowledgment but discovered through his practice the rewards of his great gifts of feeling, of thoughtfulness, and of care. “I am a doctor, I can help,” he said as a young man in the wilderness. Letters show how his long and fruitful life came to fully embody that simple statement. [ Read More ]
November 1, 2024 - Inside Higher Ed
Defending Democracy, Defending the University
Democracy and higher education have been good for each other. Although the first colleges on our shores were founded in colonies controlled by a monarchy in Britain, the impressive growth of universities that combined research, teaching and education of the whole student happened here as the country became more democratic. Slavery was the great stain on the nation, and the war fought to abolish this vile institution ended with promises that Black people, too, should enjoy opportunities for education, including at colleges. [ Read More ]
Read older bylines here.