As we enter into the new year, HxA bids farewell to our fall exploration of knowledge production and turns to a timely new topic: The University After 2021. Since the founding of Heterodox Academy, we have watched colleges and universities grow increasingly conflicted about their purpose—a trend further exacerbated by the pandemic and national racial justice movements. How do we discuss the direction colleges and universities are taking? How do we discuss the telos (or purpose) and future of the university?

We’ll explore this theme through some exciting upcoming programs. This week we’ll put the current pandemic in context with The Good, The Bad, and the Surprising: How Pandemics Change Us with Nicholas Christakis, sociologist and physician at Yale University. We look forward to our February 23 panel Saving Free Expression on Campus: A Presidential Perspective with university presidents Walter Kimbrough and Ron Crutcher (more info coming soon!). Stay tuned for additional member spotlights and affiliate programming exploring the future of social media on campus and more.

Submit to heterodox: the blog

If you’re interested in writing about The University After 2021 for heterodox: the blog, we’re now accepting submissions. Please see our submissions guidelines page and read more about our current theme. Contributors receive a modest honorarium for accepted pieces.

Closing Out Our Teaching and Constructing Knowledge Theme

We spent November and December 2021 identifying the best approaches for promoting free inquiry and innovation in support of knowledge production. Our aim was to provide students and scholars new strategies and ideas for their own lives, classrooms, and professional circles. We invite you to revisit our outputs and resources from this theme, including:

• Why Our Brains Deceive Us (and How to Think Better) (virtual event)
• “Why ‘Knowledge’ is a Dirty Word in K-12” (virtual event)
• “Trouble in the Time of Thanksgiving: How Our Fraught History Can Still Be the Source of Unity,” blog by David Danier and Angel Parham
• “Jewish Wisdom about Viewpoint Diversity,” blog by Jonathan Haidt
• “Failure Isn’t Really Failure: What Academia Can Learn From Start-Up Culture,” blog by Steven Zhou
• Tips for Finding a Program and Navigating Graduate School (tool)

For more, check out the Barriers to the Pursuit of Knowledge Resource Guide.