The concept of viewpoint diversity burst on the political scene in 2002 with the publication of David Horowitz's 'Academic Bill of Rights.' Horowitz argued that universities should seek greater pluralism and diversity.
Real change rarely happens through debate or persuasion. Instead, transformation grows out of relationships, shared struggle, cognitive dissonance, and practice. Together, Kelly and Lewis explore what organizers can learn from the science of neuroplasticity, the role of rupture and confrontation, and why movements need to focus less on 'changing minds' and more on creating conditions where people can unlearn harmful beliefs and step into collective action.
Bias risks: AI can amplify inequalities, like mislabeling non-native English writing as AI-generated. Privacy concerns: Schools face rising cyberattacks, and data misuse risks are high. Accountability: Human oversight is crucial to prevent over-reliance on AI.
This is a striking decision at a moment when public confidence in higher education is eroding. It is also puzzling because rigorous research and evaluation have demonstrated, over and over, the value of the work of centers for teaching and learning, including positive impacts on student learning outcomes, institutional effectiveness and faculty development.
Louisiana comic Pharis was a failed NFL lineman who went on to teaching, realizing that nobody hits harder than a 3rd grader. This Breakfast Club of teachers, born out of students who know what detention is, but can't spell it, relates to everyone who has ever suffered being a teacher, or student.
Being thrown into a group of new strangers each and every year, as is typical in so many American public school systems, is deeply evolutionarily unnatural. Under ancestral conditions, humans did not encounter strangers with nearly the same frequency that we experience now. And guess what? Humans have an entirely different way of interacting with strangers (including appropriate levels of hesitation and skepticism) than we have when interacting with others whom we know well.
Collective learning is how a group or system creates, improves, and keeps knowledge. This knowledge lasts beyond any one person or cohort. That is the most practical collective learning definition, because it shifts the focus away from individuals and toward the learning system itself.
This idea was based on the parallel between the pluck and elan that are characteristic of both the early-college students I worked with and that of America's hardest-working founding father. Five years after I wrote the book, I had the opportunity to revisit the field for a revised edition, making it appropriate to ask, after Thomas Jefferson's song in the second act of Hamilton, "What'd I Miss": How has early college/dual enrollment changed over the past half decade?
When I shared the reasoning behind this decision on Instagram, my DMs exploded with messages from thousands of parents quietly navigating the same issues. Watching their capable, intelligent children crumble and wondering if they're the only ones considering alternatives. Many of them told me they feel like failures for even thinking about stepping outside the system. But we're not failing ― the system is.
