In the midst of this current political campaign I find myself thinking about the word “leadership.” After all, the president (and presumably the vice-president) of the United States is considered by many to be a leader of the free world. But the precise definition of the term leadership can be at times opaque, signifying many things, not all uniform. Jackie Gleason and John F. Kennedy both wanted to send someone to the moon, but their words (and gestures) were very different, even if both inspired a generation!

Companion words muddy the waters even further, creeping alongside and making a compound statement that results in yet another meaning. One example is “visionary leadership”—a phrase that routinely appears in the employment section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, advertising positions for deans, vice-president, and presidents. Why, I wonder, do few if any ads for faculty ...

I joined the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) almost immediately after I first became a professor way back in the day. I thought it went with the profession, in much the same way that I joined the New York State Bar Association shortly after I became a lawyer. And then I discovered when I became an administrator that I was the enemy. I hung in for a while but eventually some issue or another took me over the top and I stopped paying dues and never looked back.

But I always believed it important that there be an AAUP, even if I myself was no longer going to participate. It was sort of like the student newspaper. I found myself regularly explaining to editors of undergraduate periodicals that even when the paper was criticizing me I thought it was imperative that there be a student newspaper. And yet, I confess to a little bit of schadenfreude when I started reading...

I always hate it when vacations end. You come back and discover that the world you left behind is much as it was when you departed. Even if things change they remain the same. So, for example, while I was taking a break the question of the appropriate drinking age reemerged.

John M. McCardell Jr., president emeritus of Middlebury College and William G. Durden, president of Dickinson College, have recently persuaded 100 or more of their colleagues to sign a petition, the Amethyst Initiative, to begin a conversation about lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 (the age it was when I myself went off to college).

Obviously, the debate about the legal drinking age is far broader than the boundaries of any particular college campus. Beyond the age question itself...

Many of the people who responded to my post that invited consideration of high school teaching as an alternative to being an adjunct faculty member commented on the state of secondary education in America. I wonder if they might be interested in reading a piece on the subject that I had in July 2008 issue of The Ripon Forum, the title of which is, “What are ‘World Class’ Schools?”

This is an earnest question. I’m not trying to provoke advocates of the adjunct-faculty agenda. But I couldn’t help wondering today as I was reading an advance copy of tomorrow morning’s Washington Post Magazine: Education Review about an apparent contradiction.

The headline on the cover is “Outsourcing Our Schools.” The paper reports that the Prince George’s County public schools are desperate for qualified teachers and have begun to import hundreds of them from the Philippines. Reading the story, I was reminded of a piece I read in The New York Times sometime in the last year or two about New York City bringing faculty members to the public schools from Europe and Latin America. This teacher shortage is going on at the same time that several of the nation’s public school systems...

The phrase has entered our lexicon. Pose a challanging query to someone and you’ll get the response, “That is the $64,000 question!” It’s the big enchilada, something you probably don’t know the answer to and if it turns out you do know it, well then you’re perceived to be unusually smart. Back in the mid-1950s, however, the expression was a symbol of the magic of television, the merger of entertainment and education.

After all is said and done, it was a game show. Reality television may think of itself as “of the moment” but its origins are with the earlier days of television when live contestants — regular guys and gals looking very much like your next door neighbor — performed on game shows: The Price is Right, Name that Tune, What’s My Line? The $64,000 Question. These programs (or the incarnations that are on the air today) are a little bit of reality, a small dose of magic, ...

In the later years of the 19th century through the early days of the 20th century, a group of Eastern European wood carvers immigrated to the United States and began to make furniture and decorative objects in their new world. Specializing in carved animal figures (many with European roots from areas that were heavily forested), these men made decorative elements for synagogues and cemeteries: lions, torah arks, memorial tablets, pediments and other such elements. And soon they began to create commercial items as well: cigar store figures, totems and carousel animals, ornate three-dimensional horses elaborately decorated with paint, lacquer, gilding, glass jewels — filled with detailing that beguiles the eye. I tell you all this because I visited a marvelous exhibition, “Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel,” that originated at the American Folk Art Museum in NY...

Yes, it is true. Law schools have been playing by the rules. Which means since they are full of people who know enough to ask what “it” means, they understand the loopholes. Robert Morse, the editor at U.S. News & World Report in charge of college, graduate, and professional school rankings, has discovered that there is gambling going on and he’s shocked.

America’s law schools, inevitably competitive as are so many segments of American culture, are constantly concerned about how they are perceived by potential applicants, their current students, alumni, faculty, and all other stake holders including the board of trustees, the president, and benefactors. They want to be seen to be as good as they can possibly be, and maybe even a little better. At least 20 of them believe they are in the top 10.

So, they have been “fudging” a little on the data they have been submitting to U.S....

Every four years, Americans vote for a president. And every four years while on the campaign trail the media run short of stories about the candidates and fill in with tales about their spouses. This year has been no exception and spouses have filled the column inches and airwaves portrayed as the strength behind the scenes, best friend and confident, loose canon, assertive, retiring, and overcoming adversity — health, wealth and/or not enough happiness.

Presidential spouses have coped with the issues of office since Martha & George’s time. For decades, it was nearly impossible to improve upon the story of Dolley Madison’s daring rescue of the large Gilbert Stuart portrait of the first president from the British army’s torching of the White House. A lady who puts art before self — now that is my kind of gal!

Soon we learned that Mrs. Lincoln was depressed and Mrs. Wilson ran the ...

Fox News photo of Gallaudet protestors in 2006

Two decades ago, those of us who care about such things watched as Elisabeth Zinser, the newly appointed president of Gallaudet University, was repudiated by the student body demanding that the leader of an institution created to serve the deaf had to be deaf.

The trustees had picked somebody conventional. The students said “no.” They did so with brio, the board was persuaded and my friend, I. King Jordan, was ultimately selected. King had been born hearing but became deaf in a motorcycle accident as a young man. It made sense for all kinds of symbolic reasons, I thought, for an institution serving special people to have a special person as their president. And while I lamented the means, I was empathetic with the end. And for two decades President Jordan was terrific.

At the conclusion of his term, the Gallaudet board of trustees ...