One of the main purposes of the academy is to encourage educated dialogue and debate, especially with those you disagree with. In this ideologically driven world, it is one of the only places left where intelligent dialogue is supposed to flourish.

Interested in academic freedom? If so, you should read Stanley Fish's new book, Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution. I hasten to add that you should disagree with much of it, and you probably will.

RPI actually presents us with a glimpse of the future of higher education -- a future that we might not like very much.

Instead of asking about grades, we ask our adult children to occasionally share with us something they do for a class, an artifact of their college experience.

Once again, the liberal-arts college in Singapore to which Yale has given its name, prestige, energy, and talent finds itself dancing awkwardly with the government over a right that liberal education depends on and should foster.

So long as no actual harm is caused and no one's opportunity to live and work in safety is threatened, rudeness, coarseness, and other varieties of incivility should not be forcibly excluded from a college community