The possible closure of Johns Hopkins University’s 50-year-old interdisciplinary Humanities Center is facing sharp criticism from students and faculty members alike. They say the center merits a place on campus and are citing concerns about faculty autonomy over the curriculum, the university’s explicit commitment to graduate study and the humanities, and donor influence in academic matters.

Hopkins’s reasons for considering closing the center aren’t totally clear, but the dean in charge of the center’s fate has cited its narrow focus (a characterization its proponents challenge), among other concerns. In any case, it doesn’t appear to be a budget issue.

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Part-time faculty members at Columbia College in Chicago say a department-level report, submitted to the administration without seeming to raise any eyebrows, demonstrates the kind of status-, age- and even gender-based bias they face on a regular basis.

The report suggests that fashion studies needs to diversify because there is a disproportionate number of female adjuncts “over 50,” and that the part-time faculty union contract is holding the department back because of new job protections for long-serving instructors.

The college disputes the adjuncts’ characterization of the report and says it’s committed to equal employment opportunity and diversity in every way.

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An exchange between one professor and one student at Suffolk University has set off a nationwide online discussion over the assumptions faculty members may bring to interactions with minority students.

The student, Tiffany Martínez, shared her story in a blog post — “Academia, Love Me Back” — that went viral on Friday. In the post, she described how a professor (whom she did not name) was handing back papers (in this case a literature review) and told her that “this is not your language.” At the top of the paper, the professor asked her to indicate where she had used “cut and paste.” And in an example of language that the instructor assumed could not have come from Martínez, the instructor circled the word “hence” and wrote, “This is not your word,” with “not” underlined twice.

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The Englert Theater’s screen casted a faint glow on the faces of a diverse audience that gathered to view a film that delved into the issues surrounding the disruption and reformation of America’s public universities.

On Monday night, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies hosted a showing of the filmStarving the Beast: The Battle to Disrupt and Reform America’s Public Universities with a curated conversation that followed the viewing.

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As Hillary Clinton looks to shore up her support among millennial voters, her campaign is targeting the one youth demographic — African-American voters — that was a relative strength for the Democratic nominee in the long primary campaign.

The candidate has visited 11 black colleges and counting during the campaign, while former President Bill Clinton has appeared at six campuses in the runup to Election Day. Campaign staffers are aiming to reach young African-Americans wherever they can for voter registration and turnout efforts. And Clinton has talked up policies like an infusion of federal funds for minority-serving institutions, while stating repeatedly that her plans for free public higher education won’t discourage students from enrolling at historically black colleges, public or private.

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PEN America, a group of literary writers and editors, is the latest professional association to weigh in on the ongoing debate over whether campus efforts to promote inclusivity and diversity are impairing free speech.

The debate thus far has engendered passionate arguments from both sides; the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the American Association of University Professors, for example, have argued that universities’ interpretations of federal legislation against gender discrimination at times threaten academic freedom. Groups including Faculty Against Rape, meanwhile, have pushed back, saying such arguments pit faculty interests against students’, with negative implications for educational access.

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It’s the gray chair. You know, the one across the desk or at the edge of the cubicle occupied by a financial aid counselor, academic adviser or other staff person on campuses everywhere. As colleges and universities have welcomed students back to school and freshmen have begun their much anticipated college years, these gray chairs have been in high demand. As an undergraduate then medical student, I occupied that chair more times than I can count, and more than a decade later, I still remember it well. More important: I remember the staff members who sat across from me.

Today I am an academic pediatrician at an Ivy League institution. When I retrace the path that brought me here, I recall my relationships with staff members as much or more than those with faculty members. In their own way, they were equally — or even more — important.

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One of the cardinal rules of teaching is to know thy audience. This is particularly important given that the generation gap between ourselves and our students inevitably grows over time. To paraphrase the deeply profound line from Richard Linklater’s 1993 film Dazed and Confused: you get older … they stay the same age.

When we keep our finger on the pulse of the changing undergraduate culture of our institutions and the individual identities of our students, we are better able to connect in the classroom. This is not about making them like us. Rather, it is about establishing the necessary rapport to drive home subject matter effectively. Some of the most effective learning environments are those that connect what our students learn to their overall life experience. Making the effort to know where our students are coming from also helps us to maintain our own empathy levels, a feeling that is sometimes fleeting after one too many student emails addressing us by “hey.”

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SAN ANTONIO ― How to improve student graduation and retention is a quandary that preoccupies many a college administrator. For institutions that serve large numbers of underrepresented or minority students, the question is perhaps all the more pressing, given the varied needs of different types of student populations.

At the annual Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) conference, educators and administrators from the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) sought to answer that question using their own institution as a model for others to follow at a panel discussion Sunday. Hispanic students are poised to be one of the fastest growing college-going demographics.

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RICHMOND, Va. — An internal battle has been brewing within the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) over who should publish the association’s journal that was founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, best known as the father of what has become Black History Month.

The disagreement has become so contentious among members of the 101-year-old association that some academics have taken to social media to disparage the current leadership of the association, calling them “heretics” and “sellouts” over a proposed plan to have the Journal for African American History printed and distributed by the University of Chicago press.

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