“The SJP doesn't have tunnels under our universities like Hamas has tunnels under Gaza,” ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt tells The Syllabus. “But they were clearly organizing and preparing in a way that really took us by surprise, and I regret that that happened.” In this week's episode of The Syllabus, Greenblatt reflects on the events following October 7 on our college campuses, the ADL's efforts in assessing and improving campus safety for Jewish students, and how the conversation surrounding free speech has evolved. 

Guest Bio: Jonathan Greenblatt is CEO of ADL (the Anti-Defamation League). Greenblatt joined ADL in 2015 after serving as a special assistant to President Obama. He joined the government after a career in business as a social entrepreneur and corporate executive. In 2022, he published his first book, It Could Happen Here: Why America is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable—And How We Can Stop It. 

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“The modes by which we transmit these beliefs and values are not just like we walk into the room, and we announce, ‘You only get an A if you write a paper that conforms with my preferred worldview,’” says Connecticut College philosopher Simon Feldman. In this week’s episode of The Syllabus, Feldman and his colleague Afshan Jafar join Mark Oppenheimer to talk about what professors’ politics should and should not mean in the classroom—and how the right, they feel, has distorted the topic. 

Guest Bios:

Afshan Jafar: Afshan Jafar is the chair of the sociology department at Connecticut College. Professor Jafar was the 2021 recipient of the Helen B. Regan Faculty Leadership Award, the 2015 recipient of the Feminist Activism Award, and the 2014 recipient of the  Helen  at Connecticut College  at Connecticut College . She is the author of Women’s NGO’s in Pakistan and her public scholarship has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Review of Books, Inside Higher Ed, and Ms. Magazine, among others. 

Simon Feldman: Simon Feldman is an associate professor of philosophy at Connecticut College. Feldman received the Connecticut College 2010 John S. King Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. 

“The system of elite education, which I can define at greater lengths is making kids miserable, and it's producing an elite class that's wrecking the country,” says best-selling author and essayist Bill Deresiewicz in this week’s episode of The Syllabus. Syllabus host Mark Oppenheimer discusses topics in Deresiewicz’s book Excellent Sheep, including societal pressures to attend elite colleges, overwhelming careerism, admissions competition, and increasing inequality in access to education. 

Guest Bio: William Deresiewicz is an essayist, critic, speaker, and author of the best-seller Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. Formerly a Yale and Columbia English professor, Deresiewicz transitioned to full-time writing and has taught or lectured at schools including Bard, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, and the University of San Diego. Deresiewicz is also active with Tivnu: Building Justice and Project Wayfinder, promoting social justice and purpose-based learning.

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“Our position is you don't need test scores and that individual schools should develop admissions policies that reflect the type of kids they want to recruit and the mission that they have,” says FairTest’s public education director Bob Schaeffer in this week’s episode of The Syllabus. Syllabus host Mark Oppenheimer and Bob Schaeffer discuss the evolution of college admissions testing, the recent trend towards test-optional policies, and whether high school records and holistic evaluations are better predictors of college success than standardized tests.  

Guest Bio: Schaeffer is the public education director of FairTest and a member of its board of directors. He is the author of Standardized Tests and Teacher Competence and co-authored many FairTest publications, including Sex Bias in College Admissions Tests: How Women Lose Out. He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from MIT.

“The most important project, the most important mission, is to form our young men and women to be determined truth seekers and courageous truth speakers,” says Princeton’s McCormick Professorship of Jurisprudence Robert P. George in this week’s episode of The Syllabus. Syllabus host Mark Oppenheimer and Professor George discuss the dual mandate of religiously affiliated universities, concerns about the lack of ideological diversity among faculty, and the decline of humanities departments and liberal colleges. 

Guest Bio: Bio: Robert P. George is the McCormick Professorship of Jurisprudence and director of the University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund, and Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. 

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“You’re going to have to be defending people, sometimes publicly, for saying stuff that you find abhorrent and that you hate. But that’s the gig.” says Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy at FIRE, on this week’s episode of The Syllabus. Mark Oppenheimer digs deep with free speech defender extraordinaire Alex Morey, as they discuss the chilling effect of fear and censorship on college campuses—and what the law really has to say. 

Guest Bio: Alex Morey is an attorney and a journalist who leads FIRE’s Campus Rights Advocacy program, a team of attorneys and advocates. Morey is a member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association. She has a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School and a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and has trained at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She attended the University of Arizona in her hometown of Tucson, majoring in journalism and French and graduating with honors. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar, where she taught English in rural, underserved schools. 

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“I'll say whatever I want to say, under reasonable standards, and if they want to fire me for saying that there’s systemic racism in the U. S. housing market, then fine,” says economist, legal scholar, and professor Neil Buchanan in this week's episode of The Syllabus. Are UF professors fleeing the state? Is it harder to recruit new professors? Syllabus host Mark Oppenheimer asks Buchanan these tough questions, after Buchanan’s decision to leave the UF.

Guest Bio: Neil H. Buchanan is a legal scholar and an economist. He is currently on sabbatical leave from the University of Florida and is a visiting professor at both Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Toronto. He teaches tax law and writes about a range of issues, from intergenerational justice to the possible demise of democracy in the US and elsewhere.

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“You may be right that if we bend over and tell Chris Ruffo to hit us in the ass, that he won't really hit us that hard next time, because we're being so nice and bend over for him,” says Wesleyan president Michael Roth, discussing the famed anti-DEI crusader in this week’s episode of The Syllabus. “But I actually don't think that’s true.” Syllabus podcast host Mark Oppenheimer gets Roth to open up about legacy preferences, academic bias in college athletics, artificial intelligence, the history of the student, and recent controversies surrounding Claudine Gay and plagiarism in academia.

Guest Bio: Michael S. Roth became president of Wesleyan University in 2007. He has published several books, the most recent being The Student, A Short History.

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“Whether it's parents or alums or current students or faculty, everyone wants us to figure out how do you stop people from saying things that they don't agree with,” says the president of Mount Holyoke College, Danielle Holley, in this week's episode of The Syllabus. Holley and Oppenheimer discuss the complexities of defining hate speech versus protected free speech, as well as the intrusive nature of technology on campus. “I've had students who told me they want to study, but they can’t put down their phones,” Holley says. Holley offers her predictions for how the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban will affect recruitment of minorities. And they talk about what it means to be a “women’s college” in an age when there are self-identified men on campus.

Guest Bio: Danielle R. Holley is president of Mount Holyoke College. She served as dean of the School of Law at Howard University (2014 - 2023) prior to joining Mount Holyoke. She attended Yale College and Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Carl E. Steward on the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

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“So what upsets me about all the protesting, right? Leave aside my political views. It's making it really hard for people to learn,” says Georgetown professor Jacques Berlinerblau in this week’s episode of The Syllabus. “People that don't even know what's going on are being told, ‘Pick a side, man,’ and if they don't pick a side, their social life, like cascading dominoes, starts to veer off into another direction.”

Berlinerblau worries that the prevalence of protests might impede the educational experience by pressuring students to take sides, potentially stifling learning opportunities. But Berlinerblau says the answer is not shutting down protests altogether, saying “It’d probably be a really bad idea for us to try and shut the lid on their anger and their rage categorically as a rule of entrance to the university,” and calls for a reevaluation of how protests impact the learning atmosphere and the need for universities to balance free speech with their institutional missions.

Guest Bio: Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University.

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