A co-founder of Inside Higher Ed reduced 90-hour workweeks and shifted from reading for information to reading for pleasure. A colleague curated novels to ease the transition, including Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, Sigrid Nunez's The Friend, Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, and Louise Penny's series. The colleague assigned a reread of John Williams and book-clubbed with him. The co-founder sought to create a newsletter offering tough love to senior administrators and expressed frustration with higher education's slow change and reluctance to accept responsibility. The colleague retorted by enumerating the burdens endemic to academic life.
Working in journalism left Inside Higher Ed 's co-founder Doug Lederman little time to read for anything but information, so last summer, when he stepped away from 90-hour workweeks, he told me he wanted to watch less Netflix. I said, "Friend, you came to the right place." Recommending reading is pretty much the only area where I can make solid contributions these days.
But just before I headed to D.C. last March for his official farewell party, I assigned him a novel I'd been wanting to reread and liked the idea of book-clubbing with him: John Williams's beautiful and heartbreaking . I've often given Doug a hard time about-well, everything-but especially the fact that he's never actually been in higher ed. He's only peered in from outside with a reporter's magnifying glass, exposing our flaws and fault lines, doing his essential duty as a journalist.
When Doug asked me to work with him as a thought partner to create a newsletter for upper-level administrators, he wanted to bring tough love to leaders. He confessed to having a case of the fuck-its, disappointed that higher ed has been so slow to change and unwilling to take responsibility for some missteps. As we know, disappointment can only come from love, and is much harder for recipients to bear.
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