Four months ago today, I shifted my focus from K-12 to higher ed. I’m proud to be Exec Director of Heterodox Academy @HdxAcademy. After helping students on the path to college, I want to help make sure college is a place worth going. THREAD🧵

2/ If you can’t have an honest discussion in the classroom…. If you can’t follow your research where the evidence leads… If you can pay years of tuition and never see a real debate… what’s higher ed for, anyway?

3/ *Most* colleges and universities are at least skidding away from their truth-seeking and edu mission. Some are off the high road entirely. But many profs, students, leaders, and alumni still have a chance to grab the wheel.

4/ Every day, our team talks to academics who feel they must look over their shoulder to do traditional academic stuff, like ask questions or challenge students. It’s tragic, comic, often surreal. Yet I also feel lucky…

5/ HxA members are lovely, brilliant, and engaged. Diverse in viewpoint and every other way. Some incredibly brave. Many just wish to teach and research, without letting the intellectual life devolve into slogans and power games.

6/ So! Lots happening at HxA this year. We recently launched our Campus Communities initiative to overwhelming response. There’s still time to apply by TOMORROW (12/9/22) at midnight. heterodoxacademy.org/campus-communities/

7/ Higher ed needs serious scrutiny, accountability, and alternatives. It also needs beacons: classrooms and conversations and campuses that light up a brighter way.

I’m here for it.