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1 week ago | 
thecommon.place | Tsh Oxenreider |Liza Libes |Matt Fradd
Hey there,Iâve been talking to more than a few people lately about a certain feeling that theyâre all feeling right now â a sort-of malaise, a tiredness, a âŠweariness of all thatâs currently on their plate. Itâs commonly showing up as a simple case of the donât-want-tos.
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1 month ago | 
mindingthecampus.org | Liza Libes
There’s been a lot of chatter around recent cuts to the Department of Education (ED) since President Trump announced a 50 percent reduction in the ED’s task force. On the left, teachers and administrators worry that a dip in funding will disproportionately affect low-income and disabled students, citing an unclear future when it comes to student success records.
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1 month ago | 
mindingthecampus.org | Liza Libes
In his monumental work Culture and Anarchy, 19th-century poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold laid out a novel curriculum that would revolutionize educational spaces in the coming century. Based on the Ancient Greek system of classical education, Arnold’s ambitious scheme envisioned the university as the center of cultural education—the cornerstone for understanding ourselves and the world around us.
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2 months ago | 
mindingthecampus.org | Liza Libes
“Do you help with the passion project?”Every so often, I’ll hop on a sales call with an inbound client at my college consulting company, Invictus Prep. Nervous parents, many of them immigrants and newcomers to the American college admissions process, will come prepared with a score of questions about how we propose to help their children land admissions offers from America’s most coveted universities.
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2 months ago | 
readcontra.com | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González |Vincenzo Barney |Ken Klippenstein |Liza Libes
A consistent format for these newsletters has been pretty elusive, but I think this is close to what it will look like. I considered just naming each one “Contra Review #” like I used to because it saves me a headache. You’d be surprised how long it takes to come up with headlines. But it can also be part of the fun. I hope you enjoy it and consider upgrading to paid if you’re currently a free subscriber. PODCASTPromises made, promises kept. We’re back with new episodes of the podcast.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
eurekastreet.com.au | Liza Libes
The best essay I wrote in college argued that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was a proto-transgender text. I don’t mean that this essay was objectively more meritorious, better researched, or simply more unique than anything else I wrote for my English degree courses at Columbia University during my undergraduate years.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
readcontra.com | Liza Libes |Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González
Substack has become the hub of some of the most interesting writing you’ll find anywhere. It’s also become home to a cadre of writers struggling to reclaim the humanities and fiction in particular from modern-day book burners who see great literature as little more than vehicles to explore trite ideological fixations.
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Jan 3, 2025 | 
mindingthecampus.org | Liza Libes
Ivy League applications are down, and Ivy League schools have begun to panic. Over the past few weeks, America’s most coveted schools welcomed the early decision cohort of the class of 2029. Yet unlike in previous years, which saw a consistent increase in the number of applications and a corresponding decrease in acceptance rates, the data from this year’s admissions pool told a different story.
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Dec 3, 2024 | 
persuasion.community | Liza Libes
In 1991, my dad went to prison for being a Jew. He was born in Azerbaijan—a former Soviet republic and predominantly Muslim country, although with a considerable Jewish population. Religion was suppressed in the Soviet Union, but my dad grew up in the shadow of a rich cultural tradition. In 1991, taking an engineering job at Azerbaijan’s first “tech firm,” his work ethic resulted in an early career victory in which he took a relatively senior position at the company.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
readcontra.com | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González |Liza Libes
As big companies like Walmart shuffle their DEI initiatives out of view, others are holding fast and keeping them out front. Last week, Penguin Random House, one of the world’s biggest book publishers, posted a job listing for a “DEI Fellow.” The notice reads:For a one-year role, the Penguin Random House DEI team seeks a Research and Partnerships Fellow. [sic] to work on our Latinx Voices project in collaboration with One World.
