Steven Mintz

New York, San Luis Obispo

Professor, University of Texas at Austin and Journalist at Freelance

Journalist and author attuned to orporate management, investment strategy and public policy.

Articles

Challenge of Leading Elite Institutions in Populist Age of Distrust

6 days ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. In the face of the Gaza protests, presidents at the nation’s most prestigious campuses were caught between a rock and a hard place—and somehow managed to trip over both. Pressured on one side by students and faculty demanding moral clarity and action and on the other by donors, trustees and politicians insisting on firm leadership and institutional neutrality, they found themselves in a no-win situation.
Reclaiming Academic Rigor and Intellectual Vitality

1 week ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

April 16, 2025 Reclaiming academic rigor and intellectual vitality. You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. Roosevelt Montás is an outspoken advocate for a humanistic liberal arts education rooted in transformative texts, particularly the Great Books tradition.
Who Will Thrive, Who Will Struggle and Who Will Disappear

1 week ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

April 14, 2025 Over the next decade, American higher education will undergo a profound shakeout. You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. Over the next decade, American higher education will undergo a profound shakeout. The system will become more stratified, with elite institutions continuing to offer a rich, immersive and interdisciplinary education, while many other colleges will face existential threats.
Civics Beyond the Ballot Box

2 weeks ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. Surely you remember the most famous line from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Delivered by the Captain as he asserts authority over Luke, the defiant protagonist, the line ostensibly justifies the punishment Luke will endure after his escape attempt.
Finding a Rewarding, Remunerative Job in Creative Fields

2 weeks ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. Daniel Grant, the go-to authority on the business of being an artist, recently published a fascinating essay, “The Art of Usefulness: Inside the Complicated World of Studio Assistants.” This piece is valuable not only for budding artists but for anyone who is interested in the role of internships and assistantships as stepping-stones into careers as creative professionals.
The End of the Book Need Not Be the End of Serious Thought

2 weeks ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. Are we witnessing the end of the age of the book?That’s the provocative conclusion of Sam Kahn, editor of Persuasion and author of the Substack Castalia. In a recent essay, he contends that while reading persists, it has become increasingly fragmented, digital and visual.It’s no secret: Many students resist reading whole books. Professors, in response, assign fewer.
Grief, Trust and the Future of the University

2 weeks ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. Perhaps you recall Whit Stillman’s 1998 cult classic, The Last Days of Disco—a gently ironic film chronicling the twilight of New York City’s club scene in the early 1980s. Think Studio 54: all sequins, spectacle and seduction. The city may have been a mess—gritty, dangerous, chaotic—but it was also a site of fantasy, creative energy and glamour. It was a world teetering on the edge of disappearance.
Apparently, I’m a Bot

3 weeks ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. Years ago, as a fledgling assistant professor at the University of Houston, I received a book review from a doctoral student that stunned me with its style and insight—more impressive than any I had encountered during my graduate studies at Yale, where my peers included future Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winners. I rushed to the library—remember, this was pre-internet—to check if it was plagiarized, but it wasn’t.
Why Gaza Became the Defining Campus Flashpoint

3 weeks ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

Because of my time at Columbia, I’ve had a special window into the anguished faculty conversations unfolding around the Gaza protests on both the Columbia and Barnard campuses. I’ve heard the pain in former colleagues’ voices, seen the erosion of trust and sensed the deep disillusionment that has taken hold. What’s happening there isn’t abstract to me—it’s personal.
Creating Meaningful, Psychologically Resonant Works of Art

3 weeks ago | insidehighered.com | Steven Mintz

You have /5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in. There are moments when works of art serve a higher purpose than mere entertainment—they serve as a space where the collective public can grapple with issues of meaning, purpose, suffering and mortality. For example, the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Paris sparked a riot—not because it failed, but because it challenged its audience to confront the raw, primal forces of existence.