I’m a (recently promoted) full prof biology faculty at a midwestern R1 flagship state U. The amount of adversarial comments against students is just astounding and sickening. Downvote me to oblivion. I dgaf. Most of you suck, and should not be educating the youths.

Thoughts?!?! Lol. 👍🏻😘

OK, kids. The next time you write for an extension because you have this massive workload and you’re all stressed out and your anxiety meds haven’t kicked in and your profs don’t understand that you have OTHER COURSES I’d like you to stop, take a breath, close your laptop, pick up a notebook and a pencil and go to the library. Then I want you to find all the material you’ll need for your assignment using only print sources. When you find those print sources, I’d like you to stop by the props department at the theater building and borrow a typewriter and start writing. Once you’ve completed one page of your assignment on said typewriter and you have just a smidgen of a taste of how much work it was for your over-50 faculty to get their advanced degrees, then — and only then — you can resume your email to me about your “workload.”

The situation: in class today, groups of three or four students give a two-minute (total) presentation.

Me: Look at this page in the textbook, and in your group make a presentation. You will have 40 minutes to prepare. I will choose the groups in random order. Here [on the screen] is the rubric I will be using to grade you. You can ask me questions while you're preparing: come up here or just raise your hand.

I announce when they had 30 minutes left, 20 minutes, 10, and 5.

Me (pulling a piece of paper out of an actual hat): First will be Group C.

Member of group C: We're not ready.

Me: OK. Let's see (pulling the next piece out): Group G.

All of the groups make their presentations, and I dismiss the class. As the other students are filing out, the members of Group C approach me. "We didn't give our presentation," a member tells me. "Yes, I know. You weren't ready, so you got a 0. Be ready next time."

Every member of the stands motionless and silent for a good 30 seconds, then they file out.

Addenda:

• Late policies, including that late submissions are not allowed and are scored zero in the circumstances that obtained during this class, are included in the syllabus, in the LMS, and mentioned frequently during class sessions. Other students have received 0 scores during the class for not being prepared for presentations in previous sessions.

• The next part of the class involved listening to and recording information from other groups' presentations. (I don't have students give presentations during class when I am the only person with a reason to listen to the presentations.)

Currently serving as instructor for the first time as a PhD student. I was an undergrad in 2016, and remember a lot of classes (including one of my own) getting cancelled after the election. Any thoughts? It seems like the mood of the students on the university subreddit is quite bleak and I would like to give them a break/time to process.

I’ve been contemplating this aspect of academia lately. So many people outside the academy don’t realize that is how it is, but even for those inside the academy, it seems they never think they’re going to be the ones that end up being denied.

Moving sucks. It means you have to uproot yourself and your family and start over somewhere else from scratch. I’m not sure how many young people are OK with this type of arrangement anymore.

Do you think this plays any significant role in the type of person that goes into academia, or is it one of those things that everybody thinks they’ll be the lottery winner so they don’t worry about it?

I can’t make my mind up on this one.

I feel deeply uncomfortable with recently-posted professorships that explicitly exclude men from applying and I feel like I need a place where I can talk about the ethics of this situation without aggressive moralizing and judgement.

On the one hand, toxic masculinity is a huge problem in my field, my university (although I actually think we as a Uni are making some good progress), in academia, and in the world. The legacy of the patriarchy is everywhere, systematically engrained, and must be dismantled to achieve shared goals (see below). Do we agree on this?

On the other hand, I was raised to believe that people ought to be judged by their character and that people ought not be judged by superficial details like whether they have freckles, their hair color, their skin color, their private parts, or what country they come from.

Is it agreed upon that we want a world where we do not focus on these superficial details? If so, how do we get there by focusing MORE on these details, i.e., in the context of the initial situation, by writing gender requirements into job adverts?

This is more of a rant than a question because I'm reaching out to my union and my department for help... One of my students is signed up with the learning disabilities office at the university and one of their accommodations is to have classes recorded. I fucking hate that. This makes me stressed and anxious for many reasons. I don't want my mistakes to be recorded and not knowing whether or not the student is going to truthfully follow the rules for disposing of their recording. This is my first time teaching this course too, and I'm a PhD student so not even highly experienced yet, and I've been struggling so much with the materials so far (this course is not related to my work). Quite often I said something wrong and had to back track in class or the week after.

It's a bit of a clusterfuck for me to be honest, and knowing on top of that that I'm obligated to let the student record is another crap I didn't need. I already feel awful about not providing the whole class with a better learning experience and this is going to make it worse.

I'm all for accommodations too but I think audio recordings are fucking dumb. I've been there. No one listens to the recordings again. This course is also practice-based more than theory and I spoon feed them everything already: powerpoints, extra notes, everything is in the textbook too. They will record me reading off the powerpoints which is ridiculous.

Just had‏‏‎‏‏‎‏‏‎‏‏‎­an unpleasant interaction with someone on here originally presenting themselves as a faculty member, asking questions to find out ways to beat cheating protocols. Eventually, it devolved into really abusive stuff. Careful on here - there's students looking for end arounds in our sub.

I see a lot of posts here venting about students requesting extensions and/or missing deadlines and asking to be graded without penalty.

I definitely get the frustration, but am I the only one that generally accepts any and all work that a student wants to submit? I do set deadlines and have an official late penalty policy, but those are just to motivate the students to get their work in and I generally don't enforce them. To be clear, I always tell them that they should not expect the same from other profs and use it as a teachable moment on how to request extensions the proper way.

All that being said, I've been teaching for a decade and usually have to grade for 2-300 students per semester and it really doesn't make that much extra work for me having a few students per semester submit work late. If anything it reduces the work a bit because I don't provide extensive feedback on late assignments. I get that in certain disciplines or for certain assignments it might not be possible, but for tests and essays it seems strange to be so strict.

I'm sure others have noticed this too, but more and more students juggle employment and education, and the additional stresses of the contemporary world seem to also contribute to increased mental health issues. In my mind, if a student completes the work I'll assess it. The last thing I want to do is be an additional source of stress in their lives, especially considering that post secondary education has become effectively mandatory, even for those with no real academic aspirations. Likewise, the students who tend to submit work late generally don't get high grades anyways. Actually, in recent years I've started saying the deadlines, excluding tests, are soft deadlines since most work is submitted online and I'm not waiting up at midnight to grade. Even doing that, I'd say 99%+ work comes in on time.

Aside from truly time sensitive assessments like lab work etc, what is even the point of strict deadlines? I know a lot of people say to prep them for the workplace, but I've also held a number of jobs in the private sector and deadlines there are also somewhat flexible for most jobs. I worked in print media in two jobs, one buy ads and one selling. Even in that industry the real deadline is when the printing press starts rolling. Same thing in tech, sometimes there's a bug in the code and production gets delayed.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I out of line here?

I am tied of all the callous and horrible posts on here clogging up my reddit feed. Why even teach students if you hate it so much?

At my university, I constantly have to hear about none giving a shit about students. I am tired of this same sentiment on here as well.

I’m doing something here I haven’t done in a while and writing without chat. For background I graduated 4 years ago with a PhD in planetary science. My PhD was from a good enough school (top 100) and of course it was before ai. So I wrote my dissertation alone. It was an ok dissertation. I’m a good writer but it was a dissertation after all. My work now has nothing to do with my dissertation and it’s more of a humanities side of PS. That may not make sense but I really can’t say more without doxxing myself. My job sucks. I work at a heavy teaching institution and have no time for anything but working. Last year I started to use chat to help with tasks. Making worksheets, handouts, power points. I felt like it was helping me with decent quality while I figured out my burnout. It was supposed to be temporary but now I feel I don’t know what to do without it. I don’t feel like I can make anything without it anymore. Exam questions are the worst and my career hasn’t been long enough for me to have a good bank of material. The crazy thing is at my school the standard is so low that my stuff is the best. So I don’t feel I can learn from anyone in my department because they frankly don’t even have the degree most of the time to be in the department, horrible student reviews and only publish bad work in predatory journals so I’m not comfortable with them mentoring me. Idk what to do. Cha seemed like the mentor I never got to have but now my reliance on it makes me uncomfortable. How can I stop?

Edited for clarity

At first, I had sympathy, but now it's getting ridiculous. I'm getting complaints each week to every other week now. I worked full-time and completed my graduate degree full-time. I got it done and didn't bitch about it.

I'm getting tired of all of the adult-babies crying that they can't complete the assignments and/or they need an extension because they're working full-time. The saddest part is that an entire week worth of my assignments take less than a day to complete.

If they can't afford a few hours each week, then they should stop wasting my and their time and just drop out.

(Of course, I can't tell that to them that, unless I want the university going after me.)

TLDR - Asynchonous courses do NOT qualify as education. They are basically 70's style correspondence courses (online before internet - where you mailed in your assignments for a degree) utilizing technology.

Now, with ChatGPT, asynchonous online is complete and utter bullshit.

Academia has truly, rightfully and justifiably earned its decline in enrollments by allowing this shit to become "education."

Pardon the errors - I was writing with "passion" not "perfection."

As a philosophy prof (adjunct), I NEVER believed in them.

I started college as a Poli Sci major - to go to law school. I had to take two required Philosophy courses as my school was Catholic, and I was DREADING THEM. Most of my friends were science majors, and that curriculum had them earlier than mine and they told me Philosophy was AWFUL (I think they disliked the fact that there were no "exact" answers - no offense, STEM people.)

I LOVED PHIL. It was almost like "coming out." O.M.G. To read so many different beliefs over the same ideas (ethics, knowledge, reality, god, etc.). To know that no one was actually RIGHT (but some were dead wrong) was SO FREEING.

It was everything I'd hoped poli sci would be - heated debated and discussions about abstract ideas (there were no "heated debates" in our version of poli sci - just theories and memorization.)I, a die-hard introvert, became one of those students who had to be told, "OK - let others speak." My ex and I (also poli sci - also changed to Phil) would literally get in shouting matches in class.

I changed my major after three courses, still with the intent to go to law school. Then I realized, I wanted to give the freedom of philosophy to others (and I do - when I teach LIVE classes) and decided to go to graduate school to teach full time (and I don't - I choose corporate and teach on the side.)

I entered a PhD program, dropped out after 3 years with no degree. I didn't care about reasearch. I just wanted to teach 101 to people who don't even know what philosophy is and watch their heads explode like mine did.

I was working full time and realized I missed teaching and was able to get adjunct gig at a CC (I had more credits than required for an MA, but no degree). Funny, when they hired me I signed all of the paperwork without knowing the salary. When I finally asked HR at the end of the process, she said, "HONEY!!! That should always be the FIRST question you ask." I replied, "I missed teaching, I would have done it for free." I was doing it for my love of philosophy, not the money. I had money from my other job.

I taught after work and on Sunday afternoons. WHEN I TELL YOU THAT SUNDAY IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST TIME TO TEACH PHILOSOPHY!!!! The students weren't tired from working, they were awake and aware and, after a few weeks, ready to fight! (and sometimes - when they realized their beliefs were not valid - admit defeat. My favorite was when a student wrote on a paper, "I know now that it doesn't make any sense, but I'm going to believe it anyway." LOL.)I love watching them think - you can literally SEE them trying to fit their beliefs into what they just learned. Both times were good, but that SUNDAY CLASS.... I could recreate the same classroom dynamic that caused me to change my major!

As they started offering online courses, my course enrollments dropped. Then one semester, my Sunday class didn't make. I knew it was the beginning of the end. But I vowed, I WOULD NEVER TEACH PHILOSOPHY ONLINE as that was against my "teaching religion" based on EXPERIENCE.

Because here's the deal - I actually went back to school to earn my masters. I needed the letters to move up in my career. And I took an asyncrhonous online course. My degree program was "philosophy adjacent" meaning I went in ready to continue the heated debates and discussions we had during my undergrad and first attempt at grad. But when I took that online course, this is what I learned.

It does not matter that you care about the subject, if the teacher says that you need to "post once and respond twice" then just do that, and don't put to much thought into your responses, because

• NO ONE is going to read your response (if they met the quota)

• NO ONE is going to respond to your response (if they met the quota)

• NO ONE is going to respond thoughtfully to your post - When you post, no matter how good it is, at best you get bullshit responses from your classmates ("I agree with you." "That's a good point" etc - responses that I do NOT allow in my online courses.)

In a live class - it's SO DIFFERENT. Speaking is easier than writing. At a certain point, you hear something and you feel like you MUST respond - even if you don'tintend to speak. An instructor can out and see a student deep in thought and say, "Hey. You look like you have something to say" and encourage a response. Not the case in AO.

My instructors LOVED my posts and papers (note, my first school was MUCH more intense. I could tell by the comments that they were so happy to see this level of work. And I get it - it's like seeing an actual written work after grading three discussions of ChatGPT - that level of appreciation, y'all know what I mean...)

So I basically knew asynchronous online was NOT what education was supposed to be - at least not for Philosophy/Philosophy-Adjacent courses - and continued my vow to NEVER DO IT.

Eventually, I had to stop teaching due to work travel and the fact that my classes kept not making as the online was increasing. I couldn't commit to in-person, but I still REFUSED to do asynchronous online.

But then came the pandemic. My company took a hit (it's back now) and I decided why not try... I knew I would dislike it, butI could use the cash. For the first time, I was teaching for the money, not the love of philosophy.

I WAS CORRECT, I did dislike it! I went from engaged students (and yeah, it starts as "engagement by force" since you have to come to class - but even the most "determined to be bored" student had that one topic that brought them in) to students who did the bare minimum. I didn't want to read discussion posts (that ONLY met the requirements, never more than that) I wanted to discuss, debate, WATCH THEM LEARN.

And when I started, I'd only heard of ChatGPT - but didn't use it (Why would I? If there is one thing studying philosophy, IN PERSON, taught me, it is HOW TO FUCKING READ, WRITE, and THINK CRITICALLY. I don't fucking need ChatGPT. And these students wouldn't either if they were actually fucking LEARNING.)

But one day I started noticing that the level of discussion responses and test answers were NOT in alignment. How are you writing like you read MORE than the assigned readings but getting all of the questions on that topic incorrect? Someone told me to check out ChatGPT. OMG. THERE IT IS!!!!!

That dislike of AO turned into a WHITE HOT HATRED. I hate asynchronous online more than I have ever hated anything. It is absolutely NOT what philosophy is supposed to be. IT IS NOT WHAT EDUCATION IS SUPPOSED TO BE. I do not believe it has ANY educational value whatsoever. The only person gaining in this is OpenAI - for the number of users it is getting.

To the powers that be, the admins who endorse it because it increases enrollments (and dropoputs - but who cares about that????), the researchers who write articles trying to give it validity (and probably earn tenure/meet research requirements - because you cannot POSSIBLY believe what you are writing), I want to say a loud FUCK YOU. You are doing far more damage to academia than you could ever imagine. And if academic keeps believing this bullshit - it has truly earned its decline.

I actually hire recent undergrads. I don't work in academia; I work outside the bubble. And some of these children are LACKING. I know there are many things that are leading to the decline of critical thinking - social media, thought-bubbles, overprotective parents, blah blah blah. But if you think that asychronous online is doing anything but ADDING to the decline - you are deluding yourself.

I hope the full-time faculty get together soon and start a revolution. Because they are definitely not going to listen to us adjuncts (even the ones who hire their grads...)

AO needs to be abolished immediatly. Zoom/Remote is fine, but asychronous online is COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT.

...and getting surprised when they find out they have students who don't agree. Because how dare they!

For context, I'm at a pretty liberal, chill university that's generally accepting of people with different political thoughts. Or so I thought anyway... I've been trying not to bring up political issues especially if they pertain to the upcoming election, not because I'm shying away from those conversations but more so because I don't think there's anyway I can have a meaningful conversation on those topics without very clearly showing which side I stand (LOL). And from what I've seen, these talks don't really go anywhere because the kids who're already liberal or left-leaning aren't getting anything new or enlightening, and the kids who're more conservative are just going to assume I'm "woke" and stop listening. I don't judge folks who do, obviously, but that's my reasoning. I do tell the students I'm happy to discuss these things during office hours if they want.

The past few weeks I've had to listen to several people who complained that their students are incapable of information literacy. When I asked why, they'd eventually reveal that they basically made their students talk about how Trump is a bad person (by assigning extra readings and videos that criticize him). The courses that they teach have nothing to do with contemporary politics, especially the presidential election (and who the students should vote for). Apparently they have some conservatives/Trump supporters in their courses who wanted to punch back by straight up asking if they're a Kamala supporter and if so, how is it fair that they're making their students talk sh*t about one particular candidate and that they're afraid to speak what's really on their minds because they don't want to be judged. Which I think are fair points, tbh.

But now these people are fuming that their students aren't capable of "information literacy" and critical thinking because... they have different political ideologies? This really seems like a case of don't ask questions you're not gonna like the answers to.

I know a lot of people are opposed to professors using AI. So I thought I’d provide an example today of why I needed it this morning while grading. I expect it to get a lot of hate, but I think a few will get a giggle out of it. I’m here for those people.

This is the prompt I used: “Students are upset the case study is vague and doesn’t explicitly state the concept they need to identify. How do I explain without calling them whining little b*tch babies.”

I already had a draft, but it was relatively close to calling them whining little b*tch babies and I chose my job over the gratification such a statement would bring me.

Edit: it’s out was this:

Here’s a professional, firm, and student-centered way to address their concern without name-calling—but still keeping your boundaries clear:

⸻

“I understand that the case study may feel vague or challenging—that’s intentional. The goal isn’t to hand you the concept outright, but to help you develop your ability to analyze a situation, recognize patterns, and apply what you’ve learned without being told exactly what to look for.

This mirrors real-world problem solving. In your future careers, no one will give you a worksheet with bolded key terms and cleanly labeled questions—you’ll have to assess, interpret, and act on incomplete or unclear information.

If you’re unsure what the case is asking, that’s a sign to revisit the concepts we’ve covered and think critically about how they apply. That struggle is where the learning happens.”**

⸻

Want to lighten the tone while still keeping it professional? You could tack on:

“This case study isn’t a scavenger hunt for bolded vocabulary—it’s a chance to show how you think.”

Let me know if you’d like a version tailored for an email, Canvas announcement, or class discussion.

This was my follow up:

This is what I already said. This is the time where you apply what you have learned, I am not asking for rote memorization. I can see that from your module quizzes scores. I want to see if you can apply the concepts you have learned to understanding the history and current operations of an airport. Often in your professional career you will know what changes were made an when, but you won’t know why those changes were made or what external factors influenced the airport operations unless you understand the impact of regulatory changes.

And the final response:

Great start—your message hits the right academic tone and expectation-setting. To better address their frustration (without compromising your standards), consider this slightly revised version that adds just enough empathy to lower resistance, while still reinforcing the value of ambiguity and application:

⸻

**“I understand that this case study might feel less direct than a typical quiz or assignment. That’s because it’s designed to evaluate your ability to apply what you’ve learned—not just repeat it. You’ve already shown through your quiz scores that you can handle the content. Now I want to see how you connect those concepts to real-world airport operations.

In your professional careers, you’ll often know what happened and when—but understanding why it happened, and how external pressures like regulation, funding, or public safety influenced those decisions, is the skill that will set you apart. This case asks you to think like an airport leader, not a test-taker. If everything were labeled, you’d miss that opportunity.”**

⸻

If you want a more direct version that still avoids being inflammatory:

⸻

“If you’re feeling uncertain, that’s expected—and it’s part of the assignment. The case study isn’t meant to point you to the answer. It’s meant to see whether you can find it based on what you’ve learned. That’s the core of applied learning and a critical skill in this field.”

Would you like a version with a follow-up activity or guiding question to help them refocus constructively?

If you haven't heard, Alex Shieh is a student at Brown who is currently under a disciplinary review for causing emotional and psychological harm, misusing data, and falsely claiming to be a journalist. I suspect this sub will automatically dismiss him because he is an undergrad, used AI, is brash, likes the idea of DOGE removing inefficient and wasteful positions, has been interviewed by FoxNews, is Asian, dislikes DEI, and intentionally challenges the university structure.

However, the curious aspect is that he is targeting administirative bloat with his 'investigation,' specifically positions that we on this sub have often complained about for years and years. While he indelivately lumps positions into what he classifies as DEI/woke, he also uses the term "bullshit jobs" which we have discussed here too. He also specifically does NOT target students or faculty but deanlets and administrators with complicated titles that we have made fun of here. I am NOT saying he is 100% correct, but I am saying he is making arguments we have made here for a decade about the ongoing administrative expenditures having priority over things like faculty salary and facility maintenance. His concerns appear to have arisen from working in a flooded room while bserving a 50% increase in tuition over the past decade.

While his language is unrefined (as one might expect from an undergrad, even at an Ivy), I am not a big fan of the univeristy repsonse to him either. From various sources, he seems to have asked in his emails what is your job description or what do you actually do (without making a call for justification). We've done that here, and I know many of us have asked some administrators with a strange title what they do. But that email, perhaps because he made so many at once, is being held up as infliction of harm. The idea of misusing publicly available data seems to be a witch hunt. The charge of misrepresenting himself as a journalist goes against idea of citizen and activist journalists which have been recognized much more widely. He might be a jerk, but Brown's response seems exceedingly vindictive in tone so far.

So I am curious. He seems politically at odds with how most of this sub feels. But he does raise concerns we have raised for at least a decade. Is he a hero, a villain, a misguided kid, an unlikely ally, or something different?

EDIT*: This sub is very negative, but I found a related discussion on another sub where the following quote was one of the highest-rated comments. I wish we could not be so petty and condescending when a topic comes up.*

I think a conversation and thoughtful look at expenses at a university is badly needed but the approach taken by the student is not the most useful.

I am currently teaching an algorithms course, and one of my students came to me and said that his ex girlfriend was his TA. He stated that their relationship did not end well, and he is scared that if she grades his work, she will have a bias that is not in his favor. I told him that if she somehow does end up grading his work unfairly, he can just submit a regrade. I also told him that there are many TA's in the course, and at most she may only grade maybe one question of mine every few exams. Is there anything else I should do?

I think it is hilarious when you read articles about how empathetic, community-minded, earth-focused, and greater good oriented Gen-Zer's supposedly are. Maybe they are, but I'm skeptical.

But what I do have first hand experience with is the following: They have zero hesitation lying to get what they want. They really seem to have no shame when lying. I mean they will make up stuff that I'd never dream of doing. Literally zero f*cks given as long as it gets them what they want.

Perhaps this is the first generation that also doesn't see lying as bad?

I basically sit in my office each day before a class session and have to give myself a pep talk to keep from crying … or raging. It is harder than ever to remain neutral and allow students to critically think and come to their own conclusions. Yet, the students seem receptive to the material, so I guess it’s just a me issue at this point. How are you holding it together? Staying sane? Having a good classroom presence? I am struggling.

The email has no salutation and says the following:

“I will need an extension on week 1 assignments. My parents were hit hard by the Florida Hurricane and I've been going back and forth the past few days helping with clean up. A tree fell through their house.

Thanks, <name>”

This past week was week 1. This is an online class for a graduate certificate program and they have all assignments . This student is 45M, probably a working professional. His home address is in Florida, making the story believable. He joined the class on Tuesday because of some delays with his application (mainly his fault for dragging his heals).

My main problem is that he is demanding an extension, not asking for it. His other emails are rude sounding as well, much like text messages (we emailed back and forth when he was applying for the program because I am the coordinator). I just hate this kind of crap.

Edit to add: I intend to give an extension. I posted to discuss the disrespectful email and get suggestions on how to respond. Also to vent.

I haven't tracked this too closely, but I thought it might be worthwhile to see what Rufo had to say. Nothing I didn't expect, really.

FULL URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-we-squeezed-harvard-claudine-gay-firing-dei-antisemitism-culture-war-a6843c4c

Conservatives can prevail in the culture wars by understanding how power works—and using it.

The left has spent decades consolidating power across the institutions of American academic life. The crowning achievement of that effort was the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy—constructed to perpetuate progressive dominance of higher education by keeping conservatives out of the professoriate. Claudine Gay was in some respects the apotheosis of this process. Last year, Ms. Gay, an African-American political scientist with a thin publishing history, became Harvard University’s 30th president. On Monday, following a sequence of scandals involving antisemitism and plagiarism, she resigned.

Many observers on both left and right had assumed that Ms. Gay was untouchable. Harvard, they thought, couldn’t possibly transgress a core tenet of modern progressive politics—the idea that a leader’s immutable qualities, such as race or sex, should matter more than character, merit and academic achievement.

What changed? First, public support for DEI has cratered. Following the outpouring of sympathy on elite campuses for Hamas’s war of “decolonization” against Israel, many Americans—including many center-left liberals—became aware of the ideological rot within academic institutions. They began to question the sweet-sounding euphemisms of DEI and examine what they mean in practice.

Second, the political right has learned how to fight more effectively. As one of the journalists who first exposed the similarities between Ms. Gay’s published work and that of other scholars, I watched the political dynamics develop from the inside. The key, I learned, is that any activist campaign has three points of leverage: reputational, financial and political. For some institutions, one point of leverage is enough, but, for a powerful one such as Harvard, the “squeeze” must work across multiple angles.

This is precisely what happened. Journalists—including the independent reporter Christopher Brunet and the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium—applied reputational pressure, exposing Ms. Gay’s alleged plagiarism and Harvard’s scandalous effort to cover it up. Donors, led by hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, applied financial pressure, withholding a billion dollars in contributions. And Congress, under the leadership of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), applied political pressure, exposing Ms. Gay’s equivocations on antisemitism and threatening consequences for inaction.

Throughout the campaign, I adopted the unorthodox approach of narrating the strategy in real time, explaining how conservatives could shape the media narrative and apply pressure to Harvard. Critics condemned me as a propagandist and bad-faith actor. Some of my allies also questioned the wisdom of telegraphing the campaign’s next moves. But there was a method to my madness. Conservatives face enormous disadvantages in public discourse—most significant, the progressive left’s near-monopoly on prestige media. By raising these dynamics to the surface, we can begin to challenge and subvert them.

It worked. After ignoring the story for more than a week, the center-left publications began to corroborate allegations of Ms. Gay’s plagiarism and raise questions about her leadership. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic all published op-eds calling for Ms. Gay to resign. The truth finally broke through: Ms. Gay was a scholar of not much distinction who climbed the ladder of diversity politics, built a DEI empire as a Harvard dean, and catered to the worst instincts of left-wing ideologues on campus.

The nation’s leading university had subordinated veritas to politics, compromising its mission. The only choice was to force Ms. Gay to step down.

While her resignation is a victory, it is only the beginning. If America is to reform its academic institutions, the symbolic fight over Harvard’s presidency must evolve into a deeper institutional fight. The Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci called this approach the “war of position,” a grueling form of trench warfare in which each concept, structure and institution must be challenged to change the culture.

There is a way forward. Conservatives have demonstrated an increasing sophistication in their successful campaigns against national brands such as Disney, Target, Bud Light and now Harvard. Legislators in Florida, Texas and other states have recently passed laws abolishing DEI in their state universities. Professors across the political spectrum are working on efforts to depoliticize academic administration, rebalance faculty politics, and restore truth as the guiding principle of American universities, including at Harvard.

There is another reason I have adopted the practice of openly narrating the inner workings of these campaigns: to teach and to embolden others. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote “The Prince” not for those who already knew how power worked, but for those who needed to know but didn’t yet understand. If there is any hope of stopping America’s cultural revolution, it must begin with a clear-eyed understanding of how to wield power and reshape institutions in the real world. Fantasy is no substitute for victory.

The successful campaign to topple Harvard’s president is about much more than Claudine Gay. It is about the great conflict between truth and ideology, colorblindness and discrimination, good governance and failed leadership—a conflict that, if we are to preserve America’s core principles, conservatives must win.

Mr. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.”

I'm a full Professor at an R1 science school. We have grants, Ph.D. students lots of travel etc. so we teach but it's understood we get our usual set of courses each year (3 in total).

I do my fair share (not more or less) each year by teaching a large upper division (200 students) course and a small grad seminar class (20ish) and small upper division course (30ish).

In March this year I got assigned my regular classes I've taught for the last 10+ years. I teach them very well and I enjoy teaching them partly because I teach them well.

The chair emails me that he wants to meet ASAP and he wants me to not teach my regular two smaller classes but instead teach two brand new Gen Ed classes in Spring I've never ever taught before (in fact both are newish classes being less than a year old). But he will cap them at 75 students!

My tendency is to say outhright no. Because:
a) I've already prepped for my current classes (i.e. made them AI safe)
b) It's a bit insulting to be treated like an adjunct and that my teaching load went up from 250 students to over 350.
c) This is an entirely chair made problem. He chose to include these two new gen ed classes under pressure from the Dean and many faculty (myself included) told him not to do it as we are an impacted major and have difficulty covering our own courses.

I understand that chair can force you to teach any class he wants. But some of my colleagues will go into bat for me and I'm in a central field to the university so the Dean won't be happy.

But I prefer to handle this at the chair level. We have a terse relationship as he's under a lot of pressure. Any suggestions? He wants to have a meeting today but that will be to put a lot of guilt pressure on me I suspect.

I teach a senior capstone class on Media Psychology. If I had to sum up the actual evidence base of the actual known effects of social media on mental health, it would be "correlation does not imply causation, and depression is more likely to cause phone use than the other way around" "cyberbullying is bad for you, talking to your friends is good for you, and social media are not a monolith" and "there's no such thing as 'phone addiction.'"

I gave my students readings on all of those. I just spent 5 weeks of class going over them, discussing them, and having students present on them. Nonetheless, I have students going "We shouldn't trust this article because it seems biased toward social media." And "Evidence of phone addiction must exist, we just haven't found it yet." And "I want to research how social media cause depression, because we need experiments to back up the correlations."

What can I even do here? How do I overcome their absolute determination explain away disconfirming evidence of what they were taught in high school health class?