Michael Roth

As I prepare for my commencement speech this year, I remember vividly when I first realized that I could graduate college in three years rather than four. As a freshman, I was certainly in no hurry to leave. Indeed, I loved being in college: I was excited by the combination...

Early May usually brings an unusually large number of press reports about higher education. Many high school seniors have just made their decisions about where they will be going to college, and those preparing to graduate from universities across the country are confronting transitions into an increasingly unwelcoming economy. Recently,...

In the preface to this lengthy autobiography, Claude Lanzmann writes that he has long agreed with the "thousand people" who have told him a "thousand times" that he should write the story of his "rich, multi-faceted and unique" life. But he was so busy living that it was not until...

Sherry Turkle's essay in Sunday's New York Times, "The Flight From Conversation," raised several critical questions about how our desire to be connected via technology can also be a powerful mechanism for avoiding significant human contact. Turkle, a psychologist and professor at MIT, is no technophobe. She argues,...

Every year at this time college campuses like mine welcome hundreds of visitors who move around campuses with assurance but also with plenty of questions. These are the newly admitted members of the class of 2016, and they are now trying to decide which school is the right choice for...

I read with sadness this morning that the great American poet, Adrienne Rich, died this week at her home in Santa Cruz. She was a brave and ardent writer, a gifted teacher and a powerful voice of conscience. This is no one quite like her in American letters.

On Wednesday, March 28th (9 p.m./8c), PBS will broadcast an important film that explores some of the crucial ethical issues that are emerging from the life sciences: how to use our knowledge of personal genetic information; and who should have access to this information about our individual and familial genetic...

In his first book, Absolute Convictions, Eyal Press showed how anti-abortion crusaders in Buffalo achieved intense solidarity in pursuit of their goals, including the murder of an abortion provider and intimidation of others, such as the author's father. In Beautiful Souls, Press examines another side of strong group conviction: the...

Next week Justice Antonin Scalia will be delivering the Hugo Black Lecture at Wesleyan University. It's been a long time since we've welcomed a Supreme Court Justice to Middletown. Justice Harry Blackmun visited the campus in 1993, giving the second lecture in this series. We've invited others, but given the...

This week the Supreme Court voted to hear a challenge to the ability of colleges and universities to shape the racial and ethnic demographics of their student bodies. Currently, schools are allowed to use race as a factor among many others in achieving diversity for educational reasons. When the Court...

It's been more than a little depressing to listen to debate performances over the last couple of months, in which candidates seem to gain in popularity by refining a formula of indignation and hostility. "How dare you," says the candidate, puffing out his chest, wondering how any questioner could sink...

In 1775, Dorothea Maunsell and her new husband, William Long Kingsman, went to court to show that they were indeed legally married. They had already had two wedding ceremonies (one in Italy, the other in England), but there was a problem: a long, public record of Dorothea already being married...

The news about the American education system has been bleak over the last year -- from elementary schools that seem "designed to fail" to for-profit universities that are scooping up borrowed tuition dollars without providing their graduates with much hope of gainful employment. No surprise then that the American public...

In the first half of 2011, we heard the word"deficit" in wave after wave of political discourse. The Republicans used it as a signifier of Washington's lack of fiscal self-control -- of an intellectually and morally bankrupt government that spent our money without concern for the views of those who...

The president of the Hastings Center asked me to address the links between its mission in bioethics and the mission of universities and colleges dedicated to liberal arts education. The founders of the Hastings Center knew that science was too important to leave in the hands only of specialists, and...

"The last few weeks have been especially hectic," I told my older son recently, when we had our regular phone conversation to bridge the distance between West Coast and East. "Do I say that every week," I wondered. He, too, is increasingly busy, as are so many of the people...

I recently received an email forwarded to groups of students and faculty from colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley. The message described the excessive use of force by UC Berkeley police in their attempt to dismantle tents in Sproul Plaza. I was in that plaza a...

The Occupy Wall Street protests have become an important topic on college campuses. At Wesleyan, some of our students have joined the group in Zuccotti Park in New York, and others have found a variety of ways of expressing their support. Given the mainstream media's treatment of the movement, it's...

Diane Arbus made arresting, absorbing photographs of dwarfs, twins, giants, nudists and carnies. "I really believe," she said, "there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them." Together with other artists expanding the boundaries of photography in the 1960s, she altered the way we understand portraiture and thus...

Recently the trustees of my university were in town for their annual retreat. Our theme this year was "the innovative university," and we worked together to think through how Wesleyan might get out in front of some of the major changes in higher education. Technology, of course, is driving many...