Tag: nation

  • Existential Questions for Higher Education and the Nation

    Existential Questions for Higher Education and the Nation

    “Who are we? Where are we going? Where do we come from?” These existential questions are not luxuries in times of crisis—they are necessities. And as the storms of political, social, and environmental upheaval grow darker, they demand our full attention.

    For many in the United States, especially younger generations, the future feels bleak. Student loan debt weighs down tens of millions. Meaningless, low-wage, precarious employment—what anthropologist David Graeber called “bullsh*t jobs”—dominates the landscape, even for the college educated. Higher education, once touted as the great equalizer, has increasingly functioned as a sorting mechanism that reinforces class division rather than dismantling it.

    This is not accidental. It is the consequence of more than a half century of growing inequality, fueled by tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, union busting, and the privatization of public goods. Since the 1970s, wages for working people have stagnated, while the top one percent has consolidated unimaginable wealth and power. Higher education has both suffered from and contributed to this shift: as public funding declined, universities increasingly turned to corporate partnerships, tuition hikes, student loans, and contingent labor to survive. In doing so, they have often replicated the very inequalities they claim to challenge.

    Instead of building an informed and empowered citizenry, the modern university too often churns out debt-saddled consumers, precarious workers, and disillusioned graduates. The idea of education as a public good has been replaced by the logic of the market—branding, metrics, debt financing, and labor flexibility.

    Meanwhile, U.S. politics offers little solace. We are caught between the reactionary authoritarianism of Trumpism and the managerial neoliberalism of the Democratic establishment. Both forces have proven inadequate in confronting systemic inequality, environmental collapse, and imperial overreach. Instead, they compete to maintain the illusion of normalcy while conditions deteriorate.

    Internationally, the collapse of moral leadership is most evident in the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Backed by billions in U.S. aid and political cover, the Israeli military has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and displaced countless more. Hospitals, schools, and entire neighborhoods have been leveled. On college campuses across the U.S., students and faculty who dare to speak out against this atrocity have faced surveillance, censorship, arrests, and administrative repression. At a moment when moral clarity should be the minimum, too many institutions of higher learning have chosen complicity.

    This convergence of global injustice and domestic repression raises urgent questions for academia. What is the role of the university in a world marked by war, inequality, and ecological collapse? What values will guide us through the storm?

    The answer begins with honesty. We must recognize that higher education is not separate from society’s failures—it is entangled in them. But that also means it can be part of the solution. Colleges and universities can serve as spaces of resistance, reflection, and regeneration—but only if they reject their alignment with empire, capital, and white supremacy.

    Where do we come from? From resistance: from student uprisings, civil rights sit-ins, anti-apartheid divestment, labor organizing, and community building. From people who believed—and still believe—that education should serve justice, not profit.

    Where are we going? That depends on whether we are willing to confront power, abandon illusions, and build institutions that are democratic, transparent, and rooted in the needs of the many rather than the few.

    The future is uncertain. The storm is here. But history is not finished. A more humane and equitable society remains possible—if we have the courage to demand it.

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  • University of Michigan paid firm to spy on activist students (News Nation)

    University of Michigan paid firm to spy on activist students (News Nation)

    Attorney Amir Makled joins “NewsNation Now” to discuss a report from The Guardian that the University of Michigan paid $800,000 to a private security firm to have undercover investigators surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups. Makled called the alleged conduct “really disturbing.”

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  • Music as the lifeblood of a nation

    Music as the lifeblood of a nation

    The museum’s collection includes over 300 portraits of musicians — Vivaldi, Mozart, Rossini, Verdi — most of which are searchable online but rarely known to be housed in Bologna. “We are the Facebook of music history,” Tabellini joked. Some visitors come just for a selfie with Vivaldi’s portrait. “But they end up being amazed by everything else too.”

    One way the museum connects past and present is by bringing centuries-old traditions into modern classrooms and rehearsal spaces. Ancient manuscripts, Renaissance songs and Baroque instruments become starting points for young people to experiment, perform and imagine their own musical future.

    To reach new generations, the museum doesn’t just display music. It puts it in the hands of young people.

    “If you bring a 10-year-old into a museum filled with incomprehensible scores and portraits of musicians, you’re basically telling them that music isn’t for them,” Tabellini said.

    Connecting to music by playing it

    The museum invites students to make music before they study it. Its educational programs include workshops in singing, building instruments, experimenting with electronic music and more.

    “Only afterward do they visit the museum, already equipped with experience. That way the visit isn’t punitive but engaging,” Tabellini said. Many of these programs take place directly in schools and involve thousands of children each year.

    “You understand music by doing it. That’s our approach — accessible, inclusive, active. The museum visit should be a destination, not a starting point.”

    Today, the museum includes over 110,000 volumes — manuscripts, scores, treatises and rare documents. Only a fraction is on display, and much of the experience depends on guided interpretation. 

    “You need cultural mediation to really understand what you’re looking at,” Tabellini said.

    But two decades later, the title’s meaning has changed. “The UNESCO title has generally become a sort of brand, a designer label like those of high fashion,” he said. “It should be an incentive to preserve cultural heritage, but it doesn’t impose any real obligation to do so. It’s now a marketing tool, useful for tourism but not always returning value to the local community.”

    Exploring music by creating it

    The museum’s collections also hold stories that humanize even the greatest musicians. One of the most memorable involves a 14-year-old prodigy named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

    In 1770, Mozart stayed in Bologna to study with Giovanni Battista Martini, a Franciscan friar and music theorist who laid the foundation for the city’s historic music archive. Mozart hoped to join the Accademia Filarmonica, but he had to pass a grueling composition exam.

    “These exams were called clausura, meaning ‘locked room’,” Tabellini said. “Candidates were literally locked in to write their scores. They could last hours, even days.”

    Mozart had spent the summer preparing with Martini, who was also the head of the Accademia. Still, the results were mixed.

    “We hold two of the three versions of Mozart’s exam,” Tabellini said. “The first is Mozart’s autograph — full of mistakes. The second, in Martini’s handwriting, is musically correct but full of corrections. The third, kept at the Accademia, is identical to Martini’s version, but written by Mozart. That version earned him admission.”

    The conclusion? “Mozart copied,” Tabellini said. “It’s one of the most fascinating musical mysteries we preserve. And telling it to visitors brings history to life. If even Mozart needed a helping hand … then there’s hope for all of us.”

    Breathing life into old music

    Connecting the old to today also means finding new ways to let historical documents speak to modern audiences. Through live events and storytelling, the museum ensures that ancient music isn’t just studied — it’s experienced in real time.

    The museum displays some 300 instruments, including one-of-a-kind rarities like the Clavemusicum omnitonum — a 16th-century “perfect keyboard” capable of playing every pitch imaginable. Unfortunately, its keys are too far apart to be playable by human hands.

    Other instruments, however, do come to life in the museum’s many live events: over 100 each year. These include concerts, lectures and series like Wunderkammer and Insolita.

    “In Insolita, we select a document from our collection and pair it with a live concert,” Tabellini said.

    Before the performance, we show the original manuscript and explain its history. It’s a way to give life to what would otherwise remain silent.”

    One audience favorite is “O felici occhi miei” by Arcadelt, a Renaissance madrigal — a form of secular, polyphonic vocal music — with 40 known editions. “We hold 19 of them,” Tabellini said. “When people see the actual pages before hearing the music, they realize that without those sheets, the music itself might never have survived.”

    Visitors sometimes wonder why music doesn’t constantly play in a museum of music. But there’s a reason.

    “If you just pipe background music through the rooms, it becomes ‘muzak’ — like in a supermarket,” Tabellini said.

    Instead, the museum is exploring meaningful ways to integrate sound: virtual manuscripts, interactive instruments and multimedia displays. 

    “We want to integrate music into the experience — but on our own terms,” Tabellini said. “It’s not just about hearing. It’s about understanding why you’re hearing it.”

    The challenge is to make a quiet space sing — not loudly, but purposefully. “We don’t want to entertain. We want to create an experience. Every object we preserve has something to say, and we want its voice to be heard.”

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. How do labels like “opera” or “love songs” influence — or distort — how we see Italian music today?

    2. In what way is highlighting cultural heritage important to for cities that rely on tourism?

    3. When was the last time you found yourself liking old music? What about it did you like?

     

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  • OPINION: Policy changes sweeping the nation are harming our students. Educators must fight back

    OPINION: Policy changes sweeping the nation are harming our students. Educators must fight back

    Here’s a true story from North Carolina. Two elementary school children under the age of 10 waited for their parents to come home. We know they cleaned the dishes; the house was immaculate when someone finally came.

    The children did not attend school for a number of days. After three days, someone from their school reached out to a community member with concern for their well-being.

    While they were home alone instead of in school, the children made their own food and drank water. Their parents, who had been detained by ICE, had nurtured these skills of independence, so the children were not yet hungry or thirsty when someone finally came.

    Similar scenes are likely happening across the U.S. as President Trump aggressively steps up efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. The new policies sweeping the nation deeply affect and harm our children.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    Teachers: This is the moment when we need to rise to the occasion, because children are being wronged in uncountable ways. Protections that allow them to express their gender identities are under threat. Their rights to learn their diverse histories and understand the value of their communities are being chipped away bit by bit.

    These threats, one at a time, layer after layer, amount to profound harm. So let us be especially vigilant.

    The responsibility to challenge these threats cannot fall solely on the shoulders of individual teachers. We must have systems in place that allow us to swiftly raise concerns about student well-being.

    Schools, districts, and states must provide resources and structures — like wellness checks, counseling and communication with community services — that allow us to act swiftly when the safety of our students is at risk.

    As public servants, we must live out our charge to protect and advocate for the children we serve by taking immediate action to ensure their safety in whatever ways we are able. That means actively noticing when students are missing and when they are struggling.

    Public education has long wrestled with the role of politics in schools. No matter how we answer questions about political content, educators have been unified in the goal of nurturing children’s thinking and flourishing.

    Our state constitution and many others’ declare that all children are entitled to a “sound basic education,” and our professional responsibilities extend to their safety. In North Carolina, the first category of the code of ethics for educators pertains to professional ethical commitments to students.

    To uphold these professional commitments, the educator “protects students from conditions within the educator’s control that circumvent learning or are detrimental to the health and safety of students.”

    This protection must be more than theoretical. When our students are at risk, we have our constitutional guarantees and ethical commitments.

    The brutal example of the children whose parents were taken away is one of many. We cannot fathom all that the children needed to know in order to survive those harrowing few days alone in their home. We do know they were ready.

    We can assume that perhaps they read their favorite books or calculated measurements while cooking themselves dinner, utilizing skills they learned in our classrooms. What we do know is that the knowledge taught to them by their families and community ensured their safety.

    The community member who ultimately went to check in on the missing students used a “safe word” — one that the children had been taught to listen for before ever opening their door to a stranger.

    The children did not open the door until that word was spoken. Hearing that word, they reportedly asked: “Are Mommy and Daddy OK? ICE?”

    These are the lessons young children are living by today. Safe words to protect themselves from adults who prey on their families. Skills of survival to hide at home, cooking and caring for themselves without seeking help from others if they find themselves alone.

    Related: Child care centers were off limits to immigration authorities. How that’s changed

    A protective silence now envelops all the children in the community where those parents were seized. An example has been made and now those in their community are hiding in fear or fleeing. The idea that this example is a model to be followed is a transgression of our ethical compact to care for these children, who are no longer in school, due to their fear, hiding with family members.

    Recognizing, acting on and speaking back to this injustice is precisely the sort of resistance and professionalism that binds our practice as educators. It is what we write of today.

    The children were ready. Educators need to be as well.

    We must use our voices to illuminate the harm being done to the children we know, honor and teach. Let us replace silences with spoken truths about their power and ours to survive and to resist; let us live out the expectation that public service must be enacted with humanity.

    We have a professional responsibility to not look away. This is not just a moral argument. We are their teachers, and we must ask: How will the students in my classroom survive? And how can we help them?

    Simona Goldin is a research professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina. Debi Khasnabis is a clinical professor at the University of Michigan’s Marsal School of Education.

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about Trump administration policy changes and students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

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