The painful and wrenching demise of entire academic departments opens up opportunities for a more radical understanding and practice of higher education, beyond and despite the confines of university funding.

In France, for example, there’s Le Collège international de philosophie, co-founded by philosopher Jacques Derrida, and Le Université populaire de Caen, founded by Michel Onfray, another maverick philosopher.

In the US, meanwhile, there’s Vital Thought, and The Reading Room, sponsored by Pluto Press, in the UK.

I’ve suggested the future of the humanities is wide open. But in these times it’s much more political than that:

Now Karen Attiah says Columbia Canceled My Course on Race and Media. I’m Going to Teach It Anyway.

You might want to support her summer school: Race, Media, and International Affairs 101.

As she says:

They can cancel us all they want, but we will create community and share knowledge anyway!

Willful ignorance, of the kind supported by the extremists running the US Government, has a fatal flaw.

Can you guess what it is?