Good Monday morning. This newsletter began as an email to a few friends and colleagues one year ago this week (May 7, 2020); this is our 39th edition and we’re over 250 subscribers. Thanks for reading, thanks for your feedback, thanks for your encouragement, and thanks for sharing! Our syllabus this week:
Conversation Starters
The DEI-alogue
Future of Higher Education
Best of the Rest
OUR HEARTS ARE WITH INDIA
“Sometimes it comes in a barrage of WhatsApp messages first thing in the morning, and sometimes it lands in the middle of the night. But for Indian Americans, the daily crush of dark news from the homeland is a stark reminder that the pandemic is far from over.” As virus engulfs India, diaspora watches with despair (AP)
Conversation Starters
START YOUR WEEK HERE
Students created faux New Yorker covers about the pandemic — and they were so good they went viral (WaPo)
ICYMI
Zoom Immersive View: New feature allows hosts to arrange video participants and webinar panelists into a single virtual background. Introducing Immersive View (Zoom)
I learned so much from this video and visual storytelling: How Pfizer Makes Its Covid-19 Vaccine (NYT)
THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL TALK
How to Make Your Small Talk Big (NYT) (h/t Susannah Washburn)
For more than a year, we have mostly been apart. We’ve learned to put a premium on efficiency, whether in masked exchanges on street corners or on work calls between distractions. We talk fast and abruptly shift from greetings to agenda-driven updates. Then we replay it when we’re back in isolation. Our entire social lives have become a middle school dance: unrealistic expectations in the lead-up, self-conscious regrets in the aftermath. In this time of immense division and hurt in America, small talk is one instrument of change available to all of us. It doesn’t require a filibuster-proof majority or herd immunity. It does take effort and humility — to make the first call, to acknowledge the difficulty, to stretch a little beyond the usual platitudes and to leave things untidy.
POST-PANDEMIC SOCIALIZING
Some people will want to go out as often as they can. Others won’t be able to forget how nice it is to sit at home on the couch. The 2 Types of Post-pandemic Socializers (Atlantic)
Verbal diarrhea is just one symptom of late-stage pandemic social awkwardness. It's not just you. We're all socially awkward now. (WaPo)
When the social floodgates open, not everyone will want to use their newfound freedom in the same way. The Coming Conflict Between Introverts and Extroverts (Atlantic)
Related: Returning to offices frozen in pre-pandemic time (WaPo)
‘AFTER’ THOUGHTS: WHAT WE’LL KEEP
The pandemic made us change our lives. Here are 11 ways we won’t change back. Wearing masks when we’re sick. Streaming. Soft pants. Time outdoors. Telecommuting. What we’ll keep (WaPo)
Cocktails to go. 6 restaurant pivots that food critic Tom Sietsema hopes outlast the pandemic (WaPo)
Even if we are inclined to use this time as a chance for self-improvement, it’s hard to know if or how the pandemic might really affect us now or in the coming years. Will the pandemic make us nicer people? Probably not. But it might change us in other ways. (WaPo)
Related: writers share their visions for their “After”: After Thoughts (NYT)
Related: My adult son taught me plenty while we were home together (WaPo)
‘MUDDLING THROUGH’: LANGUISHING
Feeling Blah During the Pandemic? It's Called Languishing (NYT)
Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021. In psychology, we think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing. Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. It appears to be more common than major depression — and in some ways it may be a bigger risk factor for mental illness.
THE ‘YOLO’ ECONOMY
Burned out and flush with savings, some workers are quitting stable jobs in search of post-pandemic adventure. Welcome to the YOLO Economy (NYT)
Older millennials made it to management—now they're wondering if they even want to be the boss (CNBC)
The DEI-alogue
CULTURE SHIFTERS
19 profiles of outspoken leaders who are doing the work toward equity and inclusion, toward freedom and justice for all, adding levity to our day-to-day lives and inspiring others to do the same. The Culture Shifters Who Are Shaping Our Future (HuffPo)
CHAUVIN VERDICT
Adam Serwer: There Will Be More Derek Chauvins (Atlantic)
Derek Chauvin's Guilty Verdict Is A Victory But Prosecutors Didn't Tell The Truth About Police (Buzzfeed)
BLACK LIVES MATTER
When Blackness Is a Superpower: From Falcon to Black Panther and More (NYT)
“You will be rewarded for working like an animal, but you also will be treated like an animal.” NPR's Audie Cornish on Navigating Her Career and Being a Working Mom (Elle)
AMPLIFYING VOICES
Performative Rage is Not Activism (Medium)
The Forgotten History of the Campaign to Purge Chinese from America (New Yorker)
Future of Higher Education
THE VACCINATION TIPPING POINT
UMD adds campus COVID-19 vaccine data to online dashboard (DBK)
A Tipping Point? Dozens of Public Colleges Announce Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates (Chronicle)
HOT TOPICS
The Many Ways Colleges Are Handling Covid-Complicated Graduations (NYT)
Is it Time to Eliminate Recommendation Letters? (Hint: Yes) (Chronicle)
How midlevel academic administrators can best manage crises in their units (IHE)
ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT
Elite Universities Welcome More Diverse Freshman Class (NYT)
Nationwide: Spring Undergraduate Enrollment Down 5.9%; Steepest Decline So Far Since the Pandemic (Student Clearinghouse)
FEDERAL PLANS
President Biden’s $1.8 trillion American Families Plan seeks to strengthen the middle class through: two years of free community college, an increase in the maximum Pell Grant, money for evidence-based strategies to improve completion and retention rates, and support for minority-serving institutions.
College emergency aid: The pandemic trend that needs to stay (WaPo)
COLLEGE DEGREES AS BARRIER TO WORK
TEACHING AND LEARNING
DEI and beyond: Don’t Mistake Training for Education (IHE)
Some colleges want faculty to teach more courses, citing budget problems (WaPo)
'We Need To Be Nurtured, Too': Many Teachers Say They're Reaching A Breaking Point (NPR)
Best of the Rest
WELLNESS
UNDER THE RADAR
It’s Not Just Young White Liberals Who Are Leaving Religion (538)
Police and the License to Kill (Boston Review)
Fascinating oral history of the bin Laden raid, ten years later. ‘I’d Never Been Involved in Anything as Secret as This’ (Politico)
FUN
Netflix Does to Shuffle: Inside the Play Something Feature (Vulture)
Sierra Teller Ornelas on the Roots of ‘Rutherford Falls’ (NYT)
Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+: Why we might never reach subscription fatigue (Vox)
This Duck Called "Long Boi" Is Going Viral For How Tall He Is (Buzzfeed)
Until next time (May 17), be strong and be well.