“Everything in Between” is about the systems, institutions, and practices that people build, “things” of a sort that sit in between us, between groups of us, between “us” and “them,” and between us and other systems and institutions that seem terribly far away: “the market,” “the state,” the universe, and so on.
Hello again, and greetings both to existing followers and to new readers of all sorts. It’s been a while since I posted something here. It’s nice to be back.
This Substack is all about institutions – where they come from, how they function, what they do, what happens to them, and why. For a while, and until earlier this year, I focused on colleges and universities, in many ways the canonical examples of “knowledge institutions.”
I’ll return to some of my own thoughts on that theme in future essays. For now I’ll note simply that earlier this year it became unsustainable for me to write about higher education in terms that implied that everything “else” was carrying on more or less as it had been in, say, mid-2024. So I hit the pause button.
And I doubled down on reading. I am, still, trying to figure out where universities are headed (if they are headed anywhere, including down and out); where they should be headed (ditto); and what, if anything, I might have to say and do about any of that.
Before I get back to that topic, though, I’ll fill in the gap in my publishing timeline with some information about what, exactly, that reading has consisted of.
It will surprise no one, at least no one skimming this essay now, that Substack is filled with people with opinions, and with occasional insights, about the past, present, and future of universities. Below, I’ll share a first list of the Substacks and authors that I have found stimulating and provocative on that theme. There may be more lists to come.
Some but by no means all of these people come themselves from the world of education, as I currently do. Others come from worlds of finance and economics; from leadership and management; from a focus on change (in particular on change dynamics and change management); from decision theory; from the humanities; and from critical perspectives on technology. Imagine “the future of education” meeting “the domain of the sociotechnical,” and “the sociolegal,” political economy (as well as plain old economics), urbanism and geography, and some doses of leadership practice and epistemology. Did I mention artificial intelligence? No? No need. It’s everywhere.
In other words, education is not just about education and educators (or students, or researchers and scholars, or consultants, or accreditors, or athletes, or middle management). Universities are, in a variety of ways, too important in themselves and too important as case studies of institutional formation and governance to leave simply to the insiders who run them and fund them.
In listing my current sources, I don’t meant imply that I am trying to be exhaustive (I pick and choose); I also don’t meant to be “neutral,” despite the multiple meanings of that term (I’m trying to learn, so that - later, perhaps - I can try to teach). Some of my own biases will be evident in the list that follows. I try to be reasonably inclusive of perspectives and views that I disagree with, but inevitably I fall short. I confess also to avoiding certain people. At least in this context. I have relatively little interest in reading words from people who are currently serving as university presidents or for people whose primarily credential is that they served as university presidents in the past. There are always exceptions (great leadership is great leadership, wherever it is found), but as a rule my experience is that these people are selected for their roles primarily because they appear to have the capacity to manage rather than the vision required for leadership. And, perhaps paradoxically, I have little interest in reading about success stories from academic leaders (or managers) who have built some great program and then try to leverage that experience into a just-so story about the future of something bigger or broader. Again, there are always exceptions.
So, and with that out of the way, in alphabetical order:
Jay Akridge and David Hummels, Finding Equilibrium
Bryan Alexander, AI, academia, and the Future
Helen Beetham, imperfect offerings
Nicholas Carr, New Cartographies
Susan Crawford, Moving Day [about adaptation to climate change]
Jordan Furlong [on law, the legal profession, and legal education]
Michael Horn, The Future of Education
Dave Karpf, The Future, Now and Then
Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing
Jennifer Pahlka, Eating Policy
Virginia Postrel, Virginia’s Newsletter
Hollis Robbins, Anecdotal Value
Audrey Watters, Second Breakfast [not hosted on Substack]
Obviously there are folks on Substack who I’ve “missed” (though I follow some Substacks I haven’t listed), and there are folks whose work I read carefully who aren’t on Substack. More on them later, perhaps.
Comments (and suggestions!) are welcome.