Nancy Thomas is director of the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. In the Question & Answers (Q&A) presented in this article, New England Journal of Higher Education (NEJHE) Executive Editor John O. Harney asks Thomas about her insights on higher education, citizen…

Colleges and universities are among the most cherished--and controversial--institutions in the United States. In this updated edition of "A History of American Higher Education," John R. Thelin offers welcome perspective on the triumphs and crises of this highly influential sector in American life. Exploring American higher education…

Teachers today must prepare students for an increasingly complex, interconnected, and interdependent world. Being a globally competent teacher requires embracing a mindset that translates personal global competence into professional classroom practice. It is a vision of equitable teaching and learning that enables students to thrive in an…

In the middle of the 20th century, trustees, elected officials, and others in the southern United States required black and white institutions to forfeit academic freedom protections when faculty research and teaching threatened to undermine white supremacy. In the early 21st century, faculty who critique white supremacy are facing similar attacks…

In this teacher practitioner article, we share our experience presenting a humanities lesson in which students created a remix, or mashup, by combining contemporary fiction with historical documents. Theoretical underpinnings of this project included the work of linguists Kress and Van Leeuwen, who noted that texts are shaped by multiple…

Within the ever-changing technology and business landscape, it is imperative that students develop skills in identifying and leveraging emerging technologies to create business value in innovative and novel ways. Drawing on the Net-enabled Business Innovation Cycle framework, applied learning techniques, and current events, we developed an…

This instrumental case study examines how elementary teacher candidates (TCs) came to understand citizenship and civic engagement after participating in a news group project during the 2020 presidential election season. TCs formed a binary understanding of civic engagement as "passive" vs. "active," viewing themselves as active…

Many countries keep official records of parliamentary debates. In the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Singapore, these transcriptions are referred to as Hansard, providing a rich resource for researchers exploring the historical and contextual background of governmental policy and legislation. This case study draws on the original…

The author of this article describes individual pre-class and group in-class assignments based on current news articles. Guided student pre-class readings of periodical articles can form the basis for engaging in-class group assignments. Many economics instructors seek to develop student skills at applying the concepts under study to analyze…

There is a demographic and democratic imperative for social studies teachers to broach the issue of contemporary immigration in their classrooms. In this study, preservice social studies teachers (PSTs) viewed three documentary films that presented stories of immigration that run counter to the narrative projected by the Trump administration and…

Against the backdrop of our country's current political climate, the author sometimes wonder if he is doing his job as a high school history teacher to the best of his ability. He doesn't see his role as simply covering what's in the textbook or helping students analyze current events. Rather, he believes it's his professional responsibility--his…

In 1963--a racially-charged time in the United States--James Baldwin delivered "A Talk to Teachers," urging educators to engage youth in difficult conversations about current events. We concur with Giroux (2011, 2019) that political forces influence our educational spaces and that classrooms should not be viewed as apolitical, but…

Over the past year, sweeping local and state-wide policies framed as bans against "CRT" are being propagated to restrict how race and racism can be taught in K-12 schools across the nation. As a result, schools are increasingly becoming a place where teachers face interpersonal and professional risk for teaching about US racial…

In recent decades, nationalism has emerged from the distant purview of history to become the primary driver of some of the world's biggest news. Given the prominence of nationalist conflict, students in political science increasingly study the subject with modern references in mind. This article describes the design for a timely undergraduate…

Background/Context: This article explores how the classic U.S. educator effort to stay politically "nonpartisan" when teaching became particularly complicated in an era of spiking K-12 harassment, when government officials openly targeted and denigrated populations on the basis of race, national origin, gender, sexuality, and religion.…