chad wellmon
@cwellmon
teaches and writes on history of knowledge, media, and technology & intellectual history @UVA
“Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age” out in just a few weeks. Feel the hype: “…a magisterial tour-de-force of historical scholarship…It has the potential to alter the debate over the place of the humanities…” Warren G. Breckman amazon.com/dp/022673806X/…
My friend @jennfrey 100%: “It’s not that liberal learning is out of step w/ student demand. It’s out of step w/ the priorities, values & desires of a board of trustees w/ no commitment to liberal ed & an admin class that won’t fight for liberal arts” nytimes.com/2025/07/17/opi…
I wrote about the lack of administrative support for the liberal arts in @nytimes. The standard story we hear is that students don't want it. But a darker reality is that even when it wins big with students and donors it loses with those in power. nytimes.com/2025/07/17/opi…
Transactional Logic: “Since many schools receive federal funding, they are now expected to march in step. But countless groups receive financial suppor —from soybean farmers to computer chip manufacturers—and that funding has not depended on conformity” politi.co/4nST1YW
“What happened to college as a theater of intellectual betterment, character development, self-discovery?” Neither Chat GPT nor Trump killed the idea of college as intellectual discovery. That slow, deliberate death has been 70 years or so in the making. nytimes.com/2025/07/14/opi…
The context of higher ed is everything when it comes to the AI chatter. If higher ed is transactional, then it’d be irrational for students to choose not to take full advantage of ChatGPT. Output is output & a university just another means to another end nytimes.com/2025/07/18/opi…
Neither Trump nor ChatGPT will end the university. The institutional logic of Higher Ed already has:
So here’s a short thread on why what the admins say they believe cannot be true and why they know that neither academics nor student experiences will “remain the same” 1. Honors class sizes have already been increased by at least 33%. This vitiates the seminar format that was 🧵
So much of the “view point diversity” chatter is just this: college is just high school debate about contemporary issues. That’s not learning that’s just boring and very annoying.
I don't think we've ever really nailed what the point of college is supposed to be in the first place, but I think it's interesting that so many inside and outside universities have come to imply that the point of college is to have and witness debates about politics.
Letter from 12 UVA deans to Board of Visitors goes unanswered for almost two weeks (from The Cavalier Daily) cavalierdaily.com/article/2025/0…
UVA currently has an emergency president, an interim provost, an interim healthy system head; it's med school dean just quit; it's board of trustees cannot legally meet because there's a fight over who is actually on the board. But PR on UVA.
A trio of @UVAMcIntire graduates are using advanced technology to carve a novel niche in a “boring business.” uvatoday.me/44ydivf
The clusterf*** at UVA: BOV (trustees) cannot legally meet, president resigned, provost left in March & search failed, president and provost are (emergency) interims, head of medical system fired, & med dean now out. Also best baseball coach ever quit. cbs19news.com/news/another-h…
Manifesto calls for direct (presidential) oversight of every college & university. Among others demands: severe and quick punishments for “interrupting” university operations. Why go after grounds keepers using leaf blowers & interrupting class? Harsh. thefp.com/p/the-presiden…
