Revolutionizing the University

In this talk, Cathy N. Davidson, a higher education leader and distinguished scholar of the history of technology, argues that colleges and universities need a drastic transformation to address the needs of college students today—but that most higher education reform diagnoses the wrong problem and proposes the wrong solutions. Davidson looks at the period from 1865–1925, when the nation’s universities created grades and departments, majors and minors in an attempt to prepare young people for a world transformed by the telegraph and the Model T.  She argues that if innovators then could redesign college, we can rethink higher education for our own era. From the Ivy League to community colleges, she profiles innovative educators who are changing their curriculums and their classrooms. The New Education ultimately shows how we can teach students not only to survive but to thrive amid the economic, political, and social challenges of our age.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Cathy N. Davidson is Distinguished Professor of English and Founding Director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the R. F. DeVarney Professor Emerita of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University where she served as Duke’s (and the nation’s) first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies.

In 2002, Davidson cofounded and codirects HASTAC (“Haystack”), Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory, the world’s first and oldest academic social network. She has served on the Board of Directors of Mozilla and was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Council of the Humanities. She is the 2016 recipient of the Ernest J. Boyer Award for Significant Contributions to Higher Education. She has published some twenty books, most recently The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University To Prepare Students for a World in Flux (Basic Books, 2017), awarded the 2019 Frederic W. Ness Book Award by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.