Useful reading for college administrators and others involved in navigating thorny challenges facing colleges today.
A guide to the issues surrounding free speech and censorship on college campuses as well as strategies for faculty and students to deal with them constructively.
“This book considers the struggles over the boundaries of speech in order to make the case for the active role that institutions of higher education can take in bridging political divides and helping reverse the process of democratic decline.” So writes Ben-Porath—a professor of education, philosophy, and political science at the University of Pennsylvania—at the beginning of a text in which the author examines “growing polarization in American society” specifically through the lens of post-secondary institutions, which she calls “laboratories in which democracy is learned, practiced, and enhanced.” Building on some of the topics she addressed in two previous books, Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice Is Really About (co-authored with Michael C. Johanek) and Free Speech on Campus, Ben-Porath begins by tracing the roots of America’s current political polarization back to a response to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, when cultural and academic institutions were being reexamined for bias, prejudice, and other social ills. The author then investigates the often complex web of so-called experts, political leanings, and unique social environments that characterize the college experience. Although Ben-Porath mostly focuses on the big picture, her chapter on strategies for K-12 institutions makes clear, accessible arguments for educating students with “media literacy” and “open discussion of hard topics.” Clearly aimed at scholars and policymakers—the dry prose may lead some readers to skip certain sections—the book ends with solid advice for students, staff, and university boards to help deal with a host of issues, including contentious public speakers and hate speech.
Useful reading for college administrators and others involved in navigating thorny challenges facing colleges today.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2023
ISBN: 9780226823805
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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