How Universities Lost Their Way, With Cary Nelson

Universities are meant to be spaces of free inquiry, knowledge, and rigorous debate. But according to academic and writer Cary Nelson, they’ve instead become hotbeds of ideological conformity—long before October 7. In his new essay Mindless, published in the Jewish Quarterly, Nelson traces how universities abandoned shared intellectual principles, paving the way for the antisemitism and misinformation now taking hold on campuses worldwide. He joins Liel to discuss the forces that led to this institutional failure, the consequences for Jewish students and faculty, and what must happen to restore true academic freedom.

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How Universities Lost Their Way, With Cary Nelson is an episode from Unorthodox by Tablet Magazine.

This episode is 38:31 long.

This episode was published on Mar 20, 2025.

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