I’M CONVINCED BAD STUDENTS MAKE GOOD TEACHERS. ONCE, AT a meeting of some of higher education’s top innovators, we were all surprised by a warm-up exercise that revealed that most of us had been suspended at least once from high school. Those of us who struggled through school often understand that college can be a second chance. Perhaps because we were not destined to be academics, we don’t view college as an apprenticeship for the purpose of creating future college professors but as a place of options and challenges that can help each and every student find a productive, responsible path beyond college.
On my pathway to being a good teacher, I must first thank my ever patient father, Paul C. Notari, who stuck by his rebellious and dyslexic teenager long after others would have given up. If my father had not been willing to make the extra ninety-minute detour every day on his way to and from work to drive me to the high school at which I had been accepted after getting kicked out of my own, this book would not exist. A son of immigrants, a World War II veteran, my father believes that his life was transformed by the GI Bill and an opportunity to go to college to become an engineer. My second appreciation goes to Mrs. Lipman, the teacher who believed in me when I was driving my other teachers mad. She sponsored me at the prestigious high school to which she had moved, then took the risk of nominating me for a National Council of Teachers of English Award, over more appropriate students, one of the national awards that ensured I would go to college.
At Duke University, where I taught for most of my academic career, my official, professional journey toward reimagining higher education began in earnest with a brief letter in my fax machine (it was 1998). I was at a crossroads in my career, contemplating leaving Duke to take a chaired professorship in constitutional-era history and culture when Duke president Nannerl Keohane and the late John Strohbehn, the provost, presented me with a tantalizing alternative: stay at Duke and become the first vice provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke or anywhere. It was the most creative, innovative opportunity imaginable, working with faculty and students from every part of the university to create new programs that spanned the usual divides and silos of the undergraduate departments and professional schools, as well as helping to launch a new art museum, a science and technology center, a humanities institute, and a performing arts center that spanned town and gown. After a particularly challenging meeting, Nan once jokingly described my job description as “breaking things and making things.” I’ve never looked back, and my gratitude to her, as a model of bold dignity and excellence, remains enormous.
I also thank Duke alumna Melinda French Gates, who decided to move from her leadership role in technology innovation to philanthropy the same month that I became vice provost. Her financial support—as well as her intellectual rigor and commitment to higher education—was inestimable and inspiring in every way. Thanks also go to Peter Lange, the provost with whom I worked for seven years, and Dick Brodhead, the president with whom I worked in my final two years of administration, as well as all the faculty, students, and administrative colleagues who worked hard to make good, important things happen. All of you have convinced me that change is possible. Sometimes, it’s not nearly as hard as we think it will be.
I moved from Duke University to the Graduate Center, City University of New York, in August 2014, mainly because of my conviction that no society can flourish without a profound investment in public higher education. One cannot champion higher education as a public good from within what a friend calls the “velvet walls” of a handsomely funded and expensive private university. CUNY sends six times more students from the lower to the middle class than the combined “Ivies Plus” (the eight Ivy League schools plus MIT, Stanford, Chicago, and Duke). Since coming to CUNY, I have come to admire, deeply, the commitments of faculty, administrators, and students who work to deliver and to gain the best and most innovative education possible against financial restrictions that those at well-funded institutions cannot conceive. CUNY’s can-do spirit is at the core of this book. For making this inspiring move possible, I thank President Emeritus William Kelly (now Mellon Director of the New York Public Library), President Chase Robinson, and Interim Provost Louise Lennihan. Chancellor J. B. Milliken has been unfailingly supportive. I also thank Provost Joy Connolly and all my great CUNY colleagues and students, including David Olan, Mario DiGangi, as well as colleagues Matt Gold, Steve Brier, Herman Bennett, Robert Reid-Pharr, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, David Joselit, Kandice Chuh, Ofelia Garcia, Duncan Faherty, Tony Picciano, and Eric Lott.
Thanks to the Internet and social media, I have had thousands of partners in writing this book. Almost everything here has been learned, tried, experimented with, modified, discussed, or implemented via online discussions and collaborations with a multitude of faculty members, administrators, students, technology innovators, and the public at large.
In 2002, I joined a cadre of dedicated scholars and technology innovators to found an open, online network dedicated to education innovation (it turns out, the world’s first and now oldest academic social network), the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (hastac.org, or “haystack”). Now, with over fifteen thousand network members and untold numbers of users, HASTAC has inspired every word of this book. We have never collected dues or had a corporate sponsor or even an ad, and we continue through the enormous goodwill and ideas of vast numbers of intellectual contributors plus the financial support of several institutions of higher education (Stanford briefly, then Duke University for well over a decade, and, since 2014, the Graduate Center at the City College of New York) and nonprofit funding agencies (Digital Promise, the National Science Foundation, and, through administering the annual Digital Media and Learning Competition, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation). Over twelve hundred graduate and undergraduate student HASTAC Scholars have informed my thinking about the future of higher education with literally hundreds of blogs and forum posts each month dedicated to “Changing the Way We Teach and Learn.” Special thanks go to the graduate student directors Erin Gentry Lamb, Fiona Barnett (our leader for several years), Kalle Westerling, and Allison Guess.
Mandy Dailey, Sheryl Grant, and Demos Orphanides have been daily companions in the writing of this book, as they worked to keep HASTAC’s busy human network and cutting-edge Drupal-powered website functioning. They have taught me the power of collaboration and the way to transform bold ideas into effective, if virtual, realities. Dozens of scholars, artists, and scientists have served on HASTAC’s steering committee, and I cannot think of a single idea in this book that was not deepened and enriched by my interactions with all of them.
At the Futures Initiative, at the Graduate Center, CUNY, thanks go to my colleagues and partners in academic transformation, Katina Rogers, Lauren Melendez, Kaysi Holman, Celi Cuello Lebron, Kitana Ananda, and all of the Futures Initiative graduate student fellows and faculty fellows as well as the faculty, administrators, mentors, and students in the groundbreaking CUNY Humanities Alliance, a partnership between the Graduate Center and LaGuardia Community College funded with insight and originality by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Day in and day out, you all amaze me with your ideas and commitments.
One reason I am optimistic that change is possible in higher education is the warmth with which my contrarian ideas have been received over the last decade. I cannot even begin to thank individually all the people, institutions, professional associations, nonprofits, think tanks, and corporations, in the United States and around the world, who have invited me to give keynote addresses, workshops, or plenaries. I have learned something crucial at each stop. I have learned from the dozens of people I interviewed in the course of writing this book, only a handful of whom are presented in the book. And my greatest debt, always, is to the thousands of students who have taught me pretty much everything that I know about learning. Again, my thanks to all of you. In this book, you are anonymous or pseudonymous for your privacy. You are indelibly and forever named in my heart.
I have also learned immeasurably from all of the colleagues at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, especially those who designed and developed the Digital Media and Learning Initiative, including President Julia Stasch, Connie Yowell, my partner at the Digital Media and Learning Competition David Theo Goldberg, and dozens of colleagues, competition winners, and others exploring the boundaries of the new education. My board colleagues at Mozilla, including Chair Mitchell Baker and Executive Director Mark Surman, continue to inspire me in every way. I cannot begin to say how much I have learned from their commitment to a better, more open Internet and greater web literacy for all. At Data and Society, under the fearless leadership of danah boyd, we tackle complex topics, such as privacy and automation, with an aim of contributing to a better society. On the National Council for the Humanities, under the leadership first of Jim Leach and then William “Bro” Adams, I continue to be inspired by my colleagues in the humanities whose ideas give context, depth, and richness to our society. Although I cannot name you all here, I thank you deeply for all you do and all you give.
Futures Initiative fellow and English doctoral student Danica Savonick has been a superb research assistant and an insightful and knowledgeable colleague at every stage of this book. I have also learned much from her own original research on CUNY’s open admissions programs in the 1970s. Lisa Tagliaferri and Jessica Murray helped with technical support, and Elizabeth Goetz lent invaluable professionalism during the copyediting and proofreading of the final manuscript.
My agent, Deirdre Mullane, is as creative, brilliant, dedicated, and feisty as any agent could possibly be. My editor, Dan Gerstle of Basic Books, has been a constant interlocutor and guiding hand. In an era when it is thought that editors don’t really edit anymore, he has been as wise and supportive a spirit as any author could dream of. From Basic Books, I also thank Nicole Caputo, Betsy DeJesu, Allie Finkel, Ann Kirchner, Linda Mark, Carrie Napolitano, Courtney Nobile, Christina Palaia, Liz Tzetzo, Elisa Rivlin, and Melissa Veronesi who helped make this book a reality.
Many friends and colleagues offered sustained and specific contributions to this book and its author: Anne Allison, the late Srinivas Aravamudan, Dan Ariely, Anne Balsamo, Lauren Berlant, Jackie Brown, John Seely Brown, Simone Browne, Constance Carroll, Ann Marie Cauce, Barbara Claypole-White, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Jade Davis, Petra Dierkes-Thrun, David Eng, Steve Fagin, Caitlin Fisher, Michael Gillespie, Inderpal Grewal, Macarena Gomez-Barris, Larry Grossberg, Jack Halberstam, Jessamyn Hatcher, Sharon Holland, Annie Howell, Kellie Jones, Caren Kaplan, Ranji Khanna, Ann Kirschner, Julie Thompson Klein, Adeline Koh, the late Celeste Castillo Lee, Liz Losh, Lisa Lowe, Eric Manheimer, Richard Marciano, Tara McPherson, Sean Michael Morris, Tim Murray, Lisa Nakamura, Alondra Nelson, Chris Newfield, Charlie Piot, Guthrie Ramsey, Teemu Ruskola, Robert A. Scott, Nishant Shah, Jesse Stommel, Diana Taylor, Terry Vance, Priscilla Wald, Laura Wexler, and Kathy Woodward. I also thank all those who helped or hosted me on two international research trips, to Finland and Japan. I thank especially Rebecca Jennison, Aki Kinjo, Seiki Kinjo, Shin Mizukoshi, Ichiro Okamoto, Maryvonne Okamoto, and Naomo Okamoto, and, in Finland, Saku Tuominen and Mikko Tolonen. I fear that in trying to list these contributors I will have left out many who have inspired my thinking over the last decades, so generous have hundreds of educators been with their thoughts and feedback over the years. That said, in the end, only I am responsible for the ideas in this book, some of which are sure to rankle even the best of friends and colleagues.
The first draft of this book was written during a brilliant month at the incomparable Bogliasco Foundation, in Liguria, Italy, when I was recovering from a catastrophic illness. The gracious staff, the exquisite scenery, the healthy and delicious food, and the wonderful congeniality of the fellows in residence restored me and set this book on its path again. I thank Laura Harrison, Ivana Folle, and Alessandra Natale and fellows Alberto Caruso, Kia Corthron, Ramona Diaz, Julia Jacquette, Helen Lochhead, Dina Nayeri, and Renata Shepherd.
My loving thanks, as always, goes to Charles R. Davidson and Susan Brown and Gavin and Morag, to Karina Davidson, to Sharon, Mary Lou, Kris, Sage, and Christina Notari, and Paul and Marlene Notari, and to all of my beloved and (of course) brilliant nieces and nephews in or about to be in college and who are rooting for the new education. Finally, my constant thanks and love go to the best editor, interlocutor, and loving partner that anyone could have, Ken Wissoker, my everything.