The latest issue of National Affairs, The Scrapbook’s favorite quarterly magazine, has arrived, and it’s another winner. Among the highlights: Frederick M. Hess on Obama’s (lamentable) education record, our colleague Irwin M. Stelzer on antitrust concerns raised by hospital mergers, and Tevi Troy with a very timely look at how Congress might do a better job with its hearings.
But our favorite essay, for personal and professional reasons, is Adam Keiper’s look back at the Public Interest, on the 50th anniversary of that influential quarterly’s founding by coeditors Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell. The personal reason is easy to explain: Your correspondent, in its formative years, was an assistant editor at the Public Interest. And being a member in good standing of the journalistic guild, magazine division, we tend to enjoy reflective essays on the life and times of great magazines.
We hope you will share our enthusiasm. You can read Keiper’s piece (and subscribe while you’re at it) at nationalaffairs.com. To tide you over, here’s a little taste:
“In the half-century since Nisbet wrote, tenure has been a matter of recurring controversy. Just this year, for example, Governor Scott Walker signed into law a budget that opens the door to changing tenure policy at the University of Wisconsin. But the landscape of American higher education has changed considerably since Nisbet criticized permanent professorship, and today’s critics of tenure may be unaware of the extent to which colleges and universities now depend on untenured adjunct professors and lecturers, who are paid much less than tenured faculty and who can be hired or fired at will. They may also be unaware of the extent to which conservative-minded professors now depend on tenure for even minimal job security.”
As we often say, you’ll want to read the whole thing.
