Building a Better Graduate Education: Overcoming Resistance and Finding Allies

In their recent book, The New PhD (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021), Leonard Cassuto and Robert Weisbuch argue that universities need to undergo major reform in their training programs — putting graduate students’ needs and priorities before the needs of the institution — in order to promote diversity within the academy, to promote public-facing scholarship, and to prepare humanities doctoral students for a much wider array of career paths than just academia. In this discussion, sponsored by the CNY Humanities Corridor working group “Humanities Beyond the Academy,” the authors will focus in on the issue of resistance to change within academia, considering ways that proponents of reform in graduate education can generate buy-in from faculty, administrators, and others to improve career outcomes for doctoral students. 10 copies of Cassuto and Weisbuch’s book will be given away by raffle to attendees.