Author: Jerry Leger

Even after 72 years, the case continues to appear in unexpected places. A Louisiana parish’s school board meeting. In a federal court, a redistricting map was contested. In a carpool line, two parents have a quiet conversation that starts out lighthearted but ends up being more serious. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education was meant to resolve a dispute. It never really did, in an odd and unyielding way. The actual ruling was remarkably brief. One unanimous opinion, nine justices, and a single sentence that essentially destroyed the legal framework of “separate but equal.” Americans typically remember that portion…

The pigs in the May River High School story are what most people notice right away. It’s difficult not to. The animals can be seen wandering the polished hallways in photographs taken inside the building, as if they had just been released from a pen—which, in fact, they had. The pigs, however, begin to seem like the least peculiar aspect of what transpired in Bluffton, South Carolina, on the evening of May 14. The school sits in Beaufort County, on the edge of the Lowcountry, in a town that has grown faster than almost anywhere else in the state over…

When someone brings up where their child got in, a certain silence descends upon the dinner table. The calculations are practically audible. Was it the score on the SAT? The coach of lacrosse? Or, more likely, the application’s last name that coincidentally matches a name engraved on a campus structure. Merit is a topic that Americans enjoy discussing. They feel much less at ease discussing inheritance. The nation has been telling itself for decades that it rewards hard work. The doors will open if you put in more effort and study more. However, the practice of legacy admissions, which gives…

Seldom does the Daredevil story start where it ought to. Most readers meet Matt Murdock in a courtroom or on a rooftop, never in the place that actually shaped him: a cramped dorm room at Columbia Law, somewhere up in Morningside Heights, a few subway stops from the Hell’s Kitchen he would later try to save. It’s unfortunate that this detail is often overlooked in favor of the costume and the radar sense, since the character was probably developed during the college years. The background of Columbia Law is not coincidental. It’s an Ivy League institution sitting on the edge…

The choice wasn’t made quietly. It came after five years of protests, open letters, occupations of administrative buildings, and the kind of gradual institutional pressure that only Cambridge students, with their unique blend of refinement and obstinacy, seem able to withstand. The Vice-Chancellor declared in October 2020 that the university’s £3.5 billion endowment would stop using fossil fuels by 2030 and strive for net zero across its whole investment portfolio by 2038. The campaigners described it as a historic moment. The scholars muttered, “A long time coming.” You could practically hear the rustling unease of bursars wondering what this would…

There’s a quiet change taking place in British higher education. On the evening news, there are no dramatic resignations or closed gates. Just a steady stream of announcements, each one a bit more unexpected than the last. King’s College London is partnering with Cranfield. A year ago, no one had heard of Kent merging with Greenwich under a regional banner. According to a recent Universities UK survey, two out of five institutions are willing to follow suit. Right now, the atmosphere in any senior common room in England is more akin to quiet calculation than ambition. The figures that support…

The typical Manchester scene can be seen if you stroll down Oxford Road on a weekday afternoon. There is a line forming outside the kebab van that has managed to outlast three vice-chancellors, students slicing across the pavement with tote bags and earphones, and the old red-brick buildings holding their ground against the glass towers creeping up behind them. It’s a familiar image. What those students actually do during their three or four years here is going to change if Duncan Ivison gets his way. This week, Ivison, who has been in charge of the University of Manchester for just…

In some English households, the rhythm of a Year 6 summer has been almost ceremonial for over a generation. Revision books are the focal point of the barbecues. The trip by the sea is crammed in between practice exams. By late August, the kitchen table has subtly transformed into a study desk, and someone—typically a weary parent—is using their phone’s stopwatch to time comprehension exercises. The phrase “the eleven-plus summer” is familiar to anyone who has experienced it. The ritual is beginning to break. Eight grammar schools—seven in Gloucestershire and one in Berkshire—have declared that their 11-plus entrance exams will…

The lesson, if anyone in Muncie is willing to sit with it, costs far more than the $225,000 check. Suzanne Swierc, the former director of health promotion and advocacy at Ball State University’s Indiana campus, filed a federal lawsuit after being fired for a Facebook post about Charlie Kirk. Last week, the university agreed to pay Swierc to settle the lawsuit. Her private account was where the post was made. It was composed in the hours following Kirk’s murder at a Turning Point USA event in Utah in September of last year. “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful…

Manurewa High School’s hallways emptied earlier than normal on a Friday afternoon in late May. Under a gray South Auckland sky, students filed out; some went directly to the waiting cars, while others wandered in the direction of the bus stops close to the school gates. Under supervision, the younger students—those under the age of fourteen—stayed behind and waited out the final hours of the school week. It was neither a planned event nor a fire drill. To put it simply, it was a school that had run out of adults. On that particular day, twenty-nine employees were not present.…