Thank You, Doug Lederman

As I write, I am on a flight home from spending a couple of days at Harvey Mudd College, where I was honored to deliver one of the talks as part of the Bruce J. Nelson Distinguished Speaker series, this year themed on “Learning in the Age of AI.”

The first speaker in the series was Sal Khan of Khan Academy, who was once named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. The next speaker, in about a month’s time, is Emily Bender, the linguist and AI researcher who was named one of the 100 most influential people in AI by Time magazine.

Sal Khan, Emily Bender and me, a former non-tenure-track lecturer/instructor at a handful of different institutions, a nonholder of his Ph.D. who does not have a direct line to Bill Gates in his phone contacts.

I’m thinking about how this wouldn’t have happened without Inside Higher Ed co-founder Doug Lederman.

If you didn’t see this week’s announcement, after 20 years, Doug Lederman is stepping away from Inside Higher Ed, an act following the departure of Scott Jaschik in July 2023 that now leaves the publication in the hands of the next generation of leadership.

In Doug’s announcement, he shares the origin story of IHE. While editors at The Chronicle of Higher Education, he and Scott felt like there were important aspects of the world of higher education that were not being covered, voices going unheard, and they wanted to see if there was an audience for these untold stories.

Starting a new journalistic media venture is never a good idea in terms of the odds of success, so it is worth a moment to pause and reflect on the audacity of a two-person team thinking they might be able to carve out a space alongside a legacy publication like The Chronicle.

Mission accomplished. I seriously doubt that Doug and Scott considered the potential of creating something that would have a life and legacy beyond them at the moment of launch, but this is exactly what they’ve done.

As one of the voices that had previously been unheard, I want to personally say thank you. Blogging at IHE has literally transformed my life. It became the vehicle through which I was allowed to explore my labor and my approach to writing pedagogy, a place to work out the concerns that had previously existed only in my head, a place to share thoughts with an audience that in turn supplied additional fuel and fodder for my own thinking.

It exposed my ideas to editors who wanted to know if I had a book (or two) in me. It exposed my ideas to others wrestling with the challenge of teaching and learning who now invite me to come and share thoughts on that worthy struggle in community with each other.

It gave me the confidence to believe that I could leave the profession I love (teaching) but continue that work in other contexts that have ultimately proved incredibly fulfilling.

Reflecting on my origin story as a contributor to IHE, I can’t help but observe how casual, how natural it was. Needing a temporary stand-in when he was relocating for a new position, my friend John Griswold (Oronte Churm) asked me to fill in at his blog space.

Sure, why not? After a few months, when Churm returned, Doug asked me if I wanted to launch my own space, and also, what would I like to call it?

I hit on “Just Visiting,” thinking of “just” in terms of both “only” and “that which is right.” It was meant to reflect my status as perpetual “visiting” contingent faculty inside of higher education and my attempt to say things I believe to be true. I have never asked Doug or Scott why they decided to give me a chance, but I think it was probably a choice consistent with their founding values, a desire to give voice to a perspective less likely to be heard.

To me, the fundamental value they were enacting was curiosity, and I can think of no better animating force for a publication that covers higher education.

I am tempted to say that I was grateful to be left alone to do what I had to do, but that’s not accurate. It’s true that Doug and Scott gave me enormous latitude to write toward my own sources of interest, but this latitude was not indifference and was instead a form of support, a belief in the power and benefits of letting people be curious.

Indeed, on the occasions when I wrote something that caused consternation and resulted in emails of complaint in their inboxes, I was always supported, even when they may have disagreed with me.

I look at the long roster of journalists—too many to mention—who have done such good work at IHE who have gone on to work elsewhere both in journalism and higher education writ large, and the scope of the legacy of the publication’s founders expands further.

And dare I say that the range of coverage at The Chronicle has significantly expanded over the last 20 years, perhaps thanks to IHE nipping at its heels for a couple of decades? IHE will always be an alternative to a legacy publication like The Chronicle, but alternatives are extremely important in a sector that benefits from as many different voices being heard as possible.

I was pleased to note the headline on Doug’s farewell, “Changing of the Guard at ‘Inside Higher Ed.’” A changing of the guard suggests a desire to maintain the continuity of and protect what came before. Of course, part of that continuity was a constant search for how to better serve the audience, so it’s not as though the new leadership will be standing pat.

In the announcement, Doug says that he’s “looking forward to the next career chapter,” where he can try to fix some of this industry’s problems. This is very good news for higher education indeed.

So, thank you, Doug, and I think we all look forward to whatever you do next.