Welcoming First-Year Students with a Wake-Up Call

Is it really possible that pretty much every single college and university around the country will, this fall, be welcoming its best-ever, most qualified, most curious, most diverse set of first-year students? Seems unlikely. In an interview with Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Andrew Delbanco offers an alternative. The interview is titled “Is Academic ‘Smugness’ on the Rise? Andrew Delbanco on humility, complacency, and the value of self-criticism” (August 7, 2026). Delbanco is Pofessor of American studies at Columbia University, In 2012, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. He comments: But to do serious academic work, research or teaching, self-doubt and curiosity — implying that there are things out there that you don’t already know and that you want to learn about — are central. Did there used to be more humility and less smugness? Having been in the academy now for more than 50 years, I’m inclined to say yes. Some of the negative…