About

WHAT ARE UNIVERSITIES FOR? STRUGGLES FOR THE SOUL OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Higher education is widely regarded as essential to a flourishing democracy. But today, the university is in crisis: public funding has plummeted; student debt is in the trillions; challenges to academic freedom, critical thought, and the right to political protest abound; and relationships between campuses and communities remain fraught. Why has the public lost confidence in the value of a college degree? What are the university’s core commitments, and whose interests do they serve? How can we deepen our understanding of the origins, manifestations, and broad-reaching impacts of the crises facing U.S. universities today? What are the most promising remedies now being pursued?  

The 2024–25 Feinberg Series will bring together scholars, journalists, organizers, educators, community members, and students to examine the roles of the U.S. university. We proceed with the conviction that rigorously examining the historical origins of the various crises currently engulfing the university is essential to imagining a more just future for the institution—and for democracy itself.

About the Feinberg Series

The Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series is a student- and community-oriented event series offered every other academic year by the Department of History at UMass Amherst, thanks to the generosity of Kenneth Feinberg ’67 and associates. Each iteration of the series focuses on a “big issue” of clear and compelling concern, generally a policy or social issue, aiming to ground it in historical inquiry, context, analysis, and experience. It features a wide variety of events, including lectures, exhibitions, performances, panel discussions, and film. Previous themes include: Confronting Empire, Planet on a Precipice, Another World Is Possible, The U.S. in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Immigration in the Modern Americas, and more. See links for audio and video of previous events.

About Us

Each iteration of the Feinberg Series is planned and co-directed by a rotating committee of history department faculty and the history outreach and community engagement director. This year’s committee of co-directors is Asheesh Kapur Siddique, Jess Johnson, Sigrid Schmalzer, and Kevin Young.

The James Baldwin Lecture is co-presented with the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. 

The Feinberg Series is presented in collaboration with university and community partners.

Statement on History Department (Co)sponsorship of Events