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Brianna Soukup for The Chronicle.

The Confessions of Tyler Austin Harper

A critic of the academy on professorial cowardice, racial tokenism, and righteous hypocrisy.
The Review | Conversation
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By Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin
August 11, 2026

Tyler Austin Harper, a former tenure-track professor in environmental studies at Bates College who is now a staff writer at The Atlantic, is one of the most reliably interesting — and in some precincts, polarizing — observers of academic politics. A special interest: the bespoke monoculture he saw engulfing places like Bates, where administrators eager to appease the activist wing of their campuses institutionalized a highly moralized version of progressive politics, often to the detriment of academic freedom and other values integral to higher learning.

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About the Author
Evan Goldstein
Evan Goldstein is managing editor of The Chronicle and an editor of The Chronicle Review.
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About the Author
Len Gutkin
Len Gutkin is editor of The Chronicle Review and the author of Dandyism: Forming Fiction From Modernism to the Present (University of Virginia Press). Follow him at @GutkinLen.

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