THE HALLS OF ACADEMIA

by Mary Janicke 

Mark Welsh didn’t resign last week as president of Texas A&M because he lost the confidence of students or faculty. He resigned because politicians demanded it. And that should outrage anyone who believes universities exist to pursue knowledge rather than to appease partisans. The sequence was depressingly predictable. A children’s literature course included material about gender identity. One student objected, invoked religion and a Trump-era executive order, and complained. Instead of being a moment for education—for engaging uncomfortable ideas—the episode became a weapon. A video went viral, lawmakers pounced, and the pressure machine revved into high gear. Welsh tried to manage the firestorm. He reassigned administrators. He fired the professor. He ordered a sweeping audit of the curriculum. But it was never going to be enough.  —Cartoon and news summary by Nick Anderson, September 21, 2025

The hallowed halls now hollowed 
Academia no longer a place for ideas
Now a place for ideology
 
A professor professes inclusiveness
Is now excluded for not honoring exclusiveness
 
A president supporting his faculty
Now questioned about his faculties
 
The learning of students stifled
Because one of them felt uncomfortable
 
So academia becomes a wasteland
Where young people go to have their minds
Closed not opened

Mary Janicke is a gardener, poet, and writer living in Texas. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her haiku appears on Substack.

THE COMING RENAISSANCE IN HIGHER ED

by Philip Kitcher

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Is there a deeper problem with campus unrest?  One not solved simply by replacing presidents?

 
 
The point of any university or college:
Discover, advertise and sell new knowledge.
We can expect to make big money off it,
Provided that we maximize our profit.
Pernicious liberal miseducation,
Re-fashioned as a thriving corporation,
Led by a practical economist,
Strives to appear on Forbes’ Best Business List.
To reach that rank requires a stable anchor.
The CEO we’ve hired? An ex-World-Banker!
 
Obnoxious humanistic psychobabble
Incites the young to form a mindless rabble.
Recurrent demonstrations by this mob
Divert attention from our proper job.
After reflection, we have deemed it prudent
To expurgate the useless role of student,
Replacing faculty (eternal moaners)
With affluent trustees and docile donors.
Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale
Will learn their lesson: profits must prevail.
 
A needed Reformation!  We who led it
Will take away some cash—and all the credit.

Philip Kitcher has written too many books about philosophy, a subject which he taught at Columbia for many years. His poems have appeared online in Light, Lighten Up Online, Politics/Letters, Snakeskin, and The Dirigible Balloon; and in print in the Hudson Review.

A MOUNTAINEER CAN BE A POET AND STILL FIRE A MUSKET

by Kim Malinowski

Hundreds of West Virginia University students wearing red T-shirts and bandanas to symbolize their connection to striking coal miners a century ago staged protests Monday against an administration proposal to cut 9% of majors amid a $45 million budget shortfall. —AP, August 22, 2023

I write WVU into the stars, blue and gold constellations,

my pen shimmering faculty names, even as the administration’s slash

tenure positions, promises, dreams.

I learned that my pen is a magic wand here. 

It has not been so long ago that even mountaineers could be poets

and still shoot muskets and pretend that they had a home.

I met a freshman today that I will paint as glinting diamond,

fourth day confusion, standing on the side with professors,

telling me he is the transition and the PRTs still don’t work.

But he doesn’t cower, ready to swing full into engineering and life.

My mentors are battle hardened past the traditional 10 on the Mohs scale,

fighting, worrying, fighting more. Not able to tell their stories.

I told the university’s president that I could write WVU into the skies,

either as diamonds or as coal, because each are rocks 

on their way to becoming another rock. That freshman, those faculty

can fight and worry and fight.

I can write the stories they are not allowed to.

But we have a choice if we want the story to be about diamonds or coal.

Kim Malinowski is a poet and a mountaineer. She will have six books by the end of 2024 and credits much of her success to her instructors at West Virginia University. She wore red at the August 21, 2023 Protest, lives five hours away, and fights for those that fought for her.