Quote of the Day (Lee Bollinger, on How Authoritarian Threats to Higher Education Developed)

“You would have to go back to the McCarthy period in the 1950s to see something comparable to what’s happening today. For many decades we lived free from government efforts to seize control of universities and suppress criticism and independent thought. And in this time, we forged individualistic identities. We want our students and our faculty to think of themselves as loyal to our particular institution, and at the same time, we’re competing for students and faculty against other schools. So we’ve set up a system in which institutions have individual identities and compete with one another, and this makes us more vulnerable to authoritarian efforts to undermine us.”—Former Columbia University President Lee Bollinger interviewed by Paul Hond, “Defending the Fifth Branch: A Response to Authoritarian Attacks on Universities,” Columbia Magazine, Spring/Summer 2026

With the academic year in full swing now, new threats are sure to develop against America's colleges and universities, even beyond the wide-ranging war aged by the Trump Administration outlined in Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder's US News article from earlier this month. 

In the face of all of this, Bollinger advocates “the equivalent of a NATO charter, with an Article 5 for universities in the US: If any institution among us is attacked, all of us will come to its defense.”

That may be not just the best way, but the only way to proceed now. Following President Trump’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW, the White House TV pool, which includes CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox, responded by not covering him last night. (Predictably, the President counterattacked with—what else?—“Trump TV.”)

If the pool’s strategy works, other American institutions—like higher education and prominent law firms—should follow with a similar resort to collective action.

(The image of Lee Bollinger that accompanies this post was taken on Oct. 11, 2007, by Daniella Zalcman.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Maude,’ Giving a Quick English Usage Lesson to Her Husband)

[Walter Findlay doesn’t like his wife’s new male friend.]

Walter Findlay [played by Bill Macy]: “Maude, we are not having dinner with that guy tonight! I told you, I can't stand him! Guy gets some special pleasure reminding me that I didn't graduate high school. Like last time in front of everybody, giving me that lecture on the difference between 'infer' and 'imply,' as if I didn't know.”

Maude Findlay [played by Bea Arthur]: “Come on now, Walter, he just gets impatient with ninnies who constantly misuse those words.”

Walter: “Are you inferring I'm a ninny?”

Maude: “Of course not, sweetheart. I'm implying you're a ninny; you were inferring.”—Maude, Season 3, Episode 12, “Maude's New Friend,” original air date Dec. 2, 1974, teleplay by Rod Parker and Elliot Shoenman, directed by Hal Cooper

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Fulton J. Sheen, on Christianity’s Journey From Defeat to Victory)

“Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory.”— Blessed Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979), Life of Christ (1958)

Technically, Archbishop Sheen will not be beatified until Thursday, Sept.24. But by the time many readers notice this post, the event will have taken place.

In any case, thousands have already taken to heart, during his lifetime or in the nearly half-century since his death, the spiritual lessons of perhaps the greatest mass communicator in the history of American Catholicism.

Quote of the Day (Leo Tolstoy, on the Right Way of Doing Good)

"It's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it." ― Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Anna Karenina (1877)

Quote of the Day (Annie Dillard, on the Source of Good and Evil)

“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American essayist, novelist, and memoirist Annie Dillard (1945-2026), “Total Eclipse,” in Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (1982)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Licorice Pizza,’ As a Sister Fights With a Sibling)

Alana [played by Alana Haim, pictured] [during a fight with her sister]: “Este, don't you even look at me! Don't you even look at me! You're always looking at me!”

Este [played by Este Haim]: “Oh, my...”

Alana: “What are you doing?”

Este: “I didn't even say anything!”

Alana: “What are you doing? What are you thinking, huh? ‘I'm Este. I work for mom and dad. I'm perfect! I'm a real estate agent. Alana doesn't have her life together. Alana brings home stupid boyfriends all the time.’"

Este: “I mean...”

Alana: “I knew it! I knew that was what you were thinking. You're always thinking things, you thinker! You thinker! You think things!”— Licorice Pizza (2021), written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on ‘The Most Profoundly Important Sociological Factor of Modern Times’)

“The most profoundly important sociological factor of modern times [is] the growth of technology and the technicization of every aspect of human life.” — English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), The Human Situation: Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959 (1977)