CONAHEC News and Information

High-level representatives from the U.S. and Mexican governments met March 4 in Mexico City for the 12th Plenary Meeting of the 21st Century Border Management Initiative Executive Steering Committee to encourage increased bilateral collaboration on key issues affecting our shared border.

On a Sunday in May 2014, 140 students from 49 countries, some in hijabs, some with hair tinted purple to match their graduation robes, walked across the stage to collect the first diplomas awarded at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Former President Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker. But the day really belonged to John E. Sexton, NYU’s president. He greeted every student – many of whom he knew from the 14,000-mile round trip he made from New York every other week to teach – with a fist bump or a hug.

When things are bad enough, everybody knows. Programs have been closed or neglected; enrollments have declined; a hiring freeze has been imposed; pessimism permeates the campus. While all of that is true of institutions on the brink of collapse, what about those not yet in such dire straits? How can a college monitor its fitness so that it can head off serious trouble — or plan for the inevitable? Our answer is a risk score that quantifies institutional health.

In the summer of 1917, a group of university students in Munich invited Max Weber to launch a lecture series on “intellectual work as a vocation” with a talk about the scholar’s work. He was, in a way, an odd choice. Fifty-three at the time, Weber hadn’t held an academic job in over a decade. His career had begun promisingly, but in 1899 he suffered a nervous breakdown and gave up his position as a professor of economics at the University of Heidelberg. Supported by the inheritance of his wife, Marianne, he spent years going from clinic to clinic in search of relief.