Category: Wisdom

  • I had a profound experience at the Education Deans for Justice and Equity session at the 2026 AACTE conference in New Orleans. A friend and colleague whom I have respected for a long time stood up and offered a testimony about his struggle with a faculty and a university. He described how he had left…

    Failure is the Real Test of Character
  • Most leadership does not happen in grand announcements or strategic retreats. It unfolds in ordinary moments that rarely feel historic while they are happening. It appears in how a supervisor responds to a mistake, how a teacher frames expectations on the first day of class, how a manager defines success in a performance review, and…

    Double-Loop Leading: Why I Refused to Close Gender Studies
  • At the very moment when many of America’s most powerful universities turned away from responsibility and values, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) stepped forward, despite operating under conditions designed to limit their survival. During the early 1930s, Jewish intellectuals in Germany experienced rapid and devastating exclusion from academic life. After Adolf Hitler became chancellor…

    Who Stepped Up for Jews When Universities Looked Away
  • Last year, after I stepped down from executive academic administration, I had a very small plant that was basically dead. It was only about three inches high, sitting in a tiny green pot, delicate in a way that made its decline feel almost predetermined. The leaves were dry, thin, and drained of color, and there…

    What It Means to Be Protected: Healing, Care, and Rejuvenation
  • Some of us watched the halftime show and cried. Others changed the channel. That difference tells you everything. If you were scrolling through Facebook or other media after the Super Bowl, what you saw depended entirely on your sphere of inclusion. Some timelines were full of joy, pride, and tears. Others filled instantly with the…

    “Casa Abierta”: What Bad Bunny Was Really Saying at the Super Bowl

Cloaking Inequity is an online platform for justice and liberty-minded readers. I publish reflections, analysis, and commentary on education, democracy, culture, and politics.

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Email me at jvh@alumni.stanford.edu