Nadje Al-Ali, Paul Nahme and Andre C. Willis are three "Faculty on the Edge"! In the midst of multi-sided crises in university life, they give up the pretense that everything is under control. Inexpertly edited and with little production, their free-ranging and candid takes on university politics, governance, and the state of higher education are released here as a podcast that refuses to stay in its lane. Expect sharp analysis, occasional irreverence, and candid conversations about the broader cultural and political forces shaping academic life, as well as revelations about the personal toll it can take. Serious, but not self-serious: this is what it sounds like when warm friendship, sharp minds, and a sense of humor collide!
The start of the academic year used to bring butterflies. This fall Nadje and Paul return with dread as well, while Andre says the classroom is still the freest place he knows. The three talk about coming back to Brown when universities are under government pressure and AI is unsettling how they teach and assess, and disagree about whether this is a watershed or a sharper version of old problems. They end on purpose: what each of them is in the classroom for, and whether better conditions make for better people.
5 Oct 2026
Faculty on the Edge 5: Mental Health
Everyone at a university worries about students' mental health. Hardly anyone asks how faculty and staff are doing, so in this episode Andre, Nadje and Paul ask each other. They talk about therapy and the families they grew up in, and about why academics can be so clever and so bad at feelings. Phones and legal cannabis come up, and so does alcohol, from three very different personal histories. What keeps them going? Nadje makes the case for the German way of guarding free time. Paul goes up mountains. Andre doesn't believe in balance, but exercises and meditates every day anyway.
5 Oct 2026
Faculty on the Edge 4: The World in a Blender
What does a university owe its community after violence: more guards, or more conversation? Andre, Nadje and Paul talk about security, faculty polarization and the purpose of the humanities. Then, as tends to happen on this podcast, they end up arguing about tenure. Andre and Paul would trade it for five-year renewable contracts; Nadje, outnumbered, is not persuaded that insecurity makes anyone braver.
1 Jun 2026
Faculty on the Edge 3 : (Dis)Agreement
Starting with our reactions to “the agreement” and the strange experience of feeling infantilized, we find ourselves discussing disagreement, criticism, and what it means to engage seriously with one another inside and outside the classroom. Along the way, we ask some uncomfortable questions: What would an ideal learning community look like? How much of ourselves should we bring into academic spaces? And if we were redesigning the university from scratch, would tenure survive?
1 Jun 2026
Faculty on the Edge 2: Vulnerability
In this episode, we explore the limits of identity politics, different forms of vulnerability in the classroom, and the academic personas we cultivate. We reflect on the significance of gender, the structural vulnerabilities intensified by the current political moment, and whether academia has long operated under assumptions of invulnerability, particularly when it comes to academic freedom. We also take up the increasingly contentious question of viewpoint diversity and what it might mean in practice.
1 Jun 2026
Faculty on the Edge 1: Tradition
Episode 1 begins with a quiet doubt: is speaking off the cuff really a good idea for people trained to weigh every word? That hesitation quickly becomes a conversation about our habits as thinkers - our traditions, our attachments, and our blind spots - before things drift, inevitably, into the personal. Thoughtful, candid, and only slightly unguarded.
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