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Success often depends on circumstance. Always beware of the leader who turns up preening themselves over their successes, priding themselves on their “method”, convinced of their infallibility, says Lincoln Allison

It’s tempting to dismiss the Ohio senator’s attacks on higher education as MAGA rabble-rousing, but he is right in some respects, says Lincoln Allison

Ever-expanding numbers of doctoral students may suit universities, but one’s twenties should be a time for broad learning and professional development, not for burying oneself in detailed research, says Lincoln Allison

With academics feeling the strain from higher workloads, the days when scholars had time to write novels or run businesses seem increasingly distant. Lincoln Allison suggests that universities have far more to gain than to lose by allowing their academics to broaden their experience and earn extra income

Alliances with university colleagues can be inspiring and life-affirming but may also be grounded in little more than ambition or survival instinct. Six writers reflect on the joys and challenges of having friends in academia

All academics have had that anxiety dream about standing up to give a lecture, only to realise they have forgotten to prepare anything – or to put on any clothes. But real teaching failures are rarely so disastrous – and many are teachable moments. Seven academics tell us their hard-earned lessons

Lincoln Allison is not wholly convinced by an analysis of the forces that shape history

Blindness gave the late politics professor Roger Williams a unique ability to focus on the structure and coherence of what was being said to him. And though his interrogations could be exacting, Lincoln Allison wishes more sighted academics shared his talent

Book of the week: Lincoln Allison is surprised by the amount of common ground he, as a traditionalist academic, now shares with the ‘innovatory managers’ he once quarrelled with 

Lincoln Allison makes the case for the revival of the old-style academic eccentric

Lincoln Allison may have lived through the glory days of academic publishing, but he still wonders whether the countless hours he spent writing his 14 moderately successful tomes would have been better spent on the tennis court