"A Little Less Disruptive Innovation Is Called For"

"Disruption has a totally different history. It's a way to avoid the word 'progress,' which, even when it's secularized, still implies some kind of moral progress. Disruption emerges in the 1990s as progress without any obligation to notions of goodness. And so 'disruptive innovation,' which became the buzzword of change in every realm in the first years of the 21st century, including higher education, is basically destroying things because we can and because there can be money made doing so. Before the 1990s, something that was disruptive was like the kid in the class throwing chalk. And that's what disruptive innovation turned out to really mean."

Evan Goldstein at The Chronicle of Higher Education talks with Jill Lepore about her new book, These Truths.