The American research university is one of the greatest things this nation has ever built. It is an engine of progress, a miracle of human ingenuity. It is a privilege to be a part of it, and a responsibility to defend its purpose.

That purpose is being betrayed by a pathology of risk-aversion, an epidemic of low agency spreading through its individual members. It is a thousand daily acts of intellectual cowardice, rationalized as pragmatism.

The cure is to arm the next generation of pioneers with the awareness that a different game is possible. To show them the unwritten rules so they can choose to break them. This project is that armament. It is the missing semester of becoming a researcher.

It is a defense of the frontier, written before the public loses faith and decides to burn the whole thing down.