I’ve just learned that the University of Michigan, my alma mater, has given its annual teaching award, the “Golden Apple,” to English professor Eric Rabkin. For the second year in a row, the award has gone to someone with whom I took a class back in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Last year, it went to John Rubadeau, also of the English department. Both men are excellent teachers and richly deserving of the honor; two of my best courses at Michigan were ones they taught (Rabkin on science fiction, Rubadeau on argumentative writing).

We spend a lot of time criticizing higher education here at NRO and on Phi Beta Cons, and with good reason. But it’s also worth noting that there are a lot of great teachers working in the academy today–and the University of Michigan, for all the things it does poorly, has done something splendidly right in honoring these two.