Dr. Matt Seybold's Essay Included On Los Angeles Review of Books' Best of 2023 List

The Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), a non-profit digital magazine that promotes writing about literature, culture, and the arts, selected a critical essay by Dr. Matt Seybold, Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as one of 10 pieces featured in their Best of 2023 list.

Seybold’s essay, “Jason Wingard’s EdTech Griftopia,” explored the larger implications of the Temple University Graduate Student Association's (TUGSA) 42-day-long strike, which was ongoing at the time of Seybold’s writing. Seybold argued that Jason Wingard, serving as Temple’s president at the time of the strike, used the strike as proof that higher education needs to adopt efficiencies and technologies that, according to Seybold, serve specialized corporate interests instead of student or societal ones.

“I’m very grateful to Michelle Chihara for commissioning and editing this essay, to the TUGSA members whose victory has implications for all of us who work in higher education, and to all the people who read and shared this essay,” Seybold says. “I hope it was eye-opening to many of my colleagues, not just at Temple. TUGSA dealt a blow to private equity and the push for online-only education platforms, but our struggle is far from over.”