Years ago when I was up in Montreal to give a talk, I wandered into the public botanical garden only to happen upon an extraordinary bonsai exhibit. Among the specimens flown in from Japan, several were upwards of four hundred years old.

While the exquisite beauty provided a pleasing feeling of delight and gratitude, mixed into the emotional soup I could sense a bit of stomach-clenching anxiety. Imagine being responsible for keeping alive such creatures! Unpotting them to trim the roots. Providing exactly the right amount of water and nourishment.

When I suggested to our graphic designer Janelle Delia that the front cover of this inquisitive issue—on the theme of “discipline”—feature a bonsai, I was in part thinking of the analogy to academia. It is true that only a small percentage of institutions of higher education have been kept alive for hundreds of years. But, in a way, all are like bonsai: they must be so carefully tended in terms of nourishment and growth, with the ministration necessarily passed down, one generation to another. And much of the critical safekeeping occurs through discipline.

There are (at least) two meanings of “discipline” at play here: the units of academic study we call disciplines and the methods by which a particular order is maintained.

While I expected, when we chose this inquisitive theme, for our contributors to explore one or both of these meanings, what I did not expect was that so many would find themselves writing about academic freedom and about activism within ivy-covered halls. Yet now it makes sense to me: the snipping of the roots, the training of the trunk and canopy, the tricky question of where to place limits to shape the spectacular, extraordinary thing that is our species’ tree of learning and teaching.

I hope this issue will satisfy and unsettle you as it has me. We bring you Tom Ginsburg critiquing “undisciplined disciplines,” Martha McCaughey offering scholar-optimism, Nadine Strossen considering David Rabban’s novel theory of academic freedom, and Aron Sousa and Chelsea Wentworth responding to Kalven with earwax.

We also have Kathryn Lynch on how she became a “woman,” Colleen Eren on criminology, Paul Vasey on an inscrutable, highly-disciplined Japanese ritual, and Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus on “the discipline of last resort.” Finally, we feature a contribution from the distinguished and disciplined couple of Carmen Wilson and Joe Gow.

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