Editor’s note: The new year brings change. We’ve said goodbye to Miss Conduct; Robin Abrahams retired in 2025 after 20 years, and we finished out last year with re-runs of some of her classic advice. In its place, we welcome The Big Day, the Globe’s wedding column, to the magazine. As always, thank you for reading.

‘We are in class five rapids right now.’ New England’s liberal arts colleges are in crisis. Can their model survive?

While liberal arts colleges have not faced the same devastating federal funding cuts as research universities this year, the schools have become avatars of what US Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the “decades-long woke capture” of college. Globe reporter Diti Kohli spoke to 10 New England college presidents about the precarity of the moment and the future of the academic model. 

Five simple, healthful recipes anyone can make (really)

The Mediterranean Diet is still the “gold standard” of healthy eating. Try these simple 5-ingredient dishes — including rosemary shrimp over polenta and lemon baked cod with pistachio crust shown above — from the editors of Harvard Common Press.

PERSPECTIVE

Trump wants prayer back in schools. Boston has a cautionary tale.

In September, President Trump pushed to bring prayer back to public schools by painting a utopian picture of religious days of old. But his idyllic depiction of the past contradicts what actually took place; history has long shown that public schools and prayer are incompatible, writes education reporter Linda K. Wertheimer.

CONNECTIONS

We offered refuge to a Brown University student on that night of horror. She brought light to the darkness.

On the night of the campus shooting, writer Brett W. Summers, whose spouse teaches at Brown’s medical school, went to a neighborhood restaurant where a student was taking shelter. Summers writes about what happened after the student accepted her family’s invitation of refuge.

THE BIG DAY

Harvard law grads from different cultures celebrate a ‘romantasy’ wedding at Hammond Castle

Iqra and Dimitar met as international students at Harvard. They talked to Rachel Kim Rackza about how they wove their Bulgarian and Pakistani traditions into a shared sense of belonging.

LOVE LETTERS

Parent trap 
What to do about visiting in-laws who offer unwanted advice, and won’t leave. Meredith has some suggestions for discouraging such behavior. 

Submit your relationship questions. And check out the Love Letters podcast here.

DINNER WITH CUPID

‘They sat the wrong person at the table and so I had a good laugh.’ The dress impressed, but will these daters be a match?

Go on an in-person or virtual blind date. We'll pick up the tab. Fill out an application.

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