Franklin Foer TNR has always prided itself on serving as a land-bridge connecting academia to the reading public. And that's the spirit that we hope will infuse this blog. It will be a space where the magazine's contributors and friends in the professoriate comment on current events, bring their expertise to bear on Topic A, and discuss the academic issues of the day. If you look over at our new tennis blog, you can glimpse the wide range of our contributors--check out Martha Nussbaum on Billy Jean King and feminism. And that's what I'm hoping will happen in Open U. We'll have great minds riffing and conversing: What do Cass Sunstein and Christine Stansell make of blogging? What does Alan Wolfe think about the future of European immigration? How will Steven Pinker apply evolutionary biology to explain Dick Cheney? The possibilities are endless and exciting.