In 2018, Matthew Cheney took a phrase from a poem by Emily Dickinson and named his new website Finite Eyes. There, he would chronicle his experience as a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at a regional state university in New Hampshire, a state averse to financing education. Soon, he would contend with the effects of the COVID pandemic on his university, colleagues, and students, and he would have a front-row seat for the defunding and devaluing of higher education in America.

His experiences led him to prioritize ideas of access (open access, universal access) and five values: solidarity, cooperation, coalition, refuge, and regeneration. The essays in this book explore those ideas and values, chronicling a specific time in the history of learning and teaching while seeking ideas with which to build a new, and better, future.