The Cheese: Chisme, Power, and Truth-Telling in Higher Education

The Cheese—short for chisme—is a smart, warm, and slightly rebellious podcast about what really happens behind the scenes of higher education. Hosted by Dr. Blanca Elizabeth Vega, a race, immigration, and higher education scholar, the show blends truth-telling, storytelling, and critical analysis to examine power, privilege, and resistance across colleges and universities. Each episode centers voices and histories often pushed to the margins: parents and caregivers navigating higher education systems, flashbacks to 1990s student activism that still shape today’s campus politics, and higher education and student affairs professionals sharing the realities of working with students under conditions of constraint, conflict, and care. This is not gossip for entertainment—it is chisme as knowledge, strategy, and disruption. The Cheese is for educators, administrators, graduate students, and anyone curious about how higher education actually works—and how it could work differently.