energy

When Sustainability Goes Too Far

(Picture: UC Chico’s 2011 Sustainability Report) California State University at Chico takes sustainability seriously. Yahoo listed it last year as one of the top five ‘green’ colleges in America. The university has made creating “environmentally literate citizens” an official strategic priority, and it has elaborated its general education program to include a “sustainability studies” track. […]

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What’s Going on Behind the Curtain? Climategate 2.0 and Scientific Integrity

Cross-posted from National Association of Scholars. Climategate, both 1 and 2, are textbook cases of gross lapses in professional ethics and scientific malfeasance.  To understand why, one must first understand what science is and how it is supposed to operate. Science is the noble pursuit of knowledge through observation, testing and experimentation.  Scientists attempt to […]

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Global Warming: The Campus Non-Debate

I do not want us to shut down economic drive to support false science, and on the other hand, I do not want to leave behind a scorched earth.  …. Let’s get the science right!  A better debate and research is needed by honest and believable scientists who study climate professionally. Richard Lindzen, Professor of […]

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Sustainability—Splurging with Your Tax Dollars

Within days of the GOP sweep that marked the Nov. 2 election, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Buildings and Grounds” blog featured an entry whose headline wondered: “What Future for College Sustainability Programs?” Such worrying might seem strange because in fact “sustainability”—the green mania that has inspired institutions of higher learning across the country to […]

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Even More Sustainability

A couple of weeks ago Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, wrote a serious, humorous, penetrating assessment of the rise of “sustainability” as the new ideology de riguer on college campuses. (The article is also available here, but read it on the Chronicle site if you can — the comments there are […]

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From Diversity to Sustainability

In the October 3rd issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education is a broad comparison of diversity and sustainability “ideologies.” In it, Peter Wood offers several general remarks about the terms (or notions, attitudes, commitments . . . what is the right word for these hazy but potent “-ities” that bear so many psycho-political undertones […]

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Sustainability—More Cash and a Softer Side

With great fanfare Columbia University recently announced that starting this fall it will offer an undergraduate major in the new interdisciplinary field of “sustainable development.” That makes Columbia the first Ivy League school to offer such a major, which sounds as though it ought to be a practical mix of hard science, “green” technology, and […]

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Tell Me Again—Why Is He at Princeton?

Van Jones, the Oakland, Calif.-based radical activist and author who was forced to resign his post as the Obama administration’s “green jobs czar” in September after it was revealed that he had signed a “truther” petition in 2004 calling for an investigation of President George W. Bush’s supposed collusion in the massacres of Sept. 11, […]

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College Green? Bah Humbug.

The term “College Green” has a whole new meaning these days. No longer does it refer to the tree-lined verdant lawn at the heart of the classic college campus. It now reflects an environmental faddishness sweeping academia with a fervor exceeding even that for deconstructionism or take-back-the-night events. The big buzzword on campus is “sustainability.” […]

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The Worst Campus Codeword

The academic left is fond of buzzwords that sound harmless but function in a highly ideological way. Many schools of education and social work require students to have a good “disposition.” In practice this means that conservatives need not apply, as highly publicized attempts to penalize right-wing students at Brooklyn College and Washington State University […]

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