Trustees face a quandary in trying to figure out their role in academic governance. As a matter of law, institutional responsibility is squarely in their hands. On the other hand, while few challenge their oversight in matters managerial and financial, they are routinely warned that when it comes to intellectual content, the heart of university […]
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Charlotte Allen, who you will likely recognize from her work in Lingua Franca, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times, is joining Minding The Campus as a contributing editor. She’ll be contributing regularly to the blog, and writing occasional articles for us. In addition to her writing she’s currently finishing […]
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Princeton is taking a cue from fraternity practice and indentured servitude in urging freshmen to become “thesis buddies” for seniors – essentially, asking them to perform work for them. Princeton Seniors face a considerable thesis requirement, and Whitman, the new residential college, has come up with a convenient solution to their potential labor troubles: impress […]
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Black History Month college speakers axiomatically slant left. This February, Al Sharpton appeared at Adelphi University, Nikki Giovanni at Southern University, and Mary Frances Berry at Reed College, to name just a few. The right-most speaker this year was likely an elected Democrat, Harold Ford Jr., who also spoke at Reed. It’s little change in […]
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1) Hold and publicize discussions on how your ethnic group is under-represented, ignored and invisible on campus. (“Students, faculty, and Native American scholars discussed introducing an indigenous studies program as part of Friday’s Faculty House workshop on the under-representation of Native Americans in Columbia’s curriculum and faculty. …This is our homeland and being invisible is […]
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FIRE is launching a new Campus Freedom Network site, to enable “students and faculty to communicate quickly and effectively both with each other and with FIRE in order to defend liberty on their campuses.” The press release details an impressive range of resouces: Drawing from FIRE’s vast library of educational resources, the CFN will empower […]
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In a recent Washington Post Magazine, Emmett Rosenfeld, an English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School in Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County wrote a 4,000-word first-person article complaining that he he had failed to win advanced professional certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The reason Rosenfeld didn’t earn the minimum score that would […]
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What is Global Studies? Nobody seems to have a very clear idea, according to an article on the web site Inside Higher Ed by reporter Elizabeth Redden. Her account of a Washington D.C. academic gathering sponsored by the Association of International Educators Administrators leaves readers pretty much in the dark. The article begins and ends […]
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Although the mainstream media would have you believe he was a martyr to religious fundamentalists and moral Pecksniffs, Gene Nichol lost his job as president of the College of William and Mary in Virginia for only one reason: he was a lousy administrator who seemed not to be able to get it into his head […]
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Overwhelming evidence attests to the liberal tilt on our college campuses. Studies show that the faculty at most mainstream institutions are overwhelmingly registered with the Democratic party and give a disproportionate share of their political donations to left-leaning candidates. A recent study of donations by faculty at Princeton University during the current Presidential election season […]
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Bruce Benson, the wealthy oil and gas executive and conservative Republican activist, was approved Wednesday as president of the University of Colorado in a straight party-line vote of the board of regents. All six Republicans voted for Benson. All three Democrats voted no. (see Controversy In Colorado)
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The Harvard Crimson offers an unsurprisingly elliptical response to a new study “Admissions and Public Higher Education in California, Texas, and Florida: The Post-Affirmative Action Era” appearing in InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies. The study focuses on the enrollment patterns of school systems that eliminated affirmative action – and found significant increases […]
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(This article originally appeared at Inside Higher Ed) Dartmouth College is now the latest institution to announce considerable changes to its tuition and financial aid structure, eliminating any charges for students from families making less than $75,000 a year. Dartmouth’s arrangement is not nearly so generous as Harvard’s or Yale’s, yet it’s markedly superior in […]
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Edward J. Larson, Professor of Law at Pepperdine University and Pulitzer Prize-winning author will be appearing at ACTA’s Regional Meeting at the Mount Vernon Club in Baltimore in a program advocating the instruction of American History. Those in the area would be well-advised to stop by.
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Bruce Benson, a wealthy Republican businessman, is off to a bad start as the nominee for president of the three-campus University of Colorado system. One objection is that he lacks a Ph.D., which is unusual, but not unheard of. Dwight Eisenhower ruffled few feathers as president of Columbia University before his run for the presidency. […]
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For years now, college students have been busy committing themselves to extracurricular activities. On the whole, such commitment can be constructive. It contributes to civic engagement by the young and helps them to develop personal responsibility and character. Meanwhile, college officials claim that would-be employers are now demanding that colleges provide evidence that graduates are […]
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Several colleges and universities now sponsor a freshman year abroad, sending students who have just landed on their own campus to study for a term or a full year in Europe, Latin America, Asia or Africa. Syracuse University has a “Discovery Florence” program. The University of Mississippi sends some freshmen to The University of Edinburgh […]
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Today’s university seems obsessively compassionate about the downtrodden, far more than the usual academic Marxist celebration of exploited workers. Entire departments – African American Studies, Women’s Studies, Queer Studies, Latino/a Studies – strive to uplift those suffering from white male heterosexual oppressors. In African and Latin American Studies indigenous people are always blameless “good guys” […]
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Changing the course of American Universities is no easy task, concluded a panel “Liberal Bias on Campus: The Challenge To Restore Balance to Our Universities” organized by the Manhattan Institute at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. David Horowitz observed that “ever major university has been taken over by a chiliastic religious sect.” Samatha Harris, […]
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“Women’s Studies is about to disappear as an undergraduate degree in the UK” reads an astonishing line from a recent Times Higher Education (London) story. I assumed it was a joke. Not so. The article profiled the “last stand-alone undergraduate degree in women’s studies” in the UK at London Metropolitan University, the remnant of what […]
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Those who have been operating the managerial levers of the financial system have failed embarassingly and massively to comprehend the processes for which they are responsible. They have loaned money avidly and recklessly to people who couldn’t pay it back. They fudged data to get loans approved and recalculated . Then they sausaged fragile figments […]
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At a recent Manhattan Institute forum, Ward Connerly, the fierce opponent of race and sex preferences by government (who’s leading a state-by-state referendum drive to abolish affirmative action) admitted how the Bush Administration has disgraced itself by endorsing racial and gender-conscious policies and practices. Connerly did not give examples, but one glaring illustration is President […]
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“Bans On Affirmative Action Help Asian Americans, Not Whites, Report Says” reads a Chronicle of Higher Education headline this week reporting on a new study of preference bans and attendance, offering little surprise to… any, it seems, aside from the study’s authors. The study examined the results of preference bans at a number of colleges, […]
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In our latest podcast, John Leo interviews Ward Connerly on his efforts to eliminate racial preferences in five states this November and the role of diversity in college admissions. Listen here.
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