Dana Dusbiber’s statement in The Washington Post deploring the teaching of Shakespeare in high school English courses evoked universal scorn and laughter. Her thesis is simple: Shakespeare is too old, white, male, and European for 21st-century American students, especially those of color. His language is dense and unfamiliar, enough so that Dusbiber herself can’t always understand it. […]
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It’s impossible not to notice a contradiction on the pages of Minding the Campus. My friend Bill Voegeli seems to be saying that tenure makes teaching in our colleges and universities worse (“Tenure, Kipnis and the PC University,” June 22). The shameful goings on at Northwestern over Kipnis show that tenure doesn’t really protect the […]
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In the fall of 1980, towards the end of my first semester of college teaching, I received a memo saying that on the last day of class I was to hand out the course evaluation forms for students to complete and return. A few weeks later, the packet of forms they had filled out was […]
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Earlier this spring, a student filed a due process lawsuit against Brandeis, charging that he was disciplined under a procedure different from the one that existed when he arrived on campus. In one respect, the facts of this case are atypical. After a nearly two-year relationship (between two male students) ended, the accuser appears to […]
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Some coincidences are less coincidental than others are. Northwestern University recently investigated professor Laura Kipnis, regarding complaints that an essay of hers had violated students’ legal rights. Meanwhile, a committee of the Wisconsin state legislature voted to let the University of Wisconsin choose, as a matter of policy, whether its professors would enjoy the protections […]
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“Incoming freshmen at Duke University are expected to read a graphic novel with cartoon drawings of a woman masturbating and multiple females engaging in oral sex—as well as participate in group discussions during orientation.”— from Campus Reform
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Culture wars over “social justice” have been wreaking havoc in many communities, including universities and science fiction fandom. The ordeal of Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis, hauled before a campus gender equity tribunal for publishing a critique of academia’s current obsession with sexual misconduct, has brought the backlash against “political correctness” to reliably left-of-center venues such as Vox. But this is […]
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Reason has released a March, 2015 Nick Gillespie interview with cultural critic Camille Paglia, who as usual has many lively opinions. Here are a few: journalism today (bad), Hillary (a disaster), the ideal first female president (Dianne Feinstein), what kids learn in high school (don’t bully), college now (summer camp, Club Med), what campus leftists should […]
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Stuart Taylor and I have a jointly authored piece debunking the Washington Post series on campus sexual assault. The collection of articles, accompanied by a misleading poll, has also received searing, effective criticism from Ashe Schow in the Washington Examiner, Robby Soave in Reason, and David French in NRO. I recommend each piece. The series […]
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Rape is a serious matter. That is why it is unfortunate that a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, using a small student sample that does not distinguish between unwanted touching and rape, has concluded that 25 percent of college women are sexually assaulted every year. On Sunday the Washington Post devoted half its front page and three […]
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In the New York Observer, Cathy Young laments the rise of “social justice warriors,” primarily on campus and online, arguing that “this version of ‘social justice’ is not about social justice at all. It is a cultish, essentially totalitarian ideology deeply inimical—as liberals such as Jonathan Chait wam in New York Magazine—to the traditional values […]
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Without rehashing the fine points made by AEI’s Andrew Kelly and Slate’s Jordan Weissmann about the irresponsible advice dispensed in Lee Siegel’s op-ed in the New York Times it’s worth noting a few points on the purported virtues of defaulting on student loans. First, Siegel seems to give the impression he was already under a […]
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Writing in The New York Times, Lee Siegel encourages students to follow his example and default on their student loans. The four biggest problems with his piece are: Siegel is the wrong case study Even if you are of the opinion that college should be free and student debt is immoral, Siegel is the wrong […]
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The AAUP—the American Association of University Professors—held its annual Conference on the State of Higher Education at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. June 10-14. A few subway stops away, the Heartland Institute held its tenth International Conference on Climate Change at the Washington Court Hotel, June 11-12. I suspect that I am the only […]
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Lynne Cheney had a high-profile piece in the April 1 Wall Street Journal critiquing the draft exam associated with the new Advanced Placement U.S. history standards (APUSH). (I’ve written on these standards previously.) The standards have aroused considerable controversy in the scholarly community—the National Association of Scholars deserves the most credit for highlighting the issue. […]
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Kafka was born too early to write about Amherst College. At campus hearings on claims of sexual assault, procedures are relentlessly stacked again males and evidence of innocence doesn’t count. Amherst expelled a student for committing rape—despite text messages from the accuser, sent immediately after the alleged assault, (1) telling one student that she had […]
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Hungry for love and it’s feeding time, Alice Cooper wrote in his 1991 classic song, “Feed My Frankenstein.” Academia has created its own Frankenstein with its speech codes, groupthink enforcement, and discouraging of dissent. This Frankenstein isn’t hungry for love – it’s hungry for power. And academics themselves have belatedly discovered that they’re on the […]
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On June 2 a group of 55 scholars released an Open Letter criticizing the College Board’s newly revised “Course and Exam Description, Including the Curriculum Framework” for Advanced Placement in United States History. On June 3 Daniel Henninger began his Wall Street Journalcolumn by asking, “Would a second Clinton presidency continue and expand Barack Obama’s […]
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At least for now, Columbia’s mattress saga is over. Emma Sulkowicz, the student who spent her final year on campus toting a mattress to protest the school’s failure to punish her alleged rapist, graduated at the end of May; so did Paul Nungesser, the accused man who says he’s the real victim. There was more […]
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A group of 55 historians and other scholars has issued a grave warning about the “dramatically changed” plans for the teaching of American history in our schools. The framework for the Advanced Placement (AP) exam in U.S. History, they say, imposes on students “an arid, fragmentary, and misleading account of American history… The new framework […]
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