Month: February 2025

Universities Are Profiting Off Federal Research Grants at Taxpayers’ Expense—Trump Reforms Could Curb the Abuse

The Trump Administration has proposed a much-needed reform of how we reimburse so-called “overhead expenses” associated with federal research grants made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is reasoned that research activity financed by the Feds involves not only paying researchers, buying lab equipment, and some travel but also increases needed administrative oversight, […]

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The Right Is Right—Conservative-Led Reforms Are Not Threats to Higher Ed

Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]

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The AAUP Warns Against ‘Anticipatory Obedience’—But It Only Opposes Federal Power It Doesn’t Control

Last week, the president of my university’s Faculty Senate blasted out a warning—courtesy of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Their latest statement, Against Anticipatory Obedience, treats the second Trump administration as an existential threat to academia. The message to faculty? Brace yourselves—and whatever you do, don’t comply in advance. The AAUP asserts that […]

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The American University in Crisis: A War on Science, Faculty, and Freedom

The American university is in distress. Enrollment is declining, tenure is disappearing, administrative costs are ballooning, and public trust in academia is eroding. More concerning, however, is the deeper structural crisis that has transformed universities from bastions of knowledge into battlegrounds of ideological warfare and administrative overreach. At the heart of this crisis lies a […]

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Breaking Up with Accreditors: A Satirical Contract for Academic Freedom

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of an article originally published on the author’s Substack Diogenes In Exile on January 10, 2025. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. What if accreditors were directly accountable to the people their standards affected the most, students? It would be so much […]

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Anthropology in Crisis: Elizabeth Weiss Faces the Challenges of a Politicized Discipline

Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on June 25, 2025. It was translated into English from French by the Observatory before being edited to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is crossposted here with permission. San Jose State University Elizabeth Weiss, a physical anthropologist and professor […]

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Sarah Lawrence’s Hollow Promises—’Inclusion’ Excludes Jews

I recently spoke with a senior at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC), where I have taught for 15 years. We had never met before. The student hopes to graduate this spring, but that remains uncertain. Now at home, taking classes remotely, unsure if graduation will be possible. The students stays away out of fear. As a […]

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No Borders, No Merit, No Justice: The Bizarre Philosophy of Our Intellectual Elite

“Is there any good principled reason not to have open borders?” That is a quote from Harvard professor Michael Sandel in “Two of the World’s Leading Thinkers on How the Left Went Astray,” a New York Times article published on Jan 18. The piece promotes two stars in the progressive pantheon: Sandel and French economist Thomas […]

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The Grown Ups are Back: On Gender, Trump Replaces Confusion and Chaos with Clarity and Common Sense

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by American Greatness on February 11, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission.  Last week, the Trump Administration continued its campaign for common sense: On February 5, the President signed the executive order (“EO”) Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports, restoring sanity to athletics […]

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Is It Time to Retire Social and Emotional Learning?

President Trump is determined to repair American education. He has started out with bold moves, including the demolition of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) ideology, the elimination of men from women’s sports, and taking steps against campus anti-Semitism. Yet much remains to be done. Now that DEI has been called out as a form of […]

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College’s Football’s Lost Virtue

The Most Beautiful Game There has always been something special about college football. From the passion to the pageantry, this game exemplifies the true spirit of America—a force so powerful it can unite total strangers and divide close families. Tribal to its very core, football fans of all ages perform rites and rituals, embrace their […]

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Ending Racial Preferences

One day after President Biden’s inaugural address stressing national unity, he signed an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” He created another Executive Order in February 2023, this time expanding the equity mandate to the operation of every federal program. These executive orders (EOs) had a […]

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Higher Ed Is Resisting Reform—Why Laws Can’t Win the Culture War

For the first time in a long time, conservatives and heterodox thinkers seem to be getting the upper hand in the culture war. At the federal level, executive orders such as those ending federal “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs, combatting racial discrimination in institutions that receive federal funding, and pushing back against radical transgenderism […]

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Winston Churchill’s Reception and Influence in the United States

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the Ford Forum on January 30, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission.  Recently historians from many nations commemorated the birth 150 years ago of one of the most remarkable political figures in modern times. Before his death in 1965 at […]

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What Was Britain to Do?

On February 9, 1775, the Parliament of Great Britain declared Massachusetts in a state of rebellion. With cause: Massachusetts’ Provincial Congress had met without royal leave and was organizing and training a military force. Massachusetts’ disobedience could no longer be ignored. Now, Britain would arm itself for war. Orders sailed to Governor Thomas Gage in […]

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Scorched by DEI: A Nation on Fire—Literally

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) has been in the headlines quite a bit lately, and not for good reasons. Indeed, we may be witnessing the collapse of the entire toxic ideology and not a moment too soon. Its effect on society has been devastating, leading to a noticeable decline in professionalism and public trust. For […]

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Resistance to Trump’s Orders Sows Doubt About Reform

Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]

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Secularism: Understanding Its Origins and Meaning

Editor’s Note: The following was originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on November 8, 2023. It was translated from French into English by the Observatory and later edited to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is republished here with permission. For translation assistance, I used ChatGPT. Secularism? A difficult term to […]

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Artificial Intelligence, the Academy, And A New ‘Studia Humanitatis’

The surprise on the faces of the doctoral students was as palpable as was the disbelief upon hearing the methodological equivalent of heresy spoken in a classroom. When giving a talk to grad students a year ago at the University of California, Riverside about careers beyond the university, I challenged an orthodoxy that is daily […]

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DEI Courses Consume 40 Million Hours of Undergraduate Instruction

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the College Fix on February 4, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission.  “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) course requirements in at least 30 states cost students and taxpayers at least $1.8 billion per four-year period. Meanwhile, “the current undergraduate population at public […]

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State Laws Ignored: Counseling Accreditation and How to Demand Reform Now!

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of an article originally published on the author’s Substack Diogenes In Exile on December 2, 2024. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. Under what circumstance would it be acceptable for accreditors to knowingly require a standard that flouts state law? The idea is worth consideration […]

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Oversight Still Fails—NSF Director’s Alleged Plagiarism Still Not Investigated

My recent article on Minding the Campus examined a paper by National Science Foundation (NSF) director Sethuraman Panchanathan, published by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM refused to investigate Panchanathan’s uncited copying from a paper published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The PubPeer website reported that Panchanathan wrote an October […]

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The Use and Misuse of AI in Higher Education Writing Courses

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the latest major development in the field of education, and it has the potential to either improve educational quality or significantly devalue it. It all depends on how it is used. In composition courses, using AI to produce outlines, take notes, or write, revise, or translate student writing undermines learning by […]

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Dr. Bhattacharya Should Model the Virtues He Seeks

I have just read your endorsement of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to be the head of the National Institute of Health (NIH). While I agree with much of the editorial, I would like to express some concerns, commenting as a long-time teacher of philosophy of science, a private citizen who is eager for the scientific enterprise to thrive, and a long-time supporter of the National […]

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American Thinkers Must Mind the Campus

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by American Thinker on February 3, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission.  America’s thinkers should keep colleges and universities on their radar—they’re actively undermining the nation. Over 400,000 illegal migrants are enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions, many receiving benefits unavailable to […]

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Deporting Radicalism: Trump’s Crackdown on Anti-Israel Campus Protests

On February 1, reports emerged that Liu Lijun, a Chinese national studying at the University of California, Los Angeles, is facing deportation after participating in anti-Israel protests on campus. Liu’s case marks one of the first applications of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on January 29. This order targets—among other things—foreign students […]

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The Problem with Conflict of Interest

Of late, scholarly journals and law reviews are now asking would-be authors to fill out a conflict of interest form. What is going on here? What is a conflict of interest? Perhaps the clearest conflict of interest in such academic publications is a chemist writing an article exonerating a pharmaceutical company from charges of malfeasance […]

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Censorship in U.S. School Libraries: What Now for the Bible?

Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on June 29, 2023. It was translated into English from French by the Observatory before being edited to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is crossposted here with permission. The American and international media have recently echoed a […]

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Back to Stick Figures: How Woke Warriors Destroyed Anthropology

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Reality’s Last Stand on January 16, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission.  Biological anthropology and archaeology are facing a censorship crisis. Censorship can be defined simply as the suppression of speech, public communication, or information, often because it is deemed […]

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Federal Funding Shouldn’t Be Going to Woke University Programs

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the City Journal on January 28, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission.  At a June 2024 teacher workshop put together by the African Studies Association Outreach Council, which “promotes the teaching of Africa in K-16 classrooms,” one presenter told attendees that […]

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