David Acevedo is Managing Editor of Minding the Campus and Communications & Research Associate at the National Association of Scholars.
Greetings, faithful Minding the Campus readers. If you write for MTC or read our weekly newsletter, you’ll recognize my name—otherwise, you may not. I have served as MTC’s managing editor for the last three years, and I regret to inform you all that today is my last day. (“Drat!” all the readers said.) The reason […]
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In this series of articles, I have set out to assess the various paths forward for American higher education. Most of us agree that the status quo is unsustainable, but what comes next? I began by asking whether legacy higher ed—the historic institutions that we know and (used to) love—is a lost cause. If left […]
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The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has engaged in research theft and academic espionage in American higher education for some time. Whether it be on the institutional level through Confucius Institutes or on the individual level through the Thousand Talents Plan and other “talent programs,” the last five years have made abundantly clear that China […]
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Where To Begin? When tracing the origins of today’s academic chaos, many point to the social upheaval that rocked America in the 1960s and ‘70s. Others go a bit further back, detailing the rise of the Frankfurt School in 1930s Germany and the ensuing tidal wave of critical theory that has since engulfed much of […]
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I recently began a series of articles assessing the various ways out of our current academic quagmire. In the first piece—or perhaps more accurately, the zeroth piece—I urged conservative commentators to stop spending all of their time pointing out the rather obvious double standards, contradictions, and hypocrisy within the higher education establishment, and to instead […]
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Around five years ago, Chinese government influence in American education became a permanent fixture in the news cycle. This was in large part due to the National Association of Scholars’ groundbreaking 2017 report, Outsourced to China, which exposed the deep ties over 100 American colleges and universities maintained with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through […]
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When a man contravenes his stated principles, through word or through deed, we ought to first give him the benefit of the doubt. But when he does it the tenth, or hundredth, or thousandth time, we must conclude that he holds a different set of principles entirely. In other words, one’s words and actions are […]
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The last few months have seen a rash of resignations by college presidents, most of which have been voluntary. These are no lightweights—the growing list of outgoing presidents includes those at some of the nation’s leading institutions, including Dartmouth, UPenn, Northwestern, MIT, Fordham, and most recently, my own alma mater, Columbia. Early resignation seems to […]
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These days, it’s increasingly common for conservatives, classical liberals, and centrists to point out the Left’s so-called “double standards.” The examples are endless: Black Lives Matter’s “fiery but mostly peaceful” protests were justified, while the Canadian trucker convoy was domestic terrorism. Feminists claim to uphold the dignity of women while encouraging promiscuity and allowing “trans” […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Spectator World on February 19, 2022 and is crossposted here with permission. In January, the Department of Justice dropped charges against Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Gang Chen, a mechanical engineer accused of concealing illicit ties to the Chinese government early last year. United States Attorney Rachael Rollins said regarding the decision, […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by First Things on February 8, 2022 and is crossposted here with permission. In 1919, Columbia University added a new class: “Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West.” Partly a response to World War I, it was designed as a “peace issues” course to correspond with a “war issues” […]
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