Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) recently published an essay in its flagship magazine, Academe, titled “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity.” Written by Lisa Siraganian, the J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in Humanities and professor at Johns Hopkins University, the piece makes a sweeping and unsettling claim: that efforts to foster intellectual diversity on […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on Real Clear Education on September 22, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Every morning, millions of students start their day the same way: roll over, reach for the phone, and open a social media app. Scroll. Snap. Like. […]
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I knew something was fundamentally broken the day a senior colleague grabbed my shoulders and shook me frantically in the faculty dining hall after a contentious meeting of my school’s social science faculty. The assault was shocking, especially because it happened in what should have been a routine lunch gathering at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC), […]
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This fall, I’m assigning J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis in my politics and geography class on a deeply liberal and historically activist campus. I can already anticipate the reaction. Some students will object before they’ve read a page, convinced that reading the memoir means endorsing Vance’s politics […]
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Harvard College has a grade inflation problem. But beneath it lies a deeper scandal: the faculty who have allowed, and even encouraged, the decay. The Atlantic recently reported that the average GPA at Harvard now hovers around 3.8—a number so inflated it renders distinctions meaningless. Students today can largely count on being graded as excellent, […]
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Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement was always going to make headlines. When one of the world’s most famous women says “Yes!” to an NFL star, the cultural churn is inevitable. Social media exploded, entertainment outlets fed the frenzy, and for millions of young Americans, it felt like a major life moment. That’s all well […]
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“On today’s college campuses, students are not maturing — they’re managing. Beneath a facade of progressive slogans and institutional virtue-signaling lies a quiet psychological crisis, driven by the demands of ideological conformity.” Researchers Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman just published a devastating portrait of undergraduate life at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan, “Performative […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on RealClear Education on August 15, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. When the semester begins, my classroom fills with anticipation and nerves—mine included. Every term offers a chance to start fresh, build habits, and forge relationships […]
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When Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber turned on his fellow university leaders at an April panel discussion, all but accusing Vanderbilt and Washington University chancellors of “carrying water for the Trump administration,” he revealed the dangerous delusion gripping elite academia. His outburst at the Association of American Universities (AAU) meeting wasn’t just poor form; it was a […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on RealClear Education on August 8, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. “I’m going to be in debt for my whole f—ing life. How does that even make sense? I signed up for this s— when I was […]
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The latest Harvard Crimson Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey should be read not as a snapshot of opinion, but as a damning portrait of moral failure. For the second year in a row, most respondents to the survey said they did not observe “systemic antisemitism” at Harvard. In the wake of a year of […]
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A striking new Gallup poll reveals a sobering truth: just 58 percent of Americans describe themselves as “extremely” or “very” proud to be American—the lowest level since the question was first posed in 2001. The decline is sharpest among two groups long seen as pillars of our civic and cultural institutions: young Americans and Democrats. […]
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As a professor with over twenty years of experience in higher education, I’ve watched with growing concern—not only at the rise of anti-Semitism on campus, but also at the shallow, reactive ways many institutions have responded. Nationwide, Jewish students are encountering levels of hostility and marginalization that would have been nearly unimaginable just a few […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on Sutherland Institute on July 02, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. In his recent piece in Education Next, my American Enterprise Institute (AEI) colleague Frederick Hess offers a crucial corrective to the prevailing winds in civic education. He calls […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on RealClear Education on July 02, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Harvard Government Department professors Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky recently warned in the Harvard Crimson that if Harvard negotiates with the Trump administration to restore frozen federal research funding, […]
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The intense anti-Semitic environment that has been allowed to flourish at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC) and has even been promoted by its president, Cristle Collins Judd, has rightfully drawn the attention of members of Congress, federal agencies, and the press. SLC has become an increasingly hostile place for Zionist and Jewish students, with open calls […]
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Harvard, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university, has long set the standard in higher education. For Jewish families, gaining admission has historically been both a symbol of merit and a source of communal pride. But Harvard has also long resisted their inclusion—first through admissions quotas in the early 20th century, and now, once again, […]
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Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by RealClear Education on May 05, 2025. It has been edited to match MTC’s style guidelines and is crossposted here with permission. A graduate student I have worked with over the past year recently emailed me to share the exciting news that he will be teaching a course this fall. Being able to design […]
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In response to the Trump Administration’s continued attacks on higher education, leaders of some of the most prominent colleges and universities are pushing back—albeit hypocritically. Nearly 500 college presidents and deans signed an open letter from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, titled “A Call […]
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Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by RealClear Education on April 10, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Last week, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) wrapped up their “Week of Rage,” a week-long series of programs intended to intimidate and threaten those unsupportive […]
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In the winter of 2024, the U.S. Department of Education announced that an investigation is underway at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC) over its anti-Semitic environment. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights wrote in a December 23 letter that it will examine “whether the College failed to respond to alleged harassment of students […]
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In an article for Slate, Joel Swanson, a newly hired professor of Jewish Studies at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC), selectively presents only part of the story regarding the college’s response to the wave of anti-Semitism that swept SLC following Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel. No surprise to me, Swanson uses the piece to argue […]
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The Heterodox Academy found that in 2024, more than 100 colleges and universities across North America adopted institutional neutrality policies. Taking a cue from the 1967 University of Chicago Kalven Report, which argued that the university must remain neutral to be a home to a wide diversity of views, impartiality protects open inquiry and academic freedom […]
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I recently published an article detailing the pervasive anti-Semitic environment at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC), where I have been a faculty member for the past fifteen years. In it, I presented troubling facts about the rise of anti-Semitism on the New York-based campus and shared my perspective on SLC’s handling of these issues. Rather than […]
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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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A blog post recently appeared in my inbox from Frances Lee, the new interfaith chaplain at Sarah Lawrence College, reflecting on the challenges of the fall 2024 semester. That term was marked by violent protests and disruptions led by Students for Justice in Palestine and their allies—events that gained national attention. As a Jewish professor […]
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Sarah Lawrence College (SLC) fell last week after the student-led Divestment Coalition occupied the school’s main administrative building and established an encampment on campus. The protests, supported by external groups such as National Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestinian Youth Movement’s New York City chapter, were essentially facilitated by the school, with the […]
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In the dead of night on November 21, a group of students linked to Sarah Lawrence College’s (SLC) Divestment Coalition stormed Westlands, the school’s main administrative building, and announced their occupation through social media. This was no quiet protest. Hiding their identities behind masks, the group decorated the building with signs, barricaded doors, and blocked […]
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Over the past week, I’ve had challenging conversations with many students. While they recognize that Donald Trump won re-election fairly and that the country’s mood differs from the campus atmosphere, they still feel frustrated and anxious. I try to reassure them that our future is bright and that we live in a great country, yet […]
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College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, an organization intended to help their schools become “beacons of free inquiry and civil discourse,” recently announced that it has expanded to 100 members, all of whom have “pledged to champion critical inquiry, free expression, and civil discourse on their campuses.” With this announcement, the organization released an “inaugural progress […]
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