Latest Articles

Who Is the Real “Fascist Bastard”?

The case of Jonathan Lopez, the Los Angeles Community college student who allegedly was called a “fascist bastard” by his speech professor for delivering a Christian speech, has indeed touched a nerve, as his lawyer, David French of the Alliance Defense Fund said. Once again the mainstream press got a few things askew. The Los […]

Financial Pain on the Campuses

On February 11 art-lovers packed a meeting room at Brandeis University to protest Brandeis’s plans to shut down its on-campus art museum and auction off the museum’s entire 6,000-piece collection. The list of holdings at Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum, most of them donated since the museum’s opening in 1961, reads like a Who’s Who of […]

A Small Stimulus for Colleges

In the area of higher education especially, but in most other areas too, the Stimulus bill looks more like an emergency measure designed to maintain current programs than a strategic package aimed to stimulate growth. Among others, college and university presidents are likely to be among those sorely disappointed. Last November, shortly after the election, […]

A Crucifix Controversy at BC

Over the winter break, Boston College placed in its classrooms crucifixes and other Christian symbols, many of them brought back from historically Catholic countries by BC students studying there. To the surprise of no one, this turned out to be controversial at the Jesuit-run institution. Any lurch in the direction of religion by religious colleges […]

Getting Lincoln To College

On the day in 1858 that Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen A. Douglas in the fifth of their great series of debates across Illinois, both candidates mounted a platform which had been hastily cobbled together and moved to the east side of Knox College’s ‘Old Main,’ in Galesburg, Illinois. Because of a quirk in the height […]

Stanley Fish And The Storm In Ottawa: Seven Professors Say What They Think

Denis Rancourt, a professor of physics at Ottawa University, an anarchist and a backer of Critical Pedagogy, may be the most dramatic example of a politicized teacher yet seen in North America. He believes that college instruction is an instrument of oppression and that his proper job is to combat this oppression by ignoring what […]

Brandeis: Still Abusing A Professor

By William Creeley & Harvey Silverglate Reaction to Brandeis University’s plan to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its esteemed collection was swift—and scathing. Within the Brandeis community, President Jehuda Reinharz’s proposed fire sale provoked howls of betrayal from students, faculty, alumni, and donors. In the art world and news media, the move was […]

The University Tomorrow?

Universities, Individualism, and David Brooks

In a recent op-ed, New York Times columnist David Brooks raised an interesting and important question. Drawing on a recent book (largely neglected) by Hugh Heclo entitled On Thinking Institutionally, Brooks critiqued a report on education that a Harvard University faculty committee issued a few years ago. According to the report, “the aim of a […]

Why I Left Academia

By Anonymous In March 2008 I reluctantly made the decision to leave academia. After six years in graduate school and three years as a professor, it was clear to me that the discrimination I faced was so pervasive that there would be no escaping it in the years ahead. Don’t misunderstand what I write in […]

VERITAS In The Chronicle

The Chronicle of Higher Education today reports on our VERITAS Fund’s latest partnership, with the Jack Miller Center. Campus centers that support traditional teaching about America’s founding will get a $2-million infusion from two organizations that have been instrumental in starting some of the centers. Most of the money will be used for centers that […]

Overselling Law School

Here at Minding the Campus we’ve been elaborating on Charles Murray’s argument that college isn’t for everyone, and that a college degree—which can cost graduates at least four years of forgone earnings and leave them drowning in student-loan debt—isn’t necessarily the ticket to economic prosperity that it’s cracked up to be. So what?, you might […]

Read and Watch

A new issue of the Dartmouth Review is up. Also, check out video of the first panel of this month’s National Association of Scholars conference.

Harvard Endowment Plummets, Bonuses Continue

The Boston Globe reports that Harvard alumni have written to President Faust asking that, given the recent drop in endowment value from $36.8 billion to $28.7 billion, the latest bonuses paid to the fund’s managers be returned. The five highest-paid executives earned between $3.4 and $6.9 million during the last fiscal year. Those aren’t especially […]

Creative Destruction In The Academy

At a recent conference on higher education organized by the National Association of Scholars there were several references to Schumpeter’s famous expression “creative destruction”. It was argued that technology was fomenting a change in pedagogy and the delivery of knowledge. Presumably in an environment of tightening resources, the university as we known it will change […]

Colleges And The “Green” Ploy For Stimulus Green

The good news is that neither the House nor the Senate version of President Obama’s $825 billion so-called economic stimulus package opens the sluicegate of federal slush-funding for higher-education construction projects as wide as many college presidents would like. Back in December some 31 university presidents and trustees, representing some of the biggest public university […]

Guess What College Freshmen Think

News reports on UCLA’s latest annual survey of college freshmen have focused on worries about financial aid as a factor in choosing which college to attend. Well, yes. But there are brighter nuggets to be mined here. How about this one: partying and beer-drinking in general continue their dramatic decline among incoming students. Reporting on […]

Shouldn’t All Students Learn Economics?

By Maurice Black & Erin O’Connor The current upheavals in the financial markets have left everyone confused. But in the midst of all the confusion, one thing has become crystal clear: A free country simply must be an economically and financially literate country. Amid the waves of failing banks, roiling stock exchanges, massive government bailouts, […]

The Conspiracy Against Faculty Friendship

It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help. – Epicurus (Greek Philosopher 341 BC-271 BC) Though relatively tiny in number PC forces now exercise disproportionate influence across the university, even capturing entire departments. What makes this conquest especially noteworthy is the lack of resistance from academics, […]

Orthodoxy V. Wisdom At The Supreme Court

Professor Johnny R. Buckles of the University of Houston Law School has written and posted a hypothetical Supreme Court case on the Solomon Amendment and whether private law schools can restrict military recruiting over the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. Hint as to how the decision comes out: the Chief Justice is named “Orthodoxy” and the dissent is […]

A Candidate Worth A Vote

The inestimable Harvey Silverglate has launched a candidacy for Harvard’s Board of Overseers, and quickly, the relevance of his effort is being noted. The student-run Harvard Law Record is scaling back its publication schedule in the face of several difficulties, notable among them being Harvard’s reduction of alumni distribution. As they write: [T]he replacement of […]

Want To Go Do College, Kid?

“Writing College Admissions Essays” – sound advice in the Wall Street Journal

Missing The Point About Missing Students

Despite all of the rhetoric from our elected officials about their interest in containing college costs, every American should know that the legislation Congress passed last year reauthorizing the Higher Education Act significantly increases the cost of running a college, and therefore the cost of attending one. By way of example, let’s look at the […]

Antioch – Will It Flatline Once Again?

When Antioch College, the venerable liberal arts institution in Yellow Springs, Ohio, shut its doors in June 2008, its professors laid off and most of its students transferring elsewhere, it had become the shipwreck of a perfect storm of political correctness run amok. Now, more than six months later, Antioch’s alumni have launched a plan […]

Toward Market-Based Universities

Hardly a sector of the American economy is unaffected by the current recession; however, no matter how painful this period is, it provides an opportunity for many institutions to do the kind of restructuring that should have been done before now. And, fewer segments of our society are in greater need of financial restructuring than […]

Score One For Yale

Yale made a sound decision yesterday. It said applicants must report all SAT scores, not just the highest of the three or four that some would-be Yalies take. That was the long-term policy of the College Board until last June, when Board officials announced they would let test-takers decide which scores to report. The stated […]

The Campus And The Nanny State

The most important documents governing our behavior and influencing our development as a civilization are mostly short – packing a lot of meaning into a few words. The Ten Commandments is 326 words, the Gettysburg Address is but 268. Even the extraordinarily complex and important law determining our form of federal government, the U.S. Constitution, […]

Princetonian Truth

Check out the top story at the Daily Princetonian today. You won’t regret it.

Why Read In Advance? Professors Don’t.

I don’t know who coined the phrase “a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage” as a pedagogic principle, but when I ran the words through Google, I got 196,000 links. The adage is the cornerstone of the teaching style variously known as “cooperative,” “collaborative,” “interactive,” or “student-centered” learning—part of the educational […]

More From The NAS Conference

Take a look at: Peter Wood’s general account of the conference: “How the Dorms Are Politicized: The Case of the University of Delaware” by Adam Kissel and “The Military And Academe” by Allan Silver