An interesting news item caught my eye last week. The BB&T Charitable Foundation has made a million-dollar donation to Marshall University’s Lewis College of Business. The donation comes with a string attached: Marshall must teach Ayn Rand’s classic tribute to capitalism, Atlas Shrugged, as part of the curriculum. The BB&T Foundation has made numerous grants […]
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The University of North Dakota is sponsoring a controversial lecture by 1960s bomber Bill Ayers, now a “distinguished professor of education” at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Three groups invited Ayers to speak on April 3rd: the Department of Educational Foundations and Research, the College of Education and Human Development, and Students for a Democratic […]
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Many in the One Dupont Circle crowd talk a good game about the “Federal Ministry of Education” and the threat of nationalized standards. (See “The Future of Accreditation” in Inside Higher Ed by Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation – a meditation on what accreditation will look like in 2014.) But […]
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Recently I sat down with a young woman who shared with me the experience of her first year at Thurgood Marshall College, one of the six colleges of the University of California at San Diego. She explained to me that regardless of her major field of study and in order to graduate she was required […]
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The Harvard Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, William Fitzsimmons, spoke out for SAT II tests at a recent panel at Harvard. The utility of the examinations has come into question as the University of California mulls dropping their SAT II application requirements. The Crimson reports on Fitzsimmons’ surprisingly spirited defense: “The SAT IIs have […]
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Readers who wish to comment on the University of Hawaii sponsorship of a recent 18-day Israel-bashing conference should Email Dr. Virginia S. Hinshaw, chancellor of the university —[email protected] or [email protected]. The office phone number is 808-956-7651and the address is Chancellor’s Office, 2500Campus Road, Hawaii Hall 202, Honolulu,HI 96822.
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Peter Wood and Ashley Thorne write on the upcoming AAUP Presidential Election at the NAS site. Cary Nelson, the current President, is facing Tom Guild, a professor emeritus of legal studies at Oklahoma State University. Guild is railing against the organization’s fiscal troubles under Nelson’s leadership, and “insider” posture. Thorne interviewed both candidates; here’s a […]
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In recent years, conservative critics of academia have had few better friends than Ward Churchill, the Group of 88, MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins (who fled Larry Summers talk about variations in intelligence between genders), and a few other hot-headed leftists on campus who made headlines. They proved the point about ideological bias every time […]
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When an American university sponsors a conference on Israel and Palestine, most observers know what to expect: a prolonged rabble-rousing attack on Israel sponsored by the “anti-colonial” far left, with no one invited to defend Israel. Last Friday, the University of Hawaii at Manoa concluded an 18-day Israel-bashing festival, one of the longest such adventures […]
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Read James Piereson on the alarming spate of fabricated autobiographies as of late at Arma Virumque: Here’s a sampling “There’s money in poverty,” a well known professor said to me many years ago after he had won a large research grant to study the living conditions of the less fortunate. We both laughed, he at […]
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Selena Roberts, a former New York Times sports columnist, now with Sports Illustrated , is still trying to justify her garbled coverage of the Duke lacrosse case. A Roberts column of March 31, 2006, devoted to pre-judging the lacrosse players, said they had been forced to provide DNA (untrue, they provided DNA and hair samples […]
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U.S. universities pride themselves on their tolerance – religious, ethnic, gender-based, sexual orientation-based, whatever. But when it comes to lucrative consulting fees for partnering with universities in Mideastern countries where none of the above categories of toleration seems to exist, the campus open-mindedness apparently evaporates, and a strange variety of mulitculturalism takes over. Case in […]
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In his brief tenure as president of the University of Colorado, former U.S. Senator and ACTA National Council member Hank Brown – who stepped down this past weekend – managed to leave an indelible mark on CU and higher education generally. Taking the reins in the wake of a number of scandals, Brown established a […]
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An op-ed “Aid, Discrimination, and Justice” in Monday’s Columbia Spectator speaks to an increasing conception of universities not as American institutions, but as world institutions, with a responsibility to a global audience, and, in this case, student body. Columbia just announced an overhaul of its financial aid policies, of considerable benefit to poor and middle […]
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UCLA has just approved an addition to the majors offered by their Spanish and Portuguese departments: Spanish and Community and Culture, reports the Daily Bruin. What makes this different? Well, the Bruin has an answer: “what makes this major different from the other Spanish majors are two community service-based courses that place students in quarter-long […]
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By Gail Heriot (Ms. Heriot is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. This piece is adapted from Ms. Heriot’s Commissioner Statement for the Civil Rights Report on Affirmative Action at American Law Schools released last fall.) I have no doubt that those who originally conceived of race-based admissions policies – nearly forty […]
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In 2005 Columbia University came under fire over allegations of anti-Israel bias among professors teaching in its Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department. Columbia’s response was to set up… yet another department that already seems tilted in the direction of anti-Israel bias. According to the New York Sun, Columbia appointed as new director […]
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The Columbia Spectator, an accomplished publication by collegiate standards, reliably features the wackiest student op-ed pieces I see anywhere. They’re holding their end up with Tuesday’s “Is Professor Constantine Guilty of Plagiarism.” Guilty? Couldn’t be. The piece has been attracting a fair amount of incredulous attention; it’s not especially surprising; it’s another in a string […]
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We’re pleased to announce the opening of the Philadelphia headquarters of the Jack Miller Center, an educational organization dedicated to “strengthen the teaching of America’s founding principles and history”. The institute, founded by Chicago businessman Jack Miller, and led by Mike Ratliff, plans to offer two-week summer institutes for professors, support for “partnered” academic programs, […]
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Some important articles lose audience because of faulty please-don’t-read-me headlines. Christina Hoff Sommers’s article in The American, “Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like a Man?,” featured today on Minding the Campus, is surely one of these. Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism?, argues that the “title-nining” of science education now looms as a serious […]
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Darren Garnick, of the Boston Herald, wrote to point out a bizarre element of Brandeis University’s new marketing efforts, the subject of one of his recent columns: As part of its new rebranding campaign on the Web, Brandeis University now touts itself as “Smart from the Start,” celebrating its historical relationships with Albert Einstein, Leonard […]
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Edward Rothstein’s remarkable article today in the Arts section of the New York Times carries the obligatory bland headline: “Two New Shows Cast Light and Darkness on Early Cultures in America.” The reference is to “Exploring the Early Americas” at the Library of Congress, and more egregiously, an embarrassing drowned-in-cultural-relativism show at Chicago’s Field Museum, […]
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Antioch College, the famously progressive institution in Yellow Springs, Ohio, is again slated for shutdown at the end of this academic year, despite months of negotiations and frantic fundraising by its alumni in a last-ditch effort to keep its doors open after an earlier announcement that it would close. It’s sad, because Antioch, founded in […]
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[Indoctrinate U, a documentary by Evan Coyne Maloney on the state of intellectual freedom at American universities, premiered at the Kennedy Center in September 2007 and has screened in multiple locations since. Peter Berkowitz, writing in The Wall Street Journal, called Indoctrinate U a “riveting documentary about the war on free speech and individual rights […]
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Only in California… can you take college courses aimed at training you for the medical marijuana business. Oaksterdam University, with campuses in Oakland, Calif., and Los Angeles, offers a full range of basic and advanced-level classes in such subjects as horticulture, distribution, and operating a dispensary to serve the 18,000-odd Californians licensed to smoke homegrown […]
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Trustees face a quandary in trying to figure out their role in academic governance. As a matter of law, institutional responsibility is squarely in their hands. On the other hand, while few challenge their oversight in matters managerial and financial, they are routinely warned that when it comes to intellectual content, the heart of university […]
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Charlotte Allen, who you will likely recognize from her work in Lingua Franca, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times, is joining Minding The Campus as a contributing editor. She’ll be contributing regularly to the blog, and writing occasional articles for us. In addition to her writing she’s currently finishing […]
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Princeton is taking a cue from fraternity practice and indentured servitude in urging freshmen to become “thesis buddies” for seniors – essentially, asking them to perform work for them. Princeton Seniors face a considerable thesis requirement, and Whitman, the new residential college, has come up with a convenient solution to their potential labor troubles: impress […]
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Black History Month college speakers axiomatically slant left. This February, Al Sharpton appeared at Adelphi University, Nikki Giovanni at Southern University, and Mary Frances Berry at Reed College, to name just a few. The right-most speaker this year was likely an elected Democrat, Harold Ford Jr., who also spoke at Reed. It’s little change in […]
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1) Hold and publicize discussions on how your ethnic group is under-represented, ignored and invisible on campus. (“Students, faculty, and Native American scholars discussed introducing an indigenous studies program as part of Friday’s Faculty House workshop on the under-representation of Native Americans in Columbia’s curriculum and faculty. …This is our homeland and being invisible is […]
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