FIRE is launching a new Campus Freedom Network site, to enable “students and faculty to communicate quickly and effectively both with each other and with FIRE in order to defend liberty on their campuses.” The press release details an impressive range of resouces: Drawing from FIRE’s vast library of educational resources, the CFN will empower […]
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In a recent Washington Post Magazine, Emmett Rosenfeld, an English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School in Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County wrote a 4,000-word first-person article complaining that he he had failed to win advanced professional certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The reason Rosenfeld didn’t earn the minimum score that would […]
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What is Global Studies? Nobody seems to have a very clear idea, according to an article on the web site Inside Higher Ed by reporter Elizabeth Redden. Her account of a Washington D.C. academic gathering sponsored by the Association of International Educators Administrators leaves readers pretty much in the dark. The article begins and ends […]
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Although the mainstream media would have you believe he was a martyr to religious fundamentalists and moral Pecksniffs, Gene Nichol lost his job as president of the College of William and Mary in Virginia for only one reason: he was a lousy administrator who seemed not to be able to get it into his head […]
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Overwhelming evidence attests to the liberal tilt on our college campuses. Studies show that the faculty at most mainstream institutions are overwhelmingly registered with the Democratic party and give a disproportionate share of their political donations to left-leaning candidates. A recent study of donations by faculty at Princeton University during the current Presidential election season […]
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Bruce Benson, the wealthy oil and gas executive and conservative Republican activist, was approved Wednesday as president of the University of Colorado in a straight party-line vote of the board of regents. All six Republicans voted for Benson. All three Democrats voted no. (see Controversy In Colorado)
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The Harvard Crimson offers an unsurprisingly elliptical response to a new study “Admissions and Public Higher Education in California, Texas, and Florida: The Post-Affirmative Action Era” appearing in InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies. The study focuses on the enrollment patterns of school systems that eliminated affirmative action – and found significant increases […]
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(This article originally appeared at Inside Higher Ed) Dartmouth College is now the latest institution to announce considerable changes to its tuition and financial aid structure, eliminating any charges for students from families making less than $75,000 a year. Dartmouth’s arrangement is not nearly so generous as Harvard’s or Yale’s, yet it’s markedly superior in […]
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Edward J. Larson, Professor of Law at Pepperdine University and Pulitzer Prize-winning author will be appearing at ACTA’s Regional Meeting at the Mount Vernon Club in Baltimore in a program advocating the instruction of American History. Those in the area would be well-advised to stop by.
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Bruce Benson, a wealthy Republican businessman, is off to a bad start as the nominee for president of the three-campus University of Colorado system. One objection is that he lacks a Ph.D., which is unusual, but not unheard of. Dwight Eisenhower ruffled few feathers as president of Columbia University before his run for the presidency. […]
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For years now, college students have been busy committing themselves to extracurricular activities. On the whole, such commitment can be constructive. It contributes to civic engagement by the young and helps them to develop personal responsibility and character. Meanwhile, college officials claim that would-be employers are now demanding that colleges provide evidence that graduates are […]
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Several colleges and universities now sponsor a freshman year abroad, sending students who have just landed on their own campus to study for a term or a full year in Europe, Latin America, Asia or Africa. Syracuse University has a “Discovery Florence” program. The University of Mississippi sends some freshmen to The University of Edinburgh […]
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Today’s university seems obsessively compassionate about the downtrodden, far more than the usual academic Marxist celebration of exploited workers. Entire departments – African American Studies, Women’s Studies, Queer Studies, Latino/a Studies – strive to uplift those suffering from white male heterosexual oppressors. In African and Latin American Studies indigenous people are always blameless “good guys” […]
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Changing the course of American Universities is no easy task, concluded a panel “Liberal Bias on Campus: The Challenge To Restore Balance to Our Universities” organized by the Manhattan Institute at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. David Horowitz observed that “ever major university has been taken over by a chiliastic religious sect.” Samatha Harris, […]
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“Women’s Studies is about to disappear as an undergraduate degree in the UK” reads an astonishing line from a recent Times Higher Education (London) story. I assumed it was a joke. Not so. The article profiled the “last stand-alone undergraduate degree in women’s studies” in the UK at London Metropolitan University, the remnant of what […]
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Those who have been operating the managerial levers of the financial system have failed embarassingly and massively to comprehend the processes for which they are responsible. They have loaned money avidly and recklessly to people who couldn’t pay it back. They fudged data to get loans approved and recalculated . Then they sausaged fragile figments […]
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At a recent Manhattan Institute forum, Ward Connerly, the fierce opponent of race and sex preferences by government (who’s leading a state-by-state referendum drive to abolish affirmative action) admitted how the Bush Administration has disgraced itself by endorsing racial and gender-conscious policies and practices. Connerly did not give examples, but one glaring illustration is President […]
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“Bans On Affirmative Action Help Asian Americans, Not Whites, Report Says” reads a Chronicle of Higher Education headline this week reporting on a new study of preference bans and attendance, offering little surprise to… any, it seems, aside from the study’s authors. The study examined the results of preference bans at a number of colleges, […]
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In our latest podcast, John Leo interviews Ward Connerly on his efforts to eliminate racial preferences in five states this November and the role of diversity in college admissions. Listen here.
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By Roger Rosenblatt (Harper Collins, $23.95) “Don’t bother to come home if you still have a job,” Livi Porterfield called to her husband as he shoved their two groggy children into the 243,000-miles-and-still-rattling Accord, to drive them to school. He blew her a kiss. The job she referred to was on the faculty of Beet […]
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David Feith wrote in reminding us that a 2003 Columbia student poll yielded over 65% support among students for the return of ROTC to the campus. The Columbia University Senate, however, voted against its return in 2005, by a margin of 53-10. And professors aren’t out of touch…
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Randy Cohen, the New York Times “Ethicist”, offered a very slippery response to a reader last week, on the question of financial incentives for the hiring of minority professors. You’d best read the whole exchange first. My comments are beneath: I teach at a state university that offers financial incentives to hire minority candidates. A […]
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When asked about the theme for December’s annual MLA convention- “The Humanities at Work in the World” – Yale comparative literature professor and MLA president Michael Holquist spoke of the need “to raise the consciousness of people outside the academy about the importance of the work that’s done inside the academy.” Acknowledging that the humanities […]
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The Columbia Spectator offers a surprising argument for the return of ROTC to Columbia today. Here’s a sample of their case: Opponents of ROTC argue that the program’s treatment of gays and lesbians violates the University’s anti-discrimination protocols. Those protocols should be enforced against businesses and other institutions, but the U.S. military is in a […]
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Defenders and advocates of group preferences generally make their stand on a moral claim: group preferences are needed to advance the common social good. To oppose group preferences is, in turn, to act immorally. The vehemence with which defenders of group preferences frequently speak and the extreme tactics of some pro-preference groups such as By […]
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Now that the Senate finance committee has requested – the New York Times said “demanded” – that the nation’s wealthiest colleges and universities supply detailed information about their endowments and financial practices, it seems clear that college cost is emerging as a long-running, popular and bipartisan issue. The request/demand came in a stern but polite […]
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Several college papers have come around to the ever-popular (and easy) study of university political donations. The results are no surprise. Here are a few samples Daily Bruin (UCLA): “Faculty Donors Lean Liberal” According to the Center for Responsive Politics Web site, which tracks individual and group donations to political parties, UCLA faculty members gave […]
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More evidence to shatter the NCAA’s diversionary talk of the preeminence of academics for college athletes, from the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription only, alas): The NCAA started a Web site last year, NCAAStudent.org, to illustrate how its athletes balance sports with their academic responsibilities. And in Mr. Brand’s speech here, he said the main […]
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Angela Davis is busy this year with Martin Luther King day commemorations. On Jan. 17 she gave a lecture “dealing with racism in today’s world” as part of the University of South Alabama’s 2008 Martin Luther King Jr. observations. She’s appearing at Brown to deliver its 12th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on February […]
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Yale’s burgeoning diversity program has another announcement: it wants to “incorporate the role of ethnic counselor into that of freshman counselor, who will become responsible for providing enhanced community support for cultural affairs on campus,” according to the Yale Daily News. What does that mean? Well, according to the News, which neglected to supply an […]
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