The onerous new guidelines are sure to victimize the innocent and deny students and faculty free speech In June, the Biden administration’s Department of Education rolled out new Title IX guidelines detailing how schools must address sexual discrimination and widening the areas of personal interaction and the “identities” protected under the rule. In fact, the […]
Read More
“Science must overcome its racist legacy” is the headline, followed by a commitment from four guest editors of color to “help decolonize research and forge a path towards restorative justice and reconciliation,” a reparations-tinged evocation of post-apartheid South Africa. It is both embarrassing and disgraceful that Nature, the preeminent British scientific journal, should surrender science […]
Read More
There are two absolutely minimal essential resources for universities to exist: faculty, who provide the most important services educational institutions provide, and students, who are the customers that universities traditionally serve as part, and sometimes nearly all, of their mission. Yet at many schools, the faculty constitutes only a modest minority (perhaps one-fourth or so) […]
Read More
I’m a professor, retiring at 62 because the Woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life. “Another one?” you ask. “What does this guy have to say that hasn’t already been said by Jordan Peterson, Peter Boghossian, Joshua Katz, or Bo Winegard1? There’s only one way to find out. Defenestration of a Colleague I’ve […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
As readers of Minding the Campus are no doubt aware, the Supreme Court recently issued a decision regarding a fundamental right named in the Constitution. Not Dobbs, which expunges a would-be right lurking in certain penumbras, but Bruen, which invalidates state laws that unduly restrict citizens’ Second Amendment right to bear arms. Bruen overturned a […]
Read More
Université Laval has resorted to professional violence to prop up Quebec’s crumbling covid narrative. The instrument of violence is an eight-week suspension without pay. The objects of violence are two full professors: Patrick Provost, in the Faculty of Medicine’s department of microbiology, infectious diseases and immunology, and Nicolas Derome, in the Faculty of Science and […]
Read More
Race is not a tame problem like those of mathematics or popular games. Tame problems thrive in systems with defined internal logic and operational clarity. Race is a wicked problem. There’s the easy label of the human race; and then, the more difficult divisions into tribe, clan, sect, class, nation, and other forms that can […]
Read More
Our Constitution begins, “We the People, of the United States.” “We the People,” not some of the people or some groups of people – but all of the people. Our Constitution continues by noting that it was instituted “in order to form a more perfect Union,” meaning that the Founders recognized the great imperfections of […]
Read More
Two seemingly unrelated articles appeared recently on the same day and illustrate how free speech can help differentiate colleges and law schools in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The first was an official editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which took Georgetown University Law Center to task for its handling of a controversial tweet by incoming […]
Read More
From a bird’s eye view, most children stories can be understood as a process that guides the child into becoming a member of society──a member of a particular culture, a particular place, and a particular time. We tell them about dangers, morals, customs, and cultural beliefs, and how to perform the rituals of daily life. […]
Read More
Between March 4 and March 6, 2022, the California Teachers Association (CTA), California’s largest teachers union with a membership of 325,000 educators, hosted a convention titled “2022 Equity & Human Rights Conference” in Los Angeles. With an aim to “provide all CTA members with a greater understanding of the issues of diversity, equity and social […]
Read More
As part of the widespread, hysterical reactions to perceived social problems, some are attacking basic mathematics, logic, grammar, and virtues as imperialistic and oppressive. It beggars the imagination, boggles the mind, and turns the stomach, but it’s sadly true. Is it “too white” to insist that 2+2=4? Should we no longer practice linear thinking, hard […]
Read More
The Biden administration has just proposed a Title IX regulation that would redefine sexual harassment more broadly in schools and universities, to restrict speech that some courts have ruled is protected by the First Amendment. The new definition would discard the current definition used by the Education Department, which is based on a 1999 Supreme […]
Read More
Are modern African Americans worse off for slavery? Harvard was directly complicit in America’s system of racial bondage from the College’s earliest days in the 17th century until slavery in Massachusetts ended in 1783, and Harvard continued to be indirectly involved through extensive financial and other ties to the slave South up to the time […]
Read More
Public controversies over the books children read in school are not going away. Numerous disputes have arisen as local school boards in states such as Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee have worked to make changes to the secondary literature used in classrooms. These efforts have been uniformly labeled “book banning,” which makes it difficult to distinguish […]
Read More
In June 2022, Peter Boghossian posted a video featuring Dr. Lyell Asher, a professor of English at Lewis & Clark College, titled “Why Colleges are Becoming Cults.” Although Dr. Asher raised many important points, perhaps the most significant was his discussion of the commonly heard refrain in universities that “[i]t’s not the intention, but the […]
Read More
In an April 25, 2022 Chemical and Engineering News article, Holly Jean Buck, a “development sociologist,” expresses some peculiar views about fossil fuels that go beyond climate change. It is surprising to find them purveyed in a journal not of sociology or politics but of chemistry and engineering. For starters, Buck maintains, “achieving net-zero emissions […]
Read More
Is the battle to ensure an intellectually open campus winnable? Many would answer “yes,” but there are reasons for pessimism. To be blunt, the life of the mind, the veneration of truth over falsehood, and the pursuit of truth may not be the default option of human nature. Yes, that idyllic world may exist here […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
Universities’ misguided effort to enforce racial equity As universities’ obsession with race and pursuit of racial “equity” continues apace, the Board of Directors of California Community Colleges has decided that the system will now grade its employees, including, of course, its faculty, on the extent to which they promote “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility.” The […]
Read More
In a recent piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, interfaith leader Eboo Patel recounted his experience at a 2019 “Difference in Dialogue” program at Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach and where he was a panelist for an event entitled “Diversity is Not Just the Differences You Like.” At the time of the event, […]
Read More
How much would you pay for a brigantine beached and abandoned on Midway Atoll in the South Pacific? That’s the question faced by the main character of Robert Louis Stevenson and his step-son Lloyd Osbourne’s novel, The Wrecker (1892). The enterprising young man, Loudon Dodd, bids $50,000—something like $2,000,000 in today’s inflated dollars. Loudon’s reckless […]
Read More
California’s New Reparations Report Defies Gravity On June 1, 2022, the California Reparations Task Force, established by the passage of AB 3121 in 2020, released an interim report detailing generational harms of slavery and post-slavery government policies and practices on black Americans. The 492-page report makes sweeping policy recommendations such as zero-interest home loans, free […]
Read More
Earlier this month in Vengalattore v. Cornell University, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit provided a welcome affirmation of colleges’ and universities’ obligation to respect due process on campus. The court resolved a technical question of law and remanded the case for consideration on the merits of critical elements of the […]
Read More
The campus battle between proponents of intellectual merit and those of racial preferences in admissions has been a long and disappointing campaign. Nevertheless, victory now seems within reach thanks to the current Court’s likely opinion in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. At long last, racial discrimination will—hopefully—end by […]
Read More
National security experts should help defend our democracy. They should begin by confronting the illiberalism in our universities. The Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security recently held an event titled “Democracy in Danger,” in which the speakers made several excellent points. They discussed the dangers of tribalism; ideologies which drive racial […]
Read More
President Joe Biden is considering a student loan forgiveness plan which would forgive $10,000 per borrower for individuals making less than $150,000 per year ($300,000 for a family). Without the income cap, this would cost $380.2 billion. It would wipe out the entire debt of those with a balance of $10,000 or less (15.2 million […]
Read More
To what extent can a selective educational institution advantage certain racial groups in admissions decisions without discriminating against other groups simultaneously? How can said institutions balance external demands for fairness and group representation with their core mission to educate students sufficiently? How much influence should an institution itself wield, compared with other stakeholders (including the […]
Read More
Let’s state the obvious: college students are surprisingly immature. They have not lived through real life, do not pay taxes, do not have a degree in any subject, and are not ready to demand that they be heard over all others. They need humility, patience, and tolerance. Does any parent pay tuition for their child […]
Read More