As examples of what my academic field, anthropology, has sunk to, here are four responses to the shooting and riots in Ferguson appearing in the current issue of Anthropology News. Each is a retelling of what might be called the left’s canonical myth of Ferguson: facts submerged in a sea of fiction. Pem Davidson Buck, […]
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Perpetuating the journalistic debacle of its hit job on CUNY, The Atlantic has made major corrections to its “article”—yet it refuses to formally withdraw the piece. I had previously critiqued the article, which argued that CUNY’s (allegedly) excessively high admissions standards threatened the university’s central mission and harmed students of color. The thesis was fatally […]
Read MoreAround a decade ago, the leaders of CUNY’s faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, denounced plans to eliminate remediation at CUNY senior colleges. (This move was part of a pattern in which the PSC opposed virtually every reform proposed by former chancellor Matthew Goldstein.) The move was elitist and harmful to students of color, the […]
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e21 For nearly four years, students at universities across the United States have been fighting to divest their schools’ endowments from the fossil fuel industry. Divestment activists want universities to sell all of their shares in companies involved in fossil fuel extraction and distribution. They claim that divestment will spark a national debate about climate […]
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I’ve been saying for years that American higher education ought to be free, but I’m far from sanguine about President Obama’s college plan. Here’s why: the plan to offer many students two free years at community college fails to take into account the general state of education in this country, from real costs to college […]
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Brian Ferguson, a 20-year-old autistic student, has been suspended from special-needs classes at Navarro College in Texas for mistakenly hugging a woman he did not know and kissing her on the top of her head, according to the student’s mother, Staci Martin. She said, “And then they labeled it ‘sexual assault’ because of the kissing,” […]
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The University of Chicago, on January 6, released a strong report on free expression “articulating the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation among all members of the University’s community.” Good. But what did The Maroon, the student newspaper, think of a call for robust free speech? You guessed it—not much. […]
Read MoreLoaded questions — “Have you stopped beating your wife?” — are usually objectionable, but in the case of new rules the University of Virginia just adopted in response to a fraudulent article in Rolling Stone describing a gang rape that did not happen on a night the accused fraternity did not have a party, it […]
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The new year offers an opportunity for campuses across the country to improve their free-speech record. In 2014, the University of Iowa censored a professor’s art display because it caused controversy and offense by commenting on racism, then justified its decision with a self-congratulatory message to the campus community that will surely chill even more […]
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At its early January annual session, the American Historical Association, in a procedural vote, decided not to debate two anti-Israel resolutions proposed by a group called “Historians Against the War.” (Given Hamas’ tendency to wage war against Israel, an outsider might have speculated that the group would be pro-Israel.) For the best analysis of the […]
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Defenders of the higher education establishment often show little understanding of the arguments critics make. As a recent example, I give you this December 22 Washington Post piece by Tufts University professor Daniel Drezner, “I’d like to take this opportunity to triple-dog-dare Peter Thiel.” Thiel is the super-wealthy guy who has been funding sharp and […]
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“The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: if they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades, it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them […]
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Inside Higher Ed has yet another sob story about yet another report — this one from Harvard’s Voices of Diversity project — lamenting that “[w]omen and students of color continue to encounter psychologically damaging racism and sexism on college campuses, creating a climate where students struggle to graduate and are unsure who to turn to […]
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The Fiscal Times Sometimes, the world feels as though it would be better off if everyone went back to kindergarten. At least when I attended that grade, the teachers made us learn a mantra that has stuck with me ever since — Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. […]
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Today (Jan. 7) the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) endorsed the free speech policy statement produced by the Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago. Yesterday, the Committee, chaired by esteemed law professor Geoffrey R. Stone, released this powerful new report on the importance of freedom of expression on campus. […]
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The lack of political diversity among researchers in social psychology is skewing findings and alienating students who find conservative and libertarian views regularly ignored or denigrated, according to an article featured on the Pope Center site today. In social psychology, self-identified liberals outnumber conservatives by about 10 to 1. The Pope report refers to a […]
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In November the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison voted to adopt a new policy designed to prohibit “bullying” in professional conduct. To be more exact, the policy states: “Unwelcome behavior pervasive or severe enough that a reasonable person would find it hostile and/or intimidating and that does not further the University’s academic or […]
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Last month, we had two cases of college presidents at high-profile universities join in student protests over the grand jury’s decision in the Ferguson case. Here is a story on President Eric Barron, head of Penn State, standing amidst students with hands raised. The students had spent two days gathering on campus, shouting slogans (“Black lives […]
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“Be the difference” is the motto of Marquette University, the generally not-very-newsworthy Jesuit university in Milwaukee. Marquette is in the news now for reasons that it cannot be very happy about. First a teaching assistant at the Catholic institution, Cheryl Abbate, a doctoral student in philosophy, was caught on tape earlier this year giving a […]
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KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr. say the mess at the University of Virginia over the Rolling Stone story of alleged rape is worse than the notorious mishandling of the Duke lacrosse case.
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Among the many institutions facing due process lawsuits none, perhaps, is more deserving than Duke, a university that all but defined hostility to due process in the lacrosse case. The school lost in court last year, in a case filed by Lewis McLeod, whom Duke had branded a rapist after a highly dubious procedure. McLeod […]
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In 2014, twenty-eight Harvard Law professors published the strongest coordinated response to the post-2011 campus war on due process. The professors lamented that they found “the new sexual harassment policy inconsistent with many of the most basic principles we teach.” They alleged that Harvard’s new policies “lack the most basic elements of fairness and due […]
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The University of Virginia has distinguished itself in its ability to pretend that the collapse of Sabrina Erdely’s Rolling Stone article never occurred. President Teresa Sullivan—after rashly suspending not merely the fraternity at which “Jackie” was supposedly assaulted, but all fraternities—refused to lift the ban, or even to acknowledge that the factual basis for her […]
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The post-Ferguson and post-Garner racial agitation has led to a wave of violent rhetoric and actual violence in the United States. Street protesters have called for “pigs in blankets,” declaring, “Arms up, shoot back,” and asking, “What do want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.” This rhetoric has campus amplifiers. Is the infatuation with violence […]
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A long report by the Chronicle of Higher Education finds alcohol abuse among college students nearly apocalyptic. Each year 1800 college students die from alcohol-related causes and consumption of booze seems to keep rising. One college town police officer said: Average blood-alcohol levels in students stopped by the police have risen steadily—this year one blew […]
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Steven Pinker, an experimental psychologist and prominent public intellectual, has written an important letter concerning the latest controversy over Israel at Harvard University, where he is based. Such controversies are notuncommon there. First, some background. SodaStream, an Israeli company that makes a popular home carbonation system, has been an object of the boycott, divestment, sanctions […]
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When the White House released the outlines of its long awaited college ratings plan on Friday, the world of higher education was underwhelmed. Colleges are “a little mystified,” Sarah Flanagan of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities told the Chronicle of Higher Education. “There isn’t much new here, and there isn’t much that […]
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FOIA requests from several reporters prompted the release of numerous e-mails between various UVA officials and Rolling Stone’s Sabrina Erdely and fact-checker Elizabeth Garber-Paul. A few items that we learned: Erdely and UVA Employees The e-mails show that UVA wanted to control its message by not allowing Erdely to interview lower-level administrators. As a result, […]
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To most Americans, Catherine Lhamon is all but unknown. As the U.S. Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, however, she plays an outsized role in pursuing colleges for their purportedly incompetent handing of sexual assault cases. As the issue of campus sexual assault continues to make news, it’s important that we understand her […]
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James Ceaser recently became the first UVA professor to publicly speak out regarding the deeply unhealthy climate on his campus, exposed by the publication of the now-discredited Rolling Stone article alleging multiple gang rapes at the school. (The sole source for each of these allegations appears to have been “Jackie.”) Ceaser lamented how few people […]
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