This week has featured a potential tipping point in the debate about due process and campus sexual assault. The first event came in publication of an extraordinary column by Ezra Klein, defending California’s “affirmative consent” law. In one respect, it wasn’t surprising to see Klein defend the proposal; too many liberal commentators (not to mention, […]
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This week has featured a potential tipping point in the debate about due process and campus sexual assault. The first event came in publication of an extraordinary column by Ezra Klein, defending California’s “affirmative consent” law. In one respect, it wasn’t surprising to see Klein defend the proposal; too many liberal commentators (not to mention, […]
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In my freshman year at Duke in the mid-1960s, C’s were still the most common grade in my courses, about equal to the total number of A’s and B’s combined. In my first-semester freshman composition course, there were no A’s given, only two B’s, one or two D’s — and all the rest C’s. The […]
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Over at PJ Media, Ron Radosh reveals that a banner on UCLA’s campus promotes Angela Davis, the radical activist and former UCLA professor from 1969-1970. The banner includes an old image of Davis—presumably taken during her time at UCLA—with the words “WE QUESTION” underneath. As Radosh notes, the ad, which is supposed to boost UCLA […]
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“We are never sending our boys to college.” That line came not from some far-right crank, but instead from Robin Steinberg, a public defender. For an article in the New Republic, author Judith Shulevitz had asked Steinberg to review Columbia’s new sexual assault policy. (I had profiled the policy previously for Minding the Campus.) Shulevitz […]
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A particular nostalgia is at work in academic discussion. We still talk about of liberal education, the liberal arts, and the humanities as if they remain viable activities in higher education, threatened, yes, and losing ground, but open to revival. Universities have grown ever more “corporate,” students flock to business and vocational programs, the sciences […]
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Coal miners used to bring a canary down into the mine to warn them when the air was becoming too dangerous. If the canary went limp, it was time to get out. For the last several years, conditions for American law schools have been getting progressively more dangerous, as students respond to the realities of […]
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Suppose you follow the tortured treatment of gender politics on campus, and someone told you that a male “gender expert” funded by the MacArthur Foundation had just published a Time essay strikingly hostile to men. Could you identify the author? Why yes—that would have to be Michael Kimmel, in this essay arguing that fraternities should […]
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A familiar campus drama just played out at Colgate: a few bigoted remarks, followed by protests (good), then a cornucopia of diversity demands, including major changes to the curriculum (not so good). The Colgate Association of Critical Collegians recently staged a sit-in on campus which drew support from professors and grew to 350 protestors by its […]
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In a consistent pattern in the recent debate over due process on campus, federal actions have triggered more aggressive reactions, both on campus and by self-styled activists and their media and political allies. The most obvious example of this has been California’s “affirmative consent” law (which, for reasons its sponsors have never explained, applies only […]
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A 14-year old Colorado boy with an Aztec name travels the world with his younger brother, 11, as a missionary for “global sustainability,” rapping, dancing and speaking for Earth Guardians, a group he directs. Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is not descended from Aztecs, the bloody tyranny that ruled central Mexico for several centuries until Cortes and his Native […]
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In Minds on Fire: How Role Immersion Games Transform Colleges, Mark C. Carnes makes the case that they might. Students at Pace University have become so engrossed in a game called Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament that class spills into the dorms: “students endlessly debated, gossiped, and strategized Tudor religion and politics.” At Dordt […]
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“As employees in institutions of higher learning, we have a particular responsibility to oppose Israel’s widespread and systematic violations of the right to higher education of Palestinians… As anthropologists, we feel compelled to join academics around the world who support the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli academic institutions. In responding to the Palestinian call, we […]
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In her latest Factual Feminist video, Christina Hoff Sommers shows how colleges–aided by campus Title IX coordinators–are damaging free speech on campus. Check it out here:
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The debut of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in 2011 created high hopes. The cost-free, admissions-free courses defied administrative oversight and were expected to make education accessible to those least able to afford it. As thousands signed up for classes, course sizes swelled to tens, even hundreds times the size of their counterparts on campus. […]
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The Times and the Nation have both published articles on California’s “affirmative consent” bill, the litigator’s dream signed into law Sunday by Governor Jerry Brown. One piece was responsible journalism; the other was agitprop. Given that Richard Pérez-Peña co-authored the Times article, it’s not hard to guess which was agitprop. The new California law requires […]
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A few weeks ago, I commented on a recent report shepherded through by Benno Schmidt, chairman of the CUNY Board of Trustees, on the need for a heftier trustee role in university governance. (I co-signed the report and strongly endorse its conclusions.) The report covered considerable ground, but some of its most thought-provoking recommendations involved […]
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Government’s intrusion into our bedrooms continues apace. Yesterday California Governor Jerry Brown signed California’s “affirmative consent” bill, which requires “each person involved in the sexual activity” to obtain explicit agreement from his or her partner to engage in said activity. If colleges don’t adopt this policy, they’ll become ineligible for state student financial aid. Though […]
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By way of background for you outside-the-beltway rubes, the Washington Post’s weekly “Style Invitational” is a contest in which readers compete to submit the funniest entry. This week the winners were announced for the funniest (made up) course description from a college catalogue. First-place was awarded to: “PSYC 207: Welcome to Your College Nightmare. Participants […]
Read MoreThis illustration is part of an anti-discrimination training policy presented as a game or puzzle. All faculty and graduate assistants at Marquette, the Jesuit university in Milwaukee, must take the test. It gives the test-takers 50 seconds to spot eight objects that are harassing or potentially harassing. Not to keep you in suspense, (spoiler alert) […]
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Four undergraduates at North Carolina State University announced in August that they had developed a “date-rape nail polish” that would change color when its wearer dipped her finger into a drink doctored with “roofies” (Rohypnol) and other sedatives that can cause people to black out or otherwise be unable to defend themselves against unwanted sexual […]
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The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy Federal student aid programs abound in examples that demonstrate a point economists often make: government policies almost always have undesirable consequences that weren’t anticipated, or if they were didn’t matter much to the politicians. At the time they were begun, during President Johnson’s “Great Society” years […]
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Marches and rallies against global warming once catered to broad middle-class concerns that cut across partisan lines. No longer. Peter Wood’s account of last Sunday’s climate march in New York City noted the signs that pointed to the dominance of the cause by extremists: “Capitalism Is a Crime,” “Capitalism = Ecocide” and “Turn Everything Off,” […]
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Conservatives and progressives don’t agree on many things, but neither much like the Common Core. The English and math standards, announced in 2010, have been rejected not only by professional critics of education reform and teachers unions, but also by Rush Limbaugh, groups associated with the Koch brothers, and well as by contributors to this […]
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For years, some colleges assigned new students roommates from different regions, races or classes. The idea, not very controversial, was to broaden the horizons of freshmen. Now a more intrusive version of that plan has turned up via the University of Denver, where the chancellor believes a bit of social engineering will push students toward […]
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About 400,000 people assembled yesterday along Central Park West and marched down though Columbus Circle, to Midtown, and then east to the United Nations. Billed as “The People’s Climate March,” the event was intended to focus the attention of national leaders in town for the United Nations Climate Summit, which starts on Tuesday. Some 50,000 […]
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Over at Legal Insurrection, William Jacobson draws our attention to a new petition protesting the academic boycott of Israel. The petition, which is directed towards academics, university staff, and trustees, argues that the BDS movement is at odds with crucial academic values. In particular, the petition draws attention to the fabrications of BDS movement and […]
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Doubling down on its ever expanding commitment to “diversity,” the University of Virginia Board of Visitors has just created a new standing “Committee on Diversity and Inclusion.” The new committee’s first meeting, held on September 12, considered the results of a study on the wages of female faculty, The study, by Economics Professor Sarah Turner, […]
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Is the tide turning against political efforts to stem campus assault? E. Everett Bartlett, the head of Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), just sent out an email that quoted prominent liberals displeased with recent federal and state initiatives: Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sept. 7: “I do believe you do need, for the accused, you need to maintain due process rights. And then […]
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As Lauren Noble wrote two days ago here at Minding the Campus, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s speech at Yale on Monday night was a success, despite the discomfort felt by the Yale Muslim Students Association (MSA). I say “discomfort” because that is what the MSA itself emphasized in its September 10th letter to the Yale community […]
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