“Everything goes when anything goes all of the time.” —Paul Westerberg Alexis de Tocqueville noted in Democracy in America (1835/40) that upon the advent of written constitutions and electoral politics, the aristocracies of the Western world had to rediscover their purpose. He saw the United States as the most acute example of a society in […]
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Thomas Jefferson wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America in 1774, basically the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. That’s how he got to the drafting Committee of Five for the Declaration in 1776. Fine job you did in 1774, Thomas; why don’t you write another version now? Back in 1774, […]
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Recent polling by College Pulse for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) reveals that college-aged Americans are abysmally ignorant of our rich historical heritage and knowledge of our most important civic institutions. An implication is that the colleges neglect to instruct students to remedy that scandalous deficiency. While that is no doubt correct, […]
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Men and women are increasingly diverging politically, a notably pronounced trend on college campuses. College-aged men—a shrinking demographic—have become more conservative, while college-aged women have moved into the liberal camp. Young women are more likely than their male counterparts to vote, care about political issues, and participate in social movements and protests. A cursory look […]
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Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by the College Fix on July 22, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. Professors say they’ve seen growing academic interest in magic, occult Universities are offering a variety of classes on witchcraft and magic this fall, including courses that will examine tarot cards, create spellbooks, and analyze why people accuse […]
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Since I left the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Masters Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), I’ve been forced to confront the alarming truth that the entire field of psychology is under the sway of a dangerous ideology distilled from postmodern philosophy and critical theories. This ideology disguises its authoritarian objectives using the camouflage […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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Virginians made the rejection of the Intolerable Acts revolutionary. The Intolerable Acts were outrageous abrogations of American liberty. Massachusetts was their primary target, but sympathy began to spread beyond its borders. The Orangetown Resolutions showed how small-town New Yorkers could commit themselves to solidarnosc with Boston. But the most important acceders were the Virginians. Virginia […]
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“The arts, taken as a whole, quietly govern the metaphysical heritage of our Western tradition.” Hans Georg-Gadamer, Theory, Culture and Society “Words are the gods living within a convention, but tones are the daemons.” Goethe, 25 February 1870, Cosima Wagner’s Diary, 1: 193 Music thrives across our nation’s universities because the students themselves create it. […]
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At an exhilarating four-hand piano house concert in Tucson, two noted recording and performing artists, Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt, played a signature piece by Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937), La Valse: Poème Chorégraphique composed in 1919-1920. Later, in a discussion with the audience, the pianists noted that they followed the faster tempo set by […]
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Should we be worried about the power psychology professions have in our everyday lives and the direction of the field? In researching “Trusting the ‘Experts’ is Risky Business,” I came upon the news of an Indiana family who lost custody of their transgender teen even when there was no finding of abuse. The U.S. Supreme […]
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In April, I published a tiresomely long explanation of why the newly popular idea of “institutional neutrality” is a dead end. My essay, “The Illusion of Institutional Neutrality,” took up so much space because I wanted there to be at least one easily available account of where this idea came from, why it was about […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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In recent interviews with 2aDays, University of Illinois-Springfield (UIS) student-athletes have accused head golf coach Michael Leotta of severe misconduct, exposing a troubling pattern of abuse and systemic failure within the university’s athletic department. These revelations reflect broader issues in collegiate athletics and underscore the urgent need for reforms to protect student-athletes. Former athletic director […]
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The Supreme Court’s recent Chevron ruling, while rightly focusing on central issues like presidential immunity, also brought a potential boon for American higher education. This decision, which I believe holds promise for the future, has yet to be fully grasped by the higher education establishment. Specifically, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court invalidated […]
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It was an immortal day dedicated to liberty. Stalwart patriots met on July 4, 1774. 1774? Yes. Two years before we declared our independence, the residents of Orangetown, New York subscribed to the Orangetown Resolutions. The Resolutions stated, in part: 1st, That we are and ever wish to be, true and loyal subjects to his […]
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Editor’s Note: This series is adapted from the new paper Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education? Part 1 explored the justifications and rationales that have been used to subsidize higher education. Part 2 explored subsidy design considerations. Part 3 explored federal subsidies. This fourth and final part explores state subsidies. […]
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In our rapidly changing world, civics education must do a better job. Civics must prepare students to engage their neighborhood, county, state, and nation. Civics courses today rely on history, current events, and case studies. But they fall short in effectively explaining the realities of government, campus, or neighborhood dynamics and teaching how to enact […]
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Sometimes following politics can be a bit like watching a hotly contested football game between your favorite team and its archrival. One minute, your team is marching down the field; the next, they’re giving up a big play. You go up by a few points, only to fall behind again as the hated opponent responds. […]
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Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts, George III gave them his royal assent, and, at once, America rose in unanimous rebellion. No, of course not. American patriots were outraged. But in 1774, they weren’t yet at the point of armed rebellion. The radicals of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams and the Boston Committee of Correspondence, proposed instead a […]
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Neither side of the aisle in the U.S. recognizes the other anymore. But this is more normal than we imagine. According to what political theorists call “realignment theory,” life gets bumpy in an electoral democracy, and it can change substantially and suddenly. But it’s deeper than that. Our current national malaise is a very common […]
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“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.” – Denis Didero The French philosopher could not have foreseen the delicate state of today’s young minds, who are culturally conditioned, coddled, and deceived to reject the truth when he wrote those sobering words […]
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Harvard Dean of Social Science Lawrence Bobo set off a firestorm last week when he published an article suggesting faculty should be punished for publicly criticizing the university. His position, if implemented, would severely weaken the already fragile state of academic freedom at Harvard. As dean, his significant power over the careers of many faculty […]
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The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) recently released a report revealing that the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, a taxpayer-funded program that supports promising young individuals with aspirations to serve in government and the like, has overwhelmingly favored candidates with leftist views in recent years. According to the report, the Foundation has selected a significantly higher […]
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On June 22, 1774, the Quebec Act received royal assent. This, the climax of the Intolerable Acts, not only provided for greater accommodation of Catholicism and French law in Britain’s recently conquered colony of Quebec but also expanded its borders—to include virtually all of the trans-Appalachian West down to the Ohio River. It cut the possibility […]
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Harvard Dean Lawrence Bobo writes in the Harvard Crimson that faculty speech should have limits. There are, he says, responsibilities as well as rights associated with academic freedom: As Harvard has moved to limit its opining on salient public issues, we must use our voices as faculty responsibly. Do we allow individual faculty with large […]
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Ask the average American about the state of public education, and you’re likely to hear complaints ranging from low scores, poorly paid teachers, drugs, gang violence, lack of funding, threats from school shootings, claims of indoctrination—from both sides of the political spectrum—and a myriad of other complaints. Ask teachers and parents, and you’ll likely get […]
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“That from henceforth we will suspend all commercial intercourse with the said island of Great Britain, until the said act for blocking up the said harbour be repealed.” — The Solemn League and Covenant, June 1774. Fueled by a fiery conviction to protest Parliament’s embargo on Boston’s port, a local committee crafted a persuasive letter […]
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Harvard’s year has been one for the history books. It ranked last in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual college free speech survey, earning its own category of “abysmal.” It had quite possibly the worst response to Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack on Israel in all American higher education. Its former president, Claudine […]
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On June 15, 1774, Boston citizens held a meeting in Faneuil Hall to debate how the townsmen should respond to the blockade that the British had just imposed on the port of Boston. At issue was whether the citizens should pay for the tea that some radicals had dumped in the harbor back in December. […]
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