Mark Lilla, an essayist, historian of ideas and professor of the humanities at Columbia University, is best known for his books The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics and The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. He is interviewed here by Dean Ball, a student at Hamilton College and former intern at Manhattan Institute. *** Q: You wrote […]
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Ever since Ronald Reagan tried and failed to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, conservatives have found themselves in a quandary when it comes to reforming public higher education. Some continue to insist, rightly, that the Tenth Amendment places the power over education solely in the hands of the individual states. A different group, however, […]
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Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy probably deserves his own chapter in the history of black intellectuals and black legal scholars. Over the years he has told us a great deal — some of it intentionally, with scholarship and skill; some inadvertently or unwittingly –about how race is regarded and debated in the academy, especially the legal academy. […]
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Academic politics can be vicious and hence an often entertaining spectator sport. Still, it is not altogether clear why Howard University president Sidney Ribeau’s recent announcement that he will resign the end of this year — unexpected and even shocking though it was — has attracted so much press attention, and not just in the usual higher education sources. It is true, as […]
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Cross-posted from See Thru Edu. I often try to temper my colleagues’ enthusiasm for the coming wave of “creative destruction” that is about to hit higher education. Certainly there are going to be big changes, but there are also key aspects of higher education that prove resistant to change. This is especially true about online […]
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The downfall of Hugo Schwyzer, gender studies professor and onetime darling of the feminist blogosphere–now revealed as a self-confessed “monstrous hypocrite” and intellectual fraud–has been one of the more bizarre spectacles to unfold recently on the Internet. His strange case offers depressing insights into the sexual politics of the modern academy and the cultural left, […]
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Here’s another Orwellian intervention at a U.S. university by the Federal Government: in response to feminist pressure about the handling (under Title IX and Title IV) of sexual harassment and sexual assault cases on campus, the University of Montana agreed to accept a resolution agreement with the Department of Justice and the Education Department’s Office […]
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The Department of Education released new information about student loan defaults yesterday, and it isn’t pretty. A dismaying 10 percent of student borrowers are now defaulting on their student loans within two years of repayment, and nearly 15 percent are defaulting within three years. These are the highest default rates since 1995. The data bear […]
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The Huffington Post brings news of faculty complaints at Occidental College. The background: Several months ago, students filed an OCR complaint, alleging that the school’s process for investigating sexual assault complaints was so biased against accusers that it violated Title IX. That process (which nearly all news media ignored) denies the accused student a right […]
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Writing at National Review Online about the recent release of SAT scores, Jason Richwine wonders whether all the fretting about low college-readiness rates among high school graduates really makes much sense. He links to an Atlantic Monthly story on the 2013 scores that bears the title “This Year’s SAT Scores Are Out, and They Are Grim.” Scores were […]
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Many recent articles say the humanities are in deep trouble on our campuses. Minding the Campus asked seven prominent scholars to respond briefly to this question: “If you could change one thing about the humanities, what would that change be?” Here are the answers from Stephen F. Hayward, Samuel Goldman, James Piereson, Daphne Patai, Patrick Deneen, Peter Wood, […]
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(A speech delivered September 19 at a symposium on “Religious Freedom Under Obamacare,” the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana.) * * * The official title of this talk, “New Gods on the Public Square,” is a cleaned-up version of what it would be at the New York Post, where I now work as […]
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Some 200 Canadian and American men’s activists will gather this Friday at the University of Toronto, where they will be met by angry feminists dedicated to tearing down their posters, heaping abuse on speakers, blockading events and denouncing police as “f—ing scum” if they try to restore order. At least that’s what happened last November […]
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Children of alumni have long enjoyed advantages in gaining admission to the most selective private colleges and universities in the United States–a practice rare in other nations and puzzling and unsavory to foreigners. If not as puzzling, legacy admissions are equally unsavory to many Americans, especially those who consider themselves “meritocrats” and those on the […]
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Classes have started at CUNY, and at least one highly troubling event has occurred. Last week, NRO revealed that CUNY students and at least six members of the CUNY faculty union, the PSC, had descended upon the Macaulay Honors College campus to harass David Petraeus, a visiting professor at the Honors College this term. The […]
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Reprinted from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette On Sept. 1, Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor who had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years, passed away at the age of 83. She died as the result of a massive heart attack she suffered two weeks before. As it turned out, I may have been the […]
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“Disrupting” may have had its day as a pervasive buzzword, claims Judith Shulevitz in The New Republic. It is or is soon to be toast as “jargon cluttering the pages of Forbes and Harvard Business Review” and as part of the title of many a TED talk. Disruptive used to refer to students and others who had impulse-control “issues” in class. It now […]
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Several years ago, I attended a Liberty Fund conference where one of the readings was Edward Chase Kirkland’s Dream and Thought in the Business Community. What I remember most from the book is that many of the great business leaders of the late-1800s not only regarded college education as unnecessary for anyone who was looking […]
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(Cross-posted from Open Market) Earlier, we wrote about the Obama administration’s attempt to inject a race-conscious “disparate impact” provision into colorblind anti-discrimination laws like the Fair Housing Act, and how that could lead to risky, race-conscious lending, bad loans, and future bank failures, mortgage meltdowns, and financial crises. Now, Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder highlights an […]
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The “Massive” in MOOC refers to class size, but one might think it stands for cost savings as well. MOOCs are free for students who register and cheap for those who seek credit. Few colleges and universities plan to grant credit for MOOCs, but of those who do, the cost to the student is typically a […]
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