The MLA meeting of the delegate assembly to debate the resolution criticizing Israeli policies has received ample publicity, including Cary Nelson’s vehement opposition in the Wall Street Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Nelson’s statement elicited a reply at the Chronicle by one of the sponsors of the resolution, Bruce Robbins of Columbia University, […]
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Conservative critics have long argued two related points against liberals: 1) that modern liberalism has turned its back on what for generations, even centuries, was one of its foundational principles, that individuals should be treated by the state “without regard” to race, creed, or color, and 2) that its abandonment of that principle was so […]
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By now the arguments for and against “diversity” are so numerous, so heatedly argued that squabbling pro- and anti-diversifiers have become the academic equivalent of the prisoners who memorized their joke book and hence no longer need actually to tell the jokes; simply stating “No. 14” or “No. 36” is sufficient. (As an example, I am particularly […]
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Some updates on two of the Title IX lawsuits filed by male students accused of sexual assault and disciplined through college tribunals. In the Vassar lawsuit, discovery has commenced, and Vassar has until February 3 to turn over material to Peter Yu’s attorneys. Presumably this material will include documents on the shadowy organization–the Interpersonal Violence […]
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Readers of the New York Times might be forgiven for experiencing a bit of whiplash. Last year, when Brooklyn College’s political science department voted to officially support an event demanding a boycott of Israeli academics, the Times hailed the department as a heroic defender of academic freedom. Earlier this week, however, the paper portrayed the […]
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By Jonathan Marks The Delegate Assembly of the Modern Language Association narrowly passed a resolution last Saturday urging the State Department to “contest Israel’s denial of entry to the West Bank by U.S. academics who have been invited to teach, confer, or do research at Palestinian universities.” The anti-Israel movement within academia will try to […]
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The ongoing hype over MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) parallels the cold fusion debacle of 1989. The technology sounded like a panacea, a cheap and endless source of energy. Then it flopped. Another great notion down the drain. Similarly, educational entrepreneurs once believed that massive online courses would revolutionize higher education. MOOC providers, partnering with […]
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Cross-posted from Open Market Crime rates are not the same for different racial groups, and student misconduct rates aren’t, either. The Supreme Court ruled many years ago that such racial disparities don’t prove racism or unconstitutional discrimination. But in guidance issued last week by the Justice and Education Departments, the Obama Administration signaled that it will hold school districts […]
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Heather Mac Donald may be the Ida Tarbell of our age: a writer who combines a meticulous eye for facts, intellectual brilliance, a sure sense of the historical moment, and deep moral seriousness. Tarbell is famous for her History of the Standard Oil Company, serialized in McClure’s Magazine between 1902 and 1904, and is celebrated today by the Left for […]
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The victories in the fight to reform higher-ed are often dispiriting because they remind us of the enormity of our challenge. Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) announced that it had successfully pressured the University of Colorado to reinstate a course that CU had cancelled on the grounds that the professor, Patti […]
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Earlier this week, the great classicist Victor Davis Hanson made a few familiar complaints about American higher education: Colleges cost too much, depend too much on low-paid adjunct professors, employ too many administrators, and engage in political advocacy, rather than liberal education. However, he added some over-the-top rhetoric. Colleges, in his estimation, have “gone rogue […]
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From Newsweek (via Inside Higher Ed) comes news of an unusual, but excessively limited, proposal from California Assemblyman Mike Gatto. In response to events at Occidental, Gatto says he’ll introduce a bill requiring colleges in California to report some claims of sexual assault to police. This is an excellent idea–trained law enforcement officers, not campus […]
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Thanks to the American Studies Association’s recent vote for an academic boycott of Israel, the field of American Studies has been under a microscope. Prior to the boycott resolution, perhaps no one would have noticed the conference on “Transnational American Studies,” sponsored by the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of […]
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This is an excerpt from “The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself,” published this week by Encounter Books. The author, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, is also a columnist and a nationally prominent blogger at Instapundit. *** College students and prospective students will have an effect simply by […]
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There is a mini-argument amongst some academic bloggers over the way UC-Riverside’s English department scheduled job interviews at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention. As Megan McArdle recounts at Bloomberg, Riverside emailed applicants to schedule interviews only five days (!) before the convention was to start in Chicag). For some applicants, that might have meant […]
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Last summer, when a flurry of reports and commentaries declared a material crisis for the humanities, many commentators denied the claim, for instance, this statement entitled “The Humanities Aren’t Really in ‘Crisis’” (note the gratuitous sneer-quotes). But the bad news keeps coming. Last week, Inside Higher Ed reported, “History Jobs Down 7.3%.” Data from the […]
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Defenders of the academic status quo obviously don’t care much about promoting intellectual or pedagogical diversity on campus. But they should, if only for pragmatic reasons. In an ideal world, a robust marketplace of ideas on campus could serve as a testing grounds, forcing advocates of dubious concepts to defend themselves or rethink their assumptions. […]
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You may have read about the UCLA professor whose class was taken over by 25 of his students and other protesters on grounds that he was guilty of racial “micro-aggression.” Among other things, the professor, Val Rust, was accused of micro-aggressively undermining student advocacy by explaining that the word “indigenous” isn’t capitalized. Rust is a […]
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In a recent Wall Street Journal article co-authored by Purdue University president Mitch Daniels, Gallup CEO Jim Clifton observed that “Gallup’s hundreds of business clients report that many, if not most, college diplomas don’t tell them much about graduates’ readiness for productive work.” The information gap particularly hurts students attending non-selective admission colleges of so-so reputation: how do […]
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In analyzing the backlash against the American Studies Association’s demand for a boycott against all Israeli colleges and universities, two numbers are important: 81 and 4. No fewer than eighty-one college or university presidents have personally denounced the boycott (as helpfully compiled by Avi Mayer); the number is likely higher. But only four colleges or […]
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