Minding The Campus - Page 2 of 117 -

Has Harvard Lost Its Taste for Western Civilization?

September 17, 2019
By Peter Wood

The official greeting of Harvard president Larry Bacow to the members of the Harvard Community — a typical welcome to new students, faculty, and parents — has touched a political nerve. Stina Chang, writing on the Asian-American news site AsAmNews picked up Bacow’s pitch to legislators to ease restrictions on international students who want to […]

Doing Physics While Black

September 17, 2019
By John S. Rosenberg

If “diversity” is not only good but an essential core ingredient of a quality education, as the current academic mantra insists, then physics — the least diverse of all fields (blacks earned 2% of bachelor’s degrees in 2015) — has a big problem. Now Stanford claims to have a solution. “Physics faculty and students are […]

The Garden of College Excellence Is Growing Weeds

September 12, 2019
By Peter H. Schuck

Anthony Kronman, my long-time Yale Law School colleague and perhaps the most eloquent individual I know personally, has written a brave, high-minded, argumentative, and largely persuasive book about the values and choices that should animate our greatest colleges and universities but no longer do. His book, The Assault on American Excellence, is also quixotic in […]

Columbia Adds Multiculturalism to Core Curriculum

September 10, 2019
By Mark Bauerlein

Columbia University has decided to add a contemporary multicultural component to its famed core curriculum, Insidehighered.com reported. You knew it was coming. The Western Civilization orientation in general education coursework has been utterly routed for a long time now. The few remaining cases, such as Columbia’s, won’t endure because the academic left won’t let them. […]

Teaching That America Is Hopelessly Racist

September 9, 2019
By Peter Wood

Many more college students have read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ anti-white screed Between the World and Me (2015) than have read, say, works by the Nobel economist Robert Fogel, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery (1974) or Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (1989). I can say that with […]

Are College Costs Transforming Family Life?

September 4, 2019
By Richard Vedder

The New York intellectual establishment has learned via a New York Times op-ed and a New Yorker story/book review that the high cost of college has “changed” (Times) or “transformed” (New Yorker) American family life. That is nothing particularly new or revealing, at least for millions of Americans living, as I do, in that vast […]

Harvard Law Professors Challenge Unfairness of Title IX

August 27, 2019
By KC Johnson

A lawsuit filed by an accused professor against Baylor University is the latest in a string of litigation from professors or high-level university employees adjudicated under campus Title IX tribunals. It was all but inevitable that the unfair Title IX apparatus that has ensnared thousands of accused students would target professors as well. It might […]

How Conservatives Can Win Without Whining

August 26, 2019
By Mark Bauerlein

The progressivist insistence on feeling safe and included, along with accompanying acts of censorship and personnel complaint, has proven so successful in recent years that one can hardly blame conservative students for joining in. But they should hold back. When conservatives proclaim that they are offended and unsafe, though they may win a quick victory […]

The New York Times Rewrites American History

August 23, 2019
By John Leo

On August 18, the Sunday New York Times included a section, The 1619 Project. It announced a goal unusual in journalism, reframing American history, “making explicit how slavery is the foundation on which this country is built.” The Times seemed to imagine that all the protestors were far-right conservatives, but one that caught our eye […]

Intimidation-Produced Silence at Stanford

August 19, 2019
By John S. Rosenberg

Back in the late middle of the last century I attended Stanford for my last three years of college and my last three years of graduate school. Since then I have looked in vain for the dividend checks from that investment, but one thing I have received with some regularity is the alumni magazine. Along […]

The Assault on Free Thought

August 15, 2019
By Peter Wood

The academic left’s efforts to suppress opposing views is fierce, agile, and determined. It can summon an angry mob at a moment’s notice, get the undivided attention of a busy college president, or turn on the tears over the anguish a student feels when oppressed. Whether the goal is to bar a speaker, deface a […]

A Weak Attempt at Justifying Admissions Preferences

July 31, 2019
By George Leef

In the Summer 2019 issue of Cato Institute’s Regulation magazine, Professor Dennis Weisman of Kansas State University offers a benign view of college admissions preferences. In “What Constitutes ‘Discrimination’ in College Admissions?” Weisman argues that since colleges admit many students for reasons other than their high degree of academic ability, there’s no good reason to […]

A Federal Court Takes on Title IX

July 24, 2019
By KC Johnson

Since the Obama-era Dear Colleague letter, there have been almost 500 lawsuits filed at the state or federal level by accused students. One of the most unfair—in the combination of procedures and outcome—occurred at Purdue University. A lawsuit filed in January 2017 was revived last month by an important opinion issued by the Seventh Circuit. […]

Diversicrats Are All That’s Left on Campus

July 22, 2019
By Mark Bauerlein

At this point in time, the word diversity is spoken with such pedestrian calm that people forget that it used to have an edgy import. Not that many years ago, “diversity” meant the introduction of women and minorities into academic jobs and the academic curriculum—as it does now. But back then, that introduction was cast […]

As Alaska Slashes Funds to Higher Education, Will Other States Follow?

July 19, 2019
By Peter Wood

The state of Alaska has unleashed a grizzly bear of a problem for the lower forty-eight. By slashing public spending on the University of Alaska by 41 percent, the governor and the legislature have defied one of the settled rules of American politics: Thou shalt not threaten public higher education. What if other states follow […]

A Confusing Racial Decision for Harvard

July 15, 2019
By Mark Bauerlein

Harvard’s decision last month to rescind admission to Kyle Kashuv because of nasty racial tweets he sent three years ago is a curiously unprincipled action. Kashuv is obviously contrite. He shows all the indications of a reformed sinner eager to undergo Harvard’s diversity training. One would think that an institution so solemnly dedicated to social […]

Nike, Kaepernick and Looming Tribal Warfare

July 10, 2019
By Philip Carl Salzman

Today, many people, in the U.S., Canada, and the rest of the West, have rejected liberal democracy in favor of “woke” identity politics and cultural Marxist “social justice.” Following the Marxist vision of society as a division of classes, with the oppressed victims struggling against the privileged oppressors, identity politics has expanded the class struggle […]

Diversity’s Worst Failure–the Faculty

July 8, 2019
By Mark Bauerlein

For the diversity engineers in higher education, life keeps yielding disappointments. A new study shows once again how far colleges and universities lag relative to their vocal pledges of equity and inclusion. The study draws on Federal data to determine how well those institutions have improved the demographic make-up of the faculty—improvement defined by the […]

After Vilifying Its Basketball Star—How Much Did Yale Have to Pay?

July 1, 2019
By KC Johnson

Some 500 lawsuits have been brought by accused college students in Title IX cases since the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter of 2011 made it easier for accusers to prevail. Of those 500, one of the most troubling has been the case of basketball star Jack Montague, expelled by Yale in 2016 just as his […]

A Better Way to Solve the Student Loan Crisis

June 25, 2019
By Andrew Gillen

Skin in the game for student loans, the idea that colleges should face financial consequence when their students default, is gaining momentum in policy discussions. After all, when students take out loans, the colleges get all their money upfront, leaving taxpayers holding the bag when students default on the loan payments years later. It seems […]

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Let's Ban the SAT and ACT!

That's what a coalition of civil rights lawyers wants to do in California in order to end discrimination based on merit for Latinos and African Americans. According to a report in The New Yorker, the only tests the lawyers would allow are Advanced Placement exams. The shell game of accepting test results, then distorting them to achieve a "racially balanced outcome," has been known for years at some of the most prestigious schools in the country. But two events have prompted this action in California: One is the ongoing challenge by Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard to level the playing field for Asian students, who score high on grades and tests. The other is the changing makeup of the Supreme Court, which has become more conservative in the last few years. Does anyone care that American students continue to decline in global matchups against other developed countries?

If You're White, You're Wrong

Following a growing trend in higher education, a Dartmouth professor called for mandatory white privilege courses. Dr. Emily Walton wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling for all students to take courses in white privilege and black history. She accuses white people of being afflicted with "white blindness" or a state in which racial privilege is invisible. She also claims the K-12 public schools perpetuate "white blindness" (read discrimination) by not mandating ethnic studies classes. To top it off, she equates the meritocratic system of hard work with white discrimination against minorities.

Another Blow Against Integration

At the University of Nevada, a public school in Las Vegas, integration on campus is not exactly encouraged according to a report in the College Fix. In fact, the University discourages socially mixing different groups by providing separate dorms for identity tribes, all at taxpayer expense: Howell Town for black students, Stonewall Suites for LGBT students, Tonopah housing community for women only, the Health Living floor for those who still like tofu and kale, and the Study Intensive Hall for those who plan on graduating.

Oberlin--Let's Blame the Media!

Oberlin College's student newspaper editorial board blasted national media coverage of the Gibson’s Bakery trial, saying that it “misses the mark,” and that the ruling is part of an “increasingly authoritarian country,” Campus Reform reports. The Oberlin Review’s editorial board published an editorial Wednesday, titled “Media Coverage of Gibson’s Verdict Misses the Mark,” in which it strongly criticized how national media covered the case resulting in the college being ordered to pay Gibson's Bakery $44 million.

Western Civilization = White Supremacy

New York City school administrators have been taught that pillars of Western Civilization such as objectivity, individualism, and even belief in the written word all are examples of … white supremacy, the New York Post reports.

A slide presentation obtained by the Post from the workshop “Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change” includes claims that a belief in an “ultimate truth” (objectivity) leads to a dismissal of “alternate viewpoints or emotions” as “bad” (this is straight out of the critical race theory playbook), and that emphasis on the written word overlooks the “ability to relate to others” and leads to “teaching that there is only ‘one right way’ to do something.”

Other “hallmarks” of white supremacy include a “sense of urgency,” “quantity over quality,” and “perfectionism.” Read more at The College Fix

The Civility Problem

Maybe a few courses on how to create a civil society would help America's so-called "social warriors" learn how to deal with their fellow men and women. Let's start with Amherst College in Massachusetts, where former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was scheduled to address the ongoing issue of free speech on campus. Campus Reform reports that Sessions got a dose of today's SJW tactics when a stinkbomb was set off before he went on stage. Then, a walkout was staged by a gay pride group punctuating the assault on the former A.G. Stinkbombs? What is this, 7th grade?

In response to "A Racially 'Woke' Agenda Is Now Hardwired in Public Schools"

Public education started out in this nation with a mandate to provide equal opportunity to all. This means including most of the children below the top quarter, or perhaps third (take your pick) of family household net income.

So, if we can safely assume that anywhere from two thirds to three quarters of the nation’s children will not be able to financially avoid the educational morass that confronts them, we must ask the obvious: just what kind of quality of education will they receive?

The answer to that question should form our collective response, our resolve, and certainly our political will to ensure that all children have equal educational opportunity.

Accepting the distinct fact that indoctrination is not education, and that the two mix together no better than oil and water, we might deduce, and not be far off the mark, that certain powers do not WANT marginalized children to succeed. In other words, those students are far more valuable to those same powers as abject failures than as successes by any normal and standardized measure. I think of that as the “oppression” of lowered expectations, where millions of children end up as pawns in the great and terrible game of Identity / race / victim / Olympic oppression “positionality.” Blah.

I say give the kids a break.

J. P. Merzetti, University of Toronto

Tricking Voters to Accept Racial Preferences

When 29 Courses on Black Writing Isn’t Enough at Williams

Washington State Voters Reject Affirmative Action, Again