Minding The Campus - Page 2 of 118 -

When Feminist Ideology Trumps Science

October 21, 2019
By John A. Barry

This week Melinda Gates said that she is committing $1 billion to promote gender equality by doing things like dismantling “harmful gender norms.” To many people, this sounds like a wonderful idea, but how effective are gender equality strategies that blame inequality solely on social factors such as gender norms and stereotypes? Professor Alice Eagly, in her […]

An Opponent of Due Process for the Supreme Court?

October 18, 2019
By KC Johnson

Amidst the increased recent attention paid to injustices in the criminal justice system, the opposition of prominent Democratic legislators—and progressive activists—to campus due process stands out more remarkably. The point was reinforced by two events, separated by a few hours, on Tuesday. To start the day, a progressive activist group called “Demand Justice” released a […]

College Summer Reading: A Mandated Dive Into ‘Oppressed Minorities’

October 17, 2019
By Rachelle Peterson

In 2018, Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pennsylvania, asked all incoming students to read Justin LaKyle Brown’s diversity manual titled—I kid not— UGH!?! Not Another Diversity Book: When Multicultural Competence Meets a Real Reality. The title at least pays homage to the ubiquity of college diversity training. Lackawanna College already requires each student to complete a […]

Why Harvard’s Affirmative Action Victory Should Be Overturned

October 15, 2019
By John S. Rosenberg

The recent affirmative action opinion (discussed here) in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University held that Harvard’s discrimination against Asians did not amount to discrimination. Despite the victory of Harvard and the entire higher education hierarchy, committed as it is to using racial preferences to promote “diversity,” there is a reason to believe this […]

Free Speech Must Be Protected Inside and Outside the College Classroom

October 9, 2019
By Samuel J. Abrams

A 2019 report by the Knight Foundation on the state of collegiate student expression made the troubling conclusion that “students largely agree that the political and social climate on college campuses prevents some students from saying what they really believe because they’re afraid of offending their classmates.” The data revealed that 68% felt silenced because […]

Should We Abandon the Concept of Merit?

October 7, 2019
By Peter Wood

Here we go again—yet another book denouncing merit and meritocracy. Merit is such a useful idea that it is hard to think that a society could do without it, and probably none does. That, however, hasn’t restrained a burgeoning industry of people who are fed up with the whole idea. “Abolish merit!” they thunder. “It […]

Is Yale More Dangerous than Detroit?

October 4, 2019
By KC Johnson

Few universities have a more troubling record on Title IX matters than Yale. A few months after settling a lawsuit brought by former basketball captain Jack Montague—thereby avoiding trial on a variety of claims, including that the university manipulated its procedures to bring charges against Montague and then found him guilty despite a preponderance of […]

Will SCOTUS Back Harvard’s Affirmative Action Win?

October 3, 2019
By John S. Rosenberg

A few days ago, Judge Allison Burroughs, appointed by President Obama to the Federal District of Massachusetts, issued her decision in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard College in which the plaintiffs claimed that affirmative action preferences awarded to blacks and Hispanics amounted to illegal discrimination against Asians. It’s a doozy, by which I mean […]

What the New York Times Got Wrong About Slavery in America

October 2, 2019
By George Avery

The New York Times recently drew a lot of attention for its “1619 Project” initiative, which has been criticized for misrepresenting the role of the slave trade as the central core to the development of the United States. The Times “aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the […]

When Colleges Defraud Donors

September 30, 2019
By Richard Vedder

Colleges rarely sue one another, so when little Hillsdale College in Michigan sued the much larger University of Missouri a couple of years ago, it raised some eyebrows. Hillsdale alleges that Mizzou blatantly violated the terms of Wall Street financier Sherlock Hibbs’ will, who left $5 million to his alma mater upon his death to […]

Court Allows Indirect Control of Campus Speech

September 26, 2019
By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the University of Michigan could be dampening free speech on campus by allowing a group that helps students who have experienced potentially prejudicial acts to operate at the institution. Speech First, a Washington, D.C.-based civil liberties watchdog, sued Michigan last year, asking for an injunction to halt the activities of the university’s […]

Should False Rape Reports Be Punished?

September 23, 2019
By Philip Carl Salzman

The Ninth Commandment urges us as follows: “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” The principle of false witness as an offense has been incorporated in British Common Law and American law as “perjury … defined as swearing falsely, under oath, in a judicial proceeding, about a material issue.” Perjury is a felony, a serious criminal offense. […]

Fake Claims of Rape Due to Trauma Are Under Scrutiny

September 20, 2019
By KC Johnson

The big news in campus sexual misconduct hearings is that believers in trauma-informed adjudications are on the defensive. What that verbal mouthful means is that apparent weaknesses in a complainant’s case—inarticulateness, contradictions, lying, or being too “frozen’’ or fearful of testifying—must not be automatically taken as evidence that sexual trauma has occurred. In recent years, […]

Bloomberg Warns Colleges on Limiting Free Speech

September 18, 2019
By John Leo

Former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, made headlines by arguing in a political column that political rage and increasingly polarized discourse are endangering the nation. He said Americans are too unwilling to engage with people whose ideas are different from their own. He added that Americans used to move forward productively after elections regardless […]

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 […]

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Peggy Noonan on the Coming Fall of ‘Woke’ Progressives

"The past decade saw the rise of the woke progressives who dictate what words can be said and ideas held, thus poisoning and paralyzing American humor, drama, entertainment, culture and journalism. In the coming 10 years someone will effectively stand up to them. They are the most hated people in America, and their entire program is accusation: you are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic; you are a bigot, a villain, a white male, a patriarchal misogynist, your day is over. They never have a second move. Bow to them, as most do, and they’ll accuse you even more of newly imagined sins. They claim to be vulnerable victims, and moral. Actually, they’re not." -- The Wall Street Journal, January 4 -5

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

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

The Trans Agenda Could Make You Choose Your Pronouns

State-Funded Colleges Are Still Well Funded

Why the NY Times’ 1619 Project Fails the Truth Test