Minding The Campus - Page 2 of 122 -

Virginia Attorney General’s Office: Selective Admissions Are Racist

November 30, 2020
By Hans Bader

The Virginia attorney general’s office has ruled that the Loudoun County school system committed illegal racial discrimination by admitting fairly few black and Hispanic students to its selective schools, the Academies of Loudoun. For reasons that have nothing to do with racism, the Academies of Loudoun are much more heavily Asian than the Loudoun County […]

Killing the PC Pox: A Suggestion and a Note of Pessimism

November 25, 2020
By Robert Weissberg

As a university professor I’ve witnessed the intellectual carnage afflicting today’s campus firsthand, including the suicide of two distinguished colleagues. And it grows worse as it spreads from the academy’s soft side to the hard sciences, even escaping the campus’ ideological wet markets to infect organized religions, professional societies (especially law and medicine), sports, and, perhaps […]

Young Americans are Too Sensitive About Speech

November 23, 2020
By Samuel J. Abrams

Jodi Shaw is both a graduate of Smith College and an administrator in its residential life office. She made national news when she publicly spoke truth about Smith’s diversity initiatives. Shaw— who is intimately familiarwith the school’s political culture —questioned the efficacy of many of Smith’s inclusion initiatives, critiqued the school’s overly sensitive culture, and […]

Diversity Training and Moral Education

November 20, 2020
By Bradley Campbell

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. “Who says diversity says conflict,” writes Donald Black in Moral Time. Black is a sociologist who has spent decades studying morality, and his recent work identifies the […]

Field Notes on the Politicization of the American University

November 18, 2020
By Matthew Stewart

The Syracuse University English Department’s Statement of Concern In a recent article lamenting the demise of the canon in English departments, Professor Mark Bauerlein calls attention to the homepage of Syracuse University’s department. Where one would expect to find a description of the department, one finds instead a “statement of concern regarding the death of […]

Surprise! Americans Oppose Discrimination

November 16, 2020
By John S. Rosenberg

Almost everyone is disappointed, frustrated, or angry about the election results—Republicans, because at this writing they appear to have lost the presidency amid widespread reports of voting—er, irregularities; Democrats, because they suffered an unexpected but major shellacking in the House and appear not to have regained the Senate. A noteworthy, important exception is the hearty […]

Huizinga to Conservative Intellectuals: Get Back in the Game!

November 13, 2020
By Eric Clifford Graf

On his radio show of October 22nd, 2020, Rush Limbaugh admitted that he had been shocked by the overt Marxism of so many Obama supporters. He had always assumed such ideas were marginalized, but the 2016 election showed him that, like pop culture, academia is saturated with them. Many more conservatives need to experience Rush’s […]

The Inadequacy of White Fragility

November 11, 2020
By George Yancey

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. It is a misrepresentation to argue that White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo represents all of the antiracism movement. However, it is a book that has topped the New […]

Bad Words at Ottawa U

November 9, 2020
By Mark Mercer

How should academic administrators respond when offended students complain to them about their professors or courses? In late September, in her course Art and Gender, Verushka Lieutenant-Duval mentioned the word “nigger” as an example of a word used to denigrate a class of people that was then taken up by that same people. Dr. Lieutenant-Duval […]

Diversity is Important. Diversity-Related Training is Terrible.

November 6, 2020
By Musa al-Gharbi

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. In wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed, many colleges and universities have been rolling out new training requirements – often oriented towards reducing […]

Counting Ourselves as Knights and Keeping Our Vows

November 4, 2020
By David Richardson

A Commitment to Academic Freedom for All! Almost a quarter of a century ago, I was hired as the first full-time, tenure-track history instructor at a small, rural campus in central California. At the time, I was told that our campus was in line to become the next independent community college in California. It took […]

Goodbye America, Hello Woketopia

November 2, 2020
By Philip Carl Salzman

The America of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity is already half gone. Our universities, media, industries, and one of our two main political parties are in the hands of the “wokerati.” If Democrats take control of the government come November, America is gone, to be replaced by “Woketopia.” In Woketopia your life and future will be […]

Some Conservative Speech May Become Illegal After the Election

October 31, 2020
By Hans Bader

Do you like being able to criticize progressive policies about race or gender, such as affirmative action? That freedom may soon disappear in workplaces, schools, and rental housing, if legislation backed by Democrats becomes law. A bill called the BE HEARD in the Workplace Act would redefine speech that previously was considered perfectly legal as […]

Don’t Go for Woke: Microaggressions are unscientific

October 29, 2020
By Robert Maranto

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. The fact is that there is racial insensitivity. People have to be made aware of what other people feel like…what insults them, what is demeaning to them. […]

At Wright State, Critics of Marxism Need Not Apply

October 27, 2020
By Evan W. Osborne

It is widely acknowledged that social-science and liberal-arts faculty at American universities are disproportionately of the left, and the hard-left in particular. Criticism of this fact often revolves around the idea that professors preach in their classrooms, and students facing such a faculty come away with a distorted view of how the world works and […]

The Quiet Constitutional Crisis

October 24, 2020
By Edwin C. Hagenstein

This political season has been dizzying. The steep, plunging lows—the COVID mess and the urban riots—are such that they have left many of us queasy. Enough so, that in bleak moments a shadow of doubt passes through our minds: perhaps our governing system cannot bear the burdens we face and could come undone. It is […]

The “Four Olds” of American Higher Education

October 22, 2020
By Ray M. Sanchez

That trends come and go in education is a maxim that needs no explanation. Under the guise of innovation, faddish pedagogical strategies and well-funded reform movements are as sure as the sun rises. The best of these innovations serve to enhance teaching and learning. The worst, and by far the majority, are often presented as […]

How Political Correctness on Race Fuels Polarization

October 19, 2020
By Eric Kaufmann

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Craig Frisby usefully points us to the way moral innovators and “virtue-signaling” corporate imitators have stretched the meaning of racism beyond where objective social science and common […]

Data-Driven Accountability is Coming to Higher Ed

October 16, 2020
By Andrew Gillen

Most people and institutions are held accountable, however imperfectly. We all know of a charlatan who has yet to be exposed, or a shady institution that is coasting on its reputation, but eventually, the truth wins out. With any luck, that moment has arrived for higher education. Last fall’s publication of the most comprehensive college […]

In Review: Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit

October 14, 2020
By Gabriel Andrade

The 2019 college admissions scandal made it clear that, in American colleges and universities, students have three options for entry: the back door, the side door, and the front door. You enter through the back door when your parents donate huge sums of money to the institution. This procedure is not illegal, although many people […]

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What Students Really Learn at University

Perhaps no one has written more about the plague of identity politics on America’s college campuses than MTC's contributor, Philip Carl Salzman. Salzman, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McGill University, and a contributor to many public policy organizations, has now published some of his most powerful essays in an e-Book collection called Universities Today. Salzman writes, "Since the 1980s, universities have increasingly turned away from producing and disseminating knowledge and taken up as their objective neo-Marxist radical social reform, often labeled ‘social justice.’ Today, universities focus on political propaganda and activism and are increasingly like closed religious cults."

Attention Middle Easterners! You Don’t Have to Be White Anymore

So says Harvard University in a convoluted explanation of race, identity, culture and white privilege. According to Harvard, “Since 1944, Middle Eastern- and North African-Americans have been legally “white,” having to check the “white” box on demographic surveys like the U.S. census.” OMG—what a burden! Well, fear no more my Lebanese and Syrian friends, my pals from Iraq and Iran—you no longer have the burden of being white—you can be a MENA! A middle-eastern north African. What a joy to shed the mantle of white privilege once and for all. How wonderful to have such a joyous moniker of peace, achievement, cultural contribution, and tolerance to wrap around oneself.

If You're On Time, You're a White Supremacist

The National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education, or NCORE, will feature a “pre-conference” session led by an educational consultant who believes being on time is a form of “white supremacy.” The story appears in The College Fix. NCORE is a function of the University of Oklahoma’s Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies. This year, Heather Hackman of the Hackman Consulting Group will speak about “…Racism and Whiteness and Achieving Racial Justice.” Hackman is a former professor of multicultural education at St. Cloud University who, at 2016’s “White Privilege Conference,” informed attendees that “the racial narrative of White” includes “making sure you’re not tardy.” Individualism, honesty, discipline, and rigor were other factors.

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.

In response to "Wanna Teach? Submit a Killer 'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion' Statement"

I am a long-retired public school teacher. Last fall, I submitted a letter to the editor of Education Week (unpublished), providing data on public education’s devotion to social justice issues.

To the editor:

A subscriber since the founding of Education Week in 1981, I’ve noticed a persistent theme: the “achievement gap.” In the 12-11 issue, for example, two commentaries were on that topic. Looking towards the next four decades, entertain a possibility: A fixation on performance “gaps” and on assigning blame may be unhealthy.

Evidence of fixation? At Edweek.org, I searched 24 terms associated with the achievement gap to gauge frequency. Assume 36 issues per year of Education Week over 38 years. That’s 1,368 issues. Divide “mentions” below by 1,368 for the average number of times one is likely to encounter a particular term in a random issue of Education Week:

“equity” – 7,334 mentions (5.9 times per issue)
“achievement gap” – 4,930
“discrimination” – 3,740
“desegregation” – 3,090
“social justice” – 3,020
“desegregate” – 3,063
“segregation” – 1,968
“segregate” – 1,498
“discriminate” – 1,396
“racism” – 1,380
“slavery” – 520
“racial discrimination” – 431
“racial bias” – 265
“mandatory busing” – 235
“Jim Crow” – 168
“implicit bias” – 166
“cultural competence” – 91
“forced busing” – 90
“white privilege” – 85
“institutional racism” – 76
“systemic racism” – 51
“busing for racial balance” – 51
“redlining” or “red-lining” – 38
“structural racism” – 27

Consider two changes-of-direction for the next 38 years:

1) America is among the least racist nations in the world. Endlessly beating itself up over racial disparities ill serves everyone.

2) Groups focus differently; people are individuals. All 64 starting NFL cornerbacks are Black and have been for 17 years. That gap alarms no one. Bringing some of that tolerance to educational performance may produce happier results than four more decades obsessing over gaps.
Individuals are key. Overlap among and variation within groups is enormous. While upholding meritocratic standards, why not incentivize individuals to move where they can, possibly “testing out” of graded systems. Adjusting compulsory attendance and child-labor laws might better accommodate enormous variation among individuals.

Tom Shuford, Lenoir, NC

Prejudice Under the Microscope: The Implicit Association Test (Part II)

A “Reverse Canceling” and its Critics

The Political Unfolding of California’s Racial Reckoning: From Affirmative Action to Critical Race Theory