Minding The Campus - Page 2 of 121 -

I Want To Return To The Classroom And You Should Be Begging Me To…

October 6, 2020
By David Richardson

On July 18th, 2020, the New York Times Sunday Review published an opinion piece by Ms. Rebecca Martinson, a public school teacher from northwestern Washington, on how afraid she was that she might be asked to return to the classroom this fall as the COVID pandemic continued to ravage the country. She started her piece with […]

Rethinking Higher Education Delivery in the Modern Age

October 1, 2020
By Erik S. Root

For the last decade higher education has been in steep decline, even before students were abandoned to fend for themselves and their futures while our so-called elites dithered over what to do about COVID-19. But higher ed was in trouble long before the coronavirus pandemic. According to Forbes, enrollment is down “more than two million […]

Critical Race Theory and New Racism: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

September 29, 2020
By Ray M. Sanchez

This essay is a succinct and pointed explanation of Critical Race Theory (CRT). It is intended for those who have heard about CRT in the news and wonder how it is connected to the hyper-racialization of the last six months. But it is also for those knee-deep in personal research about Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity […]

Racism: What It Is and What It Is Not (Part II)

September 24, 2020
By Craig Frisby

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 Part I of this series, an attempt was made to break down the meaning of the word “racism” using basic rules of word morphology. Unfortunately, commentaries […]

Bleemer Blooper: How UC is Using Fake Research to Promote Prop. 16

September 23, 2020
By John S. Rosenberg

Everyone is familiar with fake news. Now the University of California (UC) has presented us with what can only be described as fake research: an unpublished policy paper by a UC employee, Zachary Bleemer, criticizing Proposition 209 and defending affirmative action. The paper was also shared and distributed by the UC Office of the President. […]

The Cultural Revolution: Coming to a Campus Near You

September 21, 2020
By John Staddon

Higher education has begun a transformation similar to the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” of 1966. This claim may sound extreme, but look at the similarities for yourself. Like the Cultural Revolution, the energized identity-politics movement presents itself as a cleansing force. Pure Maoism was being corrupted by covert capitalist sympathizers—they had to be rooted out. In […]

Coalition demands illegal racial discrimination at Cornell

September 19, 2020
By Hans Bader

A faculty coalition at Cornell University is calling for race-based hiring and promotions. What it is demanding violates two laws against racial discrimination, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C. 1981. That’s because Cornell has no justifiable rationale for using race in employment decisions at all, much less to the extent that […]

Comply, Evade, Violate: Three Responses to the New Title IX

September 18, 2020
By KC Johnson

We’re now more than one month into the implementation of the new Title IX regulations—improvements which the nation’s higher-education establishment uniformly opposed. The amended regulations require two major changes: they narrow the definition of sexual harassment (but not sexual assault) to the definition offered by the Supreme Court in Davis. And they confine a university’s […]

Racism: What It Is and What It Is Not (Part I)

September 16, 2020
By Craig Frisby

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. A writer for a popular online entertainment publication once remarked that a James Bond movie is often only as good as its villain. This applies to the “Black […]

$1 Billion Price Tag Put on UW-Madison’s Minority Programs

September 15, 2020
By W. Lee Hansen

UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank’s new 2020 Diversity Plan, described in her July 8, 2020 blog entry, is more disturbing than suggested by the bland front-page headline: “Blank targets racial climate” (since retitled “National unrest sparks new efforts by UW-Madison to improve campus climate”). The chancellor’s array of proposed new “commitments” to diversity reflects her response to recent […]

Will Virginia teach critical race theory to kindergartners?

September 14, 2020
By Hans Bader

This week, the Virginia Board of Education will meet to discuss a report that may promote destructive racial ideologies — the August 2020 “Report from the Governor’s African American History Education Commission.” James Sherlock laments “the fiercely negative approach to the teaching of African American history offered by the Governor’s Commission.” He says says its […]

Understanding “Black Lives Matter”

September 9, 2020
By James Druley

The statement “black lives matter” must be affirmed in light of the recent killing of George Floyd. The police officer did not act as if Mr. Floyd’s life mattered, and by extension, as if black lives matter. His actions, and those of many other policemen, have failed to recognize the equal worth and dignity of […]

In Review: Vicky Osterweil’s “In Defense of Looting”

September 2, 2020
By Gabriel Andrade

In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, one of the novel’s heroes describes Robin Hood as “a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters. … It is this foulest of creatures—the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and […]

Countering the Mob at SDSU

September 1, 2020
By Stuart Hurlbert

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! – in Marmion, Sir Walter Scott, 1808 Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University, gives us the most detailed picture yet of the behavior, values, and mental state of today’s teenagers and college students. She calls the generation after […]

Defending our Universities from the Ideological Onslaught: An Invitation to Action

August 31, 2020
By Adam Ellwanger

As you read this, an open letter that I recently wrote is circulating online among academics and professors who share a deep concern about the rising ideological conformity and intimidation on display in our colleges and universities. As of the publication of this brief invitation, 41 academics from all over the world have signed the […]

The Intellectual Fragility of White Fragility

August 27, 2020
By Craig Frisby & Robert Maranto

Editor’s Note: This article the first in an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Five years ago, no one had heard of the term “white fragility.” But today, fueled by social media, elite corporations, and educational institutions, white fragility (and Robin DiAngelo’s bestselling book of that […]

COVID-19 and Online Education’s Stealth Expansion

August 26, 2020
By Glenn Ricketts

Last spring semester began with my five courses offered in the usual classroom setting and ended with all of them converted to an online format. My community college, along with virtually all of higher education, went into complete lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and all of our courses were either canceled or taught […]

A New Academy, A New History, and A New Language

August 22, 2020
By Wight Martindale Jr.

When Robert Taft and Adlai Stevenson faced off in the 1952 presidential race, I don’t remember any proposal to overhaul the humanities. Both candidates loved America but had differing political views. Universities were not yet on the front lines of the culture war—institutions had their own leanings, but these views were largely limited to the […]

Dear Black Lives Matter: What is the alternative to the nuclear family?

August 20, 2020
By Gabriel Andrade

If Black Lives Matter were actually about protecting and enriching black lives, then it would be a praise-worthy organization—but it’s not. BLM’s stated goals have little to do with black lives and more to do with social revolution. One of the movement’s founders, Patrisse Cullors, once described BLM’s members as “trained Marxists.” Indeed, they are. […]

Anti-Racism’s Threat to Academic Freedom

August 18, 2020
By John S. Rosenberg

Medpage Today reports that “a paper advocating against affirmative action in cardiology programs is melting under a blast of Twitter heat.” Melting is more wishful thinking than reporting—the substance of the paper was untouched by the firestorm, which was instead inflamed by the author’s opinions—but the assault has indeed been vicious. It also raises an ominous […]

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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

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

Young Americans are Too Sensitive About Speech

Diversity Training and Moral Education