Minding The Campus - Page 2 of 117 -

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 […]

How Oberlin Played the Race Card and Lost

June 24, 2019
By Peter Wood

Are Oberlin College officials serious when they say they were defending students’ free speech? That remains the college’s defense even after a jury found the college guilty of libel and interference with business in its dealings with Gibson’s Food Mart and Bakery. Gibson’s Bakery felt defamed by Oberlin College’s involvement in a campaign accusing the […]

Are the Doors to Elite Universities Still Open to Jewish Students?

June 22, 2019
By Anne Hendershott

Fifty years ago, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published a celebratory article with the title: “Doors of Ivy League Colleges Reported Wide Open for Jewish Students.” Reporting that in 1967, “40 percent of the students at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania are now Jewish. At Yale, Harvard and Cornell, the Jewish student number between 20 […]

Liberals and the Looming Big Money Problem Facing Higher Education

June 18, 2019
By John S. Rosenberg

Today’s liberals not only tolerate but encourage colleges and universities to give preferences based on race (see affirmative action and the College Board’s new “adversity” score). Now they want to prohibit giving preferential admissions treatment based on … well, it’s not completely clear, but family wealth comes pretty close. As a result, many defenders of […]

The $44 Million Verdict Against Oberlin

June 13, 2019
By KC Johnson

Oberlin College just got hit again with a jury judgment that could cripple the college financially. Last Friday, the jury found the college guilty of libel and returned a verdict award of $11.2 million to Gibson’s, a local store and its proprietors. Today, the jury added $33 million in punitive damages – a clear sign […]

Whitewashing the Harm Colleges Inflict on the Nation

June 10, 2019
By George Leef

Over the last half-century, higher education in America has been transformed from a quiet backwater with relatively little influence or cost into a powerful system responsible for or at least deeply complicit in numerous deleterious trends that are today wreaking havoc on the nation. A bill of indictment would have to include the following. The […]

Let’s Privatize State Colleges

June 6, 2019
By Richard Vedder

Op-Ed. An estimated 14.67 million college students attend what we call “state universities.” Some of them are renowned highly selective research institutions like the University of California at Berkeley or the University of Michigan, while others are relatively obscure schools with an open admissions policy. But all receive some degree of subsidization from the state […]

When Radical Ideologies Corrupt Universities

June 4, 2019
By Allen Farrington

I keep being invited to talk about free speech on college campuses and every time I’m invited I make the same point: that this isn’t about free speech and this is only tangentially about college campuses. This is about a breakdown in the basic logic of civilization, and it’s spreading. College campuses may be the […]

Will the Universities Start to Collapse?

June 3, 2019
By Roger Kimball

People used to talk about the ends of the university and how the academic establishment was failing its students. Today, more and more people are talking about the end of the university, the idea being that it is time to think about closing them rather than reforming them. Last month at a conference in London, […]

Yet Another Attack on Due Process by Title IX

May 30, 2019
By KC Johnson

“It’s Title IX, not Miranda,” Susan Riseling, former chief of police at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told a conference of academic administrators in 2015. “Use what you can.” Riseling was describing a case in which a Wisconsin student had been subjected to both a criminal and a Title IX complaint. The police originally didn’t have enough […]

Goodbye Humanities—Hating White Males Is Not a Curriculum

May 29, 2019
By Mark Bauerlein

As the humanities continue their steady slide toward the margins of the campus, the faculty still can’t look in the mirror and face the sources of the problem. Last month in the Chronicle of Higher Education, four assistant professors of English responded to a previous essay about the state of the field and unintentionally revealed […]

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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?

Studying 'Angry White Males'

The University of Kansas has approved a course called “angry white male studies,” open to all students willing to take a women’s studies course first. The course on white males will explore recent changes in demographics since the 1950s. Republican Congressman Ron Estes took a dim view, arguing that ”KU is offering a class that divides the student population and could pose a TitleIX violation by creating a hostile campus movement based on gender.”
The course will be taught by Christopher Forth, who focuses on gender, fat-shaming, and masculinity.

In response to "Doing Physics While Black"

Physics “for students with little or no high school physics or calculus.”

This is like teaching SCUBA diving to people who don't know how to swim or having your first hike being the entire Appalachian Trail. Or putting Pop Warner players into an NFL game.

Trig, Geometry, and Algebra likely isn't enough, because without calculus, you cannot teach physics. You can teach principles of physics without it, and the value of such a course taught to non-science majors should not be dismissed. But expecting someone to major in Physics without a solid math background is like expecting someone to make it onto an NBA team without being able to dribble.

For example, if you don't understand sine curves, you will never understand AC Power -- you may understand not to connect the phases together, and what happens if you do, but not why. It's that simple.

And it's not fair to the students, either. We're setting kids up to fail.

-Ed Cutting, Amherst, Massachussets

An Opponent of Due Process for the Supreme Court?

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

Why Harvard’s Affirmative Action Victory Should Be Overturned