Minding The Campus

Recent Articles Show Stunning Lack of Self-Awareness among Higher Education Establishment

April 9, 2022
By Silence Dogood

Set forth below are three articles that appeared in the last few weeks in the higher education trade press: A ‘Stunning’ Level of Student Disconnection How a President Decided It Was Time to Close His College The Enrollment Crisis for Men Continues to Worsen The first two appeared in the bible of the higher education […]

How to Fix Borrower Defense

April 8, 2022
By Neetu Arnold

Mass student debt forgiveness is unpopular with Republicans and even some Democrats. As such, it’s unlikely that the Biden administration will forgive all $1.45 trillion in student loan debt prior to the midterm elections. But that hasn’t stopped unelected bureaucrats in the administration from working behind closed doors to forgive massive amounts of student loans […]

Suppressing Pro-Israel Views at the University of Chicago

April 7, 2022
By Richard L. Cravatts

Student newspaper retracts an op-ed challenging the tactics of anti-Israel radicals The suppression of pro-Israel views on college campuses has been a troubling development in the ongoing cognitive war against Israel. Now, the silencing of pro-Israel voices even appears in student newspapers. The McGill Daily, as one troubling example, has a long-standing, publicly announced policy […]

Normalizing Illiberalism

April 6, 2022
By Wenyuan Wu

What does it take for a fringe dogma that preys on frail human divisions and obsesses with power struggles to be promoted en masse and generally accepted in a country where political liberalism had been the norm? The radical reshaping of contemporary American minds towards an unnatural preoccupation with cultural relativism and identity tribalism began […]

Debunking the Debunker

April 4, 2022
By Alexander Riley

The racist, determinist, and anti-individualist mythology behind Robin DiAngelo’s “most common myths white people believe about race” Robin DiAngelo has suddenly gotten very well-known and much wealthier because of her tapping by cultural and educational elites as one of the “experts” on white racism and concomitant non-white suffering. The university at which I am employed […]

Town vs. Gown: A Personal Memoir

April 2, 2022
By Robert Weissberg

America is awash in culture wars, but one of the least noticed yet most consequential is the hostility between the academy and business. More is involved than a gaggle of Marxist professors condemning capitalism. Academics, especially those in the social sciences and humanities, not only support the increasingly anti-business Democratic Party; their loathing is often […]

The Latest Batch of Forgiven Loans Shows Why Student Loan Forgiveness Is Such a Bad Idea

March 31, 2022
By Andrew Gillen

The Department of Education is going to forgive an additional $6.2 billion in student loans for 100,000 students through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. This adds to the $1 billion in previously forgiven loans for 11,000 students. This shows one of the reasons why student loan forgiveness is such a bad idea. Under the […]

Professor KC Johnson Sues over Violation of FOIA by Education Department

March 30, 2022
By Hans Bader

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Liberty Unyielding on March 28, 2022, and is republished here with permission. Under the Freedom of Information Act, federal agencies are supposed to respond to records requests within 20 working days, and hand over the records “promptly” thereafter, if they aren’t exempt from disclosure. But rather than doing that, they frequently violate […]

The Middle East Studies Association Betrays Academia

March 29, 2022
By Philip Carl Salzman

The Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the world’s major organization devoted to studying this region, has jettisoned academic impartiality and the quest for truth in favor of political partisanship and extremist activism. In 2017, MESA dropped its self-designation as a “non-political learned society” so that it could pursue an anti-Israel agenda. MESA has not yet […]

Seventeen Years—And Still Waiting!

March 26, 2022
By W. Lee Hansen

Federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Refuses to Rule on UW-Madison Title VI Violations In February 2005 the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents ignored my complaints that several financial aid programs violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These programs restricted eligibility to students based on their race, color, and national […]

Soviet-Style Surveillance at a Connecticut University

March 25, 2022
By Jay Bergman

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by FrontPage Magazine on March 23, 2022, and is republished here with permission. Last month, in a statement issued by its Office of Equity and Inclusion, Central Connecticut State University established a new policy designating faculty, administrators, and nearly all other employees as “mandated reporters.” In that capacity, they are required […]

Regulatory Capture of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education

March 25, 2022
By Wenyuan Wu

On March 21, 2021, the Governing Board at the California Community Colleges (CCC), the state-wide public higher education entity in charge of 116 community colleges, held a public meeting to discuss a regulatory proposal on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA). The proposal would amend the California Code of Regulations to establish a set of […]

Modern Day Brownshirts Suppress Free Speech at Yale Law School

March 24, 2022
By Richard L. Cravatts

Why the heckler’s veto is wrong and why universities must prevent its use As further confirmation that universities have devolved into islands of repression in a sea of freedom, some 120 Yale Law School students seriously disrupted a panel event on March 10th. Sponsored by the Yale Federalist Society, the event featured Kristen Waggoner, lead […]

On the Non-Diversity of Diversity and Inclusion

March 22, 2022
By Rebekah Wanic & Nina Powell

As universities continue to shift toward the endorsement of a social justice and equity-based agenda, academics are increasingly confronted with the need to be more inclusive and diverse in their teaching practice, module content, and modes of evaluation. We are told that this is desirable, typically without any real explanation or grounded argument for why […]

Resistance Is Not Futile

March 18, 2022
By Kenin M. Spivak

Professors are speaking out against progressive dogma University faculties are reeling from an unrelenting bombardment of progressive artillery aimed at decimating American traditions and laws intended to protect free speech, academic freedom, and racial and gender impartiality. Expressing even modest dissent prompts escalating aggression from students, administrators, and others. Careers, the Fourteenth Amendment, civil rights […]

Unmasking the Campaign against “White Supremacy Culture” in Science

March 17, 2022
By Mitt Castor

A revealing article in the February 2022 issue of Frontiers in Communications provides tremendous insight into the roadmap that Critical Theory advocates are using to conquer STEM, the last academic sector still holding out against the long march through the institutions. Titled “Acknowledging and Supplanting White Supremacy Culture in Science Communication and STEM: The Role […]

Another Hopeful Sign: Hiers v. Board of Regents

March 16, 2022
By Louis K. Bonham

In my last piece, I covered the recent decision in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School District, where the court declared that a new admissions process for a highly-regarded STEM-focused high school was unconstitutional, finding that scrapping the old merit-based process in favor of “racial balancing” (based on Kendian “equity” principles) was clearly illegal […]

CDC Lowers Expectations for Child Development, Raising New Questions for Parents

March 14, 2022
By Shanxi Omoniyi

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClearEducation on March 9, 2022, and is republished here with permission. The CDC has changed its list of children’s developmental milestones for infants and young children, marking the first update of its kind since 2004. The move has generally been portrayed in the media as a positive adjustment, with claims that it […]

A Gay Bar of Our Own

March 12, 2022
By Robert Weissberg

It is not a good time in today’s academy for those who prize truth. One false step, one off-hand remark, one “wrong” vote on the latest hare-brained DIE initiative, and it’s off to purgatory or worse. Even if found innocent of corrupting young minds by telling the truth, the very thought of facing a Kafkaesque […]

Silencing Disfavored Speech

March 10, 2022
By Richard L. Cravatts

UC Hastings law students expose the intolerance of the race-obsessed Left As further evidence that the campus woke persist in trying to determine what may and may not be said on university campuses, activist students at UC Hastings College of Law shut down the appearance of conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro at a March 1st […]

« Previous 1 2 3 4 … 196 Next »

Why teachers will — and won’t — discuss Buffalo grocery store shooting

"Teachers are once again grappling with how to address with their students racially motivated killings in America, this time that at a Buffalo supermarket where 13 people were shot — 11 of them Black — and 10 died. A White teenager, who police said wrote an online document citing the 'great replacement' theory, has been charged with and pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting. The racist theory says that non-White immigrants are being brought into the United States to eliminate Whites. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers have at one time or another echoed the racist idea." - Washington Post, 5/16/22

Making Their Arguments Against Affirmative Action

"Thirty-four briefs were filed, most of them last week, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its past support for affirmative action in college admissions. The briefs could be cited in the Supreme Court’s decision, expected next year, on the admissions systems at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. No college or university filed a brief, although the deadline for briefs in favor of Harvard and UNC is more than a month away. Many colleges and higher education associations are expected to weigh in at that time." - Inside Higher Ed, 5/16/22

‘Faculty Should Be Outraged’

"Soka University of America is accusing its only queer professor of color, Aneil Rallin, of exposing students to 'deviant pornography' and 'vaguely pedophilic' materials in a class called Writing the Body. A faculty committee at the California campus will consider the case later this week. It will then make recommendations about disciplinary action—up to dismissal—to the same interim dean who charged Rallin using those terms. Rallin says the accusations are based on complaints from three students who took Writing the Body in the fall and from one student outside the course." - Inside Higher Ed, 5/16/22

Financial aid administrators call for student loan system reforms

"The federal government’s student financial aid system has long come under fire, drawing a range of accusations: the U.S. Department of Education is lax in monitoring loan servicers, loan forgiveness is difficult for borrowers to secure, students are shepherded into plans that make little sense for their financial circumstances. ... In light of these discussions, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, along with a cadre of 21 higher education organizations, developed recommendations to improve the federal loan system. More than two-dozen resulting suggestions range from how to streamline loan plans to how to better oversee servicers." - Higher Ed Dive, 5/16/22

Multiculturalism Is Anti-Culture

"The destruction inflicted by multiculturalism is not accidental. It is not an unanticipated byproduct of otherwise good intentions. The destruction is the point of multiculturalism. It attacks culture as a means to foster 'inclusion,' bringing about greater 'social justice,' a goal that can only be achieved by eliminating the hierarchies, privileges, and coercive force that necessarily serve as the binding agents for every culture." - The American Conservative, 5/16/22

Harvard ends undergrad teaching program, tells students to get a master’s instead

"Aspiring teachers at Harvard University will no longer be able to just obtain an undergraduate certificate under a recent decision by the Ivy League school. Harvard announced the end of its Undergraduate Teacher Education Program and said students could obtain a Master’s in Education from the Graduate School of Education’s new Teaching and Teacher Leadership program. ... The decision comes after low enrollment and a $40 million donation in February to create scholarships for students in the new TTL program." - The College Fix, 5/16/22

Texas A&M Weighs Sweeping Changes to Library

"The Texas A&M University system is working on a plan that would make sweeping changes across its 10 libraries. Those changes, still being discussed, would include asking librarians to relinquish tenure or transfer to another academic department to keep it. ... as administrators have suggested additional changes, including to employee classification, faculty members have pushed back, arguing that proposed structural changes to the library system will do more harm than good." - Inside Higher Ed, 5/16/22

Colleges must improve their data use for racial equity efforts

"A major concern is that universities will back away from their commitments because a predominant view of racial inequality in society and by organizations is that it is mainly the result of bad actors with bad intentions. Such institutional tunnel vision on interpersonal interactions can present a false sense of progress. Data, and better uses of it, can play a more central role in monitoring and sustaining higher education’s commitments to racial equity and justice amid mounting political pressures to provide responses and justifications for such decisions. Incorporating data further into decision-making in this political climate is critical to upholding the commitments made over the past two years." - Higher Ed Dive, 5/16/22

Oberlin College Appeals To Ohio Supreme Court In Gibson’s Bakery Case

"On May 13, 2022, Oberlin College and Meredith Raimondo filed an appeal in the Ohio Supreme Court, after losing their appeal from the massive trial verdicts. ... Whether the Ohio Supreme Court decides to hear the case is discretionary under the factors listed above. Historically the court has agreed to hear only about 10% of the Jurisdictional Appeals filed. Since Oberlin College does not have a right to have the Ohio Supreme Court hear the case, it filed a Memorandum In Support of Jurisdiction. ... Of all the documents I’ve seen in this case, Oberlin College’s Memorandum In Support of Jurisdiction may be the most tendentious, bordering on mendacious." - Legal Insurrection, 5/15/22

Remaining monolingual is a surefire way for America to fall behind

"We encourage parents to make language instruction for their children a priority. Employers should partner with schools, colleges, and universities to support the training and recruitment of graduates with foreign language skills. Colleges and universities, many of which have no language requirements or require just a year of instruction, should consider encouraging or even requiring students to graduate with fluency in a foreign language. ... After all, in an increasingly interconnected, highly competitive, multilingual world, remaining monolingual is a surefire way for America to fall behind." - The Hill, 5/15/22

Bending the Knee for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity

Free Speech Under Fire at Saint Vincent College

Higher Ed’s New 90-Hour Degree Scheme