In November the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison voted to adopt a new policy designed to prohibit “bullying” in professional conduct. To be more exact, the policy states: “Unwelcome behavior pervasive or severe enough that a reasonable person would find it hostile and/or intimidating and that does not further the University’s academic or […]
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Last month, we had two cases of college presidents at high-profile universities join in student protests over the grand jury’s decision in the Ferguson case. Here is a story on President Eric Barron, head of Penn State, standing amidst students with hands raised. The students had spent two days gathering on campus, shouting slogans (“Black lives […]
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“Be the difference” is the motto of Marquette University, the generally not-very-newsworthy Jesuit university in Milwaukee. Marquette is in the news now for reasons that it cannot be very happy about. First a teaching assistant at the Catholic institution, Cheryl Abbate, a doctoral student in philosophy, was caught on tape earlier this year giving a […]
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KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr. say the mess at the University of Virginia over the Rolling Stone story of alleged rape is worse than the notorious mishandling of the Duke lacrosse case.
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Among the many institutions facing due process lawsuits none, perhaps, is more deserving than Duke, a university that all but defined hostility to due process in the lacrosse case. The school lost in court last year, in a case filed by Lewis McLeod, whom Duke had branded a rapist after a highly dubious procedure. McLeod […]
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In 2014, twenty-eight Harvard Law professors published the strongest coordinated response to the post-2011 campus war on due process. The professors lamented that they found “the new sexual harassment policy inconsistent with many of the most basic principles we teach.” They alleged that Harvard’s new policies “lack the most basic elements of fairness and due […]
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The University of Virginia has distinguished itself in its ability to pretend that the collapse of Sabrina Erdely’s Rolling Stone article never occurred. President Teresa Sullivan—after rashly suspending not merely the fraternity at which “Jackie” was supposedly assaulted, but all fraternities—refused to lift the ban, or even to acknowledge that the factual basis for her […]
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The post-Ferguson and post-Garner racial agitation has led to a wave of violent rhetoric and actual violence in the United States. Street protesters have called for “pigs in blankets,” declaring, “Arms up, shoot back,” and asking, “What do want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.” This rhetoric has campus amplifiers. Is the infatuation with violence […]
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A long report by the Chronicle of Higher Education finds alcohol abuse among college students nearly apocalyptic. Each year 1800 college students die from alcohol-related causes and consumption of booze seems to keep rising. One college town police officer said: Average blood-alcohol levels in students stopped by the police have risen steadily—this year one blew […]
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Steven Pinker, an experimental psychologist and prominent public intellectual, has written an important letter concerning the latest controversy over Israel at Harvard University, where he is based. Such controversies are notuncommon there. First, some background. SodaStream, an Israeli company that makes a popular home carbonation system, has been an object of the boycott, divestment, sanctions […]
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When the White House released the outlines of its long awaited college ratings plan on Friday, the world of higher education was underwhelmed. Colleges are “a little mystified,” Sarah Flanagan of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities told the Chronicle of Higher Education. “There isn’t much new here, and there isn’t much that […]
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FOIA requests from several reporters prompted the release of numerous e-mails between various UVA officials and Rolling Stone’s Sabrina Erdely and fact-checker Elizabeth Garber-Paul. A few items that we learned: Erdely and UVA Employees The e-mails show that UVA wanted to control its message by not allowing Erdely to interview lower-level administrators. As a result, […]
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To most Americans, Catherine Lhamon is all but unknown. As the U.S. Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, however, she plays an outsized role in pursuing colleges for their purportedly incompetent handing of sexual assault cases. As the issue of campus sexual assault continues to make news, it’s important that we understand her […]
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James Ceaser recently became the first UVA professor to publicly speak out regarding the deeply unhealthy climate on his campus, exposed by the publication of the now-discredited Rolling Stone article alleging multiple gang rapes at the school. (The sole source for each of these allegations appears to have been “Jackie.”) Ceaser lamented how few people […]
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Simple Justice This post is about the month-long uproar at the University of Michigan triggered by a satire of liberal thought by a conservative Muslim student, Omar Mahmood. As a result, he was fired by the Michigan Daily and the door to his apartment was pelted with eggs and covered in obscene graffiti. *** When I read Omar […]
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One of the most revealing statements of 2014 was made by comedian Chris Rock, who told interviewer Frank Rich that he no longer appears on college campuses because “everything offends students these days.” (Read about that here.) In case you think Rock was exaggerating, a recent incident at the University of Michigan shows how correct […]
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Marquette University, the Jesuit school in Milwaukee, has shot itself in the foot again. Weeks ago in a “Theory of Ethics” class, philosophy instructor Cheryl Abbate listed several possible topics of discussion, but said one of them –gay marriage—could not be addressed because any opposition argument would offend homosexual students, and besides society has already […]
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“This isn’t another message about higher education in crisis.This is a message about what higher education should be.” So reads the urgent email that faculty across the country received recently from the American Association of University Professors. A hundred years after the organization’s founding, the AAUP’s leaders are worried that people don’t understand what higher […]
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The collapse of the Rolling Stone rape story had an important byproduct—it showed the stunning unfairness of UVA’s proposed new sexual assault policies. UVA’s proposed guidelines, like those of many colleges, are heavily pitched toward accusers, minimize due process and all but ensure that key evidence will not come before the university, especially if that […]
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The people who run Harvard College rarely wade into intensely controversial public policy issues. Their personal views may not be at all representative of the Harvard alumni whose contributions are needed to keep the endowment growing. It is thus somewhat surprising that the Harvard administration has been so unhinged by the deaths in Ferguson and […]
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