Laments about the politicization of higher education and the ill effects of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies rarely address the roles that university presses play in these processes, but they should. While the presses publish quality scholarship on many subjects, most university presses are committed to contemporary liberal and radical political causes, reflecting the […]
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This essay has two parts. The first part painted a collective portrait of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) staff through the books they recommended for others. Here, I offer personal thoughts on what should constitute common reading for those who, like me, believe our society would thrive if more of us engaged with a […]
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This essay has two parts. First, it offers a collective portrait of the people who work for the National Association of Scholars (NAS) through the lens of the books they think other people should read. Whether that portrait will interest a broader audience, I don’t know, but it interests me not just because the seventeen […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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A recent article in the Atlantic revealed the startling truth that students at Columbia University—one of America’s most elite colleges—are unprepared to read books. Columbia University, where I completed my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature, based its reputation on its famous Core Curriculum, a series of required courses that introduce students to the […]
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I was thinking about the issue of time this past week, while doing what I call cross-reading: reading items online and pausing every few minutes to look something up on a web browser and then returning to the original reading. This is a high-stimulation way of reading, producing an ultrathin layer of information about many […]
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“Beach Books 2014-2016,” released yesterday by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), is a study of mostly summer reading assigned by colleges and universities to their incoming freshman. NAS reports: Our study of common readings during the academic years 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 covers 377 assignments at 366 colleges and universities for the first year and […]
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This morning in the Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes summed up one condition of the Republican Party: “What’s their problem? In Senate races, it’s bad candidates: old hacks (Wisconsin), young hacks (Florida), youngsters (Ohio), Tea Party types who can’t talk about abortion sensibly (Missouri, Indiana), retreads (Virginia), lousy campaigners (North Dakota) and Washington veterans (Michigan). Losers […]
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There may be something to demand-side economics: According to the most recent annual report from the National Science Foundation, the number of Ph.D. degrees awarded in the humanities dropped by almost 5 percent from 2006 to 2007. As Inside Higher Education reported, the decline—steepest for doctorates in literary studies such as English, foreign languages, and […]
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Robert George and Cornel West have teamed up in an unlikely enterprise – co-teaching a Freshmen Seminar, “Great Books and Arguments” at Princeton. You can find the full story in the June issue of the Princeton Alumni magazine. George and West seem to radiate enthusiasm about the collaboration, and, particularly, about the challenges to their […]
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