If the Obama administration’s argument that Congress has the authority to require every individual to purchase health insurance is upheld by the Supreme Court, many students may be in for a big surprise. Yes, students. The administration argument, briefly, is that access to affordable health care is so essential to both personal and national security […]
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Some of the prizes and awards colleges hand out are real winners. Take, for example, Wayne State’s recently suspended Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in Media Award. Last week, ironically speaking at an event in Detroit to combat “negative stereotyping of members of the Arab community,” Thomas said Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall […]
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According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, leaders of the American Philosophical Association and the American Anthropological Association are worried about cuts in their fields at Howard University because “such moves at the historically black institution would harm attempts to bring black scholars into their disciplines.” In a letter to Howard […]
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As noted in my December 1 essay here, Rigoberta’s Revenge, the American Anthropological Association stuck a stick in a hornet’s nest with its recent decision to remove the word “science” from its long range planning document. Stung by the resulting swarm of criticism, the AAA’s four officer’s have now issued a statement claiming the entire […]
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One of my professors in college defined an anthropologist as “a sociologist in a tent.” His comment was not a compliment — he was a sociologist — but it was true in ways that he did not have in mind. Anthropology has always been a big tent, including as it does what one anthropologist calls […]
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When the history of the decline and fall of the regime of racial preference is written, recognition will of course be given to the power of the moral, philosophical, historical, legal, and political arguments arrayed against the repugnant notion that benefits and burdens should be distributed on the basis of race. But it seems to […]
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In “Rising Admissions Standards Have Kept Top Colleges Out of Many Minority Students’ Reach,” Peter Schmidt reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education on yet another study of blacks and Hispanics being “channelled” into less selective colleges. The most selective colleges have raised the bar for admission over decades in which more black and Hispanic […]
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In “A Supportive Nudge for Minority Graduate Students on the Path to a Ph.D.,” the Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported on the Compact for Faculty Diversity‘s annual Institute on Teaching and Mentoring. The Compact for Faculty Diversity has what its web site acknowledges is “a simple goal: to increase the number of minority students […]
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The Arizona Civil Rights Amendment, also known as Proposition 107 or HCR 2019, will be on the November, 2, 2010, ballot. Virtually identical to similar measures launched by Ward Connerly and passed by substantial margins in California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska, Prop. 107 would amend the Arizona constitution to prohibit the state from “discriminat[ing] against […]
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A couple of weeks ago Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, wrote a serious, humorous, penetrating assessment of the rise of “sustainability” as the new ideology de riguer on college campuses. (The article is also available here, but read it on the Chronicle site if you can — the comments there are […]
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One of the saddest effects of the plague of political correctness that infects most selective campuses is the rampant dissatisfaction and unhappiness it produces. Those who care enormously about the purity of anything are often frustrated by even rumors of deviation from perfection. Just as hi-fi buffs searching for the absolute sound tend to listen […]
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Casual or even close readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed could be forgiven for concluding that higher education in the United States these days is fixated on — indeed, consumed by — an overweening concern with “diversity.” Indeed, if all the reports on and studies of and efforts to promote […]
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On August 30, I noted here that Title IX Has A Disparate Impact–for Black Women. The occasion for that piece was an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Narrowing the Gap, that fawningly reported the dramatic findings of a new book by Deborah Brake, a law professor at Temple, lamenting the lack of “diversity” […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education has been running a series of short articles on “What’s The Big Idea?” in which various scholars respond to the question, “What will be the defining idea of the coming decade, and why?” A couple of days ago Linda Kerber, an old friend of mine (at least she was before […]
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It has dramatically increased the number of white women (and girls; surely women even today remain girls until some point in their K-12 school years) playing on sports teams, but “most of those teams, especially those at the college level, have remained overwhelmingly white.” Title IX, it turns out, hasn’t benefited female athletes of color […]
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Last week both the Chronicle of Higher Education (“Reports Highlight Disparities in Graduation Rates Among White and Minority Students”) and Inside Higher Ed (“‘Gaps Are Not Inevitable’”) reported on two large studies by The Education Trust of the graduation rate gap between white and African-American students and betweenwhites and Hispanics. Even aside from the fact […]
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On July 12th Russell Nieli reminded readers of Minding the Campus what critics of racial preference policies (widely known by the euphemism “affirmative action”) have long known — that when university administrators talk about “diversity,” what they really mean is blacks … and to a lesser degree Hispanics. “Most elite universities,” he pointed out, seem […]
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Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education on July 4 (“Who Gets to Define Ethnic Studies?”), Kenneth P. Monteiro, dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State, criticizes what he calls “a piece of legislative hubris from Arizona that purports to ban ethnic studies in public schools.” Monteiro was referring to Arizona […]
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A revealing window into the mind of modern liberalism (keep snarky comments about looking into a dark, empty room to yourself) is nicely provided by noting what the press, especially the press covering higher educations, regards as controversial. A case in point: On July 2 both Inside Higher Ed (“Controversial Choice for Virginia Tech Board”) […]
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Inside Higher Ed had a brief notice yesterday, “Worldwide Gender Gap in Academic Salaries in Science,” that, though accurate as far as it goes, is revealingly, almost humorously, incomplete and misleading. Here is the IHE piece in its entirety: A worldwide analysis by Nature of the salaries of men and women in academic science has […]
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Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that “seeks to build interfaith cooperation on campus,” has a provocative article on Inside Higher Ed May 20, “The New Campus Culture Wars,” arguing that the campus rage for inclusion, multiculturalism, and diversity has been too narrow. “Muslim students waking up to chalk […]
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A few weeks ago I discussed The Misguided Push for STEM Diversity, noting that every month or so (or so it seems) a new report appears pointing with alarm to the “underrepresentation” of women or blacks or Hispanics or Aleuts (or usually all of the above) in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, math […]
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On Monday the Supreme Court heard arguments in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a case that pitted the right to free association against the principle of non-discrimination. Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, part of the University of California system, has a policy stating that recognized student organizations “shall not discriminate unlawfully on the […]
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In his impressive recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the formerly banned Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan’s first appearance in the United States, Peter Schmidt includes one tidbit that I found particularly interesting. After noting that Ramadan faced a surprising number of critical questions from a Cooper Union audience thought to be overwhelmingly […]
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I was struck by the title of an article that appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education this morning, “Education Dept. Data Show Rise in Enrollment and Student Aid but Flat Graduation Rates.” Unless the purpose of student aid is simply to boost enrollments, it sounds like some people — taxpayers come immediately to mind […]
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Sometimes it seems as though the most heavily researched, richly funded area of American science today involves studies of why there aren’t more women in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and efforts to induce, recruit, and retain more of them. In her article for Minding the Campus, Susan Pinker deftly punctures the omissions […]
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