Attack on Vanderbilt Clinic Has Ripple Effects
"Vanderbilt University Medical Center opened its Transgender Health Clinic in 2018 in order to, in its own words, serve 'a high-risk population' who 'have been consistently underserved by the U.S. health system.' ... But like so many clinics that offer similar services, it has become the center of a political firestorm, the focus of an attack by right-wing media that has stoked the ire of Republican lawmakers and triggered harassment of clinic staff." – Inside Higher Ed, 9/26/22
"They have conflated the laudable ethical claim that all humans deserve dignity, respect, and equal moral consideration with the implausible empirical claim that humans are born with roughly the same characteristics and capabilities. This conflation has led to fear, antipathy, and even censorship of writings that examine human variation on socially valued traits because it has encouraged the erroneous idea that human variation is a threat to moral equality." – Quillette, 9/26/22
N.C. Campuses’ Long War
"World wars have been fought in less time than the battle the UNC and N.C. Community College Systems have waged to create a user-friendly database that active-duty military personnel and veterans can use to ease their transition into higher education." – James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, 9/26/22
Florida Asserts Control of Public Universities’ Curricula
"The state of Florida, in responding to a lawsuit, asserted that it has near total control of the curriculum at public universities. Six professors, one retired professor and a student have sued to challenge the Individual Freedom Act, which bars them from endorsing eight concepts of race or racial superiority. The professors say the law unfairly restricts their freedom to speak out." – Inside Higher Ed, 9/26/22
Hostages No More
"In her new memoir, [Betsy] Devos reminds us that the founder of American public education, Horace Mann, based his system on 'the model of rigid, mass education developed in eighteenth-century Prussia,' and that he described parents as 'having given hostages to our cause.' In DeVos’s view, it’s time for parents to take back education from the technocrats and 'experts' and teachers’ unions and thereby ensure that their children are, in the words of her title, 'Hostages No More.'" – FrontPageMag, 9/26/22
These steps can help keep colleges from being easy targets for cyberattacks
"Over the last two years, cybersecurity concerns have come to the forefront for many industries, with governments and critical infrastructure operators taking new steps to secure their digital assets. As the education industry faces the same impacts of rising cybersecurity threats, it is critical that educational institutions take the following steps to invest in their security." – Higher Ed Dive, 9/26/22
A Show of Solidarity
"Professors at Southern Connecticut State University are rallying behind a local teacher investigated for sharing a list of terms about race and gender with 10th-grade students. ... The glossary in question contains such terms as explicit and implicit bias, bigotry versus prejudice, cisgender, cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation, structural racism, and white privilege." – Inside Higher Ed, 9/26/22
A New Counterculture?
"For at least a century, the Left has held a firm monopoly on 'transgressive chic,' profitably waging a countercultural guerilla war against society’s hegemonic status quo. For the Right to capture some of the Left’s youthful energy and rebellious cachet would represent a tectonic cultural and political shift. We shouldn’t be shocked if it happens." – American Greatness, 9/25/22
Should college students follow the money?
"In the past, the number of students majoring in humanities and arts disciplines tended to ebb and flow with the economy, declining during hard times and rebounding in a growing economy. Recent years, however, have seen a consistent shift away from the humanities and arts and toward fields like engineering, health care, and business. 'Follow the money' may be sound advice when pursuing political corruption, but if taken as a guide to higher education, we will all be the poorer for it." – The Hill, 9/25/22
Nowhere Mann
"I realize that a transformation to an all-private system could not happen overnight, but a 13-year phase-in would be workable. Let the kindergartners escape first, and then add a grade each year through grade 12, so by the end of 13 years, the conversion would be complete. That way, every young person now enrolled in a public school could complete her k-12 education the old-fashioned way." – American Greatness, 9/25/22
