On Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Professor Kenneth Moss, one of the University of Chicago’s (UChicago) more prominent Jewish historians and a Yiddishist, presided over the anti-Semitism roundtable held at the Franke Institute for the Humanities in Regenstein Library. The room was nearly packed when the roundtable began, with students and faculty attending from all over […]
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There is a nomocratic and teleocratic view of the Constitution. The nomocratic view, which accorded with the original understanding of almost everyone involved, is that the Constitution was designed to bring government under the rule of law, as opposed to achieving any specific purposes. The intention is evident to anyone who will take the trouble […]
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Those of you who wonder what diversity officials do all day must listen to Sheree Marlowe, the new chief diversity officer at Clark University. During first-year orientation, a baffled and tense freshperson asked if she could sing along with a carful of other white people when a song containing the N-word filled the air. “No,” […]
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Now that the University of Chicago announced that it does not condone “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces”—apparently the first major American university to do so—it is time for other institutions of higher learning to get behind this basic and rather obvious educational idea and create a genuine trend. For some 30 years now, the idea […]
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Richard A. Shweder, the University of Chicago anthropologist, who is speaking tonight in Denver at the annual American Anthropological Association convention, is recommending a “no-action” option on Israel/Palestine, meaning that he considers it inappropriate for the Association, as an entity, to support either side of the dispute. An AAA task force has come down on the […]
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In January 2015 the University of Chicago Committee on Freedom of Expression issued a brief report which eloquently made a case for the importance of free speech as “an essential element of the University’s culture.” I commented at the time in an approving manner. Over the ensuing months, the Chicago statement has gathered more and […]
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