Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the Law & Liberty on November 5, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Arguments about the Electoral College are often shallow. Opponents claim it is a relic of slavery and the product of the Founders’ distrust of democracy. They cite […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the College Fix on November 6, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Proponents of “racial equity” training have received $5 million from the National Institutes of Health to “generate evidence” in support of their program at the University of Pittsburgh. […]
Read More
For a time, I worked at a South African university, where my department still upheld the civilized practice of morning tea. One morning, I happened to arrive a few minutes late but found an open seat at a table just as a senior professor was opining—in very orotund tones, naturally—to some Honours students, “Wouldn’t it […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the National Association of Scholars on November 4, 2024, and is crossposted here with permission. Higher education has lurched from crisis to crisis over the past five years. The COVID-19 pandemic kept many would-be students from attending college while seriously straining university budgets. Colleges continue to face demographic declines, with one million […]
Read More
In modern higher education, students hold unprecedented power over faculty and university governance. This influence, shaped by the combined forces of cancel culture, student consumerism, and administrative bloat, has shifted the traditional power dynamics, leading to significant consequences for how universities function and how faculty engage with students. Although student empowerment can sometimes drive positive change, […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Liberty Unyielding on November 1, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. It has been edited to fit Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. Kamala Harris will make campus censorship worse through her judicial appointments as president. Progressive judges appointed by Joe Biden have upheld punishment and investigation of moderate, conservative, and libertarian […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClear Science on November 4, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. The latest research fraud scandal concerns one Eliezer Masliah. He’s one of the world’s leading researchers into Alzheimer’s and it looks as if he fabricated a good deal of his data. […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClear Education on November 4, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Over the last 60 years, there has been unconscionable neglect of civics and American history at both the K-12 and university levels. Surveys by the American Council of […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClear Politics on November 2, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. On the eve of a big national election, it is easy to get swept up in the excitement of presidential politics. The White House, after all, is often […]
Read More
The issue of toxicity in American culture runs the gamut. From sexist accusations toward men to the haughty denunciations of so-called elites of those not as fortunate, it is prevalent and problematic. Toxicity is prevalent because it seems to be pervasive in all corners of American society. It is problematic because American culture has rapidly shifted […]
Read More
The University of Austin (UATX) differs from other elite universities in several ways. Yet, on many of those dimensions, UATX is similar to other individual schools. The University of Chicago is just as committed to free expression. Caltech is just as dismissive of intercollegiate athletics. UATX’s Polaris Project, on the other hand, is like nothing […]
Read More
Having witnessed profound political changes under America’s first “Common Man” president – Andrew Jackson, Alexis de Tocqueville issued stern warnings against the “tyranny of the majority” in his otherwise glowing account of American Democracy: If liberty is ever lost in America, it will be necessary to lay the blame on the omnipotence of the majority […]
Read More
In today’s academic hiring process, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) statements are a common requirement for faculty hiring across the United States. As seen in a rubric obtained by Minding the Campus through a public records request, the University of Oregon evaluates DEI statements by awarding points to applicants based on their demonstrated “knowledge” of […]
Read More
Postmodern philosophers once hailed “the death of the author,” which was part of their strategy to decenter meaning in texts and free culture from the tyranny of metanarratives. Meaning cannot be found in a text without discerning the author’s intentions. All such controls and stipulations should be rejected as authoritarian. Objective meaning must give way […]
Read More
The decline of civic education in this country has led to an alarming lack of understanding among young people about how our government works. Pair that failure with the leftwing voices in media, government, and academia constantly clamoring about “our democracy,” and it’s easy to see why so many young people today embrace potentially destructive […]
Read More
My street in the Upper West Side of New York City takes Halloween seriously. A week or more before the kids go trick-or-treating, our block features an abundance of ghoulishly carved pumpkins, life-sized plastic skeletons, and enough gauzy cobwebs to set the stage for a dozen Boris Karloff movies. My forays to the suburbs and […]
Read More
Americans think George Ticknor (1791–1871) was their nation’s first Hispanist. They’re wrong; and they overrate the intellect of the Harvard professor. Like his admirers, Ticknor had a linear and encyclopedic mind. We should be grateful—he collected and collated the major texts of the modern history of European literature. But his analysis was buggy, handicapped by […]
Read More
Happy Halloween! The National Association of Scholars—which you should join—held its annual board meeting this past weekend in Denver. It was a delight to finally have that long-anticipated conversation about artificial intelligence (AI) with my colleagues—in person. AI is everywhere these days. It makes headlines in higher education as students turn to it for everything […]
Read More
The fight over student loan forgiveness has consumed most of the attention of the higher education policy world, and as a result, other policies are receiving much less attention than they should. One such neglected topic is borrower defense to repayment, which is a method of waiving repayment requirements for student loan borrowers who were […]
Read More
The case for vigorous, free-wheeling intellectual debates seems to be making a comeback on today’s campuses. This awakening is particularly evident in the growth of organizations dedicated to building a robust marketplace of ideas ruled by logic and evidence, not violent intimidation. Examples include the Academic Freedom Alliance, the Committee on Open Expression, North Carolina’s […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: Below is an excerpt of the article “Hochul Report Whitewashes Teachers Union Antisemitism,” originally posted on American Spectator on October 29, 2024. It has been edited to match MTC style guidelines. The full essay can be found here. When New York Gov. Kathy Hochul commissioned a report on the City University of New York’s rampant […]
Read More
“What kind of a friend could pull a knife When it’s him or you and his kids need shoes? What kind of friend would do you in When the bomb goes off and the shelter’s his? … What kind of friend would tell you lies To spare you from the bitter truth? And what kind […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: Below is a short excerpt from Michelle Kamhi’s essay posted on X. The full essay delves into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly the author’s response to a friend’s pro-Palestinian viewpoint. With permission, this excerpt is crossposted here, as readers of Minding the Campus may find it valuable in addressing campus anti-Semitism and pro-Palestine protests. […]
Read More