Author’s Note: This article originally appeared in my weekly Top of Mind newsletter, which goes out to subscribers every Thursday. Sign up to receive it directly in your inbox. I write to you this week from the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range. The air is cold here, but the scenes are spectacular. I’m without my usual […]
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Thanksgiving is a time for celebrating traditions, sharing a meal with friends and family, and—if you’re on the left—reciting somber land acknowledgements about “Indigenous Peoples” before passing the mashed potatoes. American universities have been issuing land acknowledgements for more than a decade. These statements, meant to recognize the supposed ancestral claims of “Indigenous Peoples” displaced […]
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Our American Revolution series now has its own home on Substack. What began as a special project of the National Association of Scholars—hosted on Minding the Campus—has grown into a full-fledged historical series worthy of its own platform. The new Substack will serve as a dedicated archive, collecting all past essays and providing a permanent […]
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Harvard wants the world to know it is taking open inquiry seriously again. Last week, the Harvard Gazette ran a glowing report announcing that the university is “building momentum on open inquiry.” It showcased new workshops, training sessions for teaching fellows, dialogue exercises for first-year students, and online modules imported from the Constructive Dialogue Institute—all […]
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As the education system has failed to impart even basic financial literacy to young Americans, the financial-trading company Robinhood is promising to fill the gap. In September, Robinhood launched its new Money Drills initiative, aimed at bringing financial education to college students. The program was designed “with student athletes” in mind, targeting young athletes who […]
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While students on America’s college campuses are locked in intense debates over gender-neutral pronouns and inclusive bathrooms, they seem far less attuned to the national crises that will define their futures: the soaring national debt and a collapsing social safety net. The national debt continues to grow largely unnoticed by students. The U.S. debt now […]
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I spent a week in Manhattan just before Zohran Mamdani got elected. It was clear to me that the tide was moving in his favor. Despite all the hustle and bustle and robust capitalism of the place, New Yorkers have been moving to the left for decades. Cultural Marxism and its alliance with radical Islam […]
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I got dressed up for a conversation with Teresa Manning to discuss the many crises currently swallowing American education. We start with President Trump’s higher-education compact—its promises, its limitations, and its enforcement power, which hovers somewhere between “symbolic” and “nonexistent.” From there, Manning and I move into the growing national-security risks tied to foreign student […]
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Helen Andrews hit the nail on the head when she argued that wokeness is the rampant feminization of American society. Her recent and widely read piece in Compact captured what many Americans sense but struggle to name. Yet questions remain: Will the great feminization continue, and for our purposes, how did educational institutions set it […]
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A recent TikTok scroll session led me into a rabbit hole of videos covering the case of University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier. In December 2015, he traveled to North Korea as part of a guided tour with a private Chinese travel company that marketed to college students. One month later, he was arrested at […]
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Relief but caution is the order of the day, counsels the Harvard Crimson’s Megan Blonigen and Jona Liu: “Harvard’s Funds are Back. Can Its Scientists Trust the Government Again?” The real question for Harvard’s scientists should be: Do we want the funding back? The answer to that question should be “no.” For several decades, our […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on RealClear Education on October 29, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. In an online discussion about educational testing, an exasperated education professional interjected that the whole discussion was moot. Had there ever been even a […]
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Henry Knox was only 25 years old when he convinced George Washington to trust him with retrieving nearly 60 tons of artillery from Fort Ticonderoga and getting it to Boston before the winter was out. A Boston bookseller turned self-taught artilleryman, Knox had already shown in the siege lines that he possessed the combination of […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is the prepared text of a speech delivered by NAS Director of Research David Randall to the School Board Member Alliance of Virginia on November 14. In it, Randall outlines practical steps Virginia school boards can take to restore rigorous, liberty-focused civics and social studies instruction. We publish the speech here […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on RealClear Education on October 23, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission In the years since Hamas’s October 7 attack, America’s colleges and universities have become moral barometers, and many have failed the test. At Columbia, […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on the author’s Substack Heterodox STEM on October 14, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), proudly trumpeting its obscurantism, has pre-published “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity: The problems with […]
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Note: Top of Mind subscribers received a condensed version of this article in this week’s newsletter. This is the full-length piece, including copies of the assignments discussed. If one were to need a specific example of how colleges and universities are creating leftist foot soldiers, they need look no further than the assignments currently being […]
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On November 13, 1775, Brigadier General Richard Montgomery led the victorious American army into the city of Montreal. He had laid the military foundation for the state of Canada to join the Union, and went off with his army toward Quebec City to finish the campaign, which did not go as planned. The Battle of […]
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Princeton University’s decision to reinstate SAT and ACT testing requirements marks a victory for common sense. The students who choose not to report their test scores to admissions departments are generally those who calculate that their scores are too low to make their applications competitive. Colleges have always understood that, but have gone along with […]
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With every passing year, the left exhibits greater contempt for America, and that trend is evident in the growing disrespect for Veterans Day on college campuses. Colleges and universities not only replace patriotic traditions with woke celebrations like Juneteenth, but openly advocate against this day of remembrance for U.S. service members. Institutions such as Harvard, […]
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July 2025 was the centennial of the famous “monkey trial” of John Thomas Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee. Scopes was on trial for violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of any theory of the origin of man that contradicted the account in Genesis. There is a preferred narrative for the Scopes trial, which goes […]
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College students are on an alarming path of equating words with weapons and supporting politically-motivated violence to stop “harmful speech.” Even before the assassination of Turning Point USA founder and free speech champion Charlie Kirk, college students have increasingly seen free speech as an enemy of safety and security. The free speech group Freedom of […]
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