Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the Observatory of University Ethicson August 1, 2024. It was translated into English by the Observatory before being edited to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is crossposted here with permission. There is a lot of talk these days about “academic freedom,” but it is mostly to say […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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“Like a mutating virus, racism shape-shifts in order to stay alive; when its explicit expression becomes taboo, it hides in coded language.” — Kathy Waldman In 2024, several states, including Idaho, Utah, Iowa, North Dakota, and Arizona, passed laws prohibiting public universities from using “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) statements as part of the hiring process. […]
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When the FBI learned of the extent to which James “Whitey” Bulger had subverted their Boston Field Office, their response was to clean it out, replacing absolutely everyone in it. Even those who hadn’t done anything wrong were given the choice of transferring to a different job with the Bureau or finding another line of […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the National Association of Scholars on January 14, 2024, and is crossposted here with permission. Oftentimes, those concerned with the state of higher education get wrapped up—rightly so—in bringing awareness to the loss of rigor, excellence, and pursuit of merit in academia. However, there is another facet of higher education […]
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Inside Higher Ed reports on a new trend: universities creating programs that combine two academic programs. This might not seem particularly new to anyone who attended college in the last fifty years, but it is spiced with a bit of novelty now. The emphasis this time is on combining any of the various subjects with […]
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Alas, cutting funding for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) and rewarding universities for free speech will prove insufficient to Make Universities Great Again (MUGA)—a key facet of making America great again long-term. With their funding threatened, universities will make it appear that they again adhere to freedom of speech and meritocracy without curbing the leftist […]
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Many opposed to the woke orthodoxy have long waited for a systemwide course-correcting. As early as 2022, red states began to legislate against ideological captures of higher education institutions by prohibiting the mandates of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) in areas like faculty hiring and classroom instruction. Anticipated changes at the federal level are solidifying […]
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Mental health remains a critical yet under-prioritized issue among student-athletes. According to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report, 36.2 percent of young adults aged 18 to 25, approximately 12.6 million people, experienced a mental illness. Student-athletes are a part of this demographic, and more must be done to create a supportive environment where they feel […]
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Author’s Note: In several of my recent articles, I’ve incorporated direct interactions with artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. Looked at several years from now, these may seem superfluous. However, we are in the midst of a technological tipping point. We see this in faculty guides from the Chronicle of Higher Education and the University of Texas […]
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Francis Salvador, who emigrated from England to South Carolina in 1773, was the first Jew to be elected to a South Carolina legislative assembly—in 1774 and 1775, his neighbors voted him into South Carolina’s First and Second Provincial Congresses, with happy disregard for the statutes that gave Jews no right to vote or hold office. […]
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Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify the roles of Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn in the legal disputes involving Michael Mann. The original text suggested that Steyn himself made the comparison between Mann and Jerry Sandusky. In fact, the comparison originated with Simberg, and Steyn quoted and commented on Simberg’s remarks while […]
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2024 was a devasting year for anthropology and archaeology. The new regulations in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and the newly passed additions to California’s repatriation laws (CalNAGPRA) resulted in the shuttering of university museum exhibits, moratoria on the use of previously collected data from any Native American sites, and calls […]
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A video from August of 2024 of University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) emerita Professor Vivian Burt explaining her resignation at a Regents meeting from her position due to anti-Semitism is going viral, and she is being mistakenly hailed as a hero by many who are sharing or commenting on the remarks. As a fellow […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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Conservative social media blew up last month in a heated debate between Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on one side and die-hard MAGA loyalists on the other. The topic was the H-1B visa program, which Musk and Ramaswamy support but some on the right want to see eliminated. The H-1B program is supposedly designed to allow U.S. […]
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Minding the Campus and the National Association of Scholars have conducted extensive research on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) in higher education, culminating in the publication of numerous columns on the subject. These have included “SUNY Has Adopted a Program to Hire Minority Professors,” “‘Diversity Is Important?’ That Doesn’t Cut it at University of Oregon,” […]
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During the COVID-19 lockdowns, I taught two summer literature and research writing courses at an online classical K-12 school after 15 years of teaching college courses. I expected little from the new teaching experience—my university students often showed little interest in reading and viewed my course as just another hurdle to a degree. Teaching them […]
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Imagine if a university faculty member claimed to have developed a vaccine for the common cold but refused to present her methods or evidence publicly. How would the university react? With intense suspicion. Why? Because if an idea isn’t publicly explained, then it can’t be falsified. Falsifiability is the possibility of finding evidence that contradicts […]
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The rivalry between the University of Michigan (Michigan) and Ohio State is among the most intense and storied in college football, but the last game of the 2024 season was particularly violent. It escalated into chaos, culminating in an on-field brawl that required police intervention and the use of pepper spray. While rivalry games bring […]
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