Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on June 18, 2025. The Observatory translated it into English from French. I have edited it, to the best of my ability, to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is crossposted here with permission. Although the founder of La Tribune de […]
Read More
Much has been written about how places like Harvard have failed to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism. The coverage is both shocking and, sadly, predictable. But what’s really struck me lately is just how willing Harvard can be to take action on anti-Semitism, so long as it means going after Jews. Harvard researcher of gender […]
Read More
Author’s Note: This article 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, enter your name and email under “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” located on the right-hand side of the site. For decades, weather […]
Read More
Daren Bakst and Marlo Lewis have edited a series of science policy recommendations for reforming the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that literally put the irreproducibility crisis of modern science first. In the first chapter of Modernizing the EPA, Marlo Lewis argues that the EPA’s policy mistakes derive from permitting and fostering practices associated with the […]
Read More
There is much discussion these days about the need for “regime change” in certain countries. I don’t generally like the phrase because it can be misunderstood. It implies that a legitimate administration is in charge of a country or institution, and that illegitimate methods will displace it. Much of the world, however, actually needs regime […]
Read More
Yesterday, two nonprofits, Fair for All and Join Our America, filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) violated Title VI and the First Amendment. On May 21st, 2025, the Our America Foundation reached out to the University […]
Read More
It is undeniable that universities across America have resisted the burgeoning trend of artificial intelligence (AI). The mere thought of unbridled access to resources like ChatGPT, which makes academic dishonesty difficult to detect, has produced tremors of resistance in professors and administrators alike. It seems that just over the last year, the boundaries of AI […]
Read More
President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4th. This law is the most consequential legislation affecting higher education for the past couple of decades. Like any legislation, it was a product of compromise, but overall, as I predict, it will move higher education and the country in the right […]
Read More
While most media focused on escalating global tensions, American higher education may have just experienced its biggest shakeup in decades. Last week in Boca Raton, Florida, six public university systems unveiled the Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE), a new accreditor designed to serve public universities with a focus on academic excellence, student outcomes, and […]
Read More
University systems in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are launching a new accreditor, dubbed the Commission for Public Higher Education. Why are accreditors important? Accreditors are semi-private organizations that function as gatekeepers for federal financial aid. Only students at colleges that have accreditor approval can receive Pell Grants, student loans, and […]
Read More
In a sweeping move that could reshape job training opportunities for young Americans, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced on May 29 an immediate halt to operations at all contractor-run Job Corps centers nationwide. All closures were said to be finalized by June 30, but the administration is facing legal pushback. The decision to close […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This op-ed is a response from a Cornell alumnus, bewildered by the university’s recent race-based hiring practices, exposed in the America First Policy Institute’s legal filing and Christopher Rufo’s City Journalarticle, “Cornell Hired Based on Race, Internal Documents Show.” Perhaps Cornell’s sprawling “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) bureaucracy and senior administrators didn’t intend […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on Sutherland Institute on July 02, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. In his recent piece in Education Next, my American Enterprise Institute (AEI) colleague Frederick Hess offers a crucial corrective to the prevailing winds in civic education. He calls […]
Read More
For years, it has been common knowledge that a humanities degree will screw you over. Compare, for instance, the median earnings of a Computer Science (CS) major from five years after graduating from Columbia University ($204,000) to that of an English major graduating from the same school ($74,000). Enrollment statistics paint a similar picture, with […]
Read More
On July 6, 1775, the Continental Congress issued a declaration—not of independence, but of necessity. With British troops already marching and colonial blood already spilled, Congress laid out its reasons for taking up arms. The declaration’s title was as direct as its purpose: A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. It […]
Read More
One might think that if Concord and Lexington left room for doubt that the American colonies were rebelling against Britain, the June 17 affair at Bunker Hill would have settled the question. American farmers inflicting more than a thousand casualties on Britain’s troops was a pretty strong signal of discontent. Moreover, the decision of the […]
Read More
Arcata is a small town lying behind the Redwood Curtain of Northern California, about two hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco. It was a place where diversity already existed, yet nobody had to talk about it. Much of this diversity was due to the location of Humboldt State University, a four-year state school […]
Read More
In a recent article, I described how Arizona State University (ASU) refused to investigate plagiarism by its administrator, Sethuraman Panchanathan, while he was serving as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Panchanathan later resigned unexpectedly and returned to ASU—just in time for the university to sue the NSF to preserve its high rate of […]
Read More
More than two years after Lia Thomas became the first male athlete to win an NCAA all-women’s swimming title, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) has officially admitted its faults and will strip Thomas—born William Thomas—of those titles, return accolades to the rightful female athletes, and issue a public apology. UPenn reached a resolution agreement with […]
Read More
Two hundred forty-nine years ago, a determined band of colonists didn’t just declare independence—they dismantled the old world order. They rejected the centuries-old belief that power comes from bloodlines, conquest, or divine right, and proposed something audacious: that legitimacy flows from the governed, not the governor. That moment was not merely the birth of America—it […]
Read More
The joy of learning to build something useful, of unearthing what no one has seen before, of understanding what was once obscure or even a mystery, of finally putting the data together, of creating something new are intellectual and spiritual joys. The satisfaction of disciplining yourself to effectuate a goal, of working with a team, […]
Read More
George Washington took command of the Continental Army outside Boston on July 3, 1775. He immediately spent a solid week inspecting the army, and only then wrote to the Continental Congress with his first report. The Continental Army was brave, but it could be made better. Above all, Washington needed money. I find myself already […]
Read More