By Roger Rosenblatt (Harper Collins, $23.95) “Don’t bother to come home if you still have a job,” Livi Porterfield called to her husband as he shoved their two groggy children into the 243,000-miles-and-still-rattling Accord, to drive them to school. He blew her a kiss. The job she referred to was on the faculty of Beet […]
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David Feith wrote in reminding us that a 2003 Columbia student poll yielded over 65% support among students for the return of ROTC to the campus. The Columbia University Senate, however, voted against its return in 2005, by a margin of 53-10. And professors aren’t out of touch…
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Randy Cohen, the New York Times “Ethicist”, offered a very slippery response to a reader last week, on the question of financial incentives for the hiring of minority professors. You’d best read the whole exchange first. My comments are beneath: I teach at a state university that offers financial incentives to hire minority candidates. A […]
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When asked about the theme for December’s annual MLA convention- “The Humanities at Work in the World” – Yale comparative literature professor and MLA president Michael Holquist spoke of the need “to raise the consciousness of people outside the academy about the importance of the work that’s done inside the academy.” Acknowledging that the humanities […]
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The Columbia Spectator offers a surprising argument for the return of ROTC to Columbia today. Here’s a sample of their case: Opponents of ROTC argue that the program’s treatment of gays and lesbians violates the University’s anti-discrimination protocols. Those protocols should be enforced against businesses and other institutions, but the U.S. military is in a […]
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Defenders and advocates of group preferences generally make their stand on a moral claim: group preferences are needed to advance the common social good. To oppose group preferences is, in turn, to act immorally. The vehemence with which defenders of group preferences frequently speak and the extreme tactics of some pro-preference groups such as By […]
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Now that the Senate finance committee has requested – the New York Times said “demanded” – that the nation’s wealthiest colleges and universities supply detailed information about their endowments and financial practices, it seems clear that college cost is emerging as a long-running, popular and bipartisan issue. The request/demand came in a stern but polite […]
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Several college papers have come around to the ever-popular (and easy) study of university political donations. The results are no surprise. Here are a few samples Daily Bruin (UCLA): “Faculty Donors Lean Liberal” According to the Center for Responsive Politics Web site, which tracks individual and group donations to political parties, UCLA faculty members gave […]
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More evidence to shatter the NCAA’s diversionary talk of the preeminence of academics for college athletes, from the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription only, alas): The NCAA started a Web site last year, NCAAStudent.org, to illustrate how its athletes balance sports with their academic responsibilities. And in Mr. Brand’s speech here, he said the main […]
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Angela Davis is busy this year with Martin Luther King day commemorations. On Jan. 17 she gave a lecture “dealing with racism in today’s world” as part of the University of South Alabama’s 2008 Martin Luther King Jr. observations. She’s appearing at Brown to deliver its 12th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on February […]
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Yale’s burgeoning diversity program has another announcement: it wants to “incorporate the role of ethnic counselor into that of freshman counselor, who will become responsible for providing enhanced community support for cultural affairs on campus,” according to the Yale Daily News. What does that mean? Well, according to the News, which neglected to supply an […]
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Rob Weir, at Inside Higher Ed, offers a list of academic squabbles worth giving up. Any worthy dead horses to clamber out of? Well, no, it’s mainly a list of disputes in which he feels the other side ought to give up. Consider “Are Campus Conservatives Victims of Discrimination” Does anyone have any spare crocodile […]
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Rhode Island College received national attention recently when the student newspaper published a cartoon depicting Jesus as the perfect roommate complete with smelly feet, turning water into wine like a card-trick at the weekly keg party. Many people objected but the College was correct to say that they wouldn’t restrict the student’s first amendment rights. […]
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The New York Times offers a good look at alumni preferences today, particularly in its account of legal challenges to the practice. There’s only been one court case to directly consider the practice, and that, made by a federal judge in 1976 in Durham, found the practice rationally supported, as it generated universities money, and […]
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After decades of watching the sons and daughters of black doctors and lawyers get preferencial tretment in college admissions over those of white coal miners and mill workers, and corporate titans kowtow to the Al Sharptons of the world, those appalled by America’s ever-expanding regime of racial quotas will be forgiven for thinking things could […]
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Is it just me, or have others noted that “Big-Time College Sports” (basketball and football, primarily) have recently taken yet another leap into a qualitatively different zone? In my neck of the woods, we have the very controversial new Big Ten Network, which hopes to make gobs of money from advertisers if cable companies ever […]
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With some recent encouraging efforts to right the ridiculous financial metrics of college attendance, let’s not forget how rapidly other aspects of the college experience continue steaming into absurdity. Andrew Ferguson offered a prescient corrective in the Weekly Standard – here’s a telling bit: A further symptom of college madness, as I should have known […]
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I know this is almost too easy, but here are several nominees for the best paper titles at this year’s MLA Conference: “The Buggering Hillbilly in the Buddy Movie: Male Sexuality in Deliverance“ “Giving Ourselves a Good Kick in the Assessment: Entering and Expanding the Outcomes Conversation,” and my favorite: “Queer in a Vaginal Economy: […]
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In order to fulfill the requirements for a major in history at Northwestern University, my daughter took a course called “The Cold War At Home.” As one might imagine in the hothouse of the college system, left wing views predominate. The students read Ellen Shrecker, not Ronald Radosh. Joseph McCarthy has been transmogrified into Adolf […]
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A few weeks ago, I alerted readers to the threat of a tightening of the student loan market . Banks have been bundling student loans, like home mortgages, and selling them as securities. First Marblehead Corporation in Boston has been the nation’s biggest player in “securitizing” student loans, and just like home mortgage-backed securities, the […]
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Inside Higher Ed’s report on the proceedings of the delegate assembly at this year’s Modern Language Association conference is titled “A Moderate MLA” – the title seems to have been chosen mainly for its alliterativeness – moderation, by MLA standards, being a quality far from centrism or temperance in the larger world. The MLA, for […]
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