The recent attempts to drive Robert Kerrey from the presidency of The New School are reminiscent of how Larry Summers was driven from the Harvard presidency in 2006 and, further back, how controversies, real and specious, roiled American campuses in the 1960s and 1970s. If the Trustees of the New School are at all tempted […]
Read MoreTake a look at some hilarious footage of the end of the NYU building occupation, courtesy of Gawker. You won’t regret the nine minutes spent watching this. “I don’t think they want water bottles. They probably drink corporate water.” -Protester
Read MoreNew York University students, or at least a few dozen of them, have just set several records for student occupations of a campus building: fewest occupiers, shortest occupation (3 days) , least support among the student body and longest list of demands. Surely the strange litany of demands had much to so with the adventure’s […]
Read MoreDr. Macchiarola, chancellor of St. Francis College in Brooklyn, delivered these remarks on February 5th at a one-day conference in New York on “The Future of the University.” The conference was sponsored by the Manhattan Institute’s Center for the American University. If I were making this presentation a year ago, I would not have some […]
Read Morehttps://www.goacta.org/publications/index.cfm?categoryid=7E8A88BF-C70B-972A-68008CC20E38AF8A#4CE03472-B0EC-DD53-2130EBC7F7E51C95
Read MoreThe case of Jonathan Lopez, the Los Angeles Community college student who allegedly was called a “fascist bastard” by his speech professor for delivering a Christian speech, has indeed touched a nerve, as his lawyer, David French of the Alliance Defense Fund said. Once again the mainstream press got a few things askew. The Los […]
Read MoreOn February 11 art-lovers packed a meeting room at Brandeis University to protest Brandeis’s plans to shut down its on-campus art museum and auction off the museum’s entire 6,000-piece collection. The list of holdings at Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum, most of them donated since the museum’s opening in 1961, reads like a Who’s Who of […]
Read MoreIn the area of higher education especially, but in most other areas too, the Stimulus bill looks more like an emergency measure designed to maintain current programs than a strategic package aimed to stimulate growth. Among others, college and university presidents are likely to be among those sorely disappointed. Last November, shortly after the election, […]
Read MoreOver the winter break, Boston College placed in its classrooms crucifixes and other Christian symbols, many of them brought back from historically Catholic countries by BC students studying there. To the surprise of no one, this turned out to be controversial at the Jesuit-run institution. Any lurch in the direction of religion by religious colleges […]
Read MoreOn the day in 1858 that Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen A. Douglas in the fifth of their great series of debates across Illinois, both candidates mounted a platform which had been hastily cobbled together and moved to the east side of Knox College’s ‘Old Main,’ in Galesburg, Illinois. Because of a quirk in the height […]
Read MoreDenis Rancourt, a professor of physics at Ottawa University, an anarchist and a backer of Critical Pedagogy, may be the most dramatic example of a politicized teacher yet seen in North America. He believes that college instruction is an instrument of oppression and that his proper job is to combat this oppression by ignoring what […]
Read MoreBy William Creeley & Harvey Silverglate Reaction to Brandeis University’s plan to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its esteemed collection was swift—and scathing. Within the Brandeis community, President Jehuda Reinharz’s proposed fire sale provoked howls of betrayal from students, faculty, alumni, and donors. In the art world and news media, the move was […]
Read MoreIn a recent op-ed, New York Times columnist David Brooks raised an interesting and important question. Drawing on a recent book (largely neglected) by Hugh Heclo entitled On Thinking Institutionally, Brooks critiqued a report on education that a Harvard University faculty committee issued a few years ago. According to the report, “the aim of a […]
Read MoreBy Anonymous In March 2008 I reluctantly made the decision to leave academia. After six years in graduate school and three years as a professor, it was clear to me that the discrimination I faced was so pervasive that there would be no escaping it in the years ahead. Don’t misunderstand what I write in […]
Read MoreThe Chronicle of Higher Education today reports on our VERITAS Fund’s latest partnership, with the Jack Miller Center. Campus centers that support traditional teaching about America’s founding will get a $2-million infusion from two organizations that have been instrumental in starting some of the centers. Most of the money will be used for centers that […]
Read MoreHere at Minding the Campus we’ve been elaborating on Charles Murray’s argument that college isn’t for everyone, and that a college degree—which can cost graduates at least four years of forgone earnings and leave them drowning in student-loan debt—isn’t necessarily the ticket to economic prosperity that it’s cracked up to be. So what?, you might […]
Read More