One of the implications of the shift of pressure against free speech from left-wing faculty and administrators to undergraduates is that the ideological framework of liberal bias doesn’t quite apply. Yes, we have language of “racism” and “sexism,” along with demands that relics of US history that fail the PC test be torn down. But […]
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For the past two autumns the two leading academic reform organizations, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), have held events offering high praise to the liberal arts as a means to improve students’ writing and to provide them with the classical culture that Mathew Arnold calls […]
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Commentators are mocking the antics of ersatz college students, calling them “snowflakes,” “crybullies,” and the “pink guard,” the latter indicating their intellectual and moral kinship to Mao’s red guard. But where does responsibility for all the silliness lie? With the administrators. Consider the words of three university presidents, whose attitudes appear to be ubiquitous. In […]
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Demands by student protesters at Emory University here, include extending student evaluations of faculty to include a tallying up of microaggressions each teacher has made and a stipulation that Emory “shall not protect the privilege of students to vocalize hate speech.” Power Line blog said: “Emory’s provost, Claire E. Sterk, and the dean of campus life, […]
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This past weekend, Fox News ran a special report about how colleges and universities across the country are handling sexual assault. The documentary (in which I appeared) ran counter to the prevailing narrative that schools are hotbeds of sexual assault where accusers aren’t taken seriously. The report, hosted by Martha MacCallum, follows the stories of three men […]
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Not all Yale students agree with the tactics employed by the bullies. Freshman Connor Wood said, “The acceptance or rejection of coercive tactics is a choice that will literally decide the fate of our democracy. Our republic will not survive without a culture of robust public debate. And the far more immediate threat is to academia: […]
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How can it be that, in the face of daily news of murders, grotesque punishments, and open oppression by radicals abroad, here at home American college students, who have grown up with degrees of freedom and autonomy virtually unknown in most times and places, agitate for restrictions on their own campuses, demand rules, regulations, and […]
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Today the Supreme Court hears arguments in round two of Fisher v. Texas. Abigail Fisher, you will recall, claimed (and still claims) that the University of Texas’s admission preferences for blacks and Hispanics amounted to racial discrimination against her because she is white. In round one the Supremes almost agreed but instead vacated and remanded […]
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The problem of political correctness at Yale has comes up again because it let a good scholar quit teaching under heavy pressure from students over a very mild email she wrote about Halloween costumes at Yale. The email said she thought that an official campus group really shouldn’t be telling students what costumes to avoid. PC […]
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The tumultuous, racially charged demonstrations that rocked American campuses this fall show few signs of abating. In fact, they’re spreading across the country because student activists have been emboldened by their “successes.” For example, at the University of Missouri, the president and chancellor resigned amid protests (even the football team threatened to go on strike) […]
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With so many campuses under renewed pressure to create “safe spaces” from political speech and dissent, growing numbers are asking us at Heterodox Academy: Where can I (or my children) go to encounter at least some modicum of viewpoint diversity among the faculty? While there are many college guides with an eye to politics, they point […]
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As protest season expands, students at a growing number of colleges and universities are listing their demands. Many of them are want to expand the campus diversity bureaucracies, curb free speech to stop microaggressions and anti-protest remarks, and impose mandatory social-justice training for students and faculty. Walter Olson of Cato and Overlawyered.com compiled a list […]
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The foundations of American Jewish life are under assault today in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. Academia is ground zero of the onslaught. The protest movements on campuses are primarily anti-Jewish movements. For the past decade or so, Jewish communal leaders and activists have focused on just one aspect of this anti-Jewish campaign. […]
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This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, […]
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Here’s how conservative scholar Steven F. Hayward responded to the question, which was asked by the Intercollegiate Review Michael Sandel, who is a critic of the left from within the left; Robert Putnam, whose work tends to ratify a lot of conservative insights about social order; William Galston, one of the few liberal students of […]
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Perhaps it’s time for universities to institute a course in logic as a basic requirement for all students. Then we might encounter more rational and thoughtful protests taking place all over the country, instead of the spectacle of students demanding that professors and administrators be fired for using words or voicing opinions disapproved by minority […]
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This is the introduction to the November 10, 2015 report: Inside Divestment: The Illiberal Movement to Turn a Generation Against Fossil Fuels – from the National Association of Scholars. A movement focused on persuading college trustees to sell off institutional holdings in coal, oil, and gas might sound like a minor trend. Students protest things […]
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Befitting its vision as one of the nation’s great universities, Duke declares that it grants tenure only to the best. Tenure at Duke, according to the university’s official policy, “should be reserved for those who have clearly demonstrated through their performance as scholars and teachers that their work has been widely perceived among their peers […]
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On Sunday night, CNN will air The Hunting Ground—a work of activist propaganda disguised as a documentary about sexual assault on American college campuses. Among its numerous faults, the film blames the campus rape problem on a plague of serial rapists; expert opinion on this matter comes courtesy of psychologist David Lisak, whose misleading interpretation […]
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Richard A. Shweder, the University of Chicago anthropologist, who is speaking tonight in Denver at the annual American Anthropological Association convention, is recommending a “no-action” option on Israel/Palestine, meaning that he considers it inappropriate for the Association, as an entity, to support either side of the dispute. An AAA task force has come down on the […]
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America’s higher education system works like this. The government dangles lots of easy-to-get money for college in front of every high-school graduate, nearly all of whom have heard repeatedly that a college degree is essential for a decent life. Without “higher education,” their lives will be nothing but low-paid drudgery. Salvation lies in enrolling in […]
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Following student protests, the President of Pomona College has acceded to a long list of demands from blacks and other “marginalized” students, according to a report in the Claremont Independent, a magazine covering the Claremont McKenna consortium of colleges in Claremont, California. President David Oxtoby reportedly signed off on demands that include the following: A diversity […]
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A retired Harvard professor received this email today from Harvard’s Dean of Undergraduate Education, Jay M. Harris: “To Faculty of Arts and Sciences: I am writing to let you know that many of our students plan to leave their classrooms today at 3:15 in a show of solidarity with Black students nationwide. They will gather in the […]
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According to the conservative Dartmouth Review, a crowd of “Black Lives Matter” protesters surged into a campus library November 12, shouting obscenities at whites (“Fuck your white privilege!” “You filthy white piece of shit!”), pushing and shoving as well. The Dartmouth, a non-conservative paper, buried its report of the library incursion at the end of […]
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I mostly agree with Peter Schuck’s viewpoint (What the President of Yale Should Have Said) but disagree strongly with his suggestion that colleges and universities have been working to support diversity on campus (and improved race relations) through their policies and practices of offering so-called “ethnocultural” dorms and identity/affinity housing. Indeed, what the colleges are […]
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Inside Higher Ed has published another article, “Banking on the Curriculum,” denouncing the influence of corporate money in academia. The article raises the specter that America’s universities are accepting corporate gifts with ideological strings attached, thereby corrupting their intellectual integrity and selling the soul of academic freedom. The article examines the recent gifts of BB&T […]
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The Supreme Court will consider two key cases relating to higher education this term. Fisher could curtail the use of racial preferences in admissions. Friedrichs could require higher-education unions to represent only those members who agree with the union’s usefulness. As currently structured, public employee unions, including those at colleges and universities, must refund the portion […]
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On November 10, following the campus thousand-member “March for Resilience” over racial insensitivity, Yale president, Peter Salovey and Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway emailed those of us in the Yale community. affirming “the importance we put on our community’s diversity, and the need to increase it, support it, and respect it.” The email embraced “the […]
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Mary Spellman, dean of students at Claremont McKenna College in California, resigned under pressure after sending a gracious note to a troubled minority student. A student demonstration argued that Spellman’s comforting message was in effect a way of saying that minorities didn’t belong at the school. Charlotte Allen has the story at her blog, Stupid Girl […]
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The students at Mizzou and Yale caught in twin episodes of contrived campus racial hysteria have been described as narcissists and self-indulgent brats catered to by their parents who told them how special they were and expecting the same judgment from college. Handed what they understand as the attitudinal keys to the kingdom, they’re enraged when […]
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