A campus debate on sexual assault was too much for Emma Hall, a junior at Brown, She had to retreat to a “safe space” because “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs.” Exposure to ideas you don’t already have is problematic on the […]
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Cornell is the latest university to face a due process lawsuit; last week, attorney Andrew Miltenberg filed a suit in New York’s Northern District. (You can read the complaint here.) The specifics are depressingly familiar—though with something of a twist, since Cornell featured one of the earliest post-“Dear Colleague” letter battles over due process. In […]
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The politics of campus due process are most unusual. Since the emergence of crime as a major (federal) political issue in the 1960s, Republicans have tended to be the tough-on-crime party, Democrats more concerned with the rights of the accused, especially when the accused are poor or racial minorities. (Obviously there have been exceptions in […]
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In her new book, Harvard Law Professor Lani Guinier attacks “testocracy,” the over-reliance on standardized tests in deciding who gets into college, who has the chance to attend America’s premier institutions, and who is relegated to the cheap seats of community colleges and for-profit schooling. Unfortunately, Guinier’s “Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in […]
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Hillel is an unrivaled center of Jewish life on college campuses. Swarthmore College students decided this week to give up the Hillel name, and thereby break from the organization, because they thought it absolutely critical that its chapter host speakers and cooperate with organizations that denigrate Zionism and wish to expel Israel from the family […]
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Jordan Schneider, like many part-time college instructors, teaches on two community college campuses in order to cobble together a living. He earns a paltry $21,000 per year with no benefits for teaching a larger-than-normal load of four courses per semester. Non-tenure track full-time professors earn $47,000. Established professors’ salaries have remained flat, at between $60,000 […]
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This is the edited transcript of Manhattan Institute’s March 10 panel discussion of “The Truth About Campus Sexual Assault” featuring Heather Mac Donald (City Journal), KC Johnson (Brooklyn College, Minding the Campus) Amy Wax (U. of Pennsylvania Law) and moderator Howard Husock, (Manhattan Institute). *** HOWARD HUSOCK: We have been told that a crisis of […]
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette In the liberal ghetto of Ann Arbor, several University of Michigan administrators recently gathered for a passionate brainstorm. The head of student affairs declared he was simply “going to die” if he heard about one more so-called micro-aggression on campus. When a colleague told him he was “acting crazy” for being so sensitive, […]
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Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School spoke up quickly on the expelling of University of Oklahoma students for their racist chants—it was an impermissible violation of free speech rights. On his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, he wrote: “[R]acist speech is constitutionally protected, just as is expression of other contemptible ideas; and universities may not discipline […]
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Even Emory, a fairly elite law school, may be part of a “death spiral” from which few law schools will escape. Emory Law professor Dorothy A. Brown acknowledged that in a Washington Post article yesterday. Let me add to her observations from my vantage point as a professor of political science for over thirty-five years. […]
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Grade inflation has been quietly ravaging our universities… in the early 1960s, 15 percent of all college grades nationwide were A’s. Today, that number has nearly tripled—43 percent of all grades are A’s. In fact, an A is now the most common grade given in college nationwide. — Tom Lindsay, Forbes
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Notre Dame made a controversial move this semester by scheduling a for-credit class on white privilege. Shrouded in secrecy, this seminar requires students to apply for and receive departmental approval before actually enrolling—an unusual departure from normal university procedures. Moreover, three professors teach ten students in this one-credit class, while only a handful of Notre […]
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“In April 2011 the Obama administration launched a campaign to expand the role of sexual misconduct tribunals on campus. Schools have been ordered to investigate and adjudicate student reports of sexual assault—whether or not alleged victims have medical exams or file incident reports—and warned not ‘to accord due process rights to the alleged perpetrator’ that would […]
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Governor Scott Walker has called for draconian budget cuts to the University of Wisconsin System: $300 million, including $114 million for my flagship institution, UW-Madison. Coupled with previous recent significant cuts, this move furthers the on-going downward trend of state funding for higher education in nationwide. The Wisconsin legislature has the final say over Walker’s […]
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Earlier this year, Jonathan Chait, a liberal, caused a stir when he argued that “political correctness,” a “system of left-wing ideological repression” has made a comeback among students and intellectuals after a long lull. Among his cases in point was Omar Mahmoud, a University of Michigan student who was fired from the student newspaper, and […]
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The Chronicle quotes New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand celebrating the revised version of the Campus Safety and Accountability Act (CASA), introduced last week, on a an expanded bi-partisan basis (up from eight co-sponsors to twelve), to the Senate. Rejoiced Gillibrand, “”The bill actually has clarified rights for the accused,” since the current system “doesn’t serve […]
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CEI Recently, I wrote about a report to the Senate by a task force of college presidents, on how the Education Department is illegally dumping an avalanche of new rules and regulations on America’s schools, without even complying with the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice-and-comment requirements. Yet another example of such mischief is the 2014 sexual […]
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The average student-loan debt is approaching $30,000. That is to say, of the 70 percent of college students who borrow to pay all or some of their college expenses, the average student left college about $28,400 in the hole in 2013, according to USNews. This alarming number has triggered a spate of news stories about […]
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My experience at Ohio University offered me a first-hand glimpse into the mindset of anti-due process activists, and the subsequent media coverage has indicated a troubling willingness for misdirection. Austin Linfante, a reporter for the OU campus news site New Political, noted that the protesters furiously tweeted how the talk doubted that “the justice system […]
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I recently reported on a clear incident of discrimination against a Jewish UCLA student for her ties to Jewish organizations on campus. Readers who follow this issue will be familiar with other recent cases in which the allegedly progressive movement to boycott Israel has flirted with anti-Semitism. Until now, though, we haven’t had much data […]
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CEI A task force of college presidents has chronicled massive regulatory overreaching by the U.S. Department of Education, which, on a daily basis, floods the nation’s schools with new, uncodified agency requirements that have never even been vetted through the formal rule-making process. “The Report of the Task Force on Federal Regulation of Higher Education: […]
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Thanks to an invitation from the George Washington Forum, I had the opportunity last week to speak at Ohio University on due process and campus sexual assault. I made two primary arguments: first (citing how Duke responded to the lacrosse case), I challenged the idea that universities are somehow biased against sexual assault accusers, much […]
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Members of Wesleyan’s Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter are suing the school for discrimination after being forced to accept women in order to remain on campus. For the record, the university has an array of other residential houses and halls, none of which, it seems, is required to accept students of other genders, sexual orientations, races, […]
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It’s mistake to conclude that “where you go to college is of almost no importance.” Even if they don’t offer the royal road to intellectual or professional success, elite colleges provide opportunities and resources that are tough to find elsewhere. And that’s one of the dilemmas of American higher education. An Ivy League diploma isn’t just […]
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In a recent edition of The Tiger, Clemson University’s official student newspaper, 110 faculty and staff members published a petition endorsing seven “demands” of the “Coalition of Concerned Students.” Demands 2-7 call for Clemson officials to construct a multicultural center, provide more funding for “under-represented student groups,” increase affirmative action hiring, rename “offensively named buildings,” […]
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The headline is unusually blunt: ‘Is the New York Times Smearing Jameis Winston?,’ a reference to the Heisman-winning quarterback of Florida State, who has been accused of rape, a case discussed in 40 New York Times articles. Stuart Taylor, Jr., author of the blunt article today on Real Clear Sports, is an attorney and veteran […]
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Simple Justice When I read Omar Mahmood’s parody, Do The Left Thing, I was rolling on the floor. The kid is good. I mean, he has it. Oh sure, no doubt he was going to rile up all the folks who bleed with every papercut, but that’s the point of satire. Piss them off. Make […]
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Congress recently approved a bill to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. It cuts Pell Grant funding 1.3%, from $22.8 to $22.5 billion. This reduction in the needs-based grant program will be reallocated to student loan service providers such as Navient and Nelnet, a move orchestrated by outgoing Senator Tom Harkin. […]
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At the Washington Wizards-Brooklyn Nets game Saturday night, a Net player, in pursuit of a loose ball, careened into a waitress on the sidelines who was carrying a tray full of beers. The clip of the sudsy disaster went viral, and curious minds wanted to know more about the drenched victim. As it turns out, […]
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My recent article in The Daily Beast exploring previously unknown details of Columbia’s high-profile “mattress girl” rape case—including the fact that alleged victim Emma Sulkowicz continued to have chatty and playful Facebook exchanges with alleged rapist Paul Nungesser for weeks after she says he brutally violated her and choked her within an inch of her […]
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