Jason Riley, one of my favorite writers, is black and opposes racial preferences (for all groups) on the grounds that they don’t solve underlying problems, sow discord, and become a source of political chicanery. A few years back, he wrote a very illuminating book entitled, Please Stop Helping Us in which he explained why the […]
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Fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has published a report showing that the overwhelming majority of top colleges in America fail to guarantee fair hearings for students accused of sexual misconduct. Their findings include: 3 in 4 top universities do not guarantee presumption of innocence in campus proceedings. 9 in 10 top universities […]
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Harvard is perhaps the only institution in the country with multiple sets of Title IX procedures, depending on which branch of the university the student attends. At Harvard Law School, the parties are allowed to have full legal representation, the tribunal is basically independent, and there’s meaningful discovery. Harvard undergraduates, on the other hand, experience […]
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Two of our nation’s premier credit rating agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, have issued reports recently giving a negative outlook on the finances of American higher education. Of course, the financial condition of schools varies considerably: there are affluent ones with large cash reserves, billions in investments in their endowment, and robust demand for their services, […]
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By now, it is clear to all observers that the most damaging material that Harvard has been forced to release in the lawsuit filed by Students For Fair Admissions is powerful evidence that Asian applicants, who score higher than applicants from other racial and ethnic groups on grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities, are graded […]
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What if the Supreme Court rules decisively against Harvard in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College? Will racial preferences fade into history as has Prohibition? Or will universities employ legally safe proxies such as social class to admit less qualified minorities? Let me suggest one resistance tactic not yet on the agenda but, rest […]
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The social sciences are a “broad church” or “big tent,” containing many perspectives, some in complete contradiction with the others. At the moment, there are two dominant “schools,” or heuristic theories, and one minor “school” of social science. One major school is postmodernism, which rejects the scientific approach, arguing that there is no such thing […]
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Sometimes the utter intellectual hollowness of a program is most clearly revealed by its unctuous but unwitting advocates. A perfect example is “Fostering Diversity on Campus to Strengthen Maine’s Healthcare System,” which the University of New England actually paid to have published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The advertorial begins with a profile of Samuel Acha, […]
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When jobs are scarce, and when you’ve spent your 20s living spartanly, reading books, books, books, writing a dissertation, and you’re sick of being a nobody whose only recognition comes from students in your freshman comp course who thank you for spending time correcting their grammar and punctuation, you’ll say anything the people who control […]
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The proposed Title IX regulations released by Betsy DeVos would ensure a much fairer campus adjudication system—they’d ensure cross-examination (through a lawyer or advocate) of witnesses; access to all evidence and training material for both parties; and the presumption of innocence for the accused. It’s little wonder that groups committed to one-sided campus procedures have […]
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}In the U.S., coastal progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans from “fly-over country,” are at each other’s throats. At least half of Americans despise their politically incorrect President. The results of elections are no longer accepted; “resistance” is proclaimed, and the aim is to overthrow those who have been elected, along with the Constitution and the […]
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Higher education has become obsessed with intense devotion to the all-encompassing cult of “diversity,” and as usual, California is leading the way. New loyalty oaths have become so demanding that, as Heather Mac Donald has written in the Los Angeles Times, even Einstein probably could not be hired on a public California university campus today. […]
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An executive search firm in the not-for-profit sector, Kittleman, has recently looked at two groups of highly successful heads of organizations: the chief executive officers of the Fortune 500 corporations and their counterparts at the 100 largest non-profit organizations listed on Forbes. It is not surprising that the captains of industry and philanthropy mostly went […]
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With the possibility of new Title IX regulations looming, defenders of the now-rescinded Obama-era guidance have aggressively sought to defend their years-long crusade against campus due process. But in several remarks last week, ex-Obama officials and their supporters provided unintentional insight on why the administration’s Title IX policy was so unfair In an interview with […]
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When a recent Canadian study of about 30,000 students between 7th and 12th grade found that more boys than girls were victims of physical dating violence, the reaction was one of disbelief. Accusations of male sexual harassment were exploding from the university campuses to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, begetting the #MeToo movement. The […]
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As extensively documented, our universities have been swept up into a new cultural movement, the so-called “social justice” movement. “Social justice” ideology is based on the Marxist vision that the world is divided into oppressor classes and oppressed classes. Unlike classical Marxism that divides the world into a bourgeois oppressor class and a proletarian oppressed […]
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The coverage of Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard College reveals as much about the state of “diversity” in the press, especially the specialized education industry press, as the trial itself does about Harvard’s practices. Inside Higher Ed I have criticized the bias of Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed’s editor and one of its three […]
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Many luminaries have urged us to believe whatever a woman says about her experience in sexual encounters. This view is widely held by feminists, the #metoo advocates, the Obama Department of Education, and many university administrators and bureaucrats, especially the university “equity, inclusion, and diversity” officers. Should we believe whatever a woman says? Perhaps we […]
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This is an edited selection of recent correspondence between Stuart Taylor, Jr., an author and expert on the Supreme Court, and John S. ROSENBERG, a lapsed historian who blogs at Discriminations. ROSENBERG’s article, “Harvard’s Strip Tease About Wealth and Race,” was published on Minding The Campus October 22nd . Stuart Taylor, Jr., is co-author of […]
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The trial of Students For Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College began last week in federal district court in Boston to determine whether “Fair Harvard” treats its Asian-American applicants, and perhaps others, equitably. The SFFA plaintiffs claim Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants, and others, every which way from Sunday, but it is […]
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Towards the end of Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Coddling of the American Mind, the authors declare that it is “a good time for us to lay our cards on the table, politically speaking.” Lukianoff confesses he is “a liberal with some sympathy for libertarian perspectives.” Haidt declares he “is a centrist […]
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It is uncertain how the current lawsuit regarding Harvard’s alleged discriminate against Asian applicants will eventually turn out, but the smart money predicts little will change. After all, this is just one of many similar previous lawsuits, and racial preferences survived them all. Nor should we ignore administrative ingenuity in circumventing court orders. At most, […]
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In a pointless act of censorship, CNN removed the episodes of the TV show “Parts Unknown” that featured actress Asia Argento. It did so because it learned that she had settled an unrelated lawsuit against her by actor Jimmy Bennett, who claimed she had sex with him when he was 17. This news had no […]
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In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males […]
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America’s colleges and universities are in trouble: falling enrollments, declining public support, even the beginnings of a decline in our dominance in international rankings. While many factors are at work, here are the top ten things I think are destroying America’s colleges and universities. First, going to college is too costly. Tuition fees have roughly […]
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Sixty years ago, higher education had an open culture where students and professors could explore many different social and political perspectives, views, values, and theories. Together, they would consider different approaches, argue about them, and draw what conclusions they could. But for the last half-century, universities have transitioned from an open to a closed culture, […]
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It remains to be seen how the Avital Ronell affair will play out. The letter presented in her defense and signed by well-known theorists and many lesser figures has evoked more scorn than sympathy, and it may signify a generational turn in literary studies. There is one element of the whole thing, however, that seems beyond […]
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We can all agree that students, like all other people in this country, have a right to protest the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Most of us can also agree that Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegations against him, now joined by Deborah Ramirez’s disturbing story, warrant further inquiry before the votes […]
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Until 2011, UCLA students English had to take a course in Chaucer, a couple in Shakespeare, and one in Milton as the fundamental works of English literature. Some junior faculty revolted, and UCLA promptly changed its course to studying compulsory papers in “Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; Genre […]
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Civil rights leaders once dreamed of a day when Americans would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, but today a different message is being spread at the University of Texas and other college campuses. “Diversity” means singling out certain races for special treatment. UT’s extensive diversity bureaucracy […]
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