Social-justice ideology is turning higher education into an engine of progressive political advocacy, according to a new report by the National Association of Scholars. Left-wing activists, masquerading as professors, are infiltrating traditional academic departments or creating new ones—departments such as “Solidarity and Social Justice”—to advance their cause. They are entering the highest rung of college administration, […]
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There is a common cultural dynamic in which competition among members of a social or political movement for the prestige of ideological purity and group leadership leads to more and more extreme substantive positions. Examples are countless: Christianity, based on a Jewish Messiah and his Jewish Apostles, soon enough came to disparage Jews who did […]
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If you are a progressive professor, your university will let you keep teaching, even if you say things that reflect extreme hostility to members of a particular race and gender. You can say we should “kill and castrate all white men, and feed their corpses to pigs,” call for the death of Republican senators and engage in full-blown […]
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Meghan Daum is a liberal feminist who, in her forties, finds herself out-lefted by the new left. The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars recounts her inability to fathom Fourth Wave Feminists who declare themselves afraid to attend college or seek “lean-in” type jobs (oh the rape culture!) and her schism […]
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To get the best possible grade, students may need to pander to their professors’ left-wing ideology. Professors are much more likely to be progressives than they are to be moderate or conservative. Law professors are no exception. Progressive professors view progressive views as a sign of intelligence, and conservatism as a sign of stupidity. For example, Prof. Robert Brandon, head of Duke […]
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This is an open letter by the author addressed to the administrators of McGill, York, and the University of Toronto. As you are certainly aware, in recent weeks a series of troubling incidents has occurred on your respective campuses. While the events in question were distinct, they all shared a common impulse by a groups […]
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The mainstream press has not shown much interest in the struggle of college journalists to report accurately on free-speech and free-press issues on campus. On November 13, The New York Times weighed in with a long news article on student coverage of a speech at Northwestern University delivered by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Some […]
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Is it possible for an entire institution to go crazy? Two years ago, posters were placed around the Indiana Wesleyan campus before Halloween warning students against wearing costumes that perpetrated crimes of cultural appropriation. The text had the standard plea for sensitivity, with a heading “THINK IT THROUGH.” A request, “Let’s actively care for each […]
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Inside Higher Ed reports that “It’s OK to Be White” posters have appeared on more campuses: The posters, which also appeared a year ago at this time, are put up without permission [from college officials]. Posters have been seen this year at Christopher Newport University, East Tennessee State University, Oklahoma City University’s law school, Susquehanna University, and Western Connecticut State University. […]
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The margin of victory for Washington state voters who opposed the return of affirmative action has been inching up. A few days ago, it was .6%, about 13,000 votes. As of Friday night, November 15, it was 1.08%, around 21,000 votes. It should continue to increase as the remaining returns come in. In my recent […]
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The readers, writers, and editors of Minding the Campus have it all wrong. If they were to hear the words “Williams College English Department,” a vision of politically correct, exquisitely liberal professors would instantly spring to mind. If they went to the department web site, to be sure, they could find support for their judgment, […]
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All the votes cast on November 5 in the “duplicitous attempt” to bring affirmative action back to Washington state have not been counted, but since the counties with large numbers of uncounted ballots all voted heavily against affirmative action it is now all but certain that attempt fell short. As of Monday morning, November 11, […]
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New U.S. Department of Education data show that the number of postsecondary educational institutions in the U.S. declined 15 percent (from 7,234 to 6,138) between the 2012-3 and 2018-19 academic years, with fully one-third of the decline in the last year. In the past two years, total undergraduate enrollment has fallen by 627,000, more than […]
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Many college professors and administrators are eager to turn their students into ideological clones of themselves in hopes of ensuring that the U.S. will have the kind of governmentally controlled, collectivistic society they desire. Sometimes their “success” in that becomes spectacularly evident, such as the furious, vitriolic attack by the Oberlin College community against a […]
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Conservatives have long worried about the Bennett Hypothesis. Named for former Education Secretary William Bennett, it argues that the availability of federal financial aid programs leads colleges to increase tuition faster than they otherwise would. Conservatives have been right to worry. But there’s a way to break that link—by changing how we determine aid eligibility. […]
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Science magazine recently studied eight science disciplines at 50 select universities, tabulating the ones that include Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) as an application requirement. In 2018, 44 percent of molecular biology programs had stopped asking for GRE scores, and the study predicted the rate would pass 50 percent in the following year’s applications. In the fields […]
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Despite all the attention that has been devoted to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard in which a U.S. District judge in Boston recently held that Harvard’s discrimination against Asian applicants was not illegal, the next chapter in the generations-old battle over affirmative action will not be written by the First Circuit in Boston or […]
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When I first took up my teaching post in 1968, a bright undergraduate said to me, “North American culture is the most corrupt in the world.” I was rather shocked to hear this, having just returned from a year of ethnographic research in the Middle East, where arguably there are many more serious problems. The […]
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This week Melinda Gates said that she is committing $1 billion to promote gender equality by doing things like dismantling “harmful gender norms.” To many people, this sounds like a wonderful idea, but how effective are gender equality strategies that blame inequality solely on social factors such as gender norms and stereotypes? Professor Alice Eagly, in her […]
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Amidst the increased recent attention paid to injustices in the criminal justice system, the opposition of prominent Democratic legislators—and progressive activists—to campus due process stands out more remarkably. The point was reinforced by two events, separated by a few hours, on Tuesday. To start the day, a progressive activist group called “Demand Justice” released a […]
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In 2018, Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pennsylvania, asked all incoming students to read Justin LaKyle Brown’s diversity manual titled—I kid not— UGH!?! Not Another Diversity Book: When Multicultural Competence Meets a Real Reality. The title at least pays homage to the ubiquity of college diversity training. Lackawanna College already requires each student to complete a […]
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The recent affirmative action opinion (discussed here) in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University held that Harvard’s discrimination against Asians did not amount to discrimination. Despite the victory of Harvard and the entire higher education hierarchy, committed as it is to using racial preferences to promote “diversity,” there is a reason to believe this […]
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A 2019 report by the Knight Foundation on the state of collegiate student expression made the troubling conclusion that “students largely agree that the political and social climate on college campuses prevents some students from saying what they really believe because they’re afraid of offending their classmates.” The data revealed that 68% felt silenced because […]
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Here we go again—yet another book denouncing merit and meritocracy. Merit is such a useful idea that it is hard to think that a society could do without it, and probably none does. That, however, hasn’t restrained a burgeoning industry of people who are fed up with the whole idea. “Abolish merit!” they thunder. “It […]
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Few universities have a more troubling record on Title IX matters than Yale. A few months after settling a lawsuit brought by former basketball captain Jack Montague—thereby avoiding trial on a variety of claims, including that the university manipulated its procedures to bring charges against Montague and then found him guilty despite a preponderance of […]
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A few days ago, Judge Allison Burroughs, appointed by President Obama to the Federal District of Massachusetts, issued her decision in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard College in which the plaintiffs claimed that affirmative action preferences awarded to blacks and Hispanics amounted to illegal discrimination against Asians. It’s a doozy, by which I mean […]
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The New York Times recently drew a lot of attention for its “1619 Project” initiative, which has been criticized for misrepresenting the role of the slave trade as the central core to the development of the United States. The Times “aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the […]
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Colleges rarely sue one another, so when little Hillsdale College in Michigan sued the much larger University of Missouri a couple of years ago, it raised some eyebrows. Hillsdale alleges that Mizzou blatantly violated the terms of Wall Street financier Sherlock Hibbs’ will, who left $5 million to his alma mater upon his death to […]
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A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the University of Michigan could be dampening free speech on campus by allowing a group that helps students who have experienced potentially prejudicial acts to operate at the institution. Speech First, a Washington, D.C.-based civil liberties watchdog, sued Michigan last year, asking for an injunction to halt the activities of the university’s […]
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The Ninth Commandment urges us as follows: “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” The principle of false witness as an offense has been incorporated in British Common Law and American law as “perjury … defined as swearing falsely, under oath, in a judicial proceeding, about a material issue.” Perjury is a felony, a serious criminal offense. […]
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