Fifty years ago, a little-known political philosopher at Harvard named John Rawls published a lengthy book titled A Theory of Justice at the well-cured age of 50. It was a bold offering because most people assumed that the major issues in political philosophy had been thrashed out by the greats. The only work remaining was […]
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As a result of government and university policies in both the U.S. and Canada, university students are not seen as individuals with records of educational achievement and the potential for both success in higher education and for contributions beyond in the wider society. Instead, they are reduced to no more than members of census categories […]
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A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education (Encounter, May 2021) is a remarkable collection of seven essays about the pernicious spread of “social equity,” “diversity” and critical race theory in academia. This book is a must-read for those who would never read it: woke academicians, journalists, and policymakers who have no idea how […]
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In a university course on the sociology of death and dying that I teach, we spend a few weeks discussing the death penalty. Students in my class are uniformly surprised to find on the syllabus sources that argue for it as well as authors taking up the other side of the issue. As is the […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is a brief submitted by Philip Carl Salzman, emeritus professor of anthropology at McGill University, to the Commission scientifique et technique indépendante sur la reconnaissance de la liberté académique dans le milieu universitaire, Organismes liés, Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, Gouvernement du Québec. Salzman addresses various issues related to academic freedom both in […]
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An assistant professor of “environmental economics” recently published an article in the journal Climate Change. The article’s central question was: “How much evidence would it take to convince ‘skeptics’ they are wrong?” The study concluded that “Those who are strongly skeptical about climate change are unlikely to change their minds for many years to come.” […]
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In 1956, then-Senator John F. Kennedy was presumed to have written a short book of biographical essays which chronicled the stories of eight U.S. senators who at times of potential crisis in American government defied conventional wisdom and made unpopular but right decisions. In some cases, these decisions cost them their political careers. He won […]
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Thomas Ricks’ First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (2020) uses brief biographies of our first four presidents to explain how their studies of the classics shaped the system of checks and balances central to American democracy. One could create a similar narrative for American […]
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Editor’s Note: This article originally stated that the Six-Day War occurred in 1968, and that the Yom Kippur war occurred in 1972. These dates have been corrected to 1967 and 1973, respectively. When I began studying cultural anthropology in 1960, anthropologists still aspired to be scientific. Leaders in the discipline wrote books with titles like […]
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You want your classroom and your campus each to be a place of open and free inquiry and, thereby, a place of open and free critical discussion. You also want each to be a place of civility and a place welcoming to all inquirers and to all their various points of view. There’s a lot […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClearEducation on June 16, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Parents looking to inspire a prudent love of country among their college-bound teens should explore The William S. Knight Center for Patriotic Education, opening later this year at College of the Ozarks. Director Andrew T. Bolger says that The […]
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With the specter of George Floyd still looming heavily over America, one cannot help but sense that change is in the air. What this change will entail is not entirely certain, for it hinges less upon the outcomes of one or two trials and much more upon which theory of reality prevails after the smoke […]
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Oliver Wendel Holmes’ “great dissent” to Abrams (1919) begins: “Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition…” Holmes’ compelling subsequent […]
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Are schools guilty of racism just because they suspend more black students than white students? Federal courts often say no, because it could be the result of a higher rate of misbehavior by black students, rather than racism. Surveys and studies show black students misbehave at higher rates in school. But the Biden administration thinks […]
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In light of President Biden’s first joint address to Congress and continued commitment to the Jan. 6 commission, it has now become abundantly clear that the Democrats are adopting the playbook of the woke (or regressive) left. Unlike the old left, which was more concerned with workers’ rights and ending discriminatory policies, the woke-regressives—born in […]
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There is a peculiar theory that has its basis in Marxism and that hails from early-twentieth-century Germany. The theory first manifested itself in the United States in the 1970s. Critical Race Theory brings with it the idea that all whites are racists, whether they are aware of this or not. The labeling of a group […]
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Your local university bookstore, bringing Woke culture to a backward small town near you It was just Commencement Weekend at the central Pennsylvania liberal arts college where I teach. COVID restrictions looked to be in serious retreat around town, as families were excitedly milling about on the main drag, many mask-free, and the whole area […]
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Charles Darwin’s works, including The Descent of Man (1871), withstand the test of time. Darwin got a remarkable amount about the mechanics of evolution, our African origins, the links between humans and the rest of the natural world, and evolution’s impact on our current conditions right. He did this with practically no human fossil record […]
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These days, theories are formulated, conclusions drawn, and policies shaped not by the accumulation of relevant evidence, but by redefining words, which determines the desired outcome. Let us begin with examples from the discourse surrounding the Palestine-Arab-Iran-Israel conflict. The “Science for Peace” letter, titled “Canada must condemn the violence in Gaza and the West Bank […]
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With news that a transgender powerlifter will likely be competing in this year’s Olympics, questions are once again being raised about how allowing biological men into female spaces could affect the integrity of athletic competition and women’s safety. Many pundits on the left see this as a non-issue; there simply aren’t that many transgender athletes, […]
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” Actual, true racism is discrimination or prejudice based on outward perceived or real ethnic or racial attributes. It is nothing more. Discrimination and prejudice based on outward perceived or real ethnic or racial attributes has occurred and does occur in America, as […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on May 17, 2021, and is crossposted here with permission. Like “black criminality,” “Jewish shrewdness,” “Italian mafiosity,” and “Irish drunkenness,” “white fragility” is a racist concept. Identifying a particular derogatory characteristic, or even a positive characteristic, with a racial or ethnic group, as if it accurately […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a series of satirical articles loosely inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. To read Part I, click here. PART II: THE YEAR 2029 OC (Old Calendar) Prologue: In the year 2024, after Congress created the new states of Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Intellectual Takeout on May 19, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Like nearly all Americans, President Joe Biden believes that a college degree is the ticket to both individual economic advancement and uplifting the poor. To put his money where his mouth is, he has proposed $256 billion in […]
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Editor’s Note: The original version of this article stated, “It was Thomas Jefferson who in 1769 drafted the law that, when enacted three years later, permitted the freeing of Virginia slaves.” The “three” here is incorrect and has been corrected to “thirteen.” Most Americans appear to believe that Thomas Jefferson raped the slave child Sally […]
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To my students: University students should be free from threat of institutional censure to state any opinion they wish and to state their opinions using whatever language they wish. At our university, however, students do not enjoy this freedom of expression. Various documents at Saint Mary’s University constrain what students may say and how they […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is the first in a series of satirical articles loosely inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. In honor of C.S. Lewis, who “discovered” the first set of correspondence. “Satire’s nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClearWire on May 12, 2021, and is crossposted here with permission. The rise of critical race theory, along with the popularity of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, presents a serious challenge to the concept of “E Pluribus Unum.” According to Richard Reinsch, the editor of Liberty Fund’s […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on May 8, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. The internationalization of labor has been a longstanding policy of government and business. The main reason is the low cost of labor in developing countries such as China, compared to the cost of labor in modern […]
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One of the least enjoyable aspects of college teaching is policing students for cheating. Instructors face the procedural issue of finding cheating as well as the moral issue of warning against it and advocating for academic integrity. Programs such as Turnitin check papers for plagiarism against a database of published material and other student papers. […]
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