Year: 2021

Legislatures: It’s Time to Defund Universities

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on May 5, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Our universities have been uniformly corrupted by neo-Marxist political ideology. They no longer teach the great wealth of knowledge of Western Civilization, or engage in research to advance that knowledge. Instead, they indoctrinate their students […]

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Field Notes on Recent Trends in Higher Ed Litigation

Editor’s Note: The following is a reproduction of a pair of emails received by the editors of Minding the Campus. We thought they would attract broad interest and publish them here with the correspondent’s consent. The correspondent has chosen to remain anonymous. The messages have been lightly edited for readability. Three interesting articles about higher ed crossed […]

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Academia Becomes More Ideological, More Coercive

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on April 30, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Universities as a community of autonomous scholars delving into knowledge and seeking to expand it is a model long out of date. With the explosive growth of university, scientific, and granting agency bureaucracies, coercive oversight and […]

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Sustainable Development in Higher Education: Useful Concept or Trojan Horse?

Having worked within the humanities for a number of years now, I have first-hand experience with the ways in which words and concepts can get politicized and abused. Sometimes, familiar words take on new meanings (e.g., racism, gender), while other times, new concepts get mainstreamed without the general public being made aware of what they […]

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In Defense of the N-word: Context Should Determine its Adoption by Professors

On college and university campuses, no self-respecting individual would use the N-word as a racial slur, given its links to slavery and the dehumanization of Africans. But a marked shift in attitudes has occurred. Professors, particularly white professors, must now refrain from referring to the N-word in any capacity. This eradicationist agenda, however, is misguided. […]

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The Sixties and the Forgotten Man: A Non-Modest Proposal

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of Peter E. Austin’s essay, “The Sixties and the Forgotten Man: A Non-Modest Proposal.” Dr. Austin was Honors Professor of History and University Studies for sixteen years at St. Edward’s University. Currently he directs The 1960s Project, a large study of the era that grew out of a large lecture course […]

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GMU President Cites ‘Diversity’ to Justify Illegal Goal of Mostly Non-White Staff

The president of George Mason University wants to give minorities a big advantage in hiring until the faculty is as heavily minority as the school’s student body and the future, mostly non-white U.S. population. This is illegal, say lawyers and law professors. Indeed, GMU’s president, Gregory Washington, recognized that objection in an April 15 email […]

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Harvard Wrongly Attributed Police Killings to Racism

In a misleading email to alumni, the leadership of Harvard University implied, without evidence, that police killed three people out of racism. It cited the “killings of Adam Toledo,” “Daunte Wright” and “George Floyd” in railing against the “evil of racism” and police killings of people “by virtue of the color of their skin.” “The […]

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Inclusive Assessment: The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations Revisited

On April 11, The Telegraph was one of several British Sunday editions to report on the adoption of so-called “inclusive assessments” by some British universities. The University of Hull, a public university responsible for the education of over 15,000 students, was featured prominently in these reports. Hull’s website describes its initiative on a web page […]

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Free to Be Greek

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClearEducation on April 20, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Why Freedom of Association Is as Essential to the University’s Mission as Freedom of Speech RealClearEducation has published a national opinion survey of students belonging to Greek-letter organizations, encompassing 4,620 students at 534 colleges and universities. […]

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Biden Embraces Critical Race Theory and Radical Indoctrination About Race and History

The Biden administration is using federal money to get states to inject radical racial theories into children’s history classes. As Stanley Kurtz notes in the National Review: The woke revolution in the classroom is about to go federal…President Biden’s Department of Education has signaled its intent to impose the most radical forms of Critical Race […]

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The Claremont Institute’s Counterrevolution to Save America

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClearWire on April 16, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Claremont Institute president Ryan Williams says that American civic education faces an acute crisis. In his estimation, essentially every institution – the vast complex of media, Big Tech, Hollywood, Fortune 500 companies, and education and government bureaucracies […]

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Biden Nominee’s Racist Claims About Whites Weren’t Satirical

President Biden nominated lawyer Kristen Clarke to run the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, even though she once said that whites are inferior to blacks, and she has long opposed civil rights for white victims of racial discrimination. “Melanin endows blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities,” while “most whites are unable to produce […]

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Where Can You Send Your Children to University?

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on April 19, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Liberal arts education, as I experienced it at Antioch College in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was aimed at opening students’ minds to the intellectual life of Western culture. Students were asked to consider […]

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Live Not By Lies

In February 1974, on the day of his last arrest by the Soviet government, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released the text of what was to be his final essay written in his homeland for twenty years, “Live Not By Lies.” The next day, he was stripped of his citizenship, deported from the Soviet Union to West Germany, […]

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Healthy Skepticism or Paranoia? How Critical Race Theory Could Contribute to Vaccine Hesitancy

With recent news suggesting blacks and Latinos are being vaccinated for COVID-19 at lower rates than whites, many are searching for the causes of this apparent inequity. While structural and systemic racism are the most cited explanations, others speculate that “vaccine hesitancy” within communities of color may also play a role. For example, a research letter […]

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Give Lil Nas X His Due

Rapper Lil Nas X has sparked controversy with his new brand of sneakers, the Satan Shoes. Only 666 pairs of such shoes were manufactured­—and sold within minutes. They feature an inverted pentagram and a reference to Luke 10:8 (where Jesus proclaims that he saw Satan fall like lightning). The marketing campaign also claims that each […]

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How ‘Inclusion’ in Canadian Universities Becomes Exclusion

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on March 27, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. The foremost advocates of racism and sexism in Canada are our universities. No longer are individuals treated as individuals according to their achievements, potential, and merits. Rather, under the label “diversity, inclusion, and equity,” students, […]

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Save the Schools—Unleash the Shysters

The battle against the Diversity-Inclusion-Equity (DIE) colossus is not going especially well. Yes, we are resisting and occasionally score a victory, but our current repertory of weapons is obviously inadequate. Take heart, for there is an alternative: a tsunami of lawsuits over academic malpractice. This is not about our organizations filing suits to end racial […]

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Hands Off My Syllabus!

The course outline or course syllabus is a teaching tool. Since it is a teaching tool, what it contains should be entirely up to the professor. Professors’ prerogatives with regard to their syllabi should be protected by academic freedom guarantees. Well, that’s in an ideal world. In the real world, in order to balance what […]

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From Postcolonial Theory to Toxic Masculinity: What Students Learn at Canadian Universities

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on March 22, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Did you know that all of the evil in the world was brought about by Western imperialism and colonialism? That is the message of “postcolonial theory,” the dominant narrative in university social sciences, humanities, and […]

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Virginia Moves Toward Ideological Requirement for Teachers

Can a state punish its school teachers for not having a progressive ideology? That’s what Virginia’s Board of Education appears to be doing. Its newly adopted “performance standard” for teacher evaluations is whether a “teacher demonstrates a commitment to equity and provides instruction and classroom strategies that result in culturally inclusive and responsive learning environments […]

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The Phenomenology of Zoom

It took a global pandemic to force me to teach online. Before, I occasionally lectured online for various schools and conferences, but had never taught a course online, either synchronously or asynchronously. (I use words like that now, given my unexpected but necessary immersion into online teaching.) My school agilely adapted to the coronavirus crisis […]

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15 Years Ago Duke Hate-Crime Hoax Was Peddled by Media and Racial-Justice ‘Reformers’

Today [article originally published on March 28, 2021] is the 15th anniversary of Duke University’s suspension of its Lacrosse team in response to false allegations that members of the team committed a racist gang-rape of a black stripper. The gang rape turned out to be a hoax. But long after DNA evidence and cell phone […]

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Virginia County Pays $15,000 to Racist Diversity Trainer for 1 Hour Seminar

School systems and colleges now routinely subject students and staff to racist scapegoating under the guise of promoting “diversity” or “anti-racism.” Radio broadcaster Rob Schilling reports on one example in Virginia: the Albermarle County Public Schools’ hiring of diversity-trainer Glenn Singleton. Singleton’s firm got paid a whopping $15,000 just to give a one-hour seminar. Singleton […]

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The Georgetown Outrage: Killing the Messenger Hurts Black Students

The specter of Madame Defarge, the blood-thirsty chronicler of severed heads in the French Revolution, hangs heavy over American universities. She just made an appearance at Georgetown Law School. Nowadays, heads don’t fall into baskets, but heads do roll, and careers, reputations, and personal lives are torn asunder by marauding woke progressives. Where can the […]

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The Woke War Against African Americans

Editor’s Note: A shorter version of this essay was originally published by The Epoch Times on March 16, 2021. The purpose of the woke “antiracism” movement launched by some members of the educational, media, and political elite, together with race activists, has always been to elevate its proclaimers above other members of the elite. In other […]

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Regrets, I’ve Had a Few

In early October 2020, a visual arts professor at the University of Ottawa spoke to her students about the phenomenon of subversive resignification. She mentioned as an example the word “nigger.” (She also mentioned “queer.”) One of her students complained to the university. In response, the university put the class on hiatus for a couple […]

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University Investigates Professor for Criticizing Communist Regime

At the University of San Diego, conservative law professor Tom Smith is being investigated for criticizing “Chinese” propaganda, based on the false premise that this constituted racial harassment of Asian-American students. If Professor Smith can be disciplined for criticizing China’s government, then I could have been disciplined as a student for criticizing Russia’s communist government […]

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The One-Party Orthodoxy of Equity and Anti-Racism

For many years now, I have attempted an open and thoughtful dialogue about equity and inclusion with members of my college community and with colleagues in my field of Learning Assistance. This occurred in the recent past when I worked at a large urban community college, where I served as a founding member of the […]

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