It may have taken decades, but thanks to an upcoming Supreme Court case, American universities may soon be legally required to end racial preferences. At least that’s what many hope. Unfortunately, even if the Supreme Court bans racial preferences, the battle will hardly end. It may even become more acrimonious. One should recall what transpired […]
Read MoreEditor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Spectator World on February 19, 2022 and is crossposted here with permission. In January, the Department of Justice dropped charges against Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Gang Chen, a mechanical engineer accused of concealing illicit ties to the Chinese government early last year. United States Attorney Rachael Rollins said regarding the decision, […]
Read MoreEarlier this month, the Anti-Defamation League released an “interim definition” of racism, after its 2020 definition was widely criticized. That earlier definition held that racism is the “marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” Of course, if this were accurate, countless instances of racial […]
Read MoreIts discrimination against Asians mirrors its treatment of Jews, but for different reasons On January 24th, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University, which not only has profound implications for the future of affirmative action in college admissions but also recalls an ignoble part of Harvard’s history […]
Read MoreThis is not an article about censorship. It is an article about critical thinking—framed within legislated guardrails. Boundaries are important in elementary and secondary education, more so than in higher education. We immediately think of age-appropriate materials, but there is also the more difficult issue of how we ought to frame education. At some point, […]
Read MoreIn 1986, economist Herbert Stein proposed what is now known as Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This may have been true 35 years ago, but we’d be hard-pressed to apply this law to today’s colleges and universities. The parade of crackpot ideas is unending, and one can only wonder […]
Read MoreAt California State University San Marcos (CSUSM), the Craven Taskforce is busy at work to cleanse the university of its connections to the late Senator William A. Craven, who helped found the school in 1978. The renaming taskforce consists of 23 members drawn from the faculty, the student body, and the larger community, who are […]
Read MoreMore lethal ammunition for the campus cognitive war against Israel In May, while Hamas was firing more than 3,000 deadly rockets from Gaza with the express purpose of murdering Jewish Israelis, members of academic communities around the world were falling over themselves to express their solidarity, not with the beleaguered citizens of the Jewish state […]
Read MoreEditor’s Note: This article was originally published by First Things on February 8, 2022 and is crossposted here with permission. In 1919, Columbia University added a new class: “Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West.” Partly a response to World War I, it was designed as a “peace issues” course to correspond with a “war issues” […]
Read MoreLast week, former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores made headlines in the sports world after he filed a class action lawsuit against the National Football League and all 32 of its teams. Flores, who is African American, was interviewed for a position as head coach of the New York Giants. The job was given […]
Read MoreA recent Wall Street Journal article told of how Bard College, my alma mater, has tasked three undergraduates, funded by the school’s Office of Inclusive Excellence, to peruse the college’s 400,000-book library and evaluate “… each book for representations of race/ethnicity, gender, religion, and ability.” According to the library’s newsletter, this evaluation was the first […]
Read MoreThe National Association of Scholars recently appointed Dr. J. Scott Turner as Director of our Diversity in the Sciences project. Dr. Turner is a retired professor of biology at the State University of New York, though he continues his research on ecology, evolution, and (in particular) termite colonies in Namibia. He is well-positioned to help […]
Read MoreNo sooner had the Supreme Court alarmed higher ed leaders and their elite allies by agreeing to revisit its past support for racial preference—thus ensuring months of contentious culture war conflict over the possibility that it might adopt Chief Justice Roberts’ aphorism in Parents Involved (“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race […]
Read MoreChildren who visit libraries in some American cities have grown accustomed to encountering drag queens who read LGBTQ+ stories to them. Parents began to object. Now it seems that public school librarians are on the receiving end of parental complaints. A January 2022 Education Week article highlighted a growing battle between parents and school librarians. […]
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