Historian David McCullough, who passed away on Aug. 7, spent his life telling stories that his fellow citizens should know. He wrote well-known biographies of John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and the Wright Brothers. He got his start chronicling the Johnstown Flood before turning to the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama […]
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A new poll from NBC News that looked at second-year college and university students is generating attention after revealing that, “nearly half of college students wouldn’t room with someone who votes differently.” More specifically, the poll found that 54 percent of sophomores would “definitely” or “probably” be open to living with someone who supported the […]
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Yesterday, Joe Biden announced a plan to write off $10,000 in student loans for most people who haven’t paid off their student loans — and $20,000 in student loans for people who received Pell Grants. Biden’s plan will increase inflation, inequality, tuition, and the national debt. News articles have estimated the cost of Biden’s plan […]
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The Biden administration just announced its long-anticipated student loan forgiveness plan. The plan would forgive $10,000 for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year ($250,000 if married) and $20,000 for Pell grant recipients. On the bright side, the Biden plan could have been worse, such as wiping out all debt with no income restrictions. But […]
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Last Thursday, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker from the North District of Florida issued a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the employment provisions in Florida’s newly codified Individual Freedom Act (IFA). On the same day, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted a lawsuit challenging the IFA, also known as the Stop the […]
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The social costs of the COVID-19 pandemic are not limited to the disease, but also include the ideologically driven response to it. At every level of government, politically motivated school closures cost children years of education, while forced closures of businesses increased poverty and economic dislocation. In Los Angeles, where public health is a political […]
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In a recent interview, Richard Hanania and Gail Heriot note how the legal concept of disparate impact—that any difference in group outcomes is evidence of discrimination—essentially makes everything illegal. This, in turn, gives the government the authority to do whatever it wants by selectively choosing which cases to bring: Literally any practice you can think […]
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Miseducation and the Law in America, Part II (Read Part I here.) As Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism stalked the globe in the 1950s, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835/40) boosted morale in the U.S. by defending freedom without whitewashing the lack of civil rights in the South. Tocqueville’s defense of American democracy was solid, and […]
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America’s colleges are so left-wing that even a progressive doctor who once headed Planned Parenthood is facing calls that she be canceled as a speaker. The College Fix reports on how public-health professors are trying to cancel her speech: More than 400 public health professionals and “allies” wrote a statement calling for the cancellation of […]
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In their zeal to create “safe” campus environments, universities have coddled, nurtured, and shielded from any criticism students from approved victim groups. So-called hate speech—which now includes any expression that contradicts the prevailing progressive orthodoxy on campuses—is said to be harmful, even violent, by those forced to listen to others’ ideas. Not content with simply […]
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For years progressives have been trying to close an imaginary loophole regarding the 90-10 rule and the GI Bill. Colleges are subject to the 90-10 rule, which requires that no more than 90% of their revenue can come from federal financial aid. Meanwhile, Congress has consistently passed GI Bills, which provide funding for servicemembers and […]
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Regular Americans are growing more and more aware that our universities are broken. Tuition costs are out of control. Lowered admission standards have collapsed academic standards. Too many degrees and credentials are awarded, diluting their value in the eyes of employers and the public at large. And all of this is to say nothing of […]
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As I have mentioned in a couple of books and numerous media epistles, late in life the great economist Milton Friedman told me he wasn’t sure whether universities should be subsidized or taxed by governments. This was a change in position: In his Capitalism and Freedom (1962), in which he generally argued for a very […]
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What is the state of academic history? Take a look at the latest issue of the American Historical Review, the flagship journal of the academic discipline. It doesn’t publish bread-and-butter research articles; those go to specialist journals and fill published essay collections. Instead, its articles illustrate entire schools of historiography, using research as an entrée […]
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The Minneapolis Public Schools have adopted a race-based layoff provision that violates the Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. “A Minneapolis teachers union contract stipulates that white teachers will be laid off or reassigned before “educators of color” in the event Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) needs to reduce staff,” reports Alpha News: […]
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In my recent discussion with Michael Rectenwald—a former New York University professor and author of Springtime for Snowflakes: “Social Justice” and Its Postmodern Parentage—we discussed how satire was one of the most effective ways to deal with “woke-ism.” (“Woke-ism” is the colloquial expression for the anti-Enlightenment agenda of identity politics becoming totalitarian). This is because […]
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Using the ‘as a Jew’ Accusation against the Jewish State As if further confirmation were needed to designate the CUNY system as an egregious purveyor of anti-Israel activism—often replete with anti-Semitic expression—the university is being made to answer for its failure to protect Jewish students and faculty with a new Title VI complaint filed on […]
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Where To Begin? When tracing the origins of today’s academic chaos, many point to the social upheaval that rocked America in the 1960s and ‘70s. Others go a bit further back, detailing the rise of the Frankfurt School in 1930s Germany and the ensuing tidal wave of critical theory that has since engulfed much of […]
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“When economists find that they are unable to analyze what is happening in the real world, they invent an imaginary world which they are capable of handling.” Nobel law and economics scholar Ronald Coase, University of Chicago Law *** Two law professors from the University of Chicago and UCLA, respectively, recently wrote a fascinating essay […]
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Coming of age as a young woman in a man’s world has always brought challenges. The track record of the psychology and psychiatry professions attempting to deal with these challenges has not been pretty. But never before have we seen the therapeutic community so eagerly inflict surgical mutilation on pre-pubescent girls struggling to accept their […]
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Miseducation and the Law in America, Part I “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” – Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2 America is litigious. Many will roll our eyes at the thought of the creatures that make it that way. Jokes learned in childhood deprecate them in titanic […]
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The woke mob’s attack on academic heretics can be likened to hunting. Most hunts attract scant attention, often no more than shooting squirrels with a .22. Blocking the reappointment of a visiting instructor at Smallville Community College who mis-gendered a student is an example of this low-level hunting. But of far greater consequence is what […]
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I remember as a college freshman seeing a cartoon taped on the door of one of the physics labs in Cornelia Hall at Iona College. It showed a student complaining to his professor, saying, “I really understand the material, I just can’t do the problems.” It’s not rocket science to understand why GenZers are struggling […]
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Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D., was an outspoken ecological climatologist, former Virginia State Climatologist, and erstwhile president of the American Association of State Climatologists. For thirty years, he was a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. He was a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change […]
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Among the debates over federal student loans, two of the most important are: 1) should student loans be used to subsidize college? and 2) are student loans subsidizing college? Should Student Loans be Used to Subsidize College? Regarding the first debate, scholars have long pointed out that there is a role for government facilitation of […]
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Last week, both Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) filed their response briefs with the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS), which is now considering two lawsuits against the institutions’ admissions processes by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA). In the responses, the defendants categorically deny claims of racial discrimination in undergraduate admissions, pledge their […]
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American higher education is in crisis, but persuading students to avoid it won’t fix the underlying problems. Charlie Kirk’s new book, The College Scam: How America’s Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America’s Youth (Winning Team Publishing, 2022), is based on the faulty premise that America can survive without higher education. No […]
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I recently began a series of articles assessing the various ways out of our current academic quagmire. In the first piece—or perhaps more accurately, the zeroth piece—I urged conservative commentators to stop spending all of their time pointing out the rather obvious double standards, contradictions, and hypocrisy within the higher education establishment, and to instead […]
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Virginia is for history lovers. George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and James Madison’s Montpelier – a triad of epicenters of our nation’s past – are all within driving distance. Those who own and operate these historic houses have a significant say over how the American Founding is taught. Unfortunately, as described in a […]
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Zig Ziglar, the late motivational speaker, wrote, “Check the records. All great failures in life are character failures, and all complete successes are character based. The need for character education is irrefutable.” Should Ziglar be dismissed out of hand because he was white? Character is a part of everything we say and do in life, and […]
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