“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”—Thomas Paine Race peddlers are at the scheme of reparations again. This time, they are playing the game in higher education, hoping to get progressive government agencies to legislate racial preferences in college admissions. Will they succeed? California […]
Read More
Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
Read More
As a college professor for 38 years and an “out-of-the-closet” conservative for at least 20 of those years, I’ve gotten used to being a little careful about what I say around my almost uniformly left-leaning colleagues. I just never thought I’d have to exercise the same caution when communicating with people on my own side. […]
Read More
The pricing of higher education is always a bit mysterious. In the past, colleges and universities have gotten into considerable trouble for price-fixing when it emerged that they had colluded to set their tuition rates or financial aid packages. But sometimes colleges and universities can read the situation without colluding. I doubt that the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and the […]
Read More
My pronouns are they/them/theirs. I insist that you use them when referring to me. You can hear sentiments like that—perhaps not as succinctly—across countless Tic-Toks, news interviews, YouTube videos, debates, and in print, from the New York Times to Fox News. Yet, what you never encounter is someone saying, “OUR pronouns are…” or “WE insist…” […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Black Liszt on November 6, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. To call what is taught in the “computer science” departments of universities a “science” is a mind game to get everyone involved to believe that what is […]
Read More
In my first essay on this topic, I surveyed the epistolary evidence for Jefferson’s subtle appreciation of Cervantes’s Don Quijote. In my second, I showed how, for his part, the inventor of the modern novel deployed the picaresque genre as a way to critically examine racism, slavery, tyranny, and monetary manipulation in late-Renaissance Spain. It’s […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by PJ Media on November 22, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. The Enlightenment-inspired higher education that I encountered during my 1958-72 studies at Antioch College and the University of Chicago, and at McGill University for much of the time when […]
Read More
The demographic cliff is not news to anyone who has been paying attention to college enrollment or workforce needs. Nothing can be done about all the children who weren’t born in the last two decades, and it is unlikely that much can be done to improve the birth rate in the near future. Many colleges […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Anchoring Truths. Anchoring Truths is the online journal of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Western society faces unprecedented social turmoil. This situation has arisen primarily through the […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Diogenes in Exile on October 07, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. We need to talk about the standards for mental health counseling education. The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) is a non-profit […]
Read More
Searching for truth is a very old and demanding activity because the truth is omnipresent. Like gravitation or the magnetic field, truth cannot be seen. There is also an apparent truth—when people look at the sky, they see the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars moving, and for a long time many believed that the Earth […]
Read More
When it comes to sleep, students are often guilty of being a little too loose with their interpretation of the rules. Late nights followed by rude awakenings from early-morning lectures are considered part and parcel of university life. However, as difficult as it may seem, finding the balance between healthy sleep and getting the most […]
Read More
The language and tone of the recent U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation report, “D.E.I. Division. Extremism. Ideology. How the Biden-Harris NSF Politicized Science,” is very partisan, which makes the report less persuasive than it otherwise might be. Still, the report identifies and criticizes a growing failure of objectivity by the National Science […]
Read More
American universities stand at a historic crossroads. After decades of strong progressive policies, progressivism has become the status quo. Universities have drifted so far to the left that they have lost all connection to their roots. When it’s easier to find a dissident in Iran than a Republican at Harvard University, it’s a clear sign […]
Read More
In New Hampshire, they call it “the shot not heard round the world.” On December 14, 1774, local patriots captured Fort McHenry in Portsmouth harbor. It’s probably—definitions and claims vary—the first open act of violent rebellion during the American Revolution. Patriots had been increasingly worried about control of scarce guns and powder since October when […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: The following is the introduction to the author’s comprehensive compilation, featuring excerpts from 170 sources, including news articles, op-eds, books, speeches, letters, conference summaries, panel discussions, policy statements, and legislation. These documents collectively explore race-based preferences in student admissions and faculty hiring, as well as the broader racialization and politicization of universities and […]
Read More
In many dimensions, the United States military is just as committed to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) as any Ivy League university. Cully Stimson, writing in the Daily Signal, provides an interesting discussion of the Students for Fair Admissions’s (SFFA) case against the United States Naval Academy (USNA). SFFA, the plaintive in last year’s Supreme […]
Read More
Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Daily Tar Heel on December 8, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. The pioneering new School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL), like anything at UNC-Chapel Hill, can be celebrated or criticized. But querulous history professor Jay Smith and other avowed […]
Read More
In 2015, when Kamala Harris was California’s Attorney General, she imposed implicit bias training on California law enforcement personnel. In 2020, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed into law a bill imposing implicit bias training on Minnesota police. In 2016, even Senator J. D. Vance wrote far too credulously of implicit bias theory: “The data consistently […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This essay is the second installment of a two-part series. You can read Part 1 here. Yesterday’s assessment of Jay Bhattacharya’s appointment as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was written before I had seen two excellent weekend Wall Street Journal stories on the Trump appointee. In a news story by Liz […]
Read More
On December 10, 1774, the First Massachusetts Provincial Congress adjourned. They had been in session since October 7. They were America’s first revolutionary legislature, and they handled their business quite well. You can read all about it in their Journals. It’s an old nostrum that America was able to achieve independence so easily because they’d […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on December 4, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. The San José State University (SJSU) women’s volleyball team made international news this season, with coverage by the BBC, the Telegraph, Quillette, the New York Times, CNN, […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on November 17, 2024. It was translated into English by the Observatory before being edited to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is crossposted here with permission. There is no stopping progress in the invention of new woke causes intended […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Mises Institute on December 18, 2023. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Mises Wire contributor Kevin Van Elswyk, in his November 29 article “Student Loans: The Continuing Crisis That Is Getting Worse,” nicely summarizes the current confusion and scandal of federal student loan […]
Read More
Research misconduct scandal after research misconduct scandal has surfaced in the science world as of late. Between neuroscientist and National Institute of Health (NIH) officer Eliezer Masliah, who Minding the Campus contributor David Randall reported on in late September, and superconductivity physicist Ranga Dias, whom I reported on, news of scientific misconduct has become increasingly […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This essay is the first installment of a two-part series. You can read Part 2 here. Probably the most important federal funder of traditional advanced research is the National Institutes of Health (NIH). President-Elect Trump has appointed a remarkable man to head that key branch of the federal government, Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., and Ph.D. […]
Read More
WEB Dubois is a hero of the academic left because he adopted Marxism in his latter days—battling with the FBI, joining the Communist Party in 1961, and then emigrating to Ghana, where he died in 1963. But what is often forgotten is the earlier great debate he had with Booker T. Washington in the latter […]
Read More
The recent dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the Ivy League’s ban on athletic scholarships has brought renewed attention to the longstanding policies of some of the nation’s most prestigious universities. The case, filed by former Ivy League athletes at Brown, Tamenang Choh, and Grace Kirk, accused all Ivy League schools and the Ivy League Council of Presidents of violating […]
Read More