French social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville described what I call the Tyranny of Benevolence in Book IV of his brilliant analysis of America’s society and government. Tocqueville published Democracy in America fifty years after Thomas Jefferson and James Madison launched their party revolution (1790–1796) and forty years after Jefferson won his so-called Revolution of 1800. […]
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As I have written elsewhere Jimmy Carter had many redeeming personal qualities often lacking in today’s American political leadership. But his policies also did a good deal of harm, most notably in higher education. Two developments of the Carter years have had lasting harmful effects. First, under Carter, the federal student loan programs began to […]
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Federal agencies pay for research at colleges and universities. Those institutions also charge overhead—called Facilities and Administrative (F&A) or indirect costs—by billing the agency at a fixed rate applied to the direct costs. Arizona State University (ASU) charges 57 percent for F&A. When a professor spends $100,000 of grant money on direct costs, ASU collects […]
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One of the great blessings of life in an open society is the freedom to doubt. There is no state religion that can demand our fealty. There are no ideologies sufficiently empowered to enforce our obedience. And, though there certainly isn’t any requirement to entirely reject an established order, there’s also no obligation to wholly […]
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The left’s favorite slogan, “Speak truth to power,” is just that. It is an empty, propagandist slogan increasingly turned into an ironic snare, considering the power scale being tipped towards their side decisively in multiple facets of American life, and higher education is at the forefront of the irony. Across the nation, campus life is […]
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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 […]
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Rudolf Haffenreffer Jr. (1874-1954) was a successful beer magnate during the era of regional breweries, including Narragansett, which was once the dominant brand throughout New England. In 1903, he purchased 376 acres of oceanfront land in Rhode Island, which happened to be where “King Phillip’s War” had both started in 1675 and ended in 1676 […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by PJ Media on December 4, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Throughout the history of civilization, many major conflicts have been framed as religious wars. Opponents identify with different religions and refer to them in explaining the conflict. Beginning in […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the College Fix on December 13, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. A University of Illinois student reported his accounting professor to the school’s bias team after she made a “passive-aggressive” comment concerning student course evaluations. The College […]
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For unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. — Isaiah 9:6 On Christmas, we celebrate a phenomenon theologians call the incarnation. The birth of Jesus Christ was the trans-dimensional irruption of the Son of God into our world from the heavenly realm. Both the Old and New Testaments give witness […]
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For decades, schools have followed a policy of promoting students regardless of whether they meet established standards, often justified by the belief that students will “catch up” when they “find their passion.” However, many never do, and for reasons rooted in basic biology. The brain allocates energy to a task only when it expects a […]
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“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 […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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…” […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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