Debates surrounding Title IX, namely the Biden administration’s push to include gender identity, are overshadowing a debate that we should be having about sexual assault and misconduct faced by female athletes. As we continue to uncover new cases of misconduct, it’s clear that Title IX does not effectively address these problems and requires strengthening to […]
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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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During a brief stint working for Congress decades ago, I used the expression “cheaters, liars, and robbers” to help locate the three House office buildings: Cannon, Longworth, and Rayburn. Those three words unfortunately describe much academic misconduct that is potentially shaking the very foundation of trust and support in American higher education. Cheaters Cheating pervades […]
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A new Inside Higher Ed Student Voice flash survey conducted in partnership with Generation Lab offers insights into the voting behaviors and preferences of college students across the United States. The survey, conducted last month, involved responses from 1,012 college students. The publication says the results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent, […]
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PEN America’s report on American classrooms paints a dark picture: legislatures are passing gag orders on college administration, faculty, and academic norms. Others, looking at the same picture, see hopeful rays of light: legislatures are correcting the overreach of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” practices. We see the same difference of perspective in a parallel report […]
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Sometimes, reform offers come too late. Joseph Galloway, speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, came to the First Continental Congress with a clever plan—the Plan of Union—to unite the British North American colonies in their own Parliament, subordinate to Great Britain’s Parliament. The American Parliament would vote on many matters, but Britain would have a veto. […]
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“The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once restated Sayre’s law in this famous quip on competition in academia. That was the 1970s when scholarly debates about communism and Marxism had little influence on government policies at the height of the Cold […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the College Fix on October 21, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. The Democrat-controlled Senate is not expected to consider the “End Woke Higher Education Act” that recently passed in the House with moderate bipartisan support, but observers remain optimistic […]
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Amy Wax has provided a perfect test case for accessing the state of academic freedom. On paper, just about any college would be lucky to have her. She earned both an MD and a JD, argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, and then became a law professor at a top college for three decades. […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on September 16, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Earlier this year, the Martin Center’s Ashlynn Warta wrote convincingly that faculty opposition to academic cuts at UNC Greensboro was best understood […]
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An essay I wrote entitled, “Incoming college STEM freshmen, take note: You need to take your classes seriously,” was published as a special to the USA TODAY Network and in two other South Florida newspapers. I offered ten suggestions for success to incoming college freshmen planning to major in a STEM discipline. Among the suggestions […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by American Greatness on October 2, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission. Chad Aldeman, a Virginia-based researcher who focuses on education-related issues, recently detailed the educational experience of his daughter, who completed sixth grade in June. He writes that […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on October 14, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Ah, October, when temperatures fall, men rake leaves, and universities publish their annual crime data, as required by the 1990 Clery Act. […]
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Last week, a student of mine learned that I did not identify as far left. I watched, on the Zoom call, as her pupils dilated in fascination: “But you were an English major at Columbia!,” she exclaimed. Incidents like these are not uncommon. Over on my Instagram page, where I post videos to promote the […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on September 27, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission. Things should be what they are in higher education as elsewhere. Colleges advertising a liberal arts curriculum should immerse their students in literature, […]
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The First Continent Congress was not known for taking radical measures. When it met in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774, it first rejected the plan but was forwarded by Pennsylvania representative Joseph Galloway, Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Galloway favored a “solid political union” between the colonies and Britain as the best way to […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is a short excerpt from an article originally published on the author’s Substack Purpose and Desire on October 16, 2024. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. I have a recent publication in Minding the Sciences concerning the “irreproducibility crisis”—also variously named the “replication crisis” or “reproducibility crisis.” The crisis, […]
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Sundays used to signify a day of rest, reflection, and worship—now, for college students, they signify 11:59 p.m. deadlines and endless Canvas notifications. The constant pressure of online grading systems and classes keeps students in a state of perpetual stress—even at Christian colleges, where Sabbath-honoring should be prioritized. Said religious universities ceaselessly stress the significance […]
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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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An Ivy League degree has long been viewed as American higher education’s crowning achievement—the ultimate status symbol, identifying the holder as a card-carrying member of the elite. At least, that used to be true. No doubt it still is, to some extent, as old ways of thinking die hard. But the recent behavior of many Ivy League leaders has clearly tarnished the crown. I’m reminded of another venerable […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the College Fix on October 15, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. A new House committee report raises concerns about the security of U.S.-China university partnerships, warning that these collaborations are aiding foreign technological and military advancements. “Following a year-long investigation, Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the Jewish Journal on October 15, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. A few weeks ago, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent out a “Campus Crisis Alert” featuring the “persistent and pervasive” antisemitism” at Sarah Lawrence College where I teach, focusing in particular on my experiences. The alert came as […]
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Science has a trustworthiness problem. Public trust in science, scientists, and in the worthiness of scientific research for society, has been on a steady decline since 2019, according to Pew Research Center. To be frank, “science” is lucky its trustworthiness problem is not worse, because the public has long been unaware just how deep the […]
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On October 2, a trial court dismissed Florida’s lawsuit against the Biden Education Department, claiming that accreditation methods for institutions of higher education are illegal. But the state will almost certainly re-file its complaint or appeal to continue its fight against an accreditation system gone bad. Florida says the current system is unconstitutional because it violates the […]
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The release of data on incoming freshmen this fall was watched keenly in light of last year’s Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard decision that effectively outlawed race-based affirmative action policies in college admissions. As the data have been released, the picture is mixed. Some schools have seen the expected results: a larger proportion of […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the American Spectator on October 13, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. Our intrepid progressives have tossed Christopher Columbus and his special day of remembrance to their ash heap of history. They have instead created something they find much more noble. They call it Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This day, […]
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The Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress was adopted on October 14, 1774. It’s important for all sorts of good reasons. The representatives of the colonies—except distant Georgia—came together for the first time to endorse a joint action. They invoked natural law to justify their rights as well as their rights as Englishmen—“the […]
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On the September 27th edition of PBS’s Washington Week, reporters expressed barely controlled outrage about the Trump campaign’s slanderous attacks on Haitian immigrants. Why don’t seemingly racist—not to mention sexist—statements crater Mr. Trump’s support? Chiefly because when, in the eyes of professors and reporters, everyone is racist, then no one is. Normal American voters reflexively […]
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Introduction The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was initially written to ensure that government-funded institutions, such as museums and universities, give human remains and some types of artifacts from past peoples to related modern tribes. Relatedness was to be determined through a preponderance of evidence, using data from archaeology, anthropology, history, biology […]
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The passage of the End Woke Higher Education Act by the U.S. House of Representatives—currently awaiting a Senate vote—marks a significant victory for constitutional freedoms in higher education. At a time when campuses are increasingly dominated by restrictive speech codes and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) mandates, this bill offers a much-needed course correction. If […]
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