How is this year’s election going to affect American higher education? I am an economist, and our tribe is somewhere between mediocre to awful at forecasting, but since I am tenured, retired, and unpaid by Minding the Campus, there are utterly no adverse consequences from making a fool of myself with this current assessment. American […]
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Since March 2020, at least 64 colleges—mostly small, private liberal arts schools—have either closed or announced they will be closing, affecting almost 46,000 students. This follows a decade that saw nearly 900 colleges shut their doors. Most of those, however, were for-profit institutions, as the Obama Administration cracked down on such schools for allegedly bilking their students, not […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The College Fix on September 16, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. A conservative Michigan State University professor who wrote a chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has received threats for his involvement in the controversial political policy paper. MSU law Professor Adam Candeub told the Detroit News he has been sent […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is a short excerpt from an article originally published on the Substack Heterodox Stem on September 1, 2024. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. Is the tide turning against the woke mind-virus? There are hopeful signs for sure, as universities and companies are beginning to eliminate mandatory diversity statements, or are gutting […]
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Recently, Federal Judge Mark C. Scarsi ruled that a leading university (UCLA) acted illegally when it worked with pro-Hamas protesters to deny Jewish students access to portions of campus, including a library. Putting this in perspective, Scarsi wrote that “in the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, Jewish […]
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MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat), BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms), and TDYs (Temporary Duty): Three-letter acronyms (TLAs) describe routine aspects of military life. These catchy labels can also reference broad epistemological contexts. They are quick and convenient, allowing users to purport to understand more than they actually do. Unfortunately, they are often misunderstood and obscure more than they […]
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Are we more committed to uncovering objective truths in science, or have we become too afraid to rock the boat in fear of backlash? As a social species, when we come together in groups, we create cultures of norms, including taboos, which can incur steep penalties if broken. This part of human tribalism can magnify some […]
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Last month, California assemblyman James C. Ramos started a state legislative meeting with a prayer; it was appropriate for a meeting that would end with the funeral of anthropology in California. The California legislators met with tribal leaders and California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) officials to review the progress California’s public universities are […]
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The arts, once a rich cultural expression boasting the proverbial “moral of the story,” are corrupt! “Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes,” wrote William Shakespeare against Elizabethan era political corruption, and it seems nothing has changed. Is cultural progress, as the modern leftists have failed to re-define it, […]
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“Political parties live in a house of power. They are organizations for social fighting. The contents of a definite moral choice are never selected. The only criterion is the ubiquitous use of a method.” C. Wright Mills, Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America. Training for irregular political operations and lawfare originates from an […]
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There’s something central to every political community about death. As a result, you must deal with death if you’re going to lead. At the extreme, you have to order other people to shed their blood—and perhaps the blood of still others—for the city or country’s sake. Such was the perspective that Pericles brought to the […]
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The Instituto Cervantes reported in 2015 that about 51 million native speakers of Spanish lived in the United States. Such statistics are always suspect. Some estimates put the current number at 57 million. Then, there are about 11 million Spanish-speaking students with varying abilities. Given the open-border policy of the Biden Administration, we can probably […]
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Author’s Note: Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that the following misfortune for Georgia taxpayers could not have happened to a more deserving group of faculty members. Furthermore, in fact-spilling for the taxpaying public, this exercise is my responsibility alone, and my colleagues are not involved; I speak only for myself. Kennesaw State […]
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There are a host of shady dealings between President Joe Biden and foreign interests—at least according to a 300-page impeachment report released by the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees on August 19. These committees allege that Biden committed “impeachable offenses” by using his public positions to obtain financial benefits from foreign sources. While Biden’s […]
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The Biden-Harris administration’s pursuit of student loan forgiveness has moved from persistent to relentless and can now only be described as reckless. To briefly recap, the administration announced its first plan back in 2022, which the Supreme Court ruled was illegal in 2023. Their second plan, a loan forgiveness scheme disguised as a loan repayment […]
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New York, NY; September 9, 2024—Minding the Campus (MTC) is excited to launch its new Research Internship Program, designed to cultivate the next generation of skilled writers and researchers focused on critical issues in higher education. This intensive four-week internship allows aspiring scholars to engage deeply with pressing topics while contributing to MTC’s mission of […]
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As a country, in celebrating resistance, we have lost sight of the important difference between resistance and resolution. For example, even before Donald J. Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017, plans were afoot to thwart his agenda. Those plans coalesced under the hashtag #Resistance, and included marches, demonstrations, plots for electors to ignore state election […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the National Association of Scholars on September 6, 2024, and is cross-posted here with permission. The original article includes audio acquired by the National Association of Scholars that describes allegations of coverup. Allegations of a “coverup” of widespread “discriminatory hiring” erupted at the University of Washington in June, according to audio acquired by […]
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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 August 21, 2024. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. Jennifer Hernandez has a useful piece in a recent City Journal, about how the Green New Deal is actually harmful to the poor. Well, […]
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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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Last week, the shopping period for my classes at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC) was disrupted on Zoom by a “Divestment Coalition” of campus groups, including the Sarah Lawrence Socialist Coalition and the Sarah Lawrence Review. The coalition announced a “boycott” of all my courses for the 2024-25 academic year, labeled me a “staunch advocate of Israel’s right to […]
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The First Continental Congress convened on September 5, 1774, in Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia. It brought together delegates from twelve of the thirteen North American British colonies to discuss what they might do collectively in response to the “Intolerable Acts” passed by the Crown in May and June. The Congress was not a revolutionary act. Indeed, […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is a short excerpt from an article originally published by James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on September 4, 2024. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. For decades, aspiring college students have had to submit with their applications scores from standardized tests, such as the SAT […]
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Given the power that trustees of a college possess, one must ask why trustees are so negligible a factor in the institution’s operations. Trustees oversee matters of personnel, finance, curriculum, athletics, building construction, and overall mission—or at least that’s what they are supposed to do. Of course, they aren’t the only voice, but they are the final voice on many […]
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Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by Cato Institute on September 3, 2024. With edits to match MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. Note, this post updates last month’s post. The biggest changes from last month include: The Supreme Court has let the Eighth Circuit’s pause on the SAVE plan remain in place. Reworked the student […]
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“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. ” – H.L. Mencken, Minority Report You don’t have to agree with all Mencken’s views to appreciate the poignant message of power hunger corrupting good intentions […]
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For months, the Massachusetts Governor’s allies plotted to strip citizens of their arms. Legislators said they sought only to enhance public safety. But they labored as far from the public eye as possible. Then revealing, “debating,” and passing their legislation in the space of one day, they hurried it to the Governor for signature. The […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The College Fix on August 30, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. PHOENIX — Two professors discussed dismantling capitalism and electing a female president to restore reproductive rights, and warned of a dystopian future with “cannibalism” and “forced breeding camps,” at an event held Wednesday at Arizona State University. […]
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In June, more than 100 deans signed a joint letter calling for law schools to support constitutional democracy by teaching students to disagree respectfully and engage across ideological divides. As around 40,000 new law students begin their professional education this fall, it is fair to question whether law schools have demonstrated a commitment to this […]
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When members of the U.S. Supreme Court return from their three-month vacation this October, they will hear several major education-related cases. Issues on the docket include Biden’s income-driven student loan repayment plan, school choice, a memorandum on parental behavior, race-based school admission, displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms, the Bible as a teaching tool, and two […]
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