Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by Tribune Chronicle on July 13, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. As the years pile up and experience grows, many folks find opportunities to share tips and guidance for those who are coming up behind them. It’s the way of the world, of course, that adults take […]
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At an exhilarating four-hand piano house concert in Tucson, two noted recording and performing artists, Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt, played a signature piece by Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937), La Valse: Poème Chorégraphique composed in 1919-1920. Later, in a discussion with the audience, the pianists noted that they followed the faster tempo set by […]
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Should we be worried about the power psychology professions have in our everyday lives and the direction of the field? In researching “Trusting the ‘Experts’ is Risky Business,” I came upon the news of an Indiana family who lost custody of their transgender teen even when there was no finding of abuse. The U.S. Supreme […]
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In April, I published a tiresomely long explanation of why the newly popular idea of “institutional neutrality” is a dead end. My essay, “The Illusion of Institutional Neutrality,” took up so much space because I wanted there to be at least one easily available account of where this idea came from, why it was about […]
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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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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Liberty Unyielding on July 6, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. It has been edited to fit Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. The Education Department is pressuring colleges to restrict speech that denounces pro-Palestine protesters or denigrates Jews or Palestinians—such as speech calling pro-Palestine protesters “terrorists”—under the rationale that such speech […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from an article originally published by The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on July 10, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. An empirical study of what is being taught and learned in university sociology courses around the country would be challenging to carry out. But American sociology provides […]
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In recent interviews with 2aDays, University of Illinois-Springfield (UIS) student-athletes have accused head golf coach Michael Leotta of severe misconduct, exposing a troubling pattern of abuse and systemic failure within the university’s athletic department. These revelations reflect broader issues in collegiate athletics and underscore the urgent need for reforms to protect student-athletes. Former athletic director […]
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The spring of 2024 witnessed the startling reemergence of anti-Semitism on the quads of many leading universities. Rather than admissions policies that quietly barred Jews from campus in the early twentieth century for fears of “overrepresentation,” the present paroxysms are on florid display. Camps were erected, students assembled with signage, makeshift libraries, and teach-ins that […]
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As an integrationist, multiculturalist, and white man married to a highly educated black woman and the father of two biracial children, I deplore racism in all its forms—systemic, overt, and covert, from any race or color. Racism must be condemned universally, regardless of its source. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared during World War II, “We […]
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Shaun Harper, a Professor at the University of Southern California (USC) and Provost Professor of Education and Business, was recently featured in a Chronicle of Higher Education article titled “Can Shaun Harper Save DEI?” As a recent USC retiree, I read the article and reviewed materials from the USC Race and Equity Center, which Harper […]
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Editor’s Note: This is part II of “Social Dualism and the Problem of Archaic Inequality.”If you have not yet read part I, find it here. Undoubtedly, some individuals who inhabit the marginal regions between two national coalitions can learn to jump between their points of view. Most of us, however, remain isolated, as if on […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by College Fix on July 2, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. Only about 6 percent of Truman Scholarship winners are conservative or aligned with center-right causes, according to 10 years of data from The College Fix. But why this might be remains a source of disagreement. The advisor for the Truman Scholarship […]
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University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum recently made headlines for allegedly preventing images of Nigerian Igbo masks from being displayed in their online catalog because these masks, according to the Igbo people, should only be seen by males. The museum’s director, Laura Van Broekhoven, who was hired in 2016, denied these claims, stating that: [T]he […]
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The Supreme Court’s recent Chevron ruling, while rightly focusing on central issues like presidential immunity, also brought a potential boon for American higher education. This decision, which I believe holds promise for the future, has yet to be fully grasped by the higher education establishment. Specifically, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court invalidated […]
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It was an immortal day dedicated to liberty. Stalwart patriots met on July 4, 1774. 1774? Yes. Two years before we declared our independence, the residents of Orangetown, New York subscribed to the Orangetown Resolutions. The Resolutions stated, in part: 1st, That we are and ever wish to be, true and loyal subjects to his […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Cato Institute on July 1, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. Note, this post updates last month’s post. The biggest changes from last month include: Update on the lawsuits regarding the SAVE plan to reflect the court injunctions. Update on the prospects of the SAVE and HEA plan in light of […]
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It will come as no news to anyone other than Rip Van Winkle that anti-Israel protests recently occurred on university campuses nationwide. Columbia University, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, and other institutions of higher learning all hosted such demonstrations. One would expect these events to demonstrate a great understanding of the Middle East, especially with professors of […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClear Education on June 25, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. MIT’s announcement that it will no longer require prospective faculty members to submit “diversity statements” is good news for American higher education. Academic institutions around the world should follow MIT’s example. “Diversity statements”, a one or two-page essay about the […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by College Fix on July 1, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. A pro-Israel group is raising concerns about foreign countries’ donations to American universities. About one in four foreign dollars donated to American universities in the past four decades have come from Arabic countries, many of whom are […]
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On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors is an explosive and humorous new book by Elizabeth Weiss, a National Association of Scholars board member and Minding the Campus contributor. Her book reveals how the field of biological anthropology, which includes the study of skeletal remains to reconstruct the past, and forensic […]
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Editor’s Note: This series is adapted from the new paper Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education? Part 1 explored the justifications and rationales that have been used to subsidize higher education. Part 2 explored subsidy design considerations. Part 3 explored federal subsidies. This fourth and final part explores state subsidies. […]
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In our rapidly changing world, civics education must do a better job. Civics must prepare students to engage their neighborhood, county, state, and nation. Civics courses today rely on history, current events, and case studies. But they fall short in effectively explaining the realities of government, campus, or neighborhood dynamics and teaching how to enact […]
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Sometimes following politics can be a bit like watching a hotly contested football game between your favorite team and its archrival. One minute, your team is marching down the field; the next, they’re giving up a big play. You go up by a few points, only to fall behind again as the hated opponent responds. […]
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Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts, George III gave them his royal assent, and, at once, America rose in unanimous rebellion. No, of course not. American patriots were outraged. But in 1774, they weren’t yet at the point of armed rebellion. The radicals of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams and the Boston Committee of Correspondence, proposed instead a […]
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Neither side of the aisle in the U.S. recognizes the other anymore. But this is more normal than we imagine. According to what political theorists call “realignment theory,” life gets bumpy in an electoral democracy, and it can change substantially and suddenly. But it’s deeper than that. Our current national malaise is a very common […]
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During a discussion about whether government funding of academic science was a good idea, I argued that it was a net negative—a prominent physicist once told me that there was no particle physics before World War II. I remember thinking to myself: “Who’s going to tell him? No particle physics? Maxwell? Planck? Rutherford? Einstein?” My […]
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In the last year, there has been a rapid increase in actions that involve removing human remains and photographs of human remains from anthropology and archaeology classrooms, conference halls, publications, and museums, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Penn Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. These museums and many others around […]
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“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.” – Denis Didero The French philosopher could not have foreseen the delicate state of today’s young minds, who are culturally conditioned, coddled, and deceived to reject the truth when he wrote those sobering words […]
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Harvard Dean of Social Science Lawrence Bobo set off a firestorm last week when he published an article suggesting faculty should be punished for publicly criticizing the university. His position, if implemented, would severely weaken the already fragile state of academic freedom at Harvard. As dean, his significant power over the careers of many faculty […]
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