Anthony Paletta is a freelance writer.
Harvard’s announcement, on December 10, that it was eliminating student loans, and otherwise increasing grant support for lower and middle income students, has set off a torrent of welcome news in the last nine days. Two days following, Yale declared that revisions to its student aid program were forthcoming. Soon, Swarthmore announced the elimination of […]
Read More
The University of Texas at Austin has just approved the formation of a field of study for the recently-established Program In Western Civilization and American Institutions. This enables the center to begin offering great books-based classes on Greek and Roman Philosophy, literature, and the American founding, among other topics. It’s a broad step forward for […]
Read More
The New York Times yesterday featured a revealing piece on “branding” as a strategy for college admittance. There are few topics so noxious as the lengths to which desirous students will go (and amounts that parents will pay) to buff their applications to a fine polish with the aid of pricey consultation services. Their counsel […]
Read More
John noted here on Friday that Columbia’s effort to placate its hunger strikers was likely to bring them “more protests and larger demands.” That’s exactly what seems promised in a triumphant editorial by Andrew Lyubursky, one of the hunger strikers, in the Columbia Spectator today: The experience of the last two weeks has shown us, […]
Read More
Here are links for the majority of papers from the American Enterprise Institute’s “Reforming The Politically Correct University” conference on November 14. Do take a look; there’s much of worth here: – “The American University: Yesterday, Today – and Tomorrow” James Piereson – “By the Numbers: The Ideological Profile of Professors” Daniel Klein & Charlotta […]
Read More
Yesterday I attended a fine conference at the American Enterprise Institute, “Reforming The Politically Correct University.” AEI commissioned papers on various aspects of the PC university from Peter Wood, Steve Balch, Greg Lukianoff, John Agresto, John McWhorter, and many others. They’re to appear in book form next summer, but many are available now at the […]
Read More
Alas, one of the intrepid Columbia hunger strikers has given in. How will they ever force Columbia to stop expanding, increase resources for minority centers, require more ethnic study courses, and make January sunnier with such lazy tactics. Especially now that a gourmand opposition group has mobilized – “Why We Act, Why We Eat,” whose […]
Read More
When I wrote about the ludicrous Columbia Spectator op-ed linking a “Euro-Centric curriculum” to the noose incidents, I suggested that the author was clearly not alone in her sentiments. Today we have confirmation; there are plenty of fools at Columbia. The Spectator reports: Beginning today, five Columbia students will go on a hunger strike to […]
Read More
Here’s another bit of wisdom from the Columbia Spectator, this time on the repulsive noose incidents. Here’s the first sentence of the op-ed. See if anything strikes you as odd. In the past weeks’ furor about nooses and graffiti, which dramatize age-old concerns about our Eurocentric curriculum, paternalistic gentrification efforts, and feelings of marginalization from […]
Read More
Sharad Karkhanis, professor emeritus at Kingsborough Community College, is a vitriolic critic of the faculty union at the City University of New York. He’s accused Susan O’Malley, another professor at Kingsborough, of seeking to “recruit terrorists” to teach at CUNY. O’Malley has responded with a two million dollar libel suit, reports the New York Post: […]
Read More
C-SPAN Book TV will broadcast three panels from the Manhattan Institute Center for the American University’s Closing of the American Mind Conference on Saturday and Sunday. Take a look at the schedule for details. Robert George, Roger Kimball, Jim Piereson, Heather MacDonald, and other luminaries are not to be missed.
Read More
You’ll no doubt be encouraged to find out, on this fine date, that the academic study of horror cinema is alive and well. The University of Pennsylvania offers “Horror Cinema”, Bowdoin “The Horror Film In Context”, Xavier “The Horror Film”, and the University of South Carolina “Horror Films.” Australia’s not far behind, with horror offerings […]
Read More
The New York Times reports that “College Costs Outpace Inflation Rate.” Of course they have. The Chronicle offers a more telling headline: “Student Aid Has Gained, but College Costs Have Risen Faster.” The Times reports “in recent years, consumer prices have risen less than 3 percent a year, while net tuition at public colleges has […]
Read More
Courtesy of the Harvard Crimson, the worst justification for a class I’ve ever seen: I understand that there are a number of students on this campus who think that FemSex is unnecessary, but what class or organization isn’t? Extracurriculars aren’t built out of necessity; they are created out of desires – to do what we […]
Read More
The Naples News reports that Stephen Safranek, Edward Lyons and Phil Pucillo, all Ave Maria professors, have filled suit against Ave Maria University, contending that they were discharged in violation of their contracts. The lawsuit was not an unexpected development given the recent controversy at the school. The move to Florida and its handling by […]
Read More
The University of Chicago hosted a conference last weekend on academic freedom. Participants ranged from John Mearshimer to Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali. Don’t laugh yet. The event’s cause celebre, the Chicago Maroon reports, was Norman Finkelstein. The partipants lamented DePaul University’s denial of tenure to Finkelstein, and lectured, predictably, on the evils of right-wing […]
Read More
Do minority law students drop out or fail to pass the bar because of affirmative action? That’s exactly the direction recent research by UCLA law professor Richard Sander is pointing. His work, published in the Stanford Law Review, concluded that the admission of underqualified students due to affirmative action leads to higher drop-out rates and […]
Read More
Drew Faust’s inauguration as Harvard President last Friday featured a surprising presence: the Harvard ROTC. The ROTC, which has been banned from the Harvard campus since 1969, formed a closing color guard composed of Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force students. Most wouldn’t have expected Faust to invite the ROTC – and they’d be right […]
Read More
Fear that Proposition 209 has whitewashed the University of California? A majority of students at seven of the nine undergraduate campuses at the University of California are now foreign-born or have one foreign-born parent, a new study by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley reveals. Chinese, Latino, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, East […]
Read More
The University of St. Thomas has now, predictably, re-invited Desmond Tutu to speak, after revoking his invitation over earlier concerns about his thoughts on Israel. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports: Rev. Dennis J. Dease, president of the university, sent a letter to students and members of the faculty and staff on Wednesday, saying he […]
Read More
Business Week reports on many colleges’ increasingly cozy relations with banks. In the most common formulation, the colleges permit their ID cards to double as debit and ATM cards for particular banks, in return, typically, for some portion of the profits. Parhaps it does work, but as Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American […]
Read More
Bored of reading? Want something to hear? See John Leo and Peter Berkowitz discuss the afflictions of the modern academy in our new podcast.
Read More
Variety reports that HBO has acquired the rights to Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson’s Until Proven Innocent. After our featuring the authors here in New York, we’re surprised it took this long for a screen deal. Our prodigious influence aside, the Duke case fully merits a fuller media treatment, and there’s no better account […]
Read More
Inside Higher Ed today reports on yet another canceled college speech: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the prize for his nonviolent opposition to South Africa’s apartheid regime, was deemed unworthy of appearing at St. Thomas because of comments he made criticizing Israel – comments the university says were “hurtful” to some Jewish people. Further, the […]
Read More
The Manhattan Institute’s Center For the American University is hosting a conference today here in New York celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Allan Bloom’s The Closing Of The American Mind. The book was an astonishing best-seller on the misdirection of the University, and the Center for the American University has assembled Robert George, Mark Steyn, […]
Read More
Senator Grassley, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, has turned his attention to the tax status of collegiate athletic programs – wondering “what gives the IRS comfort that they have met the requirements of being a charity.” The Chronicle furnishes Grassely abundant cause to wonder, reporting that athletics donations now amount to more than a […]
Read More
[this also appeared in the Washington Examiner] Last week’s withdrawal of a speaking invitation to Lawrence Summers by the University of California’s Board of Regents placed the spotlight on a central member of the radical campus constituency – the administrator. Recent spats over radical professors have obscured this corner of the university – where the […]
Read More
If anyone hasn’t realized that the new AAUP Statement on academic freedom is a sham, then there are two excellent means to inform yourself today. First, Erin O’Connor’s new piece here at the site, on the AAUP’s ducking of almost every serious complaint to which it pretends to respond. A small but telling indicator of […]
Read More
You can read a passel of editorials on Ahmadinejad above, and if you’re enterprising, you can easily find another, oh, thirty of so op-eds on the topic of his appearance. None of these, except for one, address any substantive findings from Ahmadinejad’s speech, because there weren’t any. That one exception, The Columbia Spectator now urges […]
Read More
President Bollinger is displaying a new-found talent for confounding expectations. After barring Ahmadinejad from Columbia last year, he suddenly invited him back on Wednesday, to widespread criticism, for offering a platform to a despot. Then, Bollinger further surprised with a caustic introduction and a roundup of pointed questions about Iranian nuclear ambitions, persecution of women […]
Read More