John Leo is the editor of Minding the Campus, dedicated to chronicling imbalances within higher education and restoring intellectual pluralism to our American universities. His popular column, "On Society," ran in U.S.News & World Report for 17 years.
Do not attempt satire on the campus of Colorado College. Student Chris Robinson and a friend who wants to remain anonymous satirized The Monthly Rag, a flyer published by the Feminist and Gender Studies program. The parody, The Monthly Bag, contained short notes poking fun at hypermasculine swagger as well as feminist complaining. One note, […]
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Advisers to student newspapers, on both the high school and college level, sometimes lose their jobs for backing student journalists who report stories displeasing to school administrators. Or under the implied threat of being fired, faculty advisers may steer the journalists in a direction the administration wants them to go. So the California legislature overwhelmingly […]
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A group of professors at the University of Chicago—101 of them, or about 8 percent of the full-time faculty—is protesting the decision to establish an economics research institute on campus to be named after Milton Friedman. Their letter to the president of the university says the naming would “reinforce among the public a perception that […]
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Brandeis University is now officially committed to social justice. The university’s “Diversity Statement” says that the university considers social justice central to its mission. Is this controversial? Absolutely, says George Mason law professor David Bernstein, blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy. Universities shouldn’t be in the social justice business, according to Bernstein, a Brandeis alum who […]
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Harvard president Drew Faust spoke at the ROTC commissioning ceremony, a controversial act on a campus where hostility to all things military is entrenched orthodoxy. The question hanging in the air was: will she tarnish a celebratory moment by taking the opportunity to denounce “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” or perhaps irritate the anti-military crowd by […]
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“Each successive generation since the mid-60s has read less, mastered a smaller body of knowledge, and possessed a more meager vocabulary than its predecessors. What makes the members of the current generation different is that they appear unembarrassed by their ignorance. The products of a school system devised and maintained by the processed-oriented professors of […]
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The May 30th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education ponders the state of Americans’ knowledge about science (quite low) and what to do about it. The Chronicle reports that one-third of Adults do not know that the earth revolves around the sun, and only three-fifth agreed with the statement “Astrology is not at all […]
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Steven Aird, who taught biology, was denied tenure and dismissed by Norfolk State University in Virginia for failing too many students. Though Aird isn’t talking publicly about the case, Inside Higher Ed reports that university documents he released make clear that his pattern of giving low and failing marks was the sole reason he was […]
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Chancellor G. P. Peterson of the University of Colorado, Boulder, plans to raise $9 million to endow a visiting chair in conservative thought and policy, on grounds that intellectual diversity is a good thing. Like all radical ideas, having an unorthodox professor on campus sounds a bit risky, maybe even startling, but after some reflection, […]
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Will Shortz, the famous crossword puzzle editor for the New York Times, gave the commencement address last week at his alma mater, the University of Indiana. Using his trademark cleverness and brain-taxing ambiguity, Shortz has brilliantly transformed the modern crossword. Early in the week, his Times puzzles are fairly easy (Monday, Tuesday) but each day’s […]
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Substantial opposition to the proposed new version of the University of Delaware indoctrination program turned up at Monday’s meeting of the faculty senate. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the senate will take up the issue again next week and the indoctrinators may still win. Professor Jan Blits of the Delaware affiliate of […]
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Columbia University enhanced its Israel-hating reputation by naming John Coatsworth as the new dean of its School of International and Public Affairs. The university has so many full-time detractors of Israel on its payroll that one would think an opportunity to name at least a moderate to the deanship would be overwhelming. Coatsworth signed a […]
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The creators of the notorious indoctrination program at the University of Delaware are back with a new version of their astonishingly coercive plan. Call it Indoctrination II. This time around, they pose as respectful and hovering parental substitutes, promising to do something about student homesickness, offering helpful advice on how to study for final exams, […]
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“…Middle Eastern studies programs have been distorted by “a degree of thought control and limitations of freedom of expression without parallel in the Western world since the 18th century, and in some areas longer than that… It seems to me it’s a very dangerous situation, because it makes any kind of scholarly discussion of Islam, […]
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The academic left is fond of buzzwords that sound harmless but function in a highly ideological way. Many schools of education and social work require students to have a good “disposition.” In practice this means that conservatives need not apply, as highly publicized attempts to penalize right-wing students at Brooklyn College and Washington State University […]
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The New York Times is not known for delivering sharp blows to people engaged in countercultural preening, but it delivered a nice one this morning. As the nostalgic veterans of the 1968 Columbia University protests (or uprising, or riots) gathered on their old campus to celebrate the wonder of their 40-year-old disturbance, Susan Dominus of […]
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Does a radical and viciously anti-Semitic professor deserve to get an award named for the great Lionel Trilling? Columbia University apparently thinks so. Its 2008 Trilling award will go to associate professor Joseph Massad for his book, Desiring Arabs. Trilling was an outstanding scholar known for his humanity and his liberalism. Massad is a hater […]
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Don’t miss Peter Wood’s remarkable speech on the crisis in the universities, delivered April 19 to the National Association of Scholars affiliate in Minnesota. The speech is featured above in commentary. Wood, NAS executive director, neatly encapsulates the crisis in a single sentence, discussing “how higher education one ordered by a small number of abiding […]
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Among today’s postings is an article asking whether hiring professors strictly by excellence isn’t a way to guarantee that Catholic colleges will, in time, lose their Catholic character and become secular. The article, “Academic Excellence Is Not an Excellent Criterion“, is by Georgetown University associate professor of government Patrick Deneen and it appeared in the […]
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Last night the Manhattan Institute sponsored a screening of Evan Coyne Maloney’s brilliant documentary, Indoctrinate U. Some 400-500 people attended, laughing in all the right places. (It’s hard to explain why a film about campus repression is so funny, but it is.) Not one campus administrator (on or off camera) even tries to answer any […]
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Columbia University is warily approaching the 40th anniversary of its greatest disaster, the 1968 student uprising and occupation of five buildings, which vigorous and sometimes brutal New York City police eventually ended. A three-day conference looking back at the unrest begins on April 24 and describes itself as an “event,” not a celebration or even […]
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The Way We Were This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina , Kansas , USA . It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina , KS , and reprinted by the Salina Journal. 8th Grade Final Exam: Grammar (Time, one hour) […]
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First smile of the day: Harvard is holding a conference on women featuring a few speakers outside the traditional cozy confines of the feminist left. Here is the announcement, rich in exclamation points, from the Program on Constitutional Government: A Harvard First! The Conference the Radcliffe Institute Didn’t Want to Host! A Genuine Debate with […]
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Are overweight people a victim group? On many campuses they are. Over the past decade “Fat Studies” has shown up on the curriculum at many colleges. The courses have little to with actual study, and a lot to do with identity politics, the airing of grievances and demands for protection from the oppression of the […]
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The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the National Association of Scholars (NAS), two groups conspicuously devoted to protecting traditional freedom on campus, have both come under attack as right-wing organizations. The criticism of FIRE came in a distorted entry on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. The Wikipedia entry, which has since been corrected, […]
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Here is one response from Hawaii on the l8-day Israel-bashing conference sponsored by the University of Hawaii at Manoa: “I just found out that an anti-Israel activist spoke at my daughter’s school. She is in the fifth grade at Kamehameha a private school for those with some Hawaiian blood or ancestry. Her mom (my wife) […]
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The University of North Dakota is sponsoring a controversial lecture by 1960s bomber Bill Ayers, now a “distinguished professor of education” at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Three groups invited Ayers to speak on April 3rd: the Department of Educational Foundations and Research, the College of Education and Human Development, and Students for a Democratic […]
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Readers who wish to comment on the University of Hawaii sponsorship of a recent 18-day Israel-bashing conference should Email Dr. Virginia S. Hinshaw, chancellor of the university —vhinshaw@hawaii.edu or mco@hawaii.edu. The office phone number is 808-956-7651and the address is Chancellor’s Office, 2500Campus Road, Hawaii Hall 202, Honolulu,HI 96822.
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When an American university sponsors a conference on Israel and Palestine, most observers know what to expect: a prolonged rabble-rousing attack on Israel sponsored by the “anti-colonial” far left, with no one invited to defend Israel. Last Friday, the University of Hawaii at Manoa concluded an 18-day Israel-bashing festival, one of the longest such adventures […]
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Selena Roberts, a former New York Times sports columnist, now with Sports Illustrated , is still trying to justify her garbled coverage of the Duke lacrosse case. A Roberts column of March 31, 2006, devoted to pre-judging the lacrosse players, said they had been forced to provide DNA (untrue, they provided DNA and hair samples […]
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