KC Johnson is a history professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the author, along with Stuart Taylor, of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities.
Last week, the incomparable Anne Neal penned a blistering op-ed regarding how the Penn State trustees handled the allegations against former football coach Jerry Sandusky. The ACTA head argued that “the unfolding events of the Penn State sports scandal show a major university that has been more interested in protecting itself than in educating students […]
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Commendably, the trustees of the City University of New York refused to bow to intimidation, and put the best interests of the university first by approving, in a 15-1 vote, a new tuition structure. The new policy grants CUNY the authority to raise tuition by $300 annually for the next five years. The decision, of […]
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A few weeks ago, I attended a presentation on the state of the university by CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein. In the Q&A session, a student asked Goldstein for his opinion on sympathy-protests with Occupy Wall Street that had sprung up on various CUNY campuses. Goldstein gave what seemed to me a reasonable answer. He said […]
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Tuesday’s Brown Daily Herald brings an interesting column on one of Brown University’s best known–and most questionable–disciplinary proceedings: the expulsion of a student, William McCormick, after an allegation of rape by the daughter of a major donor. I’ve written about McCormick’s case before–in what resembled a coerced plea bargain, he was dismissed from Brown after […]
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Last week, voters in my home state of Maine overturned a law passed by the GOP-led state legislature to end Maine’s same-day voter registration, which had been the practice in Maine for nearly four decades. Though polls suggested a close race, the law went down to a nearly 20-point defeat, the margin seemingly fueled by […]
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The Board of Trustees acted properly in cleaning house at Penn State, by firing president Graham Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno. The inaction of the duo, along with similar conduct from now-suspended Athletic Director Tim Curley and now-retired VP Gary Schultz has exposed the university to potentially massive legal liability, as well as […]
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The case of Julio Pino, the Kent State professor who shouted “death to Israel” at an address by an Israeli diplomat, has received a good deal of attention. In a rare, if commendable, instance of administrative courage, Kent State president Lester Lefton issued a statement condemning Pino’s behavior as “reprehensible, and an embarrassment to our […]
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We all know the story of Lucy and Charlie Brown–just as Charlie Brown is lining up to kick the football, Lucy pulls it away, and Charlie Brown tumbles down. And then Charlie Brown, ever gullible, falls for the same trick over and over again. Reading Brown president Ruth Simmons’ recommendation that the university not permit […]
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Stuart Taylor, my colleague from the lacrosse case, and UCLA Law School professor Richard Sander, have filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to hear Fisher v. University of Texas, the University of Texas racial preferences case. Hopefully the brief will achieve its purpose; it certainly presents a compelling indictment of the racial preferences structure […]
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I’ve often written of how groupthink has negatively affected the quality of higher education–while, of course, ensuring that those whose views fall within the academic majority have a better chance of success on campus. Ironically, however, what Mark Bauerlein had termed the Common Assumption effect and the law of group polarization also have combined to […]
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In contrast to the Tea Party protests of 2009-2010, the “Occupy Wall Street” protests appear to have generated a good deal of sympathy from the academy–at least from faculty in New York. A BBC article, for instance, captured a photo of a
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Prompted by the NAS’ intriguing–and commendable–decision to use Bowdoin as a case study to explore the liberal arts experience, I took a look last week at the staffing decisions in Bowdoin’s history department. Three unusual patterns emerged: (1) a seemingly disproportionate emphasis on environmental and African history; (2) an inconsistent commitment to scholarship as a requirement […]
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The NAS has announced that it is undertaking an intriguing case study examining “the curriculum, student activities, and campus values of Bowdoin College as a case study to learn what a contemporary liberal arts college education consists of,” with the hopes of creating “a template for how such a rigorous study could be undertaken at […]
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The Los Angeles Times penned a misleading, strangely-argued editorial, criticizing DA Tony Rackauckas for prosecuting the “Irvine 11.” The basic outline of the affair is now well-known: members of the Cal-Irvine Muslim Students Organization conspired to disrupt a campus speech by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. Eugene Volokh spells out the relevant statute under which the students […]
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As Mark Bauerlein observed in his seminal essay on the topic, groupthink has the effect of producing more extreme versions of the common assumption. It stands to reason, therefore, that campuses with unusually one-sided faculties will feature more frequent episodes of extremist assertions. Such certainly seems to be the case at my own institution, Brooklyn […]
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The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg convened a press conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The gathering intended to discuss findings from the CEO’s disturbing study of how the University of Wisconsin has misused and abused the school’s racial preferences admissions scheme. Using internal data obtained, in part, through a lawsuit against the university, the study […]
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Even the most jaded observer of the contemporary academy can sometimes be stunned. Consider, for instance, an article last week in the New York Times, detailing faculty unrest toward Columbia president Lee Bollinger, on grounds that Bollinger is . . . insufficiently committed to diversity. Bollinger, of course, presided over the University of Michigan’s aggressive (and […]
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ACTA has published its 2011-2 edition of What Will They Learn?, a study that examines, in basic terms, what 1007 colleges and universities around the country require from their students. The entire study is worth reading–and features an easy-to-use website–but I consider two aspects of ACTA’s findings particularly significant. First, military academies fare quite well […]
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Grade inflation has been a prime topic of debate at least since Harvey Mansfield’s Chronicle essay a decade ago. Despite my general admiration for Mansfield’s critique of academic matters, I’ve never considered the issue among the more serious problems confronting the academy, partly because it seemed to me that grade inflation has resulted not just from […]
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The AAUP has now completed the final version of what NAS’ Peter Wood aptly termed a “firewall,” designed to protect academics from outside criticism, especially from conservatives and supporters of Israel. The organization’s new standards now face their first test–but from a most unexpected source. In the left-leaning New Republic, Alex Klein has a blog […]
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The American Association of University Professors has now issued its final report on “Ensuring Academic Freedom in Politically Controversial Academic Personnel groups.”) The basic principle is as unobjectionable as it is admirable: professors should not be hired, fired, or disciplined on the basis of their political beliefs. Yet the AAUP’s report is basically unchanged from […]
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Of the criticisms directed toward the contemporary academy, the charge of “indoctrination” strikes me as the most overhyped. The phenomenon certainly occurs; the most obvious recent example came in the “dispositions” controversy, when education students around the country could choose between agreeing with their professors’ political opinions and finding another career path. But it’s relatively […]
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Last week, the American Historical Association released a members’ survey regarding how historians classify themselves. In contrast to critics (including me) who have suggested that the profession has aggressively diminished approaches to history deemed “traditional,” Inside Higher Ed reports that “designations of military history are up by 39 percent over the decade, for instance. Diplomatic […]
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At Stanford, according to the “alternative misconduct review process” guidelines offered on the university’s website, a student accused of sexual misconduct doesn’t have the right to cross-examine his accuser–or any other witnesses in his case. He cannot offer exculpatory evidence on his behalf, but can only “request” that the university’s assigned “Investigator contact individuals who […]
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Jamie Kirchick pens what’s likely to be the definitive account of Yale’s controversial decision to terminate the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA). Kirchick convincingly demonstrates how a toxic combination of anti-Israel sentiments from some key faculty members combined with Yale’s desire to cultivate Middle Eastern donors (as part of the university’s […]
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A divided three-judge panel from the 6th Circuit has issued a remarkable decision striking down the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibited state institutions from contracting.” In 2006, Michigan voters had approved the measure, by a 16-point margin. Voters in other blue states, such as California and Washington, have endorsed similar measures. Judges Guy Cole and […]
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A few weeks ago, Yale announced that it had terminated the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-semitism (YIISA). The official version of events, according to university spokespersons, cited two reasons: (1) an alleged failure by Yale professors affiliated with the institute to produce a sufficient level of scholarship; and (2) an alleged lack […]
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Today’s New York Post features a strong editorial praising the work of CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein, whose record of improving quality over the past decade is virtually unparalleled among university heads nationally. The Chancellor’s proposal, called Pathways, seeks to establish common general-education requirements at CUNY’s senior and community colleges, largely to smooth the transfer process […]
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Decisions about academic programs rarely appear as the subject of op-eds in major newspapers. But In today’s Washington Post, Walter Reich, a George Washington University professor and a member of the international academic board of advisors of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA), denounced Yale’s controversial decision to terminate the initiative. […]
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Two noteworthy overseas higher-ed items recently crossed my desk. The first came from Britain, where the coalition government has decided to rework the nation’s science instructional standards. Among the proposed changes: eliminating the requirement that science classes “challenge injustice.” Education Secretary Michael Gove argued that such “irrelevant material” contributes “nothing to helping students deepen their stock of knowledge.” While it’s […]
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