The normal give and take of democratic deliberation between citizens, while not always achieved in practice, has been the benchmark in American political culture over the course of our nation’s history. University of Florida law professor John Stinneford says, however, that these habits of free people are increasingly at risk. “I think we have all […]
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The Ohio State University is currently seeking a professor of “Philosophy of Race,” an area of expertise that includes “the epistemological significance of race or racism” and “race in the philosophy of science.” Its Department of Physics seeks a professor whose main focus is “issues relevant to educational equity.” And its Department of Anthropology recently […]
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Benjamin Franklin once said, “nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Today, though, a third item may be equally inevitable: academia’s diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) bureaucracies. Scarcely a week passes without some school proudly announcing that it will now hire dozens of DIE functionaries and spend millions to promote racial justice. Oddly, many professors, […]
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Political Hydras, Part 1 (for Javier Fernández-Lasquetty Blanc) “Such is its nature that, as fast as one doubt is cut away, innumerable others spring up like Hydra’s heads, nor could we set any limit to their renewal did we not apply the mind’s living fire to suppress them.” —Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (4.6) Among […]
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Three years ago, I began a dangerous journey of questioning strange new policies at my institution, Bakersfield College. Since then, I’ve been subjected to smears, threats, and all manner of harassment and retaliation. The most recent episode centered on fabricated allegations of racism that several national media outlets debunked, but not before one of my […]
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‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s […]
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After showing a painting of the Prophet Muhammad in her art history class, Professor Erika López Prater was informed that her teaching contract at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, would not be renewed. Those who condemned the professor’s actions believed that what she did was not only offensive to Muslims, but that such disrespect […]
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A new book documents authentic stories of fighting political indoctrination and standing up for America. In the last two years, progressives have responded to parents and citizens protesting critical race theory (CRT), a hot-button issue of the American cultural war, with dishonesty and gaslighting. On the one hand, they argue that CRT’s prevalence in American […]
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Over the past few years, I have regularly encouraged conservatives to not write off higher education. Despite the Right’s valid concerns about woke administrators, progressive faculty, student self-censorship, and hostility toward conservative speakers, higher education is a valuable institution which has promoted an incredible degree of social mobility and ground-breaking innovation. There are many conservative […]
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The 1950s were the beginning of a massive expansion of federal funding for basic, curiosity-driven science in the universities. An initiative of the Roosevelt administration, the unprecedented intrusion was floated on high-sounding rhetoric that ultimately prevailed over the concerns of a skeptical Congress. Scientists, so the story went, were intrepid adventurers exploring science’s “endless frontier.” […]
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In the acknowledgements to her infamous Yale Law Journal article of 2017, the Biden administration’s hipster Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair, Lina Khan, thanked Berkeley Law professor David Singh Grewal “for encouraging me to pursue this project.” The article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” argued that Amazon should no longer be treated as a private-sector company but […]
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In a free society, there would be no strings attached to government funding for higher education because there would be no such funding in the first place. The reality, however, is that federal student loans will not be privatized anytime soon, and since almost every college in America uses them, such schools will continue to […]
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“Sheet music is a bunch of black marks; they have no significance. I play violin, but in order to play well you have to be much more than a violin player. There is an entire world that lives together with it, like the currents in the ocean.” – Ivry Gitlis As a 2022 year-end exercise, […]
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The Biden administration has released its plans to introduce a new income-driven repayment program for student loans. The proposed regulations are as bad as the early indications hinted they would be. For those just getting up to speed, a standard loan uses a fixed monthly payment and a predetermined number of payments (e.g., a car […]
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While reading the American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights, I found myself in a situation similar to that confronted by David Hume some centuries ago. Hume, on reading the leading moral philosophers of his day, outlines the problem in these terms: In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met […]
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Nearly 60 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. King’s powerful plea for equal rights has resonated with Americans ever since, in no small part because his message was wrapped in an enlightened patriotism. He understood that the best way to fight […]
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“… everything is queer today.” – Alice P. Oxy. LII 3679, 3rd century AD, with fragments of Plato’s Republic Near the end of Plato’s Republic, a gap opens in the form of the famous Allegory of the Cave at the beginning of Book 7. It’s among the most metaphorical gestures in all of Plato’s work. As such […]
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“I don’t know how to say it any clearer.” “Got them in my livestock operation and that’s why we put a rope on some of them and take them to the slaughterhouse. That’s a fact of life with human nature and so forth, I don’t know how to say it any clearer.” At the invitation […]
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Catherine E. Lhamon is the current Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Despite the unassuming title, her position wields enormous power. The Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, at her sole discretion, can cut off federal funding (and has threatened to do so) from any recipient educational institution she […]
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Our founding document was designed to maintain a wall between your private life and government. Modern law schools profit by tearing it down. “A free society is as much offended by the dictates of an intellectual oligarchy as by those of an autocrat.” – Patrick Arthur Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals “In the social domain, […]
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The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal recently published a report by Adam Kissel and Harrington Shaw that examines the financial quality of degree programs at North Carolina state universities. The authors use debt-to-earnings ratios, calculated from College Scorecard data, to evaluate the economic returns of these programs. Their report, in addition to providing […]
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When a 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson defined America as a land that promises “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as inalienable rights, he laid out the vision for the American Dream. But as time went on, and as the tiny, fragile nation exploded into a world powerhouse, these grandiose promises were frequently blunted by tyrannical […]
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Would it not be wonderful to be a Greek god? Imagine being Poseidon, god of the sea, who was able to create storms, earthquakes, and even horses. Or Ares, god of war, who possessed superhuman powers of speed and strength, allowing him to destroy his enemies, even entire armies, at will. This is pure mythology, […]
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I recently read in the Wall Street Journal that Stanford University had more administrative staff and faculty than it did students. Specifically, there were 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16,937 students. The paid help of 18,038 (administrators plus faculty) outnumbered the customers (students) by 1,101. That gave me an idea for a stunning administrative […]
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In December 2008, Denis Rancourt was suspended from his tenured professorship in physics at the University of Ottawa—an action that resulted in his termination a few months later. This occurred after a five-year battle with university administrators. It was, according to “workplace mobbing” researcher Kenneth Westhues, a case in which the administration “coalesced in the […]
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If you haven’t heard, “the college essay is dead.” The cause? ChatGPT, a large language model trained on a massive dataset of human text that can generate human-like writing in response to prompts or questions. Since its release, ChatGPT has produced a lot of educational handwringing because it puts at students’ fingertips a machine that […]
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Neapolitan Overtime What is a constitution? In the very broadest sense, whether we refer to Moses’s ten commandments (1450 BC), the Magna Carta (1215), or the Articles of Confederation (1777–89), a constitution is a document that defines and reflects the existence of a people or a nation. A constitution doesn’t have to be a specific […]
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When 2022’s Congressional Fads Mirror Nazi Germany Everything is not ok in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Recent laws, such as the legalization of recreational marijuana, a drug that negatively affects cognitive functioning, and the legalization of gay “marriage,” a precariously codified bill, were evil and well received by […]
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While we may have to wait until 2024 to see a Biden vs. DeSantis battle royale, we might have a preview in the skirmish over accreditation in Florida. To recap developments to date (see here for more), accreditors are private entities that have been entrusted with determining which colleges and universities are eligible for federal […]
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There are professors, and then there are professors. Donald Leslie Shaw (1930–2017) was a titan in the field of Hispanic literature. He wrote two definitive books on the principal literary movements of modern Spain and Latin America: The Generation of 1898 in Spain (1975) and Nueva narrativa Hispanoamericana (1981). He also wrote what remains the best […]
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