With the specter of George Floyd still looming heavily over America, one cannot help but sense that change is in the air. What this change will entail is not entirely certain, for it hinges less upon the outcomes of one or two trials and much more upon which theory of reality prevails after the smoke […]
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Oliver Wendel Holmes’ “great dissent” to Abrams (1919) begins: “Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition…” Holmes’ compelling subsequent […]
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Are schools guilty of racism just because they suspend more black students than white students? Federal courts often say no, because it could be the result of a higher rate of misbehavior by black students, rather than racism. Surveys and studies show black students misbehave at higher rates in school. But the Biden administration thinks […]
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In light of President Biden’s first joint address to Congress and continued commitment to the Jan. 6 commission, it has now become abundantly clear that the Democrats are adopting the playbook of the woke (or regressive) left. Unlike the old left, which was more concerned with workers’ rights and ending discriminatory policies, the woke-regressives—born in […]
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There is a peculiar theory that has its basis in Marxism and that hails from early-twentieth-century Germany. The theory first manifested itself in the United States in the 1970s. Critical Race Theory brings with it the idea that all whites are racists, whether they are aware of this or not. The labeling of a group […]
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Your local university bookstore, bringing Woke culture to a backward small town near you It was just Commencement Weekend at the central Pennsylvania liberal arts college where I teach. COVID restrictions looked to be in serious retreat around town, as families were excitedly milling about on the main drag, many mask-free, and the whole area […]
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Charles Darwin’s works, including The Descent of Man (1871), withstand the test of time. Darwin got a remarkable amount about the mechanics of evolution, our African origins, the links between humans and the rest of the natural world, and evolution’s impact on our current conditions right. He did this with practically no human fossil record […]
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These days, theories are formulated, conclusions drawn, and policies shaped not by the accumulation of relevant evidence, but by redefining words, which determines the desired outcome. Let us begin with examples from the discourse surrounding the Palestine-Arab-Iran-Israel conflict. The “Science for Peace” letter, titled “Canada must condemn the violence in Gaza and the West Bank […]
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With news that a transgender powerlifter will likely be competing in this year’s Olympics, questions are once again being raised about how allowing biological men into female spaces could affect the integrity of athletic competition and women’s safety. Many pundits on the left see this as a non-issue; there simply aren’t that many transgender athletes, […]
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” Actual, true racism is discrimination or prejudice based on outward perceived or real ethnic or racial attributes. It is nothing more. Discrimination and prejudice based on outward perceived or real ethnic or racial attributes has occurred and does occur in America, as […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on May 17, 2021, and is crossposted here with permission. Like “black criminality,” “Jewish shrewdness,” “Italian mafiosity,” and “Irish drunkenness,” “white fragility” is a racist concept. Identifying a particular derogatory characteristic, or even a positive characteristic, with a racial or ethnic group, as if it accurately […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a series of satirical articles loosely inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. To read Part I, click here. PART II: THE YEAR 2029 OC (Old Calendar) Prologue: In the year 2024, after Congress created the new states of Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Intellectual Takeout on May 19, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Like nearly all Americans, President Joe Biden believes that a college degree is the ticket to both individual economic advancement and uplifting the poor. To put his money where his mouth is, he has proposed $256 billion in […]
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Editor’s Note: The original version of this article stated, “It was Thomas Jefferson who in 1769 drafted the law that, when enacted three years later, permitted the freeing of Virginia slaves.” The “three” here is incorrect and has been corrected to “thirteen.” Most Americans appear to believe that Thomas Jefferson raped the slave child Sally […]
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To my students: University students should be free from threat of institutional censure to state any opinion they wish and to state their opinions using whatever language they wish. At our university, however, students do not enjoy this freedom of expression. Various documents at Saint Mary’s University constrain what students may say and how they […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is the first in a series of satirical articles loosely inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. In honor of C.S. Lewis, who “discovered” the first set of correspondence. “Satire’s nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClearWire on May 12, 2021, and is crossposted here with permission. The rise of critical race theory, along with the popularity of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, presents a serious challenge to the concept of “E Pluribus Unum.” According to Richard Reinsch, the editor of Liberty Fund’s […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on May 8, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. The internationalization of labor has been a longstanding policy of government and business. The main reason is the low cost of labor in developing countries such as China, compared to the cost of labor in modern […]
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One of the least enjoyable aspects of college teaching is policing students for cheating. Instructors face the procedural issue of finding cheating as well as the moral issue of warning against it and advocating for academic integrity. Programs such as Turnitin check papers for plagiarism against a database of published material and other student papers. […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on May 5, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Our universities have been uniformly corrupted by neo-Marxist political ideology. They no longer teach the great wealth of knowledge of Western Civilization, or engage in research to advance that knowledge. Instead, they indoctrinate their students […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is a reproduction of a pair of emails received by the editors of Minding the Campus. We thought they would attract broad interest and publish them here with the correspondent’s consent. The correspondent has chosen to remain anonymous. The messages have been lightly edited for readability. Three interesting articles about higher ed crossed […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on April 30, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Universities as a community of autonomous scholars delving into knowledge and seeking to expand it is a model long out of date. With the explosive growth of university, scientific, and granting agency bureaucracies, coercive oversight and […]
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Having worked within the humanities for a number of years now, I have first-hand experience with the ways in which words and concepts can get politicized and abused. Sometimes, familiar words take on new meanings (e.g., racism, gender), while other times, new concepts get mainstreamed without the general public being made aware of what they […]
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On college and university campuses, no self-respecting individual would use the N-word as a racial slur, given its links to slavery and the dehumanization of Africans. But a marked shift in attitudes has occurred. Professors, particularly white professors, must now refrain from referring to the N-word in any capacity. This eradicationist agenda, however, is misguided. […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of Peter E. Austin’s essay, “The Sixties and the Forgotten Man: A Non-Modest Proposal.” Dr. Austin was Honors Professor of History and University Studies for sixteen years at St. Edward’s University. Currently he directs The 1960s Project, a large study of the era that grew out of a large lecture course […]
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The president of George Mason University wants to give minorities a big advantage in hiring until the faculty is as heavily minority as the school’s student body and the future, mostly non-white U.S. population. This is illegal, say lawyers and law professors. Indeed, GMU’s president, Gregory Washington, recognized that objection in an April 15 email […]
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In a misleading email to alumni, the leadership of Harvard University implied, without evidence, that police killed three people out of racism. It cited the “killings of Adam Toledo,” “Daunte Wright” and “George Floyd” in railing against the “evil of racism” and police killings of people “by virtue of the color of their skin.” “The […]
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On April 11, The Telegraph was one of several British Sunday editions to report on the adoption of so-called “inclusive assessments” by some British universities. The University of Hull, a public university responsible for the education of over 15,000 students, was featured prominently in these reports. Hull’s website describes its initiative on a web page […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClearEducation on April 20, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission. Why Freedom of Association Is as Essential to the University’s Mission as Freedom of Speech RealClearEducation has published a national opinion survey of students belonging to Greek-letter organizations, encompassing 4,620 students at 534 colleges and universities. […]
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The Biden administration is using federal money to get states to inject radical racial theories into children’s history classes. As Stanley Kurtz notes in the National Review: The woke revolution in the classroom is about to go federal…President Biden’s Department of Education has signaled its intent to impose the most radical forms of Critical Race […]
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