The trial of Students For Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College began last week in federal district court in Boston to determine whether “Fair Harvard” treats its Asian-American applicants, and perhaps others, equitably. The SFFA plaintiffs claim Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants, and others, every which way from Sunday, but it is […]
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Towards the end of Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Coddling of the American Mind, the authors declare that it is “a good time for us to lay our cards on the table, politically speaking.” Lukianoff confesses he is “a liberal with some sympathy for libertarian perspectives.” Haidt declares he “is a centrist […]
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It is uncertain how the current lawsuit regarding Harvard’s alleged discriminate against Asian applicants will eventually turn out, but the smart money predicts little will change. After all, this is just one of many similar previous lawsuits, and racial preferences survived them all. Nor should we ignore administrative ingenuity in circumventing court orders. At most, […]
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In a pointless act of censorship, CNN removed the episodes of the TV show “Parts Unknown” that featured actress Asia Argento. It did so because it learned that she had settled an unrelated lawsuit against her by actor Jimmy Bennett, who claimed she had sex with him when he was 17. This news had no […]
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In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males […]
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America’s colleges and universities are in trouble: falling enrollments, declining public support, even the beginnings of a decline in our dominance in international rankings. While many factors are at work, here are the top ten things I think are destroying America’s colleges and universities. First, going to college is too costly. Tuition fees have roughly […]
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Sixty years ago, higher education had an open culture where students and professors could explore many different social and political perspectives, views, values, and theories. Together, they would consider different approaches, argue about them, and draw what conclusions they could. But for the last half-century, universities have transitioned from an open to a closed culture, […]
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It remains to be seen how the Avital Ronell affair will play out. The letter presented in her defense and signed by well-known theorists and many lesser figures has evoked more scorn than sympathy, and it may signify a generational turn in literary studies. There is one element of the whole thing, however, that seems beyond […]
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We can all agree that students, like all other people in this country, have a right to protest the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Most of us can also agree that Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegations against him, now joined by Deborah Ramirez’s disturbing story, warrant further inquiry before the votes […]
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Until 2011, UCLA students English had to take a course in Chaucer, a couple in Shakespeare, and one in Milton as the fundamental works of English literature. Some junior faculty revolted, and UCLA promptly changed its course to studying compulsory papers in “Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; Genre […]
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Civil rights leaders once dreamed of a day when Americans would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, but today a different message is being spread at the University of Texas and other college campuses. “Diversity” means singling out certain races for special treatment. UT’s extensive diversity bureaucracy […]
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Most professors and students in the social sciences, humanities, education, social work, and law, and most university officials at Canadian and American universities today have adopted a political ideology labelled “social justice,” which requires redress for categories of people deemed “oppressed” for reasons of race, gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, and/or religion. For the many who […]
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A few days ago, someone leaked a draft of the Education Department’s proposed new Title IX regulations. The document seeks to use federal authority to ensure that universities employ fairer procedures when adjudicating sexual misconduct claims. Today, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—quite appropriately—took a different approach to the issue of free speech on campus. Rejecting the […]
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Federal efforts to alleviate the high and rising cost of attending college through student loans have morphed from a policy challenge to a fiscal time bomb threatening to blow up the financial future of tens of millions of Americans and the government’s own solvency. Dressed up as a progressive achievement, it is actually a failure […]
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The fall semester is off to a fiery start. We have Brown University’s decision to distance itself from Professor Lisa Littman’s research paper; the decision by the New York Journal of Mathematics journal to un-publish Professor Theodore Hill’s study; the University of Chicago’s refusal to defend Professor Rachel Fulton Brown from scurrilous attack led by […]
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The long-awaited new regulations on campus sexual misconduct, expected to be fairer toward the accused than the Obama-era Title IX guidance policies they will replace, were leaked to The New York Times and appeared there in part on August 29. Unfortunately, The Times did not post the draft guidelines, due from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. […]
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More than 4,000 people have signed a petition supporting a Brown University social scientist who is under fire from activists and her own university for research raising questions about whether social factors, rather than biological ones, could influence young adults’ transgender identities. Lisa Littman, an Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences, in a peer-reviewed […]
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Universities in the 20th century were dedicated to the advancement of knowledge. Scholarship and research were pursued, and diverse opinions were exchanged and argued in the “marketplace of ideas.” This is no longer the case. Particularly in the social sciences, humanities, education, social work, and law, a single political ideology has replaced scholarship and research, […]
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Megyn Kelly is of the few journalists to have consistently raised concerns about the fairness of campus Title IX tribunals. She did so at Fox, bringing attention to the egregious case at Amherst College. And she did so last week at NBC, noting that while conditions once were unfairly tilted against the accuser, “the Obama […]
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A potential draft of new federal campus sexual assault policies was leaked this week, so expect a new round of false and misleading statistics to be shared by those who claim due process “protects rapists” and “hurts victims.” Rape and sexual assault are serious offenses and shouldn’t be watered down to create a narrative that […]
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When I last visited Montpelier, the ancestral home of James Madison and his wife Dolley in northwestern Virginia, about twenty years ago, the principal exhibit focused on the ideals and ideas of the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the contributions made to them by the man called the Father of the Constitution. […]
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Universities face a serious dilemma in their quest for diversity and inclusion. Alas, this noble intention has a cost: degrees in Black studies, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, and similar identity group majors hardly put much bread on the table. To be blunt, the well-intentioned, socially responsible university is guilty of fraud when it tells its […]
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The troubling story of NYU professor Avital Ronell has been covered extensively by Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice; Brian Leiter has also broken several items on his blog, including the scholars’ letter on her behalf. A long article in The New York Times and a very sympathetic account in the Chronicle brought the matter to […]
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The latest Spangler Report from Yale is now out—and it portrays a deeply dangerous campus: around 1.75 percent of Yale undergraduate females as victims of sexual assault in the first six months of 2018. (That’s a violent crime rate around twice as high as that of Detroit, which the FBI rates as the nation’s most […]
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When John Searle, a philosopher at UC Berkeley, was charged with sexual harassment a year ago, about 50 intellectuals and academics wrote a heated group letter insisting the charges were not true. How could they tell? Because they knew him to be a beloved mentor and great scholar of fine character. Oh, wait. That didn’t […]
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Two-thirds (66.3%) of English departments responding to a survey indicated that the number of undergraduates majoring in English is either lower or sharply lower. Only 8.7% reported an increase in the number of majors; none reported a sharp increase. That’s the abysmal finding of a survey of English departments issued last month by the Association […]
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A university that does nothing when faced with clear evidence of academic misconduct deserves some public scrutiny. Case in point: The University of Houston, Texas’s third largest university, is having some trouble with academic standards. Since early this year, the University has been stonewalling allegations that a school superintendent plagiarized the doctoral dissertation he submitted […]
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While radical feminism in the 1960s called for challenging existing gender roles and abolishing what the feminists saw as the pervasive patriarchy that permeated social institutions, churches, politics, and schools, today’s radical feminists call for the elimination of men. In an offshoot of the #MeToo movement, the #YesAllMen campaign rejects the goodness of all men. […]
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In two recent articles (Asia Times and PJ Media), David Goldman criticized the Trump administration’s trade policy with China, in particular, the notion that tariffs will help U.S. competitiveness. Instead, he points to a lack of U.S. innovation. In the PJ Media article, Goldman concludes with five recommendations, the first four being: As we did […]
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In May, the University of Texas-Austin hastily pulled back a program on “healthy masculinity” that its counseling staff had devised–amid a flood of ridicule over such aspects of the program as posters depicting young men wearing penciled-in dresses (complete with bustlines) and encouraging UT’s male students to try nail polish and makeup. The program, titled […]
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