Science versus Sentimentality “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate!” Thus spake prison guard Strother Martin in the movie Cool Hand Luke, and so it is now between the woke and their opponents. In a recent dispute over affirmative action that got some publicity, one party affirms that, despite her best efforts, she has […]
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The Sweet Affair has proven that the historical profession is inhabited by ideological bullies and their craven victims. James Sweet, ingenuous president of the American Historical Association (AHA), stated the obvious truth that the 1619 Project and other such exercises in woke history are “presentist”—cherry-picked fabrications designed to promote a radical agenda. The woke Twitter […]
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Editor’s Note: “Assessing the REAL Reforms Act” is a Minding the Campus symposium that is closely analyzing the Responsible Education Assistance through Loan (REAL) Reforms Act, a bill recently introduced by Representatives Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Elise Stefanik, R-NY, and Jim Banks (R-IN). The bill “offers commonsense and fiscally responsible reforms to benefit students and borrowers […]
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Last month, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) hosted a Black, Latinx and Native American Family Orientation. After facing allegations of racial segregation from Christopher Rufo and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), UCSD’s Office of the Chancellor promised that “[a]ll students and their families are welcome to attend, subject to space […]
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It’s by now a commonplace story: State universities in “red” states, where most of the voters and legislators dislike progressive ideology, are being infiltrated by administrators and faculty who insist on implementing radically leftist policies and courses. Earlier this year, for example, the Martin Center published this article by Jonathan Small on the ways that […]
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Leave it to a self-proclaimed Christian, who also is a practicing homosexual, to pen an apologetic for ‘queer theology.’ That is exactly what Dr. Patrick S. Cheng attempts to do in his book titled Radical Love. Cheng’s credentials to pen such an apologetic are quite admirable. He is an attorney and a Ph.D., and he […]
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The Politics of Gender Mania at the American Academy of Pediatrics The guiding medical principle “to do no harm,” attributed to the ancient Greeks, is one of Western civilization’s oldest professional norms. Whereas Greek doctors swore to the god Apollo to do no harm to their patients, today’s doctors increasingly sacrifice patient wellbeing on the […]
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Editor’s Note: “Assessing the REAL Reforms Act” is a Minding the Campus symposium that will closely analyze the Responsible Education Assistance through Loan (REAL) Reforms Act, a bill recently introduced by Representatives Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Elise Stefanik, R-NY, and Jim Banks (R-IN). The bill “offers commonsense and fiscally responsible reforms to benefit students and borrowers […]
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An Academic Approach to an American Asset “The ink is black; the page is white.” – Three Dog Night (1972) Shelby Steele’s White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (2006) ranks among the best approaches to what has gone wrong in the U.S. in recent years. I […]
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The Declaration of Independence teaches that America was founded as a meritocratic nation, a nation where people succeed based on merit, individual talent, and hard work. How does the Declaration do this? Its assertion that “all men are created equal” means that all Americans are equal in their ability to chart a path for themselves. […]
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If you are hostile to “western scientific ways of knowing,” such as objectivity and the scientific method, that will help you get a job in the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As economic historian Phil Magness notes, “This ‘faculty job’ at a tax-funded public institution is nothing […]
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An alumnus remembers a university professor and how he demonstrated the promise of higher education. With so many problems plaguing higher education, I thought it would be healthy to recognize one example of the often unexpected ways in which the modern university brings people together. A long-time member of the University of Chicago faculty recently […]
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In this series of articles, I have set out to assess the various paths forward for American higher education. Most of us agree that the status quo is unsustainable, but what comes next? I began by asking whether legacy higher ed—the historic institutions that we know and (used to) love—is a lost cause. If left […]
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Jonathan Haidt, professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, just published a deeply moving piece about why he is resigning from his primary professional society, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). Haidt argued that his society recently asked him to violate his “quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth” because, in order to present research at the society’s […]
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While President Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness plan is justifiably getting most of the attention in the higher education policy world, he also proposed a new student loan repayment program that fundamentally undermines a definitional aspect of loans—repayment. Under this new plan, the median bachelor’s degree recipient will only owe $68 a month, regardless of […]
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An increasing number of states have created, or are considering creating, autonomous schools within public universities, where depoliticized scholarship can flourish with institutional protections from the radical, illiberal monoculture of the higher education establishment. In 2016, the Arizona legislature created the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) at Arizona State University (ASU). […]
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Editor’s Note: “Assessing the REAL Reforms Act” is a new Minding the Campus symposium that will closely analyze the Responsible Education Assistance through Loan (REAL) Reforms Act, a bill recently introduced by Representatives Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Elise Stefanik, (R-NY), and Jim Banks (R-IN). The bill “offers commonsense and fiscally responsible reforms to benefit students and […]
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Whenever the associate vice president for faculty and staff diversity at San Diego State University (SDSU) sends an email from work, her signature identifies the school as “a proud Hispanic Serving Institution, located in the territory of the Kumeyaay nations.” This kind of statement, not uncommon in contemporary academia, is a comical demonstration of our […]
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The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has engaged in research theft and academic espionage in American higher education for some time. Whether it be on the institutional level through Confucius Institutes or on the individual level through the Thousand Talents Plan and other “talent programs,” the last five years have made abundantly clear that China […]
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Reckless and wasteful spending by diversity-obsessed administrators is one of the real causes of the student debt crisis In a nod to his progressive base, one that seems to be a naked tactic to buy the votes of young, educated future Democrats, President Biden has made good on at least one of his campaign promises. […]
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It’s true that children are our future, for good or ill, depending on their education. Ill-educate children, as we are doing in the United States and Canada, and the result will be cultural decay, social breakdown, and political decline. We now teach our children that our country is illegitimate, based on genocide and racism, and […]
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Notable during the pandemic was the reluctance to view events from a psychological perspective, particularly that of collective psychology. One of the very few who did so was a professor in Belgium named Mattias Desmet. A professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University, as well as a […]
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American school districts need new policies to guide their librarians in their acquisitions practices. New policies, which provide explicit guidelines on political pluralism and obscenity, as well as reaffirming librarians’ deference to parental preferences for their minor children, would do a great deal to defuse the political battles that have flared up about the contents […]
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Cosmopolitan Leftism in Higher Education Hamilton College lies in the gorgeous Finger Lakes region of upstate New York about three miles west of the gingerbread town of Clinton. Coming north from Philadelphia, you follow the exits off the turnpike and take Franklin Avenue into town. Hang a left after Tony’s Pizzeria, go west on College […]
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When we think of the United States Constitution, we probably consider the structure it gives to our national government. We may think of its presence at the center of political controversies past and present. Or we may think of ways in which the document has been neglected. But as we mark the 235th anniversary of […]
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One of the laboratory procedures we teach to first-year general chemistry students involves measuring the wavelengths of the visible emission spectra of several elements including hydrogen, helium, neon, and mercury. I begin my class with a short, non-conventional lecture that includes the trailer from The Matrix. It is fitting to introduce the basic principles of […]
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The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) earlier this year courageously took a stand against “threats to academic freedom.” The AAUP statement identifies the most serious threats to academic freedom today. No, the threat to academic freedom, according to the AAUP, is not the “social justice” political ideology that has become mandatory for all university […]
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Most American colleges and universities are fiercely resistant to major change. The staff, especially administrators and senior faculty, think they “own” the institutions and enjoy their dominant role. Yet enrollment data and public opinion polls show that Americans increasingly take of dim view of our colleges and universities. Some think the only way to effect […]
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Donna Shalala, the former president of my alma mater—the University of Miami (UM)—who also held a professorship in my Department of International Studies during her UM tenure, once defended academic freedom: You can’t have a university without having free speech, even though at times it makes us terribly uncomfortable. If students are not going to […]
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Free speech and open expression—the very keystones of higher education—are under threat. This is an issue that now impacts all students, not just those on the Right. Earlier this week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released its 2022 study of student perceptions of free speech on college campuses—the results are sobering. Sampling […]
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