Idealistic, fanatical libertarians—the Mises types, Rothbardian and Randian—like to shout from the rooftop that “inflation is a monetary phenomenon.” But that’s mastery of the obvious. Maybe there are still some five-year-olds out there who imagine inflation to be the fault of merchants raising prices so as to screw their clients and, thus also the fault […]
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In the heart of every democracy lies a sacred covenant; an unspoken agreement that binds together the fabric of society, ensuring harmony, justice, and progress for all. This covenant, often called the social contract, represents a nation’s citizens’ collective will and shared values. This contract is implicit in our constitutional framework in the United States. […]
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Editor’s Note: This series is adapted from the new paper, Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education? Part 1 explored the justifications and rationales that have been used to subsidize higher education. This part explores subsidy design considerations. There have been seven main justifications for subsidizing higher education: Promoting favored religions, […]
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This April’s edition of The Atlantic featured a retrospective eulogy by writer Franklin Foer for America’s time as a place where anti-Semitism was rare, and Jews in America were welcome. Foer describes “Antisemitism on the right and the left” as threatening to destroy the America of civic nationalism that characterized the post-WWII boom and revert […]
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The federal dollar chain is an important civics lesson for college students. It will help answer, “Can I expect to receive Social Security payments? And will the United States of America go bankrupt?” The federal dollar chain is at least seventy-five years long. It is a conceptual tool that begins with taxes paid today by […]
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The Wall Street Journal cries alarum: “Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures.” Dozens of scientific journals have become paper mills—homes for rings of pseudo-academics to cite one another, review another, and puff up their publications with bogus research to secure the rewards of academic employment. After it bought its Egyptian rival Hindawi, academic […]
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On June 2, 1774, the Quartering Act became law. A royal governor, if Britain’s North American colonies would not provide and pay for barracks, could now house British soldiers in any colonial “uninhabited houses, out-houses, barns, or other buildings” without consent of the legislature, township, or any American. The sun would not set on a […]
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On June 1, 1774, Britain’s Parliament gave assent to the Boston Port Act. By mandating the complete shutdown of Boston’s port, prohibiting any loading, unloading, or transportation of goods within the town and its harbor, Parliament believed it was sending a powerful signal of its authority to the rebellious Bostonians who had dumped tea into […]
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Fraud was uncovered last week at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s biggest science fair, put on by the non-profit group Society for Science. The 17-year-old winner beat out nearly 1,700 competitors to take home a $50,000 cash prize, along with an additional $5,000 bonus, the hopeful start of an impressive science […]
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Jeane Kirkpatrick was the American Ambassador to the United Nations during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. A brilliant and principled woman, she was famous for her pithy characterizations of the surreal, indecorous nature of politics at the UN. She once said, for example: “What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was updated on June 1, 2024, to correct an inaccuracy regarding Sarah Lawrence College’s 2024 graduation ceremony. Initially, it was stated that graduating students were seen in an Instagram post chanting “from the river to the sea” during the commencement address. Instead, students held anti-Israel signs, and the chanting, initially thought […]
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If you’re headed off to college this fall, beware: there’s a virus circulating on campuses nationwide. And no, I’m not talking about COVID-19 or flu, but about something much more virulent and destructive, a pathogen that attacks your brain rather than your lungs, leaving you unable to think clearly or behave rationally. I’m talking about […]
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It’s time again for the Minding the Campus (MTC) Trofim Lysenko Award for the Suppression of Academic Speech. Named after the notorious Stalinist pseudoscientist whose crackpot agronomist theories—and persecution of those with the temerity to challenge them—led to the deaths of millions, the MTC Lysenko Award calls attention to those in academia who promote or advocate […]
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Men are increasingly an endangered species on American college campuses. Between 2015 and 2022, the National Center of Educational Statistics says male enrollment fell by 10.4 percent, while the decline of female enrollment was far less than one-half of that (4.4 percent). By the latter year, 38 percent more women were on campus than men. […]
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Editor’s Note: This series is adapted from the new paper Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education? Part 1 explores the justifications and rationales that have been used to subsidize higher education. Higher education has long been subsidized by the government in America, but the reasons used to justify subsidization have […]
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On April 19, the “New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness” was announced to some fanfare. Mark your calendars because the Declaration was hailed as a momentous change in our thinking about animals. Science says so! Forty scientists signed the Declaration! More scientists’ signatures are coming in! NBC News and MSN, among other media, are breathless […]
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The Administration of Justice Act and the Massachusetts Government Act, two of the four Intolerable Acts, became law on May 20, 1774. The Administration of Justice Act allowed a royal governor to remove from one colony to another, or to England, the trial of a royal official for actions up to and including murder, committed […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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You may not have noticed, but we live in revolutionary times and at a global level. A lab-created plague just killed millions of people, and now we’re witnessing the migration of millions more from third-world countries into Europe and the United States. Constitutional governance has drawn to a close in the only remaining superpower, where […]
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“But ye shall receive power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” – Acts 1:8 As a college professor concerned with the broadening of my students’ compassionate understanding of […]
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Editor’s Note: This essay is the second excerpt from the author’s doctoral project titled “Reaching Generation Z with the Gospel at a Christian University through Faith Integration, Radical Hospitality, and Missional Opportunities,” completed as part of the Doctor of Ministry program at Knox Theological Seminary. The content has been edited to adhere to MTC’s guidelines. For […]
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A decade ago, I gave a talk on the Quiché-Mayan epic at the Popol Vuh Museum at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. It was flattering at first. The smallish auditorium was full. About 100 people. A lot for a topic in the humanities at a school devoted to law, business, economics, and dentistry. I spoke […]
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In college classrooms, students often hear the assertion that “advanced societies require extensive government intervention to flourish.” However, this perspective is shortsighted in understanding how America has prospered and operates. The reality is clear: governments currently control around 30 percent of GDP, non-profits add another 10 percent, leaving the vast majority, 60 percent, generated and […]
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Much has been said about the decline of humanities, but one important aspect receives less attention: the humanities are easy and becoming easier. Certainly, this was the popular impression among students when I was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto. The softer the subject, the easier it was. My friends’ schedules, usually posted on […]
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What are the important topics that make a university education valuable? And even while the student traverses the various courses? Or in the future, when the student takes his or her place in society? I attended Columbia College in the 1960s. I took the foundational classes in Western Civilization and Humanities, but I failed to […]
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Apart from a brief overview of the Congressional appropriations and authorization process, there is minimal emphasis on the complexities of government spending and its consequential effects during civics education. This knowledge gap is exploited by activists and special interest groups, who face little opposition from taxpayers when advocating for or against government expenditures. But what […]
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What’s been happening on elite campuses this spring is quite simple. Protesters have enacted “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). They’ve put into practice the DEI corollary known as “silence is violence.” The message is clear: Jews are not welcome short of performing the “silence is violence” pantomime. Protesters are engaging in red-guard-like behavior under the […]
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Bad pronouncements from fellow economists have historically caused lots of mischief, but there is something important on which most of them agree: people respond to positive incentives—money, material goods, power, even sexual attractions—and try to avoid negative incentives—losing large sums of money, freedom through imprisonment, etc. I have argued for decades that those incentive systems, […]
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I recall an incident on a trading floor at a firm where I once worked. A young man—let’s call him William—got himself too long on the stock of Barclays as it crashed in concert with the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008. William was betting big that Barclays was oversold and that it […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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