The fringe lens of critical pedagogy has swallowed today’s academia. Facts are deconstructed, logical reasoning is contorted, historical narratives are rewritten, and causality takes a back seat to the post-modernist project of affirming feelings and identities. Increasingly, words lose meaning and become weaponized for the sake of ideological conformity. Cue the perennial abuse of “white […]
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Nils Haug’s recent “Misadventures of a Reluctant Convert—Another Whimsical Memoir” essay described his come-to-Jesus moment as a student in South Africa. He concludes that during this experience, “Truth had found me, dramatically changed my life, and I was never the same. My real education was complete.” I’m a few years older than Nils, but identified […]
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College was a transformative period in my life. I held my professors in high regard, viewing them as beacons of wisdom. For most of my time there, I was a teaching assistant and laboratory technician in the chemistry department, a role that made me feel like an integral part of the university community. The camaraderie […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by City Journal on June 3, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. In the fall of 2021, the University of Oregon psychology department petitioned the school to hire an “Assistant Professor with a dedicated research focus in diversity/inclusion-related . . . clinical issues.” The department claimed that its proposal […]
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My friend, John Fund, a distinguished journalist and political commentator, has brought to my attention a fine study done by the Washington Monthly, showing that virulent anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests have occurred disproportionately at elite colleges where most students come from relatively rich families. You heard a lot about pro-Palestinian demonstrations, building occupation, and tent […]
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Although many of the protesters who occupied college and university campuses around the country had little knowledge of intellectual history, they marched to the beat of philosophical drummers they may not have ever heard. Their chants rhythmically echoed ideologies. The anti-Israel and anti-American passions expressed in pro-Palestinian demonstrations have deep and dark roots, tracing back […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Cato Institute on June 3, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. Note, this post updates last month’s post. The biggest changes from last month include: Updated total loan forgiveness figures ($167 billion for 4.75 million borrowers) to account for the latest developments. Update on the Mackinac and Cato lawsuit, and the […]
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Editor’s Note: This essay is the third 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. […]
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Along with a 10-year corporate career, I studied in American business schools for about nine years, culminating in a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1991—Columbia was different back then because I did not need to file a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” plan. Then and now, though, American business schools have been long on theory but short […]
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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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