On October 15, The New York Times published a balanced news story that inadvertently revealed the stupidity of “Yes Means Yes” policies. Those policies redefine a great deal of consensual sex and touching as “sexual assault,” and effectively require college students to engage in “state-mandated dirty talk” during sexual encounters (as one supporter of “Yes Means Yes” policies gloated). That potentially violates the Constitution, and such policies have […]
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One major and negative narrative about the justice system is that wealthy and well-connected people get to live by different rules than the rest of us. One can find examples both reinforcing and undermining this, but the prevailing narrative remains. If one wanted to find a blatant example of wealthy, privileged people getting their own […]
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“Can I touch you here?” (repeat 15 or 16 times). California’s “Yes Means Yes” rule requires repeated authorizations for every step toward sexual intercourse. From the NY Times Oct. 15: “‘What does that mean – you have to say ‘yes’ every 10 minutes?’ asked one student. ‘Pretty much,’ replies the instructor…” How to drag anti-black […]
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The greatest threats to academic freedom come from academics themselves, not from their students or from politicians. That provocative claim is the thesis of Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge, an important new book by Joanna Williams slated for publication by Palgrave Macmillan in January 2016. Williams, who directs the […]
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The FBI has issued an alert about a new type of phone scam in which the primary targets are college students. According to the FBI, a scammer calls a student and claims to be a U.S. government official or a federal agent, feigning legitimacy by “spoofing” or mimicking a local FBI phone number on the receiving caller […]
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College officials usually wait until there has been some “crisis” – most often imaginary, based on a hoax or misapprehension – before they introduce new measures meant to “improve diversity” on campus. At Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, however, the administration recently introduced a new “bias incident response team” (BIRT) as a way to […]
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The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has just released its sixth edition of “What Will They Learn,” examining the coherence (or lack of it) of the subjects and courses American college students take. These are excerpts from the executive summary. By and large, higher education has abandoned a coherent, content-rich general education curriculum. […]
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Excerpts from a blog on the new site, Heterodox Academy The overall levels of tolerance in society do fluctuate. People are more willing to restrict political rights to their foes during times of war or international threat. Yet, while the baseline for tolerance fluctuates over time, it has always been the case, until recently, that […]
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In January 2015 the University of Chicago Committee on Freedom of Expression issued a brief report which eloquently made a case for the importance of free speech as “an essential element of the University’s culture.” I commented at the time in an approving manner. Over the ensuing months, the Chicago statement has gathered more and […]
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Ice cream cake has a disturbingly short lifespan in my home. When one is nearby, I ruthlessly hunt it down and devour it. Some days, when I have biked to work or gone for a run, I easily convince myself that I deserve cake as a reward. But exercise does not cause my cake-eating. It […]
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The joke goes like this: When Brezhnev first became President he invited his elderly mother to come up and see his suite of offices in the Kremlin and then put her in his limousine and drove her to his fabulous apartment there in Moscow. She spoke not a word. Then he put her in his […]
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Sixty-six percent of the graduates of my alma mater earn more than people who have only a high-school diploma. This fact comes courtesy of the U.S. Department of Education’s new “College Scorecard.” I took advantage of the online interactive system to see how well Haverford College alumni stack up in the race to achieve financial […]
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In the week that a new organization, Heterodox Academy, was established to press for more ideological diversity in academic life, the learned association in my own profession showed how much it is needed. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) sent around a notice of its prospective annual meeting, highlighting its most prominent speakers. Of the […]
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The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has dismissed the longstanding discrimination complaints of Asian Americans, giving Ivy League and other institutions a green light to continue chromatically contouring the results of their “holistic” admissions processes so that applicants who are black or brown or red consistently are admitted with lower academic scores than […]
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The College Fix published an interesting article, “Department of Education shredded for lawless overreach in Senate hearing.” It was about Congress getting annoyed with the Education Department for illegally imposing mandates on colleges and schools out of thin air, without even going through rulemaking or the notice and comment required by the Administrative Procedure Act […]
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On September 17 a committee of the Regents of the University of California discussed at their regular meeting a proposed “Statement of Principles against Intolerance” that had been drafted and offered for their approval by President Janet Napolitano and her staff. The Regents resoundingly rejected the draft, by implication questioning Napolitano’s judgment that it was […]
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The often-debunked statistic on campus sexual assault, that one in five women can expect to be attacked, has reappeared, inflated once more–this time to 23 percent–in a survey by the Association of American Universities (AAU), with the expected headlines from the expected quarters, such as The New York Times. The general critiques of previous campus […]
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A bizarre incident happened last week at University of Buffalo. Someone posted signs reading “White Only” or “Black Only” at the entrance to bathrooms and above drinking fountains around campus. Students were shocked and outraged, USA Today and other outlets reported. Police were called in to remove the signs and investigate. The Black Student Union called a […]
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Last week came two more court decisions involving due process and campus sexual assault. The first, which involved a student at Case Western Reserve University, had Judge Christopher Boyko (a George W. Bush appointee) ruling that it was plausible the accused student was innocent and the CWRU had manufactured inculpatory evidence—but there was nothing he […]
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School is back in session but not much has changed in the world of higher education. Tuition continues to become less affordable, student debt continues to rise, and students increasingly face poor career prospects. Also resuming is the barrage of policy proposals claiming to offer silver-bullet solutions to all that ails higher education. The latest […]
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