This article originally appeared on Minding the Campus April 21, 2013. It’s no longer a matter of much debate that America’s college campuses are not the beacons of free and open discussion in a democratic society that they were intended to be. In its 14 years of existence, our organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights […]
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For those searching frantically for discrimination on campus, the newest culprits are “microaggressions,” described by Heather Mac Donald in “The Microaggression Farce” as affronts or insults minorities find racist but are so small they are “invisible to the naked eye.” Now, according to a May 5 article at Inside Higher Ed, “more than half of […]
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The Crimson published a lengthy study last week analyzing the contribution patterns of Harvard professors in recent campaigns (2011-2014). The tally: 96 percent of the donations from the arts and sciences faculty went to Democrats. These results shouldn’t come as much surprise at this stage, but they’re a reminder of just how limited the ideological […]
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“Dignity” has been taken out for another walk around the block. In February 2014, I wrote an essay on Minding the Campus in which I commented on Attorney General Eric Holder’s speech to the Swedish Parliament, wherein he spoke of his nation’s commitment to the “dignity” of “every human being.” Over the last couples of […]
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Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology? SUNY Maritime College? Yes. They are among the top ten “value-added” U.S. colleges likely to increase a student’s lifetime earnings, according to a study, “Beyond College Rankings,” by Brookings Institution Fellow Jonathan Rothwell. The highest ranking among 4-year colleges are: 1) California Institute of Technology, 2) Colgate, 3) M.I.T., 4) Rose-Hulman […]
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Millennial workers have had it rough in recent years, coming of age during the Great Recession and experiencing higher levels of unemployment and underemployment than older generations. A new study finds that Millennials, who will dominate the U.S. labor market for the next 50 years, may face another problem: They’re less prepared for today’s job […]
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Federal rules for state authorization of online college teaching raise some odd questions. Why is Massachusetts charging $40,000 for an online college to hire a work-from-home professor living on the Vermont-Massachusetts border? Why does North Carolina demand a $37,000 fee before allowing administrators with a distance learning university to meet prospective students face to face? […]
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Should college professors teach more? Specifically, should professors at public research universities devote more time to teaching undergraduates, and less to research? In two states this, um, academic question has become a political controversy, one likely to crop up elsewhere. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican presidential candidate, has proposed a tuition freeze and […]
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A new ACTA survey, “The Unkindest Cut,” shows that’s among 52 top American colleges and universities, only four require their English majors to take even one course in Shakespeare. Of course, much of this is the Bard’s own fault. He is paying the price for being a dead white male at a time when the […]
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First, the good news: My undergraduate students here at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, are quite literate, contrary to all the bad press and fears. Every week I give them a 20-minute writing assignment in class, the sole preparation for which is having done the week’s homework. Turns out they write pretty well; arguably, in […]
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Male in ‘Mattress Case’ Sues Columbia KC Johnson Paul Nungesser—the Columbia student targeted by Emma Sulkowicz’s media campaign and described by Kristin Gillibrand as a “rapist” in a statement released by the New York senator’s office—has filed a Title IX lawsuit against Columbia University. The case was assigned to Judge Gregory Woods, an Obama appointee recommended […]
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Completing a college education, people have long presumed, shows that a young adult has not just mastered a particular subject but has broadened his or her intellect by exposure to many different disciplines, philosophies, and diverse approaches to both knowledge and life. A successful college education replaces ignorance with insight, and insularity with confidence and […]
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Frank Bruni is a New York Times columnist who has figured out something important – many Americans are completely caught up in the costly, pointless, and often damaging obsession with getting their children into our supposedly elite colleges and universities. His new book, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, is his effort at […]
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Scott Walker made himself into a presidential candidate with his victory over the minions of Madison, Wisconsin. Despite the howling demonstrations inside and outside the state capital building, Walker succeeded in passing ACT 10. It stripped the public sector unions of their most powerful organizing tool — the dues check-off, by which unions fees were automatically deducted […]
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Well-known author and scholar Heather Mac Donald recently visited UCLA to talk about the idea of “micro-aggressions” on college campuses, but before she even went there, she had a few words to say about the people running the place. The launch of her talk Thursday began with outlining the proliferation of the “massive diversity bureaucracy” […]
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Civility is a watchword on campuses these days–partly because it is an admirable characteristic, partly because the word is always useful as an apparently benign cover for censorship. From my work defending student and faculty speech for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, I know that many faculty members already recognize civility as a velvet […]
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Molly Horwitz, a junior at Stanford University, is running for a spot in Stanford’s student senate. In the course of her campaign, Horwitz, a Latina and a Jew, sought the endorsement of Stanford’s Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) and was granted an interview. During the interview, Horwitz claims, she was asked this question: “Given your […]
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“Our university campuses are now islands of oppression in a sea of freedom.”—Abigail Thernstrom, 1990 So say many critics of our colleges, and, alas, in many cases correctly. Here are the hallmarks of today’s college campus: The implementation of hate speech codes The stultifying strictures of political correctness The greatly expanded notions of verbal harassment […]
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After rejecting several previous proposals over the past several years, the UCLA faculty has finally succumbed to politically correct pressure from above (Eugene Block, the Chancellor, and other administrators) and below (“progressive” students) and voted to impose a four-unit “diversity” course requirement on all undergraduates. Ironically, the felt necessity for this new course requirement reveals […]
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• Campus Reform asked out-of-state students at UVA and UMD if they would be willing to give up their U.S. citizenship to become “undocumented students.”
• Out-of-state students at both universities pay nearly twice as much as in-state students and illegal immigrants pay.