Simple Justice When I read Omar Mahmood’s parody, Do The Left Thing, I was rolling on the floor. The kid is good. I mean, he has it. Oh sure, no doubt he was going to rile up all the folks who bleed with every papercut, but that’s the point of satire. Piss them off. Make […]
Read More
Congress recently approved a bill to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. It cuts Pell Grant funding 1.3%, from $22.8 to $22.5 billion. This reduction in the needs-based grant program will be reallocated to student loan service providers such as Navient and Nelnet, a move orchestrated by outgoing Senator Tom Harkin. […]
Read More
At the Washington Wizards-Brooklyn Nets game Saturday night, a Net player, in pursuit of a loose ball, careened into a waitress on the sidelines who was carrying a tray full of beers. The clip of the sudsy disaster went viral, and curious minds wanted to know more about the drenched victim. As it turns out, […]
Read More
My recent article in The Daily Beast exploring previously unknown details of Columbia’s high-profile “mattress girl” rape case—including the fact that alleged victim Emma Sulkowicz continued to have chatty and playful Facebook exchanges with alleged rapist Paul Nungesser for weeks after she says he brutally violated her and choked her within an inch of her […]
Read More
At Salon Magazine, Bill Moyers has an essay penned in direct response to criticism of Barack Obama for his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. People have assailed Obama for his scolding tone, bad timing , poor history, and moral equivocation. And here is Bill Moyers expanding President Obama’s point, an opinion piece entitled: “When […]
Read More
Yale runs one of the strangest systems of handling sexual assault (“economic abuse” has been counted as a sexual attack, and proceedings can start without the alleged victim’s consent) so its semiannual reports on the subject are well worth studying. I’ve analyzed each of the previous six, all done as part of a settlement with […]
Read More
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker just made an unforced error. He proposed—then backed away from—a change in the mission statement for the University of Wisconsin. I admire Walker and view him as among the more attractive candidates for the Republican nomination. And in that spirit, I’d like to offer him some friendly advice on a potentially […]
Read More
Swarthmore is again in the news over campus speech. Just yesterday, Hussein Aboubakr, an Egyptian political refugee who’s written about anti-Semitism among Egyptian Muslims, spoke at an event sponsored by Swarthmore’s pro-Israel groups. According to Swarthmore’s Students for Israel, some of the students who attended the event came only to scoff: “As [Aboubakr] tearfully recalled […]
Read More
Cathy Young’s must-read piece on the Columbia case made famous by accuser Emma Sulkowicz triggered a furious backlash, including a twitter hashtag campaign and a Mic article that cast aspersions without challenging a single fact that Young presented. Three elements of the reaction to the article deserve further comment. First, victims’ rights advocates have dismissed […]
Read More
As expected, anti-Israel activist and purported American Indian Studies expert Steven Salaita has filed a lawsuit against the University of Illinois. My take on the merits of Salaita’s case remains essentially the same: (1) FIRE is absolutely correct in the chilling effects of Illinois’ “civility” standard; and (2) the Salaita case is most comparable to […]
Read More
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker made headlines last week by demanding that academics work harder. In response to criticism of his proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system while giving it more autonomy from the state, Walker contended that faculty could help make up the shortfall by teaching extra classes. Professors have […]
Read More
KC Johnson and Adam Kissel have written insightfully about the case of Steven Salaita for MTC. Briefly, this August the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign withdrew its offer to Salaita of a tenured position in American Indian Studies. The offer was withdrawn after Chancellor Phyllis Wise and the Board of Trustees became aware of […]
Read More
A recent Inside Higher Ed story documented an alarming trend in the English departments at University of Maryland, George Mason University, and Florida State University. The numbers of English majors there have plummeted in the last few years. Maryland lost 88 majors in 2012, 79 majors the next year, and 128 majors 12 months later, the story […]
Read More
This is the headline today on Joe Asch’s Dartblog, an established and very readable blog about Dartmouth: Breaking: Frats Survive (for now); Hard Liquor Goes; Moral Education Returns The reference is to a plan by University president Phil Hanlon to deal with Dartmouth’s outstanding reputation for binge-drinking, feminist accusations of “rape culture,” and angry faculty […]
Read More
These days, Americans are talking a lot about underinflated footballs and overinflated student debt loads. In the latter camp you’ll find the president of Purdue University (and former governor of Indiana) Mitch Daniels. On January 28, he contributed an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “How Student Debt Harms the Economy.” Daniels points […]
Read More
CEI Bad things can happen when an agency (like the Education Department) throws caution to the wind and regulates based on slanted media coverage from National Public Radio, rather than facts and evidence. Checks and balances exist for a reason. When agencies impose new obligations on the institutions they regulate, they are supposed to first […]
Read More
As a former journalist who joined academe, I was often struck by the obscurity of administration-faculty communication. Murkiness prevailed, along with the absence of clear subjects and verbs, and worse: the absence of clear meaning and intention. “Say what you mean and mean what you say” was more like “say it sort of like you […]
Read More
Last year, when the White House campus sexual assault task force issued its due process-unfriendly recommendations, the document excluded one critical item: how colleges and universities should coordinate with local law enforcement agencies. That item was promised at a later date; it now has appeared. As expected, the document gave little reason to believe that […]
Read More
In the latest college to settle a due process lawsuit instead of defending its policies in court, MassLive reports that Amherst College reached a settlement with an anonymous male student who sued the school after Amherst withheld his degree. The case was unusual in a couple of respects: first, the allegation involved a same-sex rather […]
Read More
On January 14—a Wednesday—Duke University announced its decision to broadcast a Muslim call to prayer (the adhan) on campus at 1:00 every Friday afternoon. An uproar ensued, fueled in part by Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham) writing about the decision on his Facebook page. The next day, Duke backed down, canceling its plan to issue the amplified adhan from […]
Read More