Has Stanford Law stopped discriminating? I realize this is a loaded question, but it is inescapably prompted by research, published in the Journal of Legal Studies, that suggests “ways to close the gender gap in law schools.” Stanford law professors Mark Kelman and Daniel Ho examined 15,689 grades assigned by 91 instructors to 1,897 Stanford […]
Read More
I’d like to add this to Peter Augustine Lawler’s legislative agenda: As long as university officials take race and ethnicity into account in admissions decisions, a bill requiring publication of the use of such preferences is necessary. Such a bill would require universities that receive federal funding to report annually in detail on whether and […]
Read More
The Republicans’ massive victory on all levels of American politics requires them to be more than anti-Obama or anti-progressive. They must implement policies that will contribute to the flourishing of all of American life. “Reform conservatives”–such as Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin–have taken the lead in showing that Republicans have to do more than cut […]
Read More
As part of its ongoing series on “Inequity In Silicon Valley,” USA TODAY published a long and questionable article Monday, “How To Close The Tech Diversity Gap,” reporting on a conference at the Stanford Law School the paper co-sponsored with Stanford last week. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was much in evidence, both in spirit and […]
Read More
In the mid-1990s, the MacArthur Fellows Program, commonly referred to as the “genius grants,” appeared to be captured by the multicultural, race-and-gender left. But the program director that embraced the radical left, Catharine Stimpson, left the MacArthur Foundation in 1996 after only four years. Her successor, Daniel Socolow, severely restricted the fellowships going to liberal […]
Read More
The Federalist Society last Saturday sponsored a symposium at Yale Law School that discussed “Achieving Intellectual Diversity” on law school faculties. On one of the panels, I said that as a student at Yale law 1977-1981 (with a year off to work for the Republican National Committee) it was a good time to be in […]
Read More
When Patrick Witt published his op-ed on what was done to him in a sexual assault hearing at Yale, he had to know that the critics would emerge from the woodwork. And so they have. The New York Times continues to stand behind its botched reporting on the case, which even the Times’ public editor […]
Read More
At the invitation of the Alabama chapter of Eagle Forum—Phyllis Schafly’s pro-family conservative organization—I flew to Birmingham last week to give a talk on the Common Core K-12 State Standards. Alabama was one of only a few states I had never set foot in. When I mentioned that to an elderly gentleman I met at […]
Read More
Perhaps the highest-profile victim of the war on campus due process, former Yale quarterback Patrick Witt, has spoken out publicly for the first time. In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Witt, now a student at Harvard Law School and prompted by the law school faculty’s speaking out against Harvard’s new policies, wrote that Yale’s […]
Read More
Stanford student Elisabeth Dee, class of 2016, one of the organizers of a demonstration called “Carry that Weight” where students were urged to carry a pillow or mattress around for a day to symbolize the burden placed upon survivors of sexual assault, has called on the school to actively reduce the burden of proof required […]
Read More
Two years after MOOCs grabbed higher-ed headlines and recession-battered students began calling for cheaper college options, what do professors think of online education? According to Inside Higher Ed’s 2014 survey of faculty attitudes on technology, they’re cautiously becoming more hopeful about its success, if education consists in conveying information. But they’re increasingly skeptical about its […]
Read More
The latest alarming numbers on campus sexual assault come from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey which supposedly shows that 17 percent of female undergraduates have been sexually assaulted during their time at the school. Writing in The Washington Post, columnist Catherine Rampell has invoked these findings as a rebuke to those who have criticized […]
Read More
Put yourself in the shoes of the admissions director at a selective, highly respected college with a narrow academic focus – science, math, and engineering. How could you improve the likelihood that the students you’ll offer admission to will be the best of the many who applied? You already look at SAT and ACT scores, […]
Read More
The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that Penn is moving full speed ahead to weaken due process protections when campus tribunals handle sexual assault claims—and only when they handle sexual assault claims. The DP notes that students accused of sexual assault will no longer be judged by a jury of their peers, and instead will face a […]
Read More
This is an edited version of a paper delivered at a recent conference on “What Is a Liberal Education For?” at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. Dr. Agresto is a former president of St. John’s. *** The liberal arts are dying in America, and they are dying in large measure because the public is […]
Read More
I’ve written frequently about the unfair, guilt-presuming processes that colleges and universities from Harvard to Occidental use when deciding sexual assault cases. But a second trend has occurred largely outside the public eye. As they have “reformed” their sexual assault procedures, colleges and universities also have increasingly instituted training programs for members of these disciplinary […]
Read More
Bryn Mawr College, a good liberal arts college where I adjunct taught a few years back, recently got the kind of press no college wants: two southern students displayed a Confederate flag, leading to days of demonstrations. One protester had written on her arm “I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO QUESTION IF I BELONG HERE. I WILL […]
Read More
This is the the keynote address delivered by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker on October 23rd in New York at the fifteenth anniversary dinner of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). *** A few years ago I wrote a chapter on taboo language which began, “It’s no coincidence that freedom of speech is enshrined […]
Read More
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Student Loan Ombudsman has just released his annual report on private student loans. The data in the report suggests that an epidemic of non-repayment is happening in the private student loan sector. Some 5300 borrowers lodged complaints with the CFPB from October 2013-September 2014, an increase of 38% from the […]
Read More
These remarks by the noted First Amendment expert were delivered in New York last night (Oct. 23) at the 15th anniversary dinner of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the foremost protector of free speech in higher education. *** This is an extraordinarily perilous moment with respect to free speech on campuses around […]
Read More