The concept of “lawfare” is in the news constantly. The term describes a program, run mostly by political parties, that uses the courts to attack and tie up opponents—or to use the judicial system as its own government. It seems like a new practice in present-day politics, but its design goes back decades to one […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on the College Fix on May 2, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Capitalism is an “oppressive system” that is “incredibly difficult to survive,” a financial coach said during a recent lecture at Iowa State University. […]
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In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “some animals are more equal than others.” Orwell’s dystopian novel about the dangers and hypocrisy of Marxism was meant to serve as a warning. But Harvard University seems to be using it as a guide. As higher education has come under pressure from the Trump administration and increased skepticism from […]
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A century ago, student dormitories were supervised by faculty who lived in the buildings, a tradition that remains at Harvard, Yale, and elite prep schools such as Phillips Andover. The sheer number of veterans who arrived with the GI Bill after WWII forced most institutions to abandon this model—they just let the veterans run their […]
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Last week in RealClearEducation, Kenin M. Spivak argued that while Columbia University’s leadership and commencement ceremonies showcase a deep embrace of leftist ideology, student activism remains largely performative. Reflecting on his experience as both alumnus and guest at this year’s graduation, Spivak says that despite the dominance of DEI rhetoric and the praise for progressive […]
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Since the education debacle of 2020-22, much of the blame has gone to online or “digital” learning. Conservative commentators, in particular, often speak of online classes in sneering terms, as if they were primarily responsible for students’ learning loss, declining IQs, and the general “dumbing down” of higher education, among other harms. But is that […]
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In Episode 5 of The Week in Science, Scott Turner, Director of Science Programs at the National Association of Scholars, offers a timely critique of the growing media narrative around a so-called “Trump brain drain”—the claim that scientists are fleeing American institutions due to MAGA-led funding cuts. Turner says that what is actually driving scientists away […]
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I thought that we had hit rock bottom with English pedagogy when the National Council of Teachers of English proclaimed in 2022 that “the time has come to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.” Nope. There’s a new plague on the rise in English classrooms, and it […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on Law & Liberty on May 27, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. American higher education is characterized by many forms of tuition discounts, often called “scholarships.” Some of them are based on distinguished academic achievement, but often […]
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The Trump administration’s efforts to reform higher education have been met with increasing resistance from the higher education establishment. Indeed, arguably the most prestigious university of all—Harvard—sued the Trump administration in late-April for freezing over $2 billion in federal research funding because Harvard refused to comply with a list of conditions for the continued receipt […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on American Greatness on April 24, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. On April 8, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, did something unusual: it found and showcased bright spots in American higher education. Such hidden […]
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In this first episode of our new podcast, VAS News Chat, I join Teresa Manning, Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars and President of its Virginia affiliate, for a deep dive into my recent article, “America’s Obsession with Diplomas Is Killing Opportunity,” in which I argue that credentials have become an illegitimate precondition […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on the College Fix on May 30, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. A doctoral student at the University of Nebraska (NU) recently orchestrated a drag performance appropriating the Catholic Mass for the final recital of his musical degree. The […]
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On Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Professor Kenneth Moss, one of the University of Chicago’s (UChicago) more prominent Jewish historians and a Yiddishist, presided over the anti-Semitism roundtable held at the Franke Institute for the Humanities in Regenstein Library. The room was nearly packed when the roundtable began, with students and faculty attending from all over […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from an article originally published by the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press on May 21, 2025. It is crossposted here with permission. I received my Ph.D. and J.D. from the University of Virginia (UVA). I loved my time at UVA, but I’m concerned the university has become an institution of […]
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The English language is not strong enough, nor are my skills in using it, to fully describe the unmitigated disaster that the federal program of financial assistance for college students has been, especially in the case of student loans. That program has: Incentivized academic mediocrity and penalized academic merit and accomplishment; Materially raised the cost […]
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Author’s Note: This article 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, enter your name and email under “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” located on the right-hand side of the site. The “One Big […]
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“Hath not a Jew eyes? … If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” These are not the words of Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Once upon a time, the “educated” in the Anglophone West would have known this. Sadly, this is […]
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Harvard, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university, has long set the standard in higher education. For Jewish families, gaining admission has historically been both a symbol of merit and a source of communal pride. But Harvard has also long resisted their inclusion—first through admissions quotas in the early 20th century, and now, once again, […]
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While listening to an online debate about the future of artificial intelligence (AI), I considered writing this essay and a parallel one that I had asked AI to write. The debate delved into the differences of human versus machine language “intelligence,” computational wizardry versus human emotion, and regulation of the AI industry, whether driven by profit and market […]
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