University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum recently made headlines for allegedly preventing images of Nigerian Igbo masks from being displayed in their online catalog because these masks, according to the Igbo people, should only be seen by males. The museum’s director, Laura Van Broekhoven, who was hired in 2016, denied these claims, stating that: [T]he […]
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The Supreme Court’s recent Chevron ruling, while rightly focusing on central issues like presidential immunity, also brought a potential boon for American higher education. This decision, which I believe holds promise for the future, has yet to be fully grasped by the higher education establishment. Specifically, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court invalidated […]
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It was an immortal day dedicated to liberty. Stalwart patriots met on July 4, 1774. 1774? Yes. Two years before we declared our independence, the residents of Orangetown, New York subscribed to the Orangetown Resolutions. The Resolutions stated, in part: 1st, That we are and ever wish to be, true and loyal subjects to his […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Cato Institute on July 1, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. Note, this post updates last month’s post. The biggest changes from last month include: Update on the lawsuits regarding the SAVE plan to reflect the court injunctions. Update on the prospects of the SAVE and HEA plan in light of […]
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It will come as no news to anyone other than Rip Van Winkle that anti-Israel protests recently occurred on university campuses nationwide. Columbia University, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, and other institutions of higher learning all hosted such demonstrations. One would expect these events to demonstrate a great understanding of the Middle East, especially with professors of […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by RealClear Education on June 25, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. MIT’s announcement that it will no longer require prospective faculty members to submit “diversity statements” is good news for American higher education. Academic institutions around the world should follow MIT’s example. “Diversity statements”, a one or two-page essay about the […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by College Fix on July 1, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. A pro-Israel group is raising concerns about foreign countries’ donations to American universities. About one in four foreign dollars donated to American universities in the past four decades have come from Arabic countries, many of whom are […]
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On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors is an explosive and humorous new book by Elizabeth Weiss, a National Association of Scholars board member and Minding the Campus contributor. Her book reveals how the field of biological anthropology, which includes the study of skeletal remains to reconstruct the past, and forensic […]
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Editor’s Note: This series is adapted from the new paper Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education? Part 1 explored the justifications and rationales that have been used to subsidize higher education. Part 2 explored subsidy design considerations. Part 3 explored federal subsidies. This fourth and final part explores state subsidies. […]
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In our rapidly changing world, civics education must do a better job. Civics must prepare students to engage their neighborhood, county, state, and nation. Civics courses today rely on history, current events, and case studies. But they fall short in effectively explaining the realities of government, campus, or neighborhood dynamics and teaching how to enact […]
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Sometimes following politics can be a bit like watching a hotly contested football game between your favorite team and its archrival. One minute, your team is marching down the field; the next, they’re giving up a big play. You go up by a few points, only to fall behind again as the hated opponent responds. […]
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Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts, George III gave them his royal assent, and, at once, America rose in unanimous rebellion. No, of course not. American patriots were outraged. But in 1774, they weren’t yet at the point of armed rebellion. The radicals of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams and the Boston Committee of Correspondence, proposed instead a […]
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Neither side of the aisle in the U.S. recognizes the other anymore. But this is more normal than we imagine. According to what political theorists call “realignment theory,” life gets bumpy in an electoral democracy, and it can change substantially and suddenly. But it’s deeper than that. Our current national malaise is a very common […]
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During a discussion about whether government funding of academic science was a good idea, I argued that it was a net negative—a prominent physicist once told me that there was no particle physics before World War II. I remember thinking to myself: “Who’s going to tell him? No particle physics? Maxwell? Planck? Rutherford? Einstein?” My […]
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In the last year, there has been a rapid increase in actions that involve removing human remains and photographs of human remains from anthropology and archaeology classrooms, conference halls, publications, and museums, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Penn Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. These museums and many others around […]
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“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.” – Denis Didero The French philosopher could not have foreseen the delicate state of today’s young minds, who are culturally conditioned, coddled, and deceived to reject the truth when he wrote those sobering words […]
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Harvard Dean of Social Science Lawrence Bobo set off a firestorm last week when he published an article suggesting faculty should be punished for publicly criticizing the university. His position, if implemented, would severely weaken the already fragile state of academic freedom at Harvard. As dean, his significant power over the careers of many faculty […]
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The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) recently released a report revealing that the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, a taxpayer-funded program that supports promising young individuals with aspirations to serve in government and the like, has overwhelmingly favored candidates with leftist views in recent years. According to the report, the Foundation has selected a significantly higher […]
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On June 22, 1774, the Quebec Act received royal assent. This, the climax of the Intolerable Acts, not only provided for greater accommodation of Catholicism and French law in Britain’s recently conquered colony of Quebec but also expanded its borders—to include virtually all of the trans-Appalachian West down to the Ohio River. It cut the possibility […]
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Juneteenth has become a national holiday during which we remember and celebrate the end of slavery. The date comes from the tardy dissemination in Texas of the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln’s momentous document by which he freed the slaves in the areas in rebellion. But June 19th is the wrong date to celebrate. The Emancipation […]
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