British author Douglas Murray once shared a platform with Iranian-born activist Maryam Namazie as part of her One Law for All campaign. The two were there to discuss the illiberalism encircling British society—particularly with respect to Islamism and Sharia—including the leftists who seemed ever willing to open the gates for it. A major problem with […]
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The Supreme Court has finally banned racial preferences in higher education. Alas, those familiar with the academy’s penchant for race-related chicanery know that the celebrations may be premature. Yes, few college and university presidents will announce their outright resistance, but many, perhaps most, will surreptitiously find a way to sneak racial preferences back in. Ideologues […]
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The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine forget … Science In July 2020, just two months after the killing of George Floyd, chairwoman of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 84-year-old civil-rights pioneer Eddie Bernice Johnson, asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) [T]o take action on research […]
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Ties to the Chinese military—and to U.S. national security Portland State University (PSU) is at the cutting edge of geopolitical competition, with its simultaneous ties to both Beijing’s military establishment and America’s National Security Agency (NSA). Thanks to “collaborative partnerships” between PSU’s Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science and three different Chinese universities with […]
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Strategic Ambiguity, the Motte-and-Bailey Fallacy, and the Allure of Simplistic Morality Who doesn’t support being more tolerant and culturally sensitive? What kind of a monster thinks that Black Lives Don’t matter? Just be kind. Our academic morass starts with some banal platitude, with which almost everyone agrees, but ends with a far more controversial claim, […]
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Republicans in both the House and the Senate have recently released a slew of new legislation focused on reforming higher education. In the Senate, Republicans announced the Lowering Education Costs and Debt Act, which itself comprises a bundle of five bills. The College Transparency Act (CTA) is a bipartisan bill that aims to remove the […]
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In January, University of Toronto psychologist Yoel Inbar interviewed for a role at UCLA. His girlfriend had received a job offer from the psychology department, and like many universities, UCLA has a dual career program designed to facilitate partner appointments. The interview went well, and as Inbar notes in a recent podcast, he thought that […]
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California is a peculiar case of counteracting, yet converging forces regarding affirmative action. In 1996, it was the first state to codify a statewide constitutional ban on preferential treatment on the basis of race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin via the passage of Proposition 209. Over the last two decades, big players in the […]
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When the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s plan for massive student loan forgiveness ($10,000 to $20,000 for 98% of borrowers), I said to friends, “Biden will sneak in most of what he wanted in other ways.” Specifically, I thought he would continue the extremely generous income-repayment scheme that he and Education Secretary Miguel […]
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Gustave Doré, Don Quijote 2.22 (1869) I wondered what all the fuss was about after I saw the movie There Will Be Blood (2007). It’s visually remarkable but overly moralizing. After two and a half hours, you’re supposed to think American capitalism is about greed, treachery, and murder. In Texas the movie is a litmus […]
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Once upon a time, liberals and conservatives could converse easily. I know that sounds implausible, but it is true. Now, I am fairly old. Fred Flintstone was just two grades ahead of me at Bedrock High. Back then we could debate questions such as whether it was a good idea to let dinosaurs turn into […]
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Last year, Florida’s Stop W.O.K.E Act banned the teaching of certain race-based concepts in K–12 schools and higher education, including the notion that one race is superior or inferior to others. That is an appropriate prohibition in the K–12 system, where young people are particularly vulnerable to the misuse of research by ideological teachers. This […]
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The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important statements on human liberty ever written. Not only did it launch the American Revolution, but it also inspired freedom fighters all around the world. From Frederick Douglass and the struggle against chattel slavery to Winston Churchill and the battle against totalitarianism, the ideas of the Declaration have been a rallying point […]
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The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan on Friday. The administration was attempting to forgive $10,000 of student loans for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, and $20,000 for those who had received a Pell grant. The alleged authority for this action was a 20-year-old law that allows […]
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Last Thursday, June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court released its ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, which it bundled with the University of North Carolina (UNC) case, putting an end to race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Framing the decision as one that embraces “the transcendent aims of the Equal Protection Clause,” […]
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A few months ago, I was summarily fired as an editor-in-chief of the kidney section of the most widely used medical reference. UpToDate is used by tens of thousands of physicians every day, helping them make the best and most timely decisions for patient care. Even as I was fired, UpToDate’s leadership team praised my work. […]
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While voters have repeatedly registered their opposition to racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in academic admissions and hiring, administrators, faculty, and the National Association for College Admission Counseling consistently undermine the electorate’s intent. For some time, they have been actively conspiring to subvert the anticipated SCOTUS ruling defending the Fourteenth Amendment’s assertion that no one […]
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Editor’s Note: This piece is part of a new Minding the Campus article series called Minding the Sciences, wherein we are renewing our focus on the sciences given the many threats it faces in modern academia. Click here to learn more. In April, David Muir of ABC News broadcast a special report from South Sudan, […]
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We may critique modern American higher education for many reasons. But there is one fact that embarrasses academic administrators more than any other: as colleges and universities have embraced a monomaniacal fixation on social and economic justice, they have cultivated an ever-increasing reliance on the exploited labor of “adjunct faculty,” who teach courses for a […]
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The Biden administration plans to release new gainful employment regulations. The regulations would terminate federal financial aid for some programs where graduates do not earn more than high school graduates or where the students take on excessive debt, as determined by two debt-to-income tests. My previous list of pros and cons still holds, but having […]
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