The Trump Administration has proposed a much-needed reform of how we reimburse so-called “overhead expenses” associated with federal research grants made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is reasoned that research activity financed by the Feds involves not only paying researchers, buying lab equipment, and some travel but also increases needed administrative oversight, […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt 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, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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Last week, the president of my university’s Faculty Senate blasted out a warning—courtesy of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Their latest statement, Against Anticipatory Obedience, treats the second Trump administration as an existential threat to academia. The message to faculty? Brace yourselves—and whatever you do, don’t comply in advance. The AAUP asserts that […]
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The American university is in distress. Enrollment is declining, tenure is disappearing, administrative costs are ballooning, and public trust in academia is eroding. More concerning, however, is the deeper structural crisis that has transformed universities from bastions of knowledge into battlegrounds of ideological warfare and administrative overreach. At the heart of this crisis lies a […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of an article originally published on the author’s Substack Diogenes In Exile on January 10, 2025. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. What if accreditors were directly accountable to the people their standards affected the most, students? It would be so much […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on January 25, 2025. It was translated into English from French by the Observatory before being edited to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is crossposted here with permission. San Jose State University Elizabeth Weiss, a physical anthropologist and professor […]
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I recently spoke with a senior at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC), where I have taught for 15 years. We had never met before. The student hopes to graduate this spring, but that remains uncertain. Now at home, taking classes remotely, unsure if graduation will be possible. The students stays away out of fear. As a […]
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“Is there any good principled reason not to have open borders?” That is a quote from Harvard professor Michael Sandel in “Two of the World’s Leading Thinkers on How the Left Went Astray,” a New York Times article published on Jan 18. The piece promotes two stars in the progressive pantheon: Sandel and French economist Thomas […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by American Greatness on February 11, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission. Last week, the Trump Administration continued its campaign for common sense: On February 5, the President signed the executive order (“EO”) Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports, restoring sanity to athletics […]
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President Trump is determined to repair American education. He has started out with bold moves, including the demolition of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) ideology, the elimination of men from women’s sports, and taking steps against campus anti-Semitism. Yet much remains to be done. Now that DEI has been called out as a form of […]
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The Most Beautiful Game There has always been something special about college football. From the passion to the pageantry, this game exemplifies the true spirit of America—a force so powerful it can unite total strangers and divide close families. Tribal to its very core, football fans of all ages perform rites and rituals, embrace their […]
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One day after President Biden’s inaugural address stressing national unity, he signed an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” He created another Executive Order in February 2023, this time expanding the equity mandate to the operation of every federal program. These executive orders (EOs) had a […]
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For the first time in a long time, conservatives and heterodox thinkers seem to be getting the upper hand in the culture war. At the federal level, executive orders such as those ending federal “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs, combatting racial discrimination in institutions that receive federal funding, and pushing back against radical transgenderism […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the Ford Forum on January 30, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission. Recently historians from many nations commemorated the birth 150 years ago of one of the most remarkable political figures in modern times. Before his death in 1965 at […]
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On February 9, 1775, the Parliament of Great Britain declared Massachusetts in a state of rebellion. With cause: Massachusetts’ Provincial Congress had met without royal leave and was organizing and training a military force. Massachusetts’ disobedience could no longer be ignored. Now, Britain would arm itself for war. Orders sailed to Governor Thomas Gage in […]
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“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) has been in the headlines quite a bit lately, and not for good reasons. Indeed, we may be witnessing the collapse of the entire toxic ideology and not a moment too soon. Its effect on society has been devastating, leading to a noticeable decline in professionalism and public trust. For […]
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Author’s Note: This excerpt 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, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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Editor’s Note: The following was originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on November 8, 2023. It was translated from French into English by the Observatory and later edited to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is republished here with permission. For translation assistance, I used ChatGPT. Secularism? A difficult term to […]
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The surprise on the faces of the doctoral students was as palpable as was the disbelief upon hearing the methodological equivalent of heresy spoken in a classroom. When giving a talk to grad students a year ago at the University of California, Riverside about careers beyond the university, I challenged an orthodoxy that is daily […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the College Fix on February 4, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) course requirements in at least 30 states cost students and taxpayers at least $1.8 billion per four-year period. Meanwhile, “the current undergraduate population at public […]
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