One of the laboratory procedures we teach to first-year general chemistry students involves measuring the wavelengths of the visible emission spectra of several elements including hydrogen, helium, neon, and mercury. I begin my class with a short, non-conventional lecture that includes the trailer from The Matrix. It is fitting to introduce the basic principles of […]
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The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) earlier this year courageously took a stand against “threats to academic freedom.” The AAUP statement identifies the most serious threats to academic freedom today. No, the threat to academic freedom, according to the AAUP, is not the “social justice” political ideology that has become mandatory for all university […]
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Most American colleges and universities are fiercely resistant to major change. The staff, especially administrators and senior faculty, think they “own” the institutions and enjoy their dominant role. Yet enrollment data and public opinion polls show that Americans increasingly take of dim view of our colleges and universities. Some think the only way to effect […]
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Donna Shalala, the former president of my alma mater—the University of Miami (UM)—who also held a professorship in my Department of International Studies during her UM tenure, once defended academic freedom: You can’t have a university without having free speech, even though at times it makes us terribly uncomfortable. If students are not going to […]
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Free speech and open expression—the very keystones of higher education—are under threat. This is an issue that now impacts all students, not just those on the Right. Earlier this week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released its 2022 study of student perceptions of free speech on college campuses—the results are sobering. Sampling […]
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In Part One of this essay, I analyzed the ways in which two contrasting lenses—the liberal lens and the critical lens—affect postsecondary administrative practices and curricular development. I also asked whether there is any defense of the critical lens in education. To read my assessment of those two subjects and to get more background on […]
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Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the state of the American academy today knows that employment discrimination runs rampant on campus. Not the old-fashioned kind where women, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Asians, gays, or communists were excluded from employment opportunities, but the modern Kendian variety, in which overt discrimination against white men (and, in many […]
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Civic Architecture In May 2021 and April 2022, the Biden administration removed five members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. They did so as part of their fervid campaign to remove from the federal government all appointees of the Trump administration—even appointees in components of the federal government which previously presumed bipartisan comity. In […]
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A constant concern in my academic sub-field of comparative politics is how to create concepts and measurements that stand up to scrutiny when applied to several cases. When we hear someone claim that politics in Country X are “corrupt,” our first questions are “What do you mean by corruption?” and “Compared to where?” This concern […]
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When I consider what academe has become, I feel like a boy at the grave of my father. The Harvard I arrived at in 1960, with its Gen-Ed core inspired by the Red Book of 1948, with Finley and Alfred, with Riesman and Erikson, with Harry Levin, George Wald, and Charles Paul Segal, and with […]
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Barbara Ehrenreich passed away on September 1, 2022, at the age of 81. She died in a hospice care facility. According to her daughter, Rosa Brooks, she was killed by a stroke. I had long dismissed Barbara Ehrenreich as a typical denizen of what I call NPR World. I want to be clear that I […]
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It is not an uncommon occurrence at universities that certain unapproved speech is suppressed because it does not conform to prevailing ideologies. As part of what is now labeled “cancel culture”—purging thought and ideas that conflict with leftism—this unfortunate trend has shown itself at law schools as well, where lawyers in training have felt no […]
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The Critical Classroom, a book published by the Heritage Foundation, makes cogent arguments against structuring the classroom with the lens of critical theory. Still, I would have liked to read an article in the book defending the critical classroom. Perhaps I could play the role of an imagined interlocutor, but my attempt at exploring the […]
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The Wyoming State Legislature recently considered a bill to defund gender studies at its public universities—although they ultimately did not turn this bill into law. The bill followed parallel efforts abroad, notably in Hungary, to defund gender studies. A previously unthinkable extension of the government into university affairs has now been mooted. Gender studies (a.k.a., […]
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In 2013, Thor Halvorssen and Alexander Lloyd released balloons with thumb drives into North Korea. I’m not sure what the drives contained exactly or whether they led to any changes there. I suppose such drives did not need to contain anything to cause consternation. Such a “hack,” as they called it, is worthwhile if only […]
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airbrush, noun … to remove or alter by or as by means of an airbrush: to airbrush facial lines from a photograph. … to prettify or sanitize: airbrushed versions of modern history. Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez writes a regular newsletter called “Race on Campus” for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her most recent issue purports to inform readers on “What […]
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Colleges and universities were once bare-bones places. Dorm rooms had all the charm of a Motel 6 and school-run cafeterias were comparable to those in high school. Recreation was, maybe, a TV room and a musty gym for pick-up basketball. No matter—education was about learning, not personal indulgence. But, as tuition soars and competition for […]
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Like many other followers of the higher education scene, I weighed in on the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program last week, concluding that it was bad for America. In one iteration, I listed seven words beginning with the letter “I” to describe the policy action: illegal, inflationary, immoral, inequitable, irresponsible, irrational, and idiotic. This […]
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Over the past 20 years, trans activism has become more prominent at universities. As many academics know, this is one of those “third rail” subjects that can cause you serious trouble. Women like Selina Todd, Ann Henderson, and Kathleen Stock have discovered that one’s physical safety—not psychological or cultural safety—can be jeopardized when challenging this […]
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The notion that states have been cutting funding for higher education, commonly referred to as state disinvestment, is widespread within academia and the media. These cuts are alleged to be responsible for much of what ails higher education, especially the rise in tuition. Consider, for example, some recent statements from education leaders: • James Kvaal, […]
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