As a university professor I’ve witnessed the intellectual carnage afflicting today’s campus firsthand, including the suicide of two distinguished colleagues. And it grows worse as it spreads from the academy’s soft side to the hard sciences, even escaping the campus’ ideological wet markets to infect organized religions, professional societies (especially law and medicine), sports, and, perhaps […]
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Jodi Shaw is both a graduate of Smith College and an administrator in its residential life office. She made national news when she publicly spoke truth about Smith’s diversity initiatives. Shaw— who is intimately familiarwith the school’s political culture —questioned the efficacy of many of Smith’s inclusion initiatives, critiqued the school’s overly sensitive culture, and […]
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Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. “Who says diversity says conflict,” writes Donald Black in Moral Time. Black is a sociologist who has spent decades studying morality, and his recent work identifies the […]
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The Syracuse University English Department’s Statement of Concern In a recent article lamenting the demise of the canon in English departments, Professor Mark Bauerlein calls attention to the homepage of Syracuse University’s department. Where one would expect to find a description of the department, one finds instead a “statement of concern regarding the death of […]
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Almost everyone is disappointed, frustrated, or angry about the election results—Republicans, because at this writing they appear to have lost the presidency amid widespread reports of voting—er, irregularities; Democrats, because they suffered an unexpected but major shellacking in the House and appear not to have regained the Senate. A noteworthy, important exception is the hearty […]
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On his radio show of October 22nd, 2020, Rush Limbaugh admitted that he had been shocked by the overt Marxism of so many Obama supporters. He had always assumed such ideas were marginalized, but the 2016 election showed him that, like pop culture, academia is saturated with them. Many more conservatives need to experience Rush’s […]
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Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. It is a misrepresentation to argue that White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo represents all of the antiracism movement. However, it is a book that has topped the New […]
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How should academic administrators respond when offended students complain to them about their professors or courses? In late September, in her course Art and Gender, Verushka Lieutenant-Duval mentioned the word “nigger” as an example of a word used to denigrate a class of people that was then taken up by that same people. Dr. Lieutenant-Duval […]
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Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. In wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed, many colleges and universities have been rolling out new training requirements – often oriented towards reducing […]
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A Commitment to Academic Freedom for All! Almost a quarter of a century ago, I was hired as the first full-time, tenure-track history instructor at a small, rural campus in central California. At the time, I was told that our campus was in line to become the next independent community college in California. It took […]
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The America of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity is already half gone. Our universities, media, industries, and one of our two main political parties are in the hands of the “wokerati.” If Democrats take control of the government come November, America is gone, to be replaced by “Woketopia.” In Woketopia your life and future will be […]
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Do you like being able to criticize progressive policies about race or gender, such as affirmative action? That freedom may soon disappear in workplaces, schools, and rental housing, if legislation backed by Democrats becomes law. A bill called the BE HEARD in the Workplace Act would redefine speech that previously was considered perfectly legal as […]
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Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. The fact is that there is racial insensitivity. People have to be made aware of what other people feel like…what insults them, what is demeaning to them. […]
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It is widely acknowledged that social-science and liberal-arts faculty at American universities are disproportionately of the left, and the hard-left in particular. Criticism of this fact often revolves around the idea that professors preach in their classrooms, and students facing such a faculty come away with a distorted view of how the world works and […]
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This political season has been dizzying. The steep, plunging lows—the COVID mess and the urban riots—are such that they have left many of us queasy. Enough so, that in bleak moments a shadow of doubt passes through our minds: perhaps our governing system cannot bear the burdens we face and could come undone. It is […]
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That trends come and go in education is a maxim that needs no explanation. Under the guise of innovation, faddish pedagogical strategies and well-funded reform movements are as sure as the sun rises. The best of these innovations serve to enhance teaching and learning. The worst, and by far the majority, are often presented as […]
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Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Craig Frisby usefully points us to the way moral innovators and “virtue-signaling” corporate imitators have stretched the meaning of racism beyond where objective social science and common […]
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Most people and institutions are held accountable, however imperfectly. We all know of a charlatan who has yet to be exposed, or a shady institution that is coasting on its reputation, but eventually, the truth wins out. With any luck, that moment has arrived for higher education. Last fall’s publication of the most comprehensive college […]
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The 2019 college admissions scandal made it clear that, in American colleges and universities, students have three options for entry: the back door, the side door, and the front door. You enter through the back door when your parents donate huge sums of money to the institution. This procedure is not illegal, although many people […]
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Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing symposium on white fragility and its related concepts. To view all of the essays in this series, click here. Part II of this series illustrated how the concept of “racism” has come to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean—which, over time, has diminished in its […]
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