Editor’s Note: The following piece is the text of informal remarks by David Bolotin, tutor emeritus at St. John’s College Santa Fe. He delivered them on December 9 as part of a panel discussion sponsored by the College’s Student Committee on Instruction on the topic of “Politics, Liberal Education, and the [St. John’s] Program.” St. John’s […]
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I am a lawyer with a “Juris Doctor” degree from Harvard Law School. But calling myself “Doctor” would be misleading, because I don’t practice medicine. Indeed, it would be insufferably pompous. As law professor Eugene Volokh notes, lawyers don’t call themselves “doctor,” even though the word “doctor” is in their degree. Jill Biden has an […]
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On June 20, 2017, I vehemently opposed the censorship of my college president, Adam F. Falk, when I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in room 224 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. I fought my college president cerebrally, aggressively, and with rhetorical firepower for over two years. Six months before my graduation in June, 2018, President Falk announced […]
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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. Liberalism vs “Social Justice” Social justice is a good thing. It is almost unheard of for anyone to say they would not want a just society. Humans […]
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In their recent “Open Letter Demanding the Overhaul of McGill’s Statement of Academic Freedom,” the Anthropology Students Association and the Anthropology Graduate Student Association of McGill University have schooled us about the new anthropology. Here are some of its dimensions: The benighted old anthropology began with questions and engaged in research to find answers. Cultural […]
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If the Trump Presidency has taught national conservatives anything, it’s that we must take the offensive in the culture wars and not lay supine, politely beseeching tolerance from our foes; it’s that the libertarian strategy of enlightened pluralism will not be brooked by an ever more implacable foe. This is why President Trump’s September 17th […]
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Periodically, professors drop their commitment to objective truth to pursue political agendas. When this occurs, they become prisoners of their own ideologies. In a publication by Professors Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan, the authors reveal that some scholars within critical studies deliberately mislead readers by utilizing deepfake methodology. The authors refer to this deceptive practice […]
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In an otherwise excellent article ridiculing another journalist who was “canceling” restauranteurs with the wrong ethnicity for the ethnic food they were producing, Jonathan Kay expressed his perplexity about the meaning of “cultural Marxism.” “These battles [such as those about ‘cultural appropriation’ of cultural features by people with incorrect genes] are often described in left- […]
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Kenneth Stern, author of The Conflict over the Conflict, carries credentials. From 1989 to 2014, he served the American Jewish Committee as an expert on antisemitism. In 1999-2000, Stern helped defend Deborah Lipstadt when she was sued for libel by Holocaust denier David Irving. Amid an increase in antisemitic hate crimes in Europe after 2000, […]
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Eight McGill University student societies have taken offense at the classical liberal views I have expressed in articles on matters of public interest. In a petition dated November 30, 2020, entitled “Open Letter Demanding the Overhaul of McGill’s Statement of Academic Freedom,” these students have demanded that the McGill Administration revoke my Emeritus status, so […]
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Personal Reflections on Election Reactions in Academia and Society In this essay I will briefly discuss some of my post-election (2016 and 2020) experiences in academia as a right-of-center faculty member at an (501c3, allegedly “non-partisan”) institution composed of hardcore leftists, as well as how this relates to attitudes found in the broader American society. […]
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After a long and contentious journey from Bakke, it appears that we have come to a fork in the road on affirmative action (inevitably recalling Yogi Berra’s famous advice: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!). On November 3, by a resounding 57% to 43%, the people of California voted to […]
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The Virginia attorney general’s office has ruled that the Loudoun County school system committed illegal racial discrimination by admitting fairly few black and Hispanic students to its selective schools, the Academies of Loudoun. For reasons that have nothing to do with racism, the Academies of Loudoun are much more heavily Asian than the Loudoun County […]
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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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