For learning and discovery communities to flourish, there has to be a diversity of ideas that are explored and debated, with multiple perspectives discussed civilly by veteran scholars—the faculty—as well as inquisitive young learners—the students. While campuses in recent years have obsessed over what are intellectually relatively unimportant dimensions of diversity, such as the skin […]
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As anti-Israel protests convulsed American campuses in the spring semester—likely to reappear soon in the fall—one might be forgiven, judging from the headlines, for thinking that the Ivy League and a handful of major state universities constitute the entirety of American higher education. Not infrequently, even commentators on these events hailed from the same set […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the author’s book Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me: Debunking the False Narratives Defining America’s School Curricula. It is posted here with permission. A widely accepted contemporary belief, prevalent throughout American secondary and higher education, is that post-1800 Western colonialism was an unmitigated evil. Notably, this does not hold […]
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When I began my academic career, my colleagues regarded the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as the great proponent and bulwark of academic freedom. The senior colleague I admired most—a gentleman and scholar, the embodiment of what it meant to be a professor—was a long-time member. My, how times have changed. Yes, the AAUP […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is a short excerpt from an article originally published by The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on August 7, 2024. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. Legal battles over President Biden’s various schemes to forgive student debt continue. In July, the Eighth Circuit Court of […]
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Although our national motto, E Pluribus Unum, appropriately reflects how diverse peoples have melded together to form a tribe that we call “Americans,” that does not negate the fact that there are numerous different ways we carry out the business of life across our vast land. That is especially true regarding the provision of higher […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is a short excerpt from an article originally published by The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on August 5, 2024. With edits to fit MTC’s style, it is crossposted here with permission. For nearly five decades, American universities systematically discriminated against white and Asian Americans. Quotas, “holistic review processes,” and “factors” […]
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“Tú sola comprendiste que el hombre y el tigre se diferencian únicamente por el corazón.” —Horacio Quiroga, Juan Darién (1920) At an event at Stanford Law School last year, Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach shut down Federal Judge Kyle Duncan’s speech because his ideas hurt people’s feelings. More recently, officials in the United Kingdom have indicated […]
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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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I teach at an Ivy League university. I can’t count how many colleagues have told me that they “just give everyone an A.” This mindset doesn’t belong to just one instructor, department, discipline, or generation. I do not “out” any one or two particular people when I describe my experience with grade inflation. It’s happening […]
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With colleges and universities reopening in a few short weeks, I want to remind fellow faculty that educating students is one of the most important tasks they are charged with performing. For faculty to provide a responsible college education today, we professors must help our students learn how to find and then embrace the truth […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is a brief excerpt from the author’s in-depth essay, “Using the Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1:28 and the Ten Commandments as the Foundation for a Christian Ethic of Earth Stewardship,” originally published by the Cornwall Alliance on November 7, 2023. Shared here with permission. Introduction As recently as the 2018 Gallup […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The College Fix on August 13, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. A University of Kansas student is speaking out against her sorority for granting honorary membership to a male transgender activist who identifies as female during its 150th anniversary celebration. Sarah Green, a junior at the University of […]
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Billy Beane revolutionized the game of baseball by determining which factors improved the performance of players. The book Moneyball details how he strategized to develop winning players rather than accept the untested school of thought prevalent at the time. When Beane came on the scene, most of those involved in decision-making in the sport judged potential […]
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In his 1995 classic, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen took American history textbooks to task for their rose-tinted portrayal of history, such as glorifying Columbus while neatly skipping over the violence and exploitation that followed his arrival. Textbooks of Loewen’s time were off the mark, […]
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A new academic year is upon us. With that, new faculty and graduate students will be delving into research applications, especially through the largest higher education funder of scientific research: the National Science Foundation (NSF). This year, those applying for research funds will have to consider whether their projects “may impact tribal resources or interests,” […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Liberty Unyielding on August 5, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. It has been edited to fit Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. If a university is ordered by the government to investigate each instance of speech that is bigoted to determine if it cumulatively contributed to a “hostile environment” for […]
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In a bizarre incident in California, a seven-year-old girl found herself banned from drawing, suspended from recess for two weeks, and forced to apologize after presenting a drawing to a black classmate. What sparked such controversy? In her colorful creation, she boldly wrote “Black Lives Mater [sic]” (BLM) at the top and, beneath it, sketched […]
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The rising cost of college has dissuaded many from pursuing a degree and caused millions more to go deep into debt. One important factor contributing to this trend is the amount many institutions spend on intercollegiate athletics. About twenty large universities, such as Penn State and the University of Alabama, have successful football teams that […]
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Depending on which side of the political aisle you choose, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” better known as DEI, stands for very different things. For the far-left, who have largely coopted and infected their less radical comrades, it is something inherently good and imbued in America’s DNA. In response to increasing demands for dialing down DEI […]
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