How time flies. In 1987, a new breed of speech and harassment codes and student indoctrination were unleashed on college campuses across the land. Thus, what Allan Kors and Harvey Silverglate famously labeled the “shadow university”–the university dedicated to censorship and politically correct paternalism–is now at least 25 years old. The public recognized the consequences of […]
Read MoreHarvard’s Dean of Freshmen Thomas Dingman has managed to circumvent the brouhaha he created last year with his “kindness pledge.” To recap: In the fall of 2011 Dean Dingman drew the wrath of former Dean of Harvard College Harry Lewis, as well as the mockery and criticism of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education(FIRE) […]
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To the student tired of politically correct speech, whose soul longs for the free pursuit of truth, take heart! There are support networks that bring together like-minded students around conferences, seminars, reading groups, scholarships, and grants. Take a look at a sampling below. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute inspires students to discover, embrace, and advance the […]
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Cross-Posted from Open Market New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants to kick Chick-fil-A out of New York because its CEO, Dan Cathy, opposes gay marriage. Accordingly, she informed the head of New York University (which leases space to the one Chick-fil-A restaurant in New York City) that “Chick-fil-A is not welcome in New York […]
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UCLA’s “Academic Freedom Committee” has delivered an important document that appears to give carte blanche to professors to introduce unrelated political advocacy into their classrooms–in apparent violation of Regents’ policy. The case involved David Delgado Shorter, a UCLA professor in the “Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance.”(His dissertation was entitled, “SantamLiniamDivisoriam/Holy Dividing Lines: Yoeme Indian […]
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As one who has spent nearly four decades in the academy, let me confirm what outsiders often suspect: the left has almost a complete headlock on the publication of serious (peer reviewed) research in journals and scholarly books. It is not that heretical ideas are forever buried. They can be expressed in popular magazines, op-eds […]
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The Star-Tribune opening paragraph–“The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the University of Minnesota’s discipline of a student over Facebook comments that her instructors found threatening, rejecting claims that flunking her infringed on her First Amendment rights”–couldn’t help but raise concerns. Given the judiciary’s excessive deference to higher-ed administrators, when courts uphold university actions against […]
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Ray Bradbury, born in 1920, a fearless defender of the imagination and scathing critic of political correctness long before the term was even invented, died on June 5th, 2012. His last published piece was a brief autobiographical essay in The New Yorker (June 4, 2012) called, ironically, “Take Me Home,” in which he describes his […]
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It is no secret that what passes for an education at most of the nation’s colleges and universities is suspiciously akin to indoctrination. An asterisk: With the exception of a few areas–specifically, climate and the environment, certain fields within biology and medicine, history of science and the interaction between science and public policy–the rot that […]
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Taking note of a posting by Naomi Schaefer Riley, John Rosenberg took a hard look at what passes for cutting-edge scholarship in Black Studies–and wasn’t impressed with what he found. Rosenberg’s post became all the timelier when the Chronicle announced that it had removed Riley from the Brainstorm blog. In an editor’s note that could […]
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From the site of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. Not long ago, the university was seen as a world apart–an idyllic enclave where our studious youth learned the virtues of citizenship, cheered hard for the football team, and read the great classics of Western thought. The “ivory tower” was more an […]
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New York magazine’s Jon Chait ran one of his periodic columns arguing that congressional Republicans were unlikely ever to have cooperated with President Obama, regardless of Obama’s policies. Chait has argued, persuasively, that given the current political climate and the institutional tools available to the minority to obstruct without paying a political price, only a […]
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We missed this unusual column when it appeared in the Harvard Crimson two weeks ago, but it’s worthy of comment even at this late date. It begins with Olympia Snow’s complaint that the Senate is not a place “that ensures all voices are heard and considered,” then moves swiftly to argue that Harvard isn’t such […]
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This is the text of a speech given March 28, 2012 at a Manhattan Institute luncheon in New York City. *** I began representing students in 1969. A group of Harvard students took over University Hall in an anti-Vietnam War protest. There was a lot of violence, President Pusey called in the police, and […]
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Two of our best writers here at Minding the Campus, KC Johnson and Harvey Silverglate, spoke quite brilliantly at a Manhattan Institute luncheon last Wednesday on “Kangaroo Courts: Yale, Duke and Student Rights.” It is, in our opinion, the best possible short course for understanding the star-chamber proceedings that students face these days at campuses […]
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Remarks delivered at a Manhattan Institute luncheon, March 28, 2012 in New York City. Professor Johnson and attorney Harvey Silverglate, whose talk will be presented here tomorrow, spoke on “Kangaroo Courts: Yale, Duke and Student Rights.” *** Before the Patrick Witt case, I had some experience writing about how the New York Times handles […]
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Posted by Fr. John Sims Baker The students here at Vanderbilt Catholic have decided to move our 500-member group off campus rather than allow the university to dictate who our leaders might be. Using anti-discrimination rules, the administration says campus groups must allow all students to become group officials–which would means we must accept non-religious […]
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Did the shuttering last year of a Yale institute created to study anti-Semitism have anything to do with campus politics? The university denied it. But the Yale Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) was eliminated amid attacks from Palestinian representatives and anti-Israel faculty.
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Cross-posted from Open Market. Provisions are being added to the 1994 Violence Against Women Act that could undermine due process on campus and in criminal cases, as civil liberties groups like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and civil libertarians like former ACLU board member Wendy Kaminer have noted. The changes are contained […]
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In a recent interview, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger was asked whether the Hazelwood standard of student speech should be applied to colleges and universities. (Hazelwood gave high-school teachers and administrators broad authority to restrict student speech, in the name of advancing “legitimate pedagogical goals.”) Bollinger issued a strong caution:
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The Kennedy School’s “One-State” conference provided only the latest reminder of the hostile on-campus attitude toward Israel. (Imagine the likelihood of any major campus hosting an allegedly academic conference ruminating about the destruction as a state of Iran, or Egypt, or Mexico.) In light of the conference and its controversy, it’s worth reviewing an excellent […]
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Inside Higher Ed reports this morning — surprise! — that “®oughly two-thirds of public and private college presidents say they plan to vote for President Obama in November.” Only two-thirds? Actually, that is a surprise. I wonder how many of them are in states that have had to cut or reduce spending on higher education […]
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Vartan Gregorian once said the way to become a successful college president is simple: stand up, give a speech on “diversity,” then sit down. Richard Levin, president of Yale, is the longest-lasting president of an Ivy League university, and following Gregorian’s sage advice is surely one reason why. Whenever a serious incident occurs at Yale, […]
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Dr. London, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, received the Jeane Kirkpatrick Award for Academic Freedom on February 9 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the American Conservative Union Foundation. These were his remarks on the occasion. *** It is with enormous humility and gratitude that I accept this award from the […]
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In a case highlighted by FIRE, Oakland University in Michigan issued a three-semester suspension to a student named Joseph Corlett, allegedly in response to some of Corlett’s in-class writings that passed well beyond the bounds of good taste (in a writing journal, he ruminated on the sexual attractiveness of his female professors) and to Corbett’s […]
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Consider the following two cases: • Crystal Smith, VP for Human Resources at a small historically black state college in the deep South, was fired for her published letter in the local newspaper praising affirmative action and condemning Ward Connerly as a bigoted Uncle Tom because of his opposition to race preferences. In dismissing her […]
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Cross-posted from NAS. Several weeks ago, KC Johnson–a scholar I much admire, not least for his fearless dedication to principle–published an essay on Minding the Campus under the title, “Keeton Defense Contradicts NAS Principles.” We offered Professor Johnson the opportunity to re-post his article or contribute a further statement on the NAS website. He accepted […]
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FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has attracted important support for its open letter asking the Department of Education to define harassment narrowly enough to allow genuinely free speech on campus. Many colleges and universities ban expression that might be considered “offensive” or cause “embarrassment” or “ridicule.” The January 6 letter, sent to […]
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Although our beleaguered universities continue their seemingly inexorable march from being institutions of higher education to resembling, more and more, political and social re-education camps for the young, every now and then the students demonstrate that they remain well ahead of campus administrations and faculties when it comes to appreciating the true role of our […]
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Keeping quiet can seal your fate if you are a professor facing a campus kangaroo court after being accused of racial “harassment” over your classroom speech. Free-speech advocates use adverse publicity to save wrongly-accused professors from being convicted and fired. They put to good use Justice Brandeis’s observation that publicity cures social evils, […]
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