The Man Who Would Be King

John Fennebresque’s friends and coworkers call him “Czar.” That appears to be a fitting nickname, for his imperious exercise of authority was his downfall as chairman of the University of North Carolina system’s Board of Governors. Additionally, his yearlong control of a supposedly democratic governing body exposed serious flaws in the way the UNC board conducts its business.


BDS Nonviolence Provides Cover for Violent Allies

Much has been written about the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and I will not revisit the debate over its merits. Instead, I will home in one aspect of its character: its espousal of nonviolence. That BDS supporters call for economic, academic, and cultural boycotts, rather than for violence, has been among its most important selling points. As Corey Robin of Brooklyn College put it in a post challenging BDS critics, Palestinians “have taken up BDS as a non-violent tactic, precisely the sort of thing that liberal-minded critics have been calling upon them to do for years.” But the nonviolent tactics of BDS may be nothing more than a smokescreen for its organizers’ real intention—to takedown Israel by any means.



Welcome to North Carolina, Secretary Spellings

The search for the next University of North Carolina system president has finally concluded. Margaret Spellings, secretary of the U.S. Education Department during George W. Bush’s second presidential term, was unanimously elected by the system’s Board of Governors on October 23. Spellings, who will take the helm in March 2016, is a moderate Republican, but one who shows some promise of developing into a reform-minded university leader—a very welcome possibility. She opposes what she calls universities’ “send us the money and leave us alone” approach, and some of her views on higher education challenge those of the academic establishment.



Does Privatizing Higher Education Undermine the Public Good?

How much “privatization” have we actually had in higher education? In one sense, none, because no state-owned college or university has been sold off to private investors. But on the other hand, there has been quite a bit, since to a considerable extent, governmental funding for higher education has been replaced by private funding. In Privatization and the Public Good, Matthew Lambert, vice president for university advancement at William & Mary, gives us an approved “establishment” view of the privatization phenomenon in which it is perceived as a great threat.


The Humanities Man the Barricades Against Growing Criticism

Heightened skepticism regarding the value of the humanities and liberal arts is not just the result of external factors that are outside of higher education’s control, such as economic malaise or policymakers’ job-centricity. Internal problems related to debased curricula and hyper-politicization, for instance, may be more harmful to the future of the humanities. Unfortunately, at a recent event sponsored by UNC-Chapel Hill’s Program in the Humanities and Human Values of the College of Arts and Sciences, university leaders failed to acknowledge those problems, much less take ownership of them.


Mastery, Not “Creativity,” Should Come First in Arts Education

At issue, of course, is the fact that the purpose of the traditional music education to prepare students to participate and collaborate in “the performance and analysis of European classical repertory” at its highest levels. The “broader reality” to which they subscribe is reflected in the modern tendency to see that emphasis as not only a slight to those who will fail to achieve those ends, but as a real offense to those who, like the Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major, reject that purpose and the primacy of the European classical canon itself.


Political Activism Comes to the American Conservatory

As we replace, for the sake of politics or expediency, the teachers who quietly loved and maintained the classical music tradition with those who have made a career of loudly condemning or refuting it, the discipline will be chipped away from the inside by a myriad of tiny careerists and ideologues happy to attack or cheapen the long and living tradition of Western classical music for the sake of a petty promotion or a hearty pat on the back.


The Existential Crisis of the American Music School

Since at least the 1920s, America has done a fine job of nurturing its budding classical musicians within a large and well-funded network of conservatories that function either as independent institutions or else as colleges within larger universities. The grand venture of transplanting the pinnacle of European artistic achievement into the fertile soil of the New World has been a spectacular success. So can we say, then, that all is well in the world of higher music education on this side of the pond? Perhaps surprisingly, almost everyone you ask today will answer that question with a “no,” for all the wrong reasons.