Public higher education was once America’s great enabler, permitting young people from lower-class backgrounds to attend college for very little money and to rise as far as their abilities and drives would take them. That may no longer be the case, according to economists James Koch and Richard Cebula. In their 2020 book, Runaway College … Continue reading “Why Don’t Governing Boards Rein in College Costs?”
The 1960s were a turbulent period for academia, and we are still struggling with the repercussions of that turbulence today. Indeed, today’s “woke” campus is in many ways the result of policies, patterns, and practices initiated in that period and its immediate aftermath in the early 1970s. It may therefore be useful to look at … Continue reading “University Decline: Hofstadter’s Warning Has Been Ignored”
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media recently announced a heralded addition to their faculty. Nikole Hannah-Jones has agreed to accept a Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism in July. According to a press release issued by the school, Hannah-Jones is a “Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant” recipient who … Continue reading “School of Journalism—or Ministry of Propaganda?”
Members of the media and faculty erupted into histrionics at the recent appointment of Darrell Allison to the chancellorship of Fayetteville State University. It is a great scandal, they claimed; Allison “cut in line” cried the left-wing think tank NC Policy Watch; the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and FSU faculty senate questioned not … Continue reading “Perpetual Scandal-Mongering as a Political Tool”
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of articles. Part I can be found here, Part II is here, and Part III is here. The “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) paradigm is sweeping through academia. Its increasing use as an ethical basis for enacting university policies is no small matter. Rather, it is monumental: … Continue reading “UNC Governing Boards Fiddle while Reason Burns”
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of articles. Part I can be found here and Part II is here. As was shown in the first article in this series, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is a misleading term, indicating a radical political agenda rather than a set of ethical principles. The second article analyzed … Continue reading “UNC System Adopting Political Litmus Tests for Employment and Attendance”
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of articles. Part I can be found here. The phrase “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is a loaded one; it does not signify noncontroversial principles, as might be assumed, but instead describes a radical political agenda. Throughout academia, programs and standards based on DEI are proliferating at a … Continue reading “Advancing the Radical Agenda at UNC-Chapel Hill with Sneaky Language”
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of articles. Part II is here. The political left has proven itself to be amazingly incompetent when it comes to governing. Examples abound of nations, states, and cities—even those with tremendous wealth, resources, and other advantages—reduced to nightmare zones of poverty, violence, and corruption. Think of Venezuela, … Continue reading “The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Movement: Tyranny Through Subverting Language”
Let’s Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education is indeed a reasonable book. Drawing on thinkers from John Locke to Allan Bloom, Ursinus College political theory professor Jonathan Marks cuts through the excesses of higher education commentary and makes a compelling case that the underlying problem at the heart of higher education‘s troubles is … Continue reading “Be Reasonable, But Not Naive, About the Crisis in Higher Ed”
Since 2015, the University of North Carolina system’s Board of Governors (BOG) has endured one controversy after another, beginning with protests over decisions to close three “academic centers” for being overly political and to replace Democrat Thomas Ross as the system president with Republican Margaret Spellings. Some of the problems have been of the board’s … Continue reading “Heavy Is the Head that Wears the Crown”