One of higher education’s most enduring enigmas is the continued support given by relatively traditional donors to their rapidly radicalizing institutions. This deep division between the beliefs of important donors and the actual conduct of school officials has been brought to light in a new report about Davidson College by the American Council of Trustees … Continue reading “Survey Says: Davidson College Should Mend Its Ways”
In my nearly 15 years as a higher education journalist and analyst, I have, unfortunately, witnessed too few victories for the reform movement. In that time, and certainly for several decades before, academia has continued moving in bad directions. On one hand, it has increasingly submitted to the “alphabet soup” mentality —CRT, DEI, AGW, LGBTQ…, … Continue reading “Sheep No More: the Alumni Rise”
At Davidson College, the frog finally realized that it’s being slowly cooked alive. As the theory goes, if you put a frog into boiling water, it will immediately jump out, but if you put it in lukewarm water and gradually raise the heat, it will not realize what is happening until it’s too late. The … Continue reading “On Boiling Frogs And Forked Tongues: Alumni Fight Back at Davidson”
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”