Editor’s note: This is the second part of an essay on how to restore ideological balance in universities without affirmative action for conservative scholars. The first part can be found here. The ideological imbalance of American university faculties is not new. Whether one looks at faculty voter registrations, publications, course syllabi reading lists, or merely … Continue reading “Faculty Hiring Needs Proper Checks and Balances”
Editor’s note: This is the first part of an essay on how to restore ideological balance in universities without affirmative action for conservative scholars. The second part can be found here. Legislating a problem away is an extremely tempting option, when available. Why not try to fix the most intractable problem in public higher education—its intensifying … Continue reading “Vote No for Affirmative Action for Conservatives”
Academic freedom has long been a guiding principle for American colleges and universities: Neither faculty nor students should be told what to say or punished for saying whatever they think. That principle has been under attack in recent years as militants try to drive out those who dissent from their beliefs, but for the most … Continue reading “The Chinese Don’t Like Academic Freedom, So American Schools Should Avoid Their Confucius Institutes”
From Evergreen State College in Washington to Yale University in Connecticut, campaigns to punish or fire professors accused of thinking or saying things outside the bounds of political correctness seem to crop up with disturbing regularity. Often, we’ve seen these attacks coming from students, faculty, and administrators on the Left. Sometimes, however, conservatives have similar … Continue reading “Everyone’s Offended: Campus Intolerance Can Come from Liberals and Conservatives”
A little over four years ago the University of Colorado, Boulder began a three-year pilot program that I believe has no precedent in American higher education. With the help of private donors, and the support of the university’s board, president, and chancellor, the school created the position of Visiting Scholar of Conservative Thought and Policy. … Continue reading “Let Your Light Shine: My Year As the Visiting Scholar of Conservative Thought at the University of Colorado”
During my time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I graduated this spring, many of my peers and professors seemed to genuinely care about the free exchange of ideas, students were often pushed to explore all sides of an issue, and analysis of factual evidence was usually a key goal of … Continue reading “A Graduate’s Perspective: Thought Police Are Undermining Higher Education”
The Martin Center has been covering the Kafkaesque case of Marquette University professor John McAdams since it first broke several years ago. Professor Howard Kainz first wrote about it in “Firing Professor McAdams: When a Catholic University Collides with Political Correctness.” He explained the substance of the problem between the university and McAdams, which was … Continue reading “Court Ruling in the McAdams Case: A Body Blow to Free Speech and Tenure”
Many readers probably have read about the New Wave of free speech suppression that has swept across campuses in the last several years. It comes on the heels of the previous era of speech codes that reigned from the late 1980s through the first decade of the 2000s. In 2005, I published the Independent Institute … Continue reading “Free Speech Is More Threatened Than Ever and We Must Respond”
The Faculty Senate at Wake Forest University made headlines last week when it demanded that the university reject a $3.69 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. Such a stance is not unusual. Many liberal faculty members and student groups are now trying to “UnKoch” their campuses. But Wake Forest’s Faculty Senate resolution goes further. … Continue reading “Wake Forest Faculty Attempt to Undermine Koch-Funded Campus Institute”
In their Atlantic article, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukainoff identified a troubling development on American campuses. They wrote, “A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.” Instead of confronting statements, beliefs, … Continue reading “Bias Response Teams Chill Free Speech and Miseducate Students”