The hiring of a critical race theorist to teach music is yet another offering from academics at the temple of the woke. Little good it will do students or individuals and communities interested in rejecting racial prejudice. In July, Arizona State University officials hired a music professor to train K-12 music teachers, emphasizing that the … Continue reading “Arizona State University and Offerings at the Temple of the Woke”
Karl Marx is a common fixture on college course syllabi. From English to sociology to philosophy, the German socialist’s writings are explained, analyzed, and dissected. I find myself, a teacher of modern social theory, often explaining the nuances of Marxist concepts like “commodity fetishism” and “species being” to students. But there is one thing you … Continue reading “We Need to Teach About the Socialist Alternative…and Its Failure”
Michelle Goldberg complains in the pages of The New York Times about how it is the left wing that is currently a victim of cancel culture—thanks to the right, which is trying to destroy “critical race theory.” Sounding alarm at the global counter-movement, she writes that Critical race theory, the intellectual tradition undergirding concepts like white privilege … Continue reading “The Backlash to Critical Race Theory Is on The Way”
The College Board is a not-for-profit company that has a great deal of influence over American education. Its Scholastic Aptitude Test (the SAT) is the most widely used test for assessing the college readiness of students, and its many Advanced Placement exams allow students to show that they have learned subjects well enough not to … Continue reading “How the College Board Mangles the Teaching of History”
The Legal Insurrection Foundation, of which I am the president, has launched a website, criticalrace.org, to provide resources to parents and students regarding Critical Race Training in higher education. The main feature of the website is a database of how Critical Race Theory is put into action on campuses, presented in the form of an … Continue reading “Exposing Critical Race Training in Higher Education”
It has never been harder to teach artistic individualism in America. A religious devotion to the causes of social justice dominates the ideas of professors in the academy, and David Randall’s report “Social Justice Education in America” has made clear that their evangelical zeal for teaching students the merits of intersectional political activism is topped … Continue reading “To De-Politicize Art Schools, Students Need to Fight Back “
Every time I read an op-ed piece from some English professor (and isn’t it always an English professor?) whining about the demise of the humanities, in The Chronicle of Higher Education or elsewhere, I’m reminded of that great scene from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. You know the one. As Anakin Skywalker and his erstwhile friend and … Continue reading “Dear Humanists: You Have Done That Yourself”
As academia becomes ever-more entrenched in groupthink, it can be intimidating to be a lone voice that refuses to toe the ideological line. And for good reason: failure to at least appear to agree with the ideological consensus on campus can result in a number of professional—and personal—consequences. But those potential consequences haven’t deterred one … Continue reading “Speaking Out Against Censorship in Academia”
With the pandemic, more parents are discovering what their children are being taught in public schools—from explicit how-tos in sex-ed class to narratives of power that divide everyone into oppressors and oppressed. Yearning for a richer emphasis on cultural literacy, character, and civil discourse, parents are turning to alternative curricula, such as Core Knowledge and … Continue reading “For Teacher Training, Drop Critical Theory and Add Character”
Every so often, a leftist thinker breaks free from the orthodoxy to point out that policies favored by “progressives” can have adverse consequences. When that happens, it’s worth paying attention. We have such an instance with the publication of The Cult of Smart by Fredrik deBoer, a writer and one-time academic whose work has appeared … Continue reading “A Book with a Kernel of Truth—and a Grain Silo of Nonsense”