Scholars gathered October 24 and 25 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to discuss free speech—and focused on its alleged pernicious effects. The conference’s takeaway was that the problem with free speech in the public sphere is not one of inadequacy, but rather one of overabundance. The conference, “Finding Expression in Contested Public … Continue reading “An Anti-Free Speech Conference in Greensboro”
When college officials violate people’s rights, they run the risk of bringing on lawsuits that can cost their schools a lot of money. The most common instance has been hyper-aggressive Title IX actions where the accused student was presumed guilty and railroaded into suspension or expulsion and later successfully sued over the violation of his … Continue reading “The Oberlin Case Gives College Leaders a Teachable Moment”
The end of the spring semester marks the 20th anniversary of my professorship at Duke, first as an assistant professor and then as an associate professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy. During this time, I regularly taught the required ethics class for all undergraduate public policy majors. I won multiple … Continue reading “The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Education”
Like most Americans, I have always assumed that color blindness is our ideal. Not any more: color blindness is now become the new racism. So much for a 70-year struggle to fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.’s wish that his children be “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their … Continue reading “The New Racism, Part I: How ‘Race and Ethnic Studies’ Made Color Blindness a Bad Thing”
The chickens have come home to roost at Duke’s Divinity School. Protesting students claim the school is insufficiently diverse. More needs to be done, they say, to combat racism, transphobia, homophobia, and associated evils. All this despite a campaign by the administration to achieve these very aims in the course of which a distinguished faculty … Continue reading “Duke Divinity School’s Race to the Bottom”
The relationship between participation in sports and academic performance has many faces. Most of them are happy; for instance, many studies show that high school athletes outperform non-athletes academically by a large margin. At the college level, the relationships are more varied, depending on the school, the sport, and the demographic group. Still, college athletes … Continue reading “Are Black Male Athletes Failing to Graduate Because of Racism?”
Anyone who applies for an executive or upper management position at a university these days must demonstrate a “strong commitment to diversity.” That’s because diversity, according to campus dogma, provides real educational benefits. Counting and mingling students and professors by race, ethnicity or gender is supposed to broaden perspectives and enhance classroom learning. That might … Continue reading “Classroom Diversity and Its Mentality of Taboo”
On February 5, more than 100 students, faculty, administrators, and political activists packed a lecture hall at UNC-Chapel Hill to hear controversial indigenous studies professor Steven Salaita speak about academic freedom and censorship.
A professor doesn’t agree that it should be the top priority.
Rush Limbaugh found out what a lot of good, beleaguered individuals on college campuses already know — there’s a new definition of “racism” taking hold.