Universities may not target unpopular speech on campus often, but when they fail to protect it, the results are similar to officially silencing speech. A recent example of this lack of effort to protect comes from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where an anti-socialism display was destroyed on campus within a day after … Continue reading “Students Tear Down Anti-Socialism Display at UNC Charlotte”
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 takeaway was that the problem is not enough free speech in public, but too much free speech in public. The conference, “Finding Expression in Contested Public Spaces,” featured a keynote … Continue reading “An Anti-Free Speech Conference in Greensboro”
The social sciences have a problem: If their scholars think too much alike, they will be blinded to the flaws and gaps in their research. Rather than explaining how individuals in society act and think, academics can sometimes slip blinders on themselves and the public. Polling shows broad agreement within some disciplines. For instance, recent … Continue reading “Blinding Themselves: The Cost of Groupthink in Social Psychology”
As academia becomes increasingly political and some professors call for an activist academy, some critics have questioned the impact of “cultural studies” and critical theory on the quality of research in the humanities. Academics Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay, and Peter Boghossian have led the reaction against scholarship-as-activism with their famous “grievance studies” hoax. The three … Continue reading “Did You Know? Grievance Studies in the UNC System”
Until 2015, I believed that the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter, which called for universities to significantly broaden their interpretation of Title IX protections, was merely a way to address the so-called “rape crisis” on American campuses. I doubted the narrative that colleges had rates of sexual assaults that were comparable with warzones, but this … Continue reading “The Totalitarian Impulse in the Title IX Racket”
A recent cascade of investigative reporting on the shady business dealings of Jerry Falwell Jr. has raised some troubling questions about the controversial evangelical figure and his vision for Liberty University, the conservative Christian institution he has led for more than a decade. Reports from Politico and Reuters, with university staff and administrators as sources, … Continue reading “Liberty University: A Cautionary Tale”
“Opportunity zones,” defined by a 2017 law, are poor areas targeted by the federal government for economic investment. In a study by the Brookings Institution, researchers discovered that money intended for economically struggling areas was funneled to college towns instead. Though college towns have many unemployed, poor adults—known as students—they don’t tend to be economically … Continue reading “Did You Know? An Anti-Poverty Program Sent Funds to 33 Well-Off College Towns”
In a long-awaited decision, federal trial judge Allison Burroughs has ruled that, while Harvard does consider a student’s race in determining who gets in and who doesn’t (“the use of race in and of itself is admitted”), nonetheless Harvard is not breaking the law. That outcome was not surprising, and the judge’s opinion is unlikely to … Continue reading “Round One—Harvard Beats Asian Americans”
Orwell’s famous dystopia 1984 is often cited as a parable about the banality of administrative evil. The ever-vigilant bureaucrats of Oceania position themselves not only on the Left side of history, but also at its end. To err from their ideology is treason. The citizens of Oceania live in a state of self-imposed hypnosis where … Continue reading “The Ministry of Love: Ongoing Gender Partisanship in the Department of Education”
A letter from the federal Department of Education has sparked yet another controversy on the campuses of Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This time, the issue is about how to honor the intentions of donors, with the donor being the federal government instead of a private individual or corporation. … Continue reading “No, Academia, Title VI Funding Is Not for Your Pleasure”