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”
Campus protests started in the 1960s, but protests on today’s college campuses have a different vibe. While protests in the past pitted students against university leadership, protests in the present are supported and accommodated by presidents and administrators. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, college officials waste resources on political … Continue reading “Why Is UNC Funding a ‘Hub for Social Justice?’”
On 30 April 2019, St. Edmunds College, University of Cambridge, rescinded a fellowship to the outstanding young researcher Noah Carl, who self-identifies as a conservative. The rescinding was unjust, and it came after a sustained and equally unjust campaign of leftist protest and demonstration against Dr. Carl. The campaign was unjustly supported by leftist press … Continue reading “A Witch Hunt Comes for a Nonconformist Professor”
Jenna A. Robinson, President In March, Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay penned “A Principled Defense of the University” for Areo. Coming from two of the authors of the “Sokal Squared” publishing scandal, it’s an important disclaimer: Grievance studies are not representative of the whole university. In the essay, the authors explain why they believe … Continue reading “What We’re Reading: A Defense of the University, Governance Guidebooks, and a Higher Ed Satire”
In the 1992 movie A Few Good Men, there is a courtroom scene where the prosecuting attorney (played by Tom Cruise) tells the defendant Marine officer Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) that he wants the truth. To that, Jessup shouts back, “You can’t handle the truth.” What brings that to mind is the recent … Continue reading “Can Americans ‘Handle the Truth’ About Individual Achievement Differences?”
In 2017, the North Carolina legislature passed House Bill 527 (now State Law 2017-196) to foster open inquiry in the state’s public colleges and universities. One of the provisions ordered the University of North Carolina system Board of Governors to produce an annual report on two categories of intellectual freedom: free speech and institutional neutrality. … Continue reading “Commencements Show the UNC System’s Struggles with Political Neutrality”
Academic postmodernism is no stranger to the idea that classical Enlightenment values such as reason, equal treatment, and individual agency should be cast aside for the sake of racial and sexual grievances. We should denounce reason and science as the legacy of “dead white men”—or so we are told. Western academia has become both ideologized … Continue reading “Identity Politics Versus Basic Logic: Should Colleges Offer Affirmative Action for the Female Majority?”
The public relies on journalists to learn about and share academic research. Public knowledge can be undermined, however, when academics try to influence what research journalists cover or limit the “acceptable debate” about an issue. This influence can be achieved through “citation cartels,” where sympathetic researchers cite and reference one another and ignore or dismiss … Continue reading “Keeping Journalists in the Dark: ‘Citation Cartels’ Limit Public Knowledge”
Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from Coming Home: Reclaiming America’s Conservative Soul (ISBN: 9781641770569), to be published by Encounter Books on May 14. The promise of higher education has become a trap for tens of millions of Americans. The promise: Every one of us and our children could go to college, earn a … Continue reading “From Indoctrination to Education: Salvaging the University”
On April 11, the administration of the University of Tulsa shocked faculty, students, and alumni by announcing the elimination of 40 percent of the school’s academic programs. Undergraduate and graduate programs in theater, musical theater, dance, vocal and instrumental music, English, history, philosophy, religion, chemistry, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Greek, Latin, anthropology, mathematics, and many … Continue reading “Administrative Hardball at the University of Tulsa “