College Is Not a Theater

I am delighted to see that Asian-Americans are speaking out against racial preferences in admissions. That stands to reason, since their children are the big losers in the racial preferences game. But they should be joined by non-Asians who understand that the purpose of college is for students to maximize their learning, not for administrators to play at social engineering.


A Massive Book on the History of Higher Education Makes You Wonder If It’s Getting Better, or Worse

Writing a comprehensive history of American higher education from colonial times up to the Second World War is a monumental undertaking, but if anyone is up to the task it’s Penn State University professor Roger Geiger, perhaps the country’s leading scholar on the history of post-secondary education in America. Geiger’s new book The History of American Higher Education is the most fact-filled treatment of its subject to date, and will likely remain the standard work for years to come.




Emote, Protest, Get Naked for Your Professor, and Get Credit

Such assignments do not prepare students for the world of work and adult responsibilities, where their emotions do not factor in performance reviews, where they are expected to communicate in a clear and logical manner, and where they will have to know certain facts in order to build a bridge, argue a legal case, treat a heart attack victim, or teach children to read. Nor do such assignments prepare them to participate as free and literate citizens in a constitutional republic.



With friends like these, the humanities needs no enemies

Do we still need the humanities? Yes, now more than ever. But the current academicization, politicization, and jargon mean that college may be the worst place to look for them. That’s where you go for Queerness, libidinal data, and negotiated flesh. On the bright side, it may be that the liberal arts and humanities will flourish once they escape the airless vaults of academia.


Brown University doubles down on "diversity"

Despite howls of denial, there can be no doubt that "diversity" hiring (i.e., hiring faculty who wouldn’t have been hired but for their race, ethnicity, gender expression, etc.) produces "diversity hires" with lower academic qualifications just as surely as lowering admission standards to enroll more underrepresented minorities admits students who have lower qualifications.