Academic left
November 11, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The other day we noted how Williams College was attempting to take the crown as the most infantile leftist college. (Evergreen State is permanently disqualified, because who can compete with that?) But Northwestern University is not taking the challenge lying down. Northwestern has one of the most highly regarded journalism schools in the country (though that is obviously a mark against it), and yesterday the Daily Northwestern student newspaper issued
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November 7, 2019 — Steven Hayward
When last we checked in on Williams College a year ago, a group of students had issued a petition opposing a call for Williams to adopt the free speech/free expression statement of the University of Chicago. The petition was so bad that, as I said at the time, “you have to read it, not to believe it.” It contains such gems as: “Free Speech,” as a term, has been co-opted
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October 17, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Four years ago, we published an article by a distinguished alum of Princeton University. He documented the leftist takeover of Princeton, tracing it back to the late 1960s and the rise of William Bowen and Shirley Tilghman. He wrote: Over the years, beginning as early as the 1960s and 1970s, Princeton loaded up its faculty with liberals, socialists, Marxists, and other fellow travellers, and more recently, with people like Paul
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October 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Recently, attacks against Jews have sharply increased in New York City. According to a report published in May by the New York Police Department, from January through May of this year, New York City experienced an 83 percent rise in hate crimes. Fifty-nine percent of hate crimes in the city are directed against Jews, and anti-Semitic attacks have risen by 90 percent in the past year. On September 22, a
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August 22, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Scenes from the higher education apocalypse: I don’t know whether Columbia University’s graduate program in English literature is as premier in the field as it was back in the glory days of Lionel Trilling, but yesterday the Chronicle of Higher Education reported this: Columbia Had Little Success Placing English Ph.Ds on Tenure Track. “Alarm” Followed, and the University Responded The story is unfortunately behind the Chronicle‘s paywall, but when you
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August 6, 2019 — Steven Hayward
No one objects in principle to a serious ethnic studies program, just as sensible people support “multicultural” perspectives rightly understood. The trouble with a lot of multiculturalist projects and various identity-studies programs in schools today is that they are highly politicized and ideological. This attracts some students, but it understandably turns off many students—perhaps a large majority. Hence the demand of zealous advocates for ethnic studies to make their subject
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August 1, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Has academic philosophy become as hopelessly politicized as other humanities? That’s a question treated in a forthcoming paper in Philosophical Psychology entitled “Ideological Diversity, Hostility, and Discrimination in Philosophy.” From the abstract: “We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left- leaning individuals and moderates to very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing
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July 9, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I got a large response from my latest whimsical Tweet yesterday: But who needs it, since most of the scandals of higher education today are out in plain sight? Such as this announcement for a brand new “Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Minor” at the University of Denver, which reads like a parody: The new Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) minor brings together the best of what the University has to
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July 6, 2019 — John Hinderaker
If you live in or near the Twin Cities, you should think about attending a special pre-release screening of the Dennis Prager/Adam Carolla film No Safe Spaces next Tuesday, July 9. No Safe Spaces, which deals with the insanity on America’s college campuses, won’t be released until the Fall, but we have arranged for a special screening, sponsored by Center of the American Experiment. Details are here. The showing will
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July 4, 2019 — John Hinderaker
My youngest daughter graduated from college a few weeks ago. She wrote this piece for The College Fix. I am taking the liberty of posting it in its entirety. I just graduated from St. Olaf College after receiving an education I didn’t expect. That’s because as a conservative at my small, Minnesota-based liberal arts institution, I’ve spent the last four years defending myself against personal and political attacks from professors
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June 24, 2019 — John Hinderaker
South Dakota’s legislature is considering a bill that would require the state’s universities to protect free speech and intellectual diversity. In that connection, some lawmakers have taken aim at the diversity industry: Several Republican lawmakers who were behind a bill to require the state’s university system to promote intellectual diversity are questioning the size, role and cost of diversity offices. The lawmakers, which include the House and Senate leadership, sent
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June 15, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I wondered on Thursday whether Oberlin would learn its lesson from the $33 million defamation verdict against the college, and explained why the answer was almost certainly No. You can strike “almost.” Today the New York Times reports that Oberlin’s president has confirmed that they are determined not to learn anything from the verdict: In an email to the Oberlin community on Friday, Carmen Twillie Ambar, the college president, said
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June 14, 2019 — John Hinderaker
This is a screen shot of Oberlin’s Twitter account. I assume that the account has been taken private within the last few days as a result of reaction Oberlin was getting to the jury verdicts against it in the Gibson’s case. Click to enlarge: There is a certain irony in the text: “Think one person can change the world? So do we. Maintained by the Oberlin College Office of Communications.”
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June 14, 2019 — Steven Hayward
While I’m still enjoying the schadenfreudey yumminess of Oberlin’s comeuppance, worth catching up with the latest news from Harvard. You may have followed the story of how Harvard recently removed law professor Ronald Sullivan and his wife (also a law professor) Stephanie Robinson, as deans of the undergraduate Winthrop House at Harvard. The campus wokerati targeted Sullivan for the sin of joining Harvey Weinstein’s defense team, which he did on
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June 13, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Short answer: No, they won’t. Longer answer: Check out the dean of students (and also assistant to the president for equity, diversity, and inclusion!) Meredith Raimondo, who was near the center of the Gibson’s Bakery case for collaborating with students to harass Gibson’s Bakery. Raimondo came to the deanship from Oberlin’s department of “Comparative American Studies,” which, Oberlin’s website informs us, was “newly formed” around 2003. I’ll bet it was
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June 13, 2019 — John Hinderaker
We wrote here about the lawsuit against Oberlin by a local store, Gibson’s, that alleged it was defamed by the college and its Dean of Students. Among other facts in the case, student protesters, accompanied by the Dean, handed out leaflets accusing Gibson’s of being “racist” because the store’s employees caught an African-American Oberlin student shoplifting a bottle of wine. Does that make sense to you? It didn’t make sense
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June 8, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Dartmouth News reports that the college is celebrating an event that happened 50 years ago, on June 7, 1969: As part of the yearlong 250th anniversary commemoration, Dartmouth is revisiting various turning points in its history. On Friday, the clock turns back 50 years to the afternoon of May 7, 1969, when students who opposed the Vietnam War occupied the Parkhurst administration building. Paul and I, both Communists at the
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