Academic left
April 18, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Today’s installment of our Civil War on the Left series notes two recent incidents on campus that should fuel a big bump in popcorn futures prices in the commodity pits. First, at the University of Texas at Austin, a leftist professor who checks all the right boxes is nonetheless in hot water because he stumbled over one of the advanced feminist borders. From The American Spectator: An Antifa group at
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April 16, 2018 — Steven Hayward
One of the best explanations for why colleges and universities seem so insane these days is offered indirectly by one of the smartest left-leaning academics of our time—Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School. An interesting old article of Sunstein’s entitled “The Law of Group Polarization,” he explains how homogenous groups of people will become more extreme the more they deliberate together, and paradoxically degrade deliberation. And there are few groups
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April 15, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Edna St. Vincent-Millay is reported to have quipped that history isn’t one damn thing after another—it’s the same damn thing over and over again. I’ve never verified this quotation, but in any case it seems congruent with Yogi Berra’s similar quip about “déjà vu all over again.” I say this because lately I’ve been reading some old essays from the late John P. Roche, who taught for years at Brandeis University
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April 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
The great Christina Hoff Sommers is just out with another of her splendid “Factual Feminist” videos on the crisis of free speech on college campuses. As it happens, I got together with Christina recently and taped an interview for the Power Line podcast. I’ve got quite a backlog of interviews in the can right now, but I’ll try to move hers up in the queue. In the meantime, it’s totally
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April 12, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Following up on Tuesday’s dispatch about the recent disgrace at Beloit College, today comes news of an even more disgraceful outrage at CUNY Law School. Josh Blackman of South Texas College of Law, a fine legal mind and author of many excellent legal articles as well as cogent popular articles for National Review Online and elsewhere, was invited by the CUNY Federalist Society chapter to speak on free speech. The
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April 10, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Not long ago, the political science department at Beloit College posted the following job opening: College of Liberal Arts, Department of Political Science, Tenure-Track Position Opening POSITION: Assistant Professor of Political Science (Political Theory) Beloit College, a selective liberal arts college with a proud tradition of innovation, seeks an energetic teacher-scholar for a replacement position of five courses per year. The successful candidate will be responsible for introductory courses in
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April 1, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I know I’ve made the point before, but there is fresh evidence in recent weeks of how much the left today hates western civilization and human excellence in general. Once again the left is determined to flunk what I’ve long called “the Churchill test.” Once upon a time leading liberals loved Churchill. Think of Isaiah Berlin’s great 1949 Atlantic Monthly essay, “Churchill in 1940,” or how much Arthur Schlesinger loved
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April 1, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Professor Amy Wax is of course the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She earned an M.D. degree from Harvard in addition to her J.D. degree from Columbia Law School. She holds an endowed chair at the law school. She must be one of the most prominent members of the faculty. Yet she is the subject of a campaign of vilification and stigmatization for
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March 26, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Forget gun control. The next frontier is likely banning beef. Bear with me here: this requires a few moving parts before the punch line. First, psychologists will tell you that people who believe everything is connected to everything else suffer from paranoia, though in many cases they are just suffering from liberalism. Second, we know that Donald Trump likes his steaks well done, which is a minor character flaw, to
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March 26, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Last year I wrote about the academic tempest aroused by Professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander in “That which must not be said.” They aroused the tempest with this Philadelphia Inquirer column recapitulating a few home truths. Professor Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She earned an M.D. degree from Harvard in addition to her J.D. degree from Columbia Law School.
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March 23, 2018 — Steven Hayward
We reported here last week about how the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point is closing several liberal arts departments and laying off tenured professors (gasp! the horror!). Now this news from Kentucky: University faculty alarmed by Kentucky budget language that guts tenure protections By Linda Blackford University faculty around the state are raising red flags over proposed legislative language that appears to let administrators ignore tenure protections as they downsize because
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March 21, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Harvard Law School’s Professor Larry Tribe, who has turned into a left-wing crank, is offering a seminar titled “Constitutional Law 3.0: The Trump Trajectory.” It is a seminar open to only 12 students approved by the professor. This is how Tribe describes the course: This seminar will explore what the Trump presidency might mean for American constitutional law, how we might expect the Constitution to constrain Trump’s execution of his
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March 19, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Yep—another new series heading for our periodical updates on the “Suicide of the University,” which is the title of the lecture I gave last month at Arizona State and which I will revise for publication and also post up as a Power Line podcast at some point soon. At that conference I got to meet Bret Weinstein, late of Evergreen State, whose astounding story we covered here, here, and here. I
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March 17, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I’ve been predicting, most recently in a lecture last month at Arizona State University that I’ll post up as a podcast at some point soon, that universities would soon begin to divide into two entities—the STEM fields and related practical subjects (i.e., business and economics), and the social sciences and humanities, which would start to shrivel under the weight of the degradations the left has inflicted over the last 40
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March 11, 2018 — Steven Hayward
The competition for the Worst College President in America is surely hard fought, but George Bridges of Evergreen State College in Washington State has to be the early favorite at the betting window. We’ve taken note of Bridges’ craziness before, here and here. He is an especially egregious example of the rot in college administrations where invertebrates thrive as a matter of course. Bridges presided over the disaster of craziness
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February 21, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Last year I wrote about the academic tempest aroused by Professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander in “That which must not be said.” They aroused the tempest with this Philadelphia Inquirer column recapitulating a few home truths. Professor Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She earned an M.D. degree from Harvard in addition to her J.D. degree from Columbia Law School.
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February 19, 2018 — John Hinderaker
That is the conclusion of this survey of political “scientists” which is getting a lot of play in today’s news. This ranking is done periodically by members of the American Political Science Association, and this year’s poll compares today’s ratings with those compiled in 2014. They show the traditionally great presidents at the top, led by Lincoln and Washington. One surprise this year is that Barack Obama has jumped up
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