Academic left
June 21, 2022 — Steven Hayward
With all the attention directed at the elite leftist bigotry behind trying to force “Latinx” upon an unwilling minority group, I had almost forgotten about the much older term popularized by feminists a while ago now: “womxn.” I don’t know how to say this any better than “Latinx,” but fortunately we have the University of California at Irvine’s Womxn Center for Success on the job helping us out. Though they
»
June 15, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Phil Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research, a repeat podcast guest, is a thorough and indefatigable researcher, and especially likes to refute the errors and distortions of ideologically biased academics like Nancy MacLean — but also Princeton’s Kevin Kruse, a celebrated leftist historian whom the Chronicle of Higher Education once called “History’s Attack Dog” for his spirited attacks on conservatives. Kruse has 500,000 followers on Twitter. Back in 2017,
»
June 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
David Jensen is the University of Minnesota Law School’s chief advancement officer. Mr. Jensen has emailed his response to my message to Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Dean William McGeveran, who moderated the Zoom webinar I addressed. I am posting Mr. Jensen’s response verbatim without further comment. * * * * * Dear Scott: Thank you for writing to Professor McGeveran regarding your concerns over the “Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s
»
June 12, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The biggest political question of the next year is whether, assuming Democrats lose badly in November, the progressive left that is the ballast of the Democratic Party will be able to pivot back toward the center as Bill Clinton did by degrees after the 1994 mid-term upended 40 years of Democratic hegemony on Capitol Hill. Never mind Biden, who has neither the feral intelligence nor retail political skills Clinton had.
»
June 9, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday we pondered the thesis that radical prosecutor Chesa Boudin was recalled because San Francisco is just too darned conservative, dontchaknow. Today’s bubble-headed leftists are mad at the media, for saying that the recall is a “message to national Democrats.” Behold New York University law professor Noah Rosenblum: I’m worried about Rosenblum. He just might stumble on our greatest plot, which is our infiltration of the New York Times with
»
June 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
A few years back we flagged the article in Gender, Place and Culture on “Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon,” wondering if it was a hoax. And it indeed was a hoax—part of the very successful Pluckrose/ Beghossian/Lindsay project to plant absurd articles in postmodern academic journals. I thought we might have a sequel involving on our hands in the current
»
May 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
There is sharp competition for the prize of the worst people at universities these days. Egregiously radical faculty usually get the most attention, followed by the “diversity, inclusion, and equity” (DIE!) staff. But the admissions staff tend to get a pass, partly because they don’t make public pronouncements that attract attention. The admissions process is, however, the tip of the spear for the race-mongering that is central to the left
»
May 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
From time to time we like to highlight academic job ads as an indicator of how badly politicized our universities have become. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes the University of Oklahoma with a job ad so jaw-dropping bad that it sets a new standard. In this case, for a musical theater performance slot. The full ad is quite long, but I’ve excised some of the
»
May 11, 2022 — Steven Hayward
“It’s such a fine line between clever and stupid,” David St. Hubbins informs us in This Is Spinal Tap, and to adapt his profound insight, given that contemporary liberalism operates mostly in cliches, how do you discern the fine line between plagiarism and stupid liberal cliches? Consider the case of this year’s Duke University undergraduate commencement speaker, Priya Parkash, who is being accused of plagiarizing a Harvard student commencement speaker
»
May 3, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Last week in our Geek in Pictures, I included a stylized chart that Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist of liberal inclination, created (though I wasn’t sure at the time that he was the creator): Naturally the left, deeply insecure about their positions (which helps explain their censorious and authoritarian disposition), reacted badly to this chart, as Wright explained in a terrific article in the Wall Street Journal today after the
»
May 3, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Aside from Leakgate, the other big legal news from the Supreme Court yesterday was its unanimous ruling that the City of Boston exercised impermissible discrimination against religious freedom with its refusal to fly a Christian flag over city hall while allowing flags from some 200 other organizations. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the opinion, saying “When the government encourages diverse expression — say, by creating a forum for debate — the First
»
May 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
In other survey news, a brand new Pew Research Center survey finds that the public opposes race-based college admissions by a whopping 74 percent. Here’s the general breakdown of factors the public believe should guide admission: Pew, controlled for decades now by liberals despite—or rather against—the wishes of the very conservative J. Howard Pew who set up the Pew foundation, does its best to fog up the massive public opposition
»
April 24, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Instapundit and the College Fix direct our attention to the job announcement of the University of Waterloo in Canada, for a faculty chair in “Climate Change, Water or Future Cities.” It’s not the topic that makes this faculty search notable, but rather the limitation on who Waterloo will consider for the position. Here’s the relevant part of the actual job listing: The Faculty is looking for candidates with a PhD
»
April 11, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Stan Evans liked to joke that back in 1964, young conservatives had to get over the Goldwater defeat without grief counselors. This was no exaggeration in 2016, when administrators at campuses across the country rushed to comfort students (and many tearful faculty) the morning after Donald Trump’s surprise victory, with long, lugubrious campus-wide emails “sharing the pain” of the campus community, and listing the emotional support resources the campus would
»
March 30, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• This is clearly the feel good story of the day: Harvard drops out of top 3 in annual law school rankings (Reuters) – Harvard Law School was ranked No. 4 in law school rankings published Tuesday by U.S. News & World Report, marking just the second time in more than three decades that the elite school was not among the top three on the annual list. . . A
»
March 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I forget which leftist thinker remarked some years ago that conservatives stormed Washington, while leftists stormed the English Department. While the first half of this statement may be contested, the second half is dead on the mark. There are few traditional academic disciplines today that have fallen further into the fever swaps of leftist ideology than English literature, which has had the effect of driving students away from the field
»
March 17, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Some stories are just so stupid and absurd that only someone with an advanced degree could possible believe them. From The Telegraph: ‘Cancelled’, the 1804 train with supposed links to slavery Trains could face a new kind of “cancellation”, as National Museum Wales reviews steam-powered technology over claims it was linked to the slave trade. Richard Trevithick unveiled the first steam-powered locomotive in Wales in 1804, but National Museum Wales
»
