Academic left
November 1, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has released a report titled “Antisemitism On College Campuses Exposed.” At 122 pages, plus a much longer appendix, I haven’t had time to read it all. I want to call attention to one section of the report that describes the reaction of some educators and politicians to the scrutiny that universities received in the wake of widespread anti-Semitic activity on their campuses.
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October 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Several news items of note on campus protests and general leftism. Last Monday, October 7, a group of pro-Hamas students at Pomona College occupied the main administration building (Carnegie Hall—I had some graduate classes in that building way back when, and it is often used in Hollywood movies when they want an exterior that looks like an Ivy League college), expelled its workers and injured a public safety officer, and
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September 26, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Next week will see the 60th anniversary of the inception of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, which became one of the milestones of the radical student movement of the 1960s. Berkeley is very proud of that legacy. Two weeks ago Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and former ACLU executive director Nadine Strossen appeared at a campus forum championing free speech and rejecting the “heckler’s veto” over unpopular views and
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September 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
To no one’s astonishment, Penn has reprimanded Prof. Amy Wax for her crime of disagreeing with campus woke orthodoxy. Prof. Wax will be suspended for the next academic year, her salary cut in half, and stripped of her title as the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law. This outcome was foreordained from the beginning of the witch hunt several years ago, and it is a near certainty that Wax would have
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September 20, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Robert Pondisco of the American Enterprise Institute responded to a query on Twitter/X yesterday on the question of why academic writing is so awful. His pithy answer: The opacity of academic prose arises from the epistemological imperative to operationalize disciplinary jargon, facilitating intra-specialized discourse while obfuscating heterogenous interpretive accessibility and perpetuating a recursive dialectic of erudition and exclusion. Yup, that pretty much nails it. My young philosopher pal Spencer Case
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September 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Former Attorney General Bill Barr is a Columbia graduate. At the Free Press, he considers that university’s descent into anti-Semitism: Reading the report issued last month by Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemitism, one could be forgiven for thinking that it describes the University of Heidelberg circa 1933. It contains accounts of observant Jews being harassed and assaulted, and open calls for the murder of Jews. But no, this is
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September 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
There has been some salutary progress in recent months shutting down the divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” rackets on college campuses in many red states, but after the job of ridding us of the scourge of DEI attention needs to be turned to admissions offices. Thesis: Most admissions offices should be purged wholesale. Not only are most of them likely still violating civil rights law in the aftermath of the
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August 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I’ve been on record for a while predicting that campus anti-Semites will attempt to shut down several high profile college campuses this fall, in particular Columbia. Columbia classes are scheduled to resume on September 3, the day after Labor Day. Today’s Columbia’s embattled president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, abruptly resigned, effective immediately. She held the job for barely a year. There is no reporting yet as to whether Columbia’s trustees lost
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June 28, 2024 — Steven Hayward
A few weeks back Harvard announced that it would henceforth practice “institutional neutrality” on hot button political and social issues, and no longer issue official university statements. This is an obvious case of closing the barn door after the animals have all escaped, and is clearly a dodge to avoid offending competing alumni and faculty interests with any kind of position on the Hamas War against Israel. For once taking
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June 20, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
“Cultural Stereotype” Casey Goonan, 34, has been arrested “in connection to multiple arson cases on the University of California, Berkeley campus” and is being held on $1 million bail. While the case unfolds, consider an ongoing UC Berkeley story that has escaped notice. Back in 2008, Los Angeles Democrat John Perez ran for the state Assembly, claiming that he graduated from UC Berkeley, prize campus of the University of California
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June 6, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Harvard is trying to distance itself from its image as a left-wing institution, strongly aligned with the Democratic Party. Last week, the university said it would stop taking public positions on issues that are not relevant to its core functions as an educational institution. Now, Harvard has announced that its faculty of Arts and Sciences will no longer be subject to a DEI hiring requirement: Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts
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May 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Last Friday evening I had the occasion to team up in Los Angeles with Dean Pete Peterson of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy (where I just finished a very congenial semester filling the large shoes of the late Ted McAllister) to discuss the state of higher education before an audience of about 90 citizens alarmed at the current scene. Our conversation was unscripted and spontaneous, but here are some
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May 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward
An open letter from Jewish students at Columbia University needs to be shared in full, on account of its lucidity and moral clarity: In Our Name: A Message from Jewish Students at Columbia University To the Columbia Community: Over the past six months, many have spoken in our name. Some are well-meaning alumni or non-affiliates who show up to wave the Israeli flag outside Columbia’s gates. Some are politicians looking
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May 6, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Thirteen federal judges have written to Columbia University to announce that, absent major changes, they won’t hire any Columbia graduates—from the law school or the undergraduate college. Here’s the letter: More of this, please.
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May 4, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It is tempting to quip that Columbia University has succeeded splendidly in bring ‘Colombia’ to its campus. But that is an injustice to Colombia, which has largely rooted out its corruption, unlike Columbia University. In any case, I got to reflecting on how perceptive leftists understood the previous iteration of the meltdown at Columbia University back in 1968. Not long after the police cleared out the campus back then, Columbia
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May 4, 2024 — Steven Hayward
“Lucretia,” our “International Woman of Mystery” on the 3WHH podcast, is not our only academic friend who needs to proceed pseudonymously from time to time so as to avoid a struggle session with our sub-moronic college administrator class. A loyal Power Line reader of some academic prominence who goes by the name “Norm D. Ploom” sends along the following query about yet another double-standard in play in the current campus
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May 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It is hard to single out the worst appeaser among the university presidents currently cowering before anti-Semitic mobs on campus, and trying to defuse the situation through negotiations with people who have no interest in negotiating. But I think we have a winner. Yesterday, Carol Folt, president of the University of Southern California, tweeted out this: I had a second meeting today with the same group from the encampment. We
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