Academic left
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 bringing “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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May 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I keep getting ads like these turning up in my social media feeds: I especially like the Yale person saying they read applicant essays “very carefully.” Probably almost as carefully as Stanford: Student gets into Stanford after writing #BlackLivesMatter on application 100 times CNN — If you’re applying to college, you can spend hours crafting the perfect admissions essay. Or you can just write the same word 100 times. It worked for
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April 29, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As I write, a little before 3 pm eastern time, it appears the letter from Columbia University’s leadership calling for a peaceful resolution of the situation, released on Friday, that Scott posted this morning is, to borrow the legendary phrase of Ron Ziegler, “inoperative.” That letter represented a de facto capitulation, and was, as Scott notes, playing for time, hoping the end of the school year would yield a dissolution
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April 27, 2024 — Steven Hayward
A lot of young conservatives today like to disparage “Zombie Reaganism,” without actually knowing very much about him. But is there any political leader right now speaking as clearly as this? There is NOTHING better to watch today than THIS ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/IGr1F2mAmq — miha schwartzenberg (@mihaschw) April 27, 2024 Though I’ll my mischievous suggestion for the day:
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April 27, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The kill-the-Jews rallies going on across America have resulted in casualties, including the leader of Columbia’s protests, now banned from the campus although it doesn’t appear that he has been expelled. Here in Minnesota, we have the entertaining spectacle of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health being fired, and subsequently starting a lawsuit. On to that in a moment, but first,
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April 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The Atlantic today has posted up an article from George Packer that, as John Podhoretz noted on Twitter, you could have read in Commentary at any point for the last 35 years. The fact that this is appearing in The Atlantic perhaps marks a turning point in established liberal opinion, but will college administrators and trustees take note and do anything about it? It’s a long piece, but here are
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April 18, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday we noted the exchange in the House hearing with Columbia University president Minouche Shafik in which she was asked about the use of the term “folx” in Columbia University’s School of Social Work. President Shafik professed ignorance of the term, but this is very likely an outright lie, as the term has been catching on in academia for a long time, like “Latinx.” Here, perhaps, is a clue to
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April 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It is hard to know which ivy league university is the most pathetic, but Yale always has a strong entry in the weekly sweepstakes. At first I thought this demand letter from Yale students to the administration was a fine effort at droll satire (it’s the bit about carbon emissions from the Gaza war on page 2 that made me think this was an attempt at comedy writing), but I
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