Academic left
August 9, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Under Ron DeSantis’s leadership, Florida has attained the enviable status of the state that liberals most like to hate, and to denigrate irrationally. Thus it is no surprise to see this headline: Pro-woke professors leave Florida universities in protest. The Tampa Bay Times reported on a July meeting of the Florida Board of Governors. During the meeting, a number of professors expressed concern about the political climate in Florida. Professors
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August 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
There are hundreds of jargon-filled academic articles published every day, and as such are not worth noting. But once in a while a special effort at ideological academic babble deserves notice when it is indistinguishable from parody. Such is this article from Ethnos, an anthropological journal, published yesterday: That Which They Will Not See: Climate Denial as a Vector of Epistemological Crisis in the Contemporary United States Susannah Crockford, University
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July 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I am intermittently a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA), and attend its large annual meeting when it is convenient or otherwise useful, such as when held in San Francisco or Washington DC, as it often is. Some years back the APSA moved its long-scheduled annual meeting from San Francisco to Seattle because there was a pending strike of hotel workers in San Francisco, and for the oh-so-sensitive
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July 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Last fall there was a considerable controversy about whether, as the student banners held, “Stanford hates fun.” Among other things, Stanford requires that student parties have to be registered and cleared with the campus administration. This is having a chilling effect on student life, as the Stanford Daily student paper reports: There were just 45 parties registered on campus during the first four weeks of the fall quarter, compared with
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July 15, 2023 — John Hinderaker
It pays to be a minority, especially a Native American. That is the only possible explanation why so many people, especially academics, adopt fake Indian identities. There is even a word for it: Pretendian. And it seems as though the more militant the academic, the more likely he actually isn’t Native at all. One more case in point: University of Kansas professor Kent Blansett. The Dakota Scout reports: University of
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June 14, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday we reported on how Johns Hopkins University had erased the existence of women by defining lesbians as “non-men.” To refresh your memory, here’s part of JHU’s “glossary” of terms: This absurdity got wide coverage beyond Power Line, and evidently Johns Hopkins was embarrassed. Today Johns Hopkins removed the glossary entirely, and now has this in its place: Even this got modified later in the day to this: In other
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June 13, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This news item caught my eye: Secretary Cardona cancels UW commencement speech amid researchers strike Hours before he was scheduled to give the commencement speech to the University of Washington’s graduating class of students, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona canceled his appearance, citing a strike by graduate and postdoctoral researchers. “Secretary Cardona will not cross the picket line to give the commencement address,” a spokesperson for Cardona said in
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June 11, 2023 — Steven Hayward
After the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 ended segregation in public schools, many jurisdictions in the south engaged in what they openly called “massive resistance” to the Court’s decree, and enforcing the decision required both legislation and many follow-up lawsuits at every level of the federal judiciary for many years after. It appears colleges and universities are already preparing their own “massive resistance” to a prospective Supreme
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May 16, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Seth Mandel, writing in the current issue of Commentary: By every metric, American Jewish campus life is a shadow of what it once was. The City University of New York is losing the last two Jewish members of its 80-member senior leadership team—in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. Jewish enrollment in elite universities, most notably the Ivy League, is in free fall. And a sense
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May 3, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Back in December we reported on Stanford University’s attempt to instruct everyone on language use with their “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.” It read like a parody of our idiotic woke university culture today, and Stanford quickly withdrew it on account of the massive public embarrassment it generated. Now it is Columbia University’s turn. Columbia’s “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Guide” also works hard to instruct us proper meaning and
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May 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Keeping up with the insane manifestations of wokery could be a full time job, and it is becoming repetitious and boring, like climate change. But wokesters, in apparent competition for peak clownery, keep saying, “Hold my Bud Light—watch this!” So behold the Essex Wexford School District in Vermont, which will cease referring to fifth graders as boys or girls: Glenn Reynolds has been saying for years now that sending your
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April 10, 2023 — Steven Hayward
As previously mentioned, the campus left (but I repeat myself) is having daily conniptions over Gov. Ron DeSantis deciding to do something about left wing public colleges and universities, and today a faculty member of New College in Sarasota decided to immolate himself on Twitter while suggesting if he were more “patriotic” he’d immolate the college too. And then he calls someone else “fascist.” I’m sure your first reaction is
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April 4, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Let’s take in two news items that don’t appear related on the surface. First, Inside Higher Ed reported recently that anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses increased 41 percent in 2022, adding “That is greater than the 36 percent increase in incidents in the United States over all.” Second, yesterday the Washington Post published an article from a third-year Stanford Law student that claims the bulk of Stanford law students are really
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April 4, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It is fun to take in the Chronicle of Higher Education every day, because it is like reading a trade journal for an industry that knows it is in decline, along the lines of daily newspapers or buggy whip makers. Every day the Chron operates from a cringe mode about the problems of declining enrollment, financial pressures, the poor morale among DEI staff and the rising backlash against it, and above
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April 3, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Federal appellate judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who announced last year that they would cease hiring clerks from Yale Law School (and were then joined by several other federal judges), have added Stanford Law to their boycott list. Good for them. Meanwhile, the president of Stanford, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has welcomed students back for the spring quarter today with a special message preaching the importance of tolerance and “diversity” of
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March 22, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This afternoon Dean Jenny Martinez of Stanford Law School released a 10-page memorandum about the shameful Judge Duncan affair laying out the “next steps” regarding protests and freedom of speech. It is not until page 8 that we learn the most significant news—that “Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach is currently on leave.” Hopefully this is a prelude to her dismissal not only for her role in this specific matter, but for
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March 19, 2023 — Steven Hayward
English majors are fast disappearing from our colleges and universities, and with good reason. Here’s a current summer course offering from Johns Hopkins University: Climate Fiction and Capitalist Accumulation – AS.060.186 This course will examine the relationship between capitalist accumulation, the climate crisis, and contemporary climate fiction. What is capitalist accumulation? How has this process led to the contemporary climate crisis? What ideas constitute its ideological apparatus? How do contemporary
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