Higher education
September 11, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The assassination of Charlie Kirk represents an incalculable loss to his young family, to the conservative movement, and therefore to the United States. We mourn his death but we also feel deep anger in our breasts. If we did not represent the forces of constitutional order, it feels like it could be the opening salvo of a civil war. It provokes us to wonder what might have happened if the
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September 10, 2025 — Scott Johnson
FIRE — the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — is out with its 2026 list of college free speech rankings. FIRE has surveyed more than 68,000 students and ranked more than 250 colleges to compile the most comprehensive guide to free speech on campus anywhere — “because a true university education requires freedom of expression.” Right on! Let me note at the outset that FIRE does not grade on
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September 3, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Over the weekend I noted that The Times (UK) occasionally makes editorial content accessible to us without a subscription. It remains accessible for a few days. I drew attention to last week’s personal account by Elsa Johnson, which became inaccessible shortly thereafter. Our friend at the Times has re-sent us Ms. Johnson’s column with a link that should make it accessible for a few more days. I urge readers to
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September 3, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Peter Wood is president of the invaluable National Association of Scholars, a former professor of anthropology and college provost, and the author of compelling books including 1620, Wrath, A Bee in the Mouth, and (my favorite) Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. He writes with lucidity and grace on questions of history and public policy both in his books and his articles, as in the current Spectator World essay “The
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August 20, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I want to recognize Harvard Professor Steven Pinker for concisely rendering the quote of the day in the video clip below. Professor Pinker draws on the famous observation in Voltaire’s Essay on Universal History that the Holy Roman Empire was “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” I have drawn on that quote a few times myself to make a similar observation regarding the Southern Poverty Law Center, as in
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August 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In the August 14 Wall Street Journal column “Evidence Backs Trump on Higher Ed’s Bias,” Professors Jon Shields and Yuval Avnur report the results of their study of bias in college teaching. Exhibit A is the prominent use of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010) in college courses. According to Shields and Avnur, “it shows up in thousands of syllabi, as it
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August 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
When China scholar and journalist Jonathan Mirsky died in 2021 at the age of 88, Britain’s Guardian posted Jonathan Steele’s excellent obituary with many links recounting his career, mostly in British journalism. I recalled him myself on Power Line with the thoughts below. Jonathan taught Chinese and Chinese history at Dartmouth when I was an undergraduate. I got to know Jonathan (as we all called him) as the center of
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July 24, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Short of the Carthaginian solution, what sort of agreement would redress the wrongs that Columbia University has tolerated, facilitated, committed, and lied about against its Jewish students and teachers? There is room for reasonable disagreement, but I think it would be something that goes beyond the Danegeld/fine of $200 million in installment payments over three years, another $21 million to resolve the investigation of pending claims by the EEOC, and
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July 17, 2025 — Scott Johnson
This morning the Wall Street Journal editorial “Dividing doctors by race” takes up the subject of “affirmative action” — i.e., racial discrimination — in medical school admissions. The numbers reveal that admissions practices have not caught up with the law of the land: The Supreme Court banned racial preferences in university admissions, but finding ways to maintain them has become a cottage industry in higher education. Medical schools are among
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July 9, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The Middle East Forum has just published an important study by Sam Westrop, Anna Stanley, and Asra Nomani: Beachhead: Georgetown U.. Here are the first two paragraphs of the executive summary (emphasis in original): Over the past three decades, malign foreign influence actors from Qatar, Turkey, and Malaysia have entrenched themselves at Georgetown University, using the institution’s campuses in Washington, D.C. and Doha as bases to propagate Islamist ideology, train
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July 9, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday we linked to 2023 video of University of Minnesota Professor Melanie Yazzie advocating for the dismantling of the United States in my post featuring the Title VI complaint filed against her with the authorities at the university and the Department of Justice. The 2023 video derived from the post-10/7 “From Minnesota to Palestine” event that reveled in hatred of the United States and of Israel — in the immediate
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July 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I have been forwarded a copy of the complaint filed against University of Minnesota Professor Melanie Yazzie. Jon Justice first made me aware of her with a brief video he posted here on X. When I look her up on the university’s site, I am advised that “I am not authorized to access this page.” She appears to be an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the university’s main
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July 3, 2025 — Scott Johnson
When the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium reported that Columbia University acting president Claire Shipman had agitated to ditch the Jewish pro-Israel member of the Columbia board and add an Arab, Columbia issued a statement claiming that Shipman’s deep thoughts had been taken out of context: “These communications were provided to the Committee in the fall of 2024 and reflect communications from more than a year ago,” the school said.
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July 2, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I excerpted Will Sussman’s Tablet column “A Tenured MIT Professor Accused Me of Having a ‘Zionist Mind Infection’” for my “Quote of the day.” I think the column is behind Tablet’s paywall. Today the New York Post publishes Sussman’s column in accessible form as “I was chased out of MIT — and it was all because I’m Jewish.” I thought some readers might want to read it in its
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July 2, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Peter Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars, a former professor of anthropology, and the author of several compelling books. He adds something to our understanding of the young Communist running as the Democrats’ mayoral candidate in his Spectator essay “The education of Zohran Mamdani.” Drawing on the 2013 NAS study What Does Bowdoin Teach? — Bowdoin being Mamdani’s alma mater, Wood makes every word of the essay
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July 2, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium shines a spotlight on Columbia University acting president Claire Shipman. As a member of the board in 2024, Shipman argued that the school needed to get an “Arab on our board” and suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy, according to text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce. “We need to get somebody from the
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July 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I quoted from the Department of Education letter notifying Harvard that it is charged with a violation of Title VI for tolerating anti-Semitism on campus. I was unable to find a copy of the letter online at the time, but have now posted it below via Scribd courtesy of Jessica Schwalb’s Washington Free Beacon story “Harvard Violated Jewish Students’ Civil Rights, Trump Admin Finds While Threatening Remaining Federal Funding.”
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