Higher education
July 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Will Sussman recounts his experience as an MIT doctoral student in the Tablet column “A Tenured MIT Professor Accused Me of Having a ‘Zionist Mind Infection.’” He writes: * * * * * Before Oct. 7, 2023, I was the literal poster boy for a PhD student at MIT. I was featured in a July 2023 profile in MIT News, which relayed my background and aspirations. “Although he has just
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June 30, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Victor Davis Hanson gave the commencement address at Hillsdale College on May 10. The July/August issue of Imprimis, not yet posted online, is where I found it. That issue publishes a text adapted from Victor’s speech. Among the themes noted in the section headings supplied with the YouTube video are Hillsdale’s rising national profile, Hillsdale’s independence from federal influence, Hillsdale as a model for civic and moral education, observations on
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June 10, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Harvard Professor Steven Pinker wrote the 4,000 word column “Harvard Derangement Syndrome” that the New York Times published on May 23. The Hoover Institution’s Peter Berkowitz was a member of the Harvard faculty once upon a time. He offers a biting counterpoint in the RealClearPolitics column “Steven Pinker’s damning defense of Harvard.” Berkowitz writes in his conclusion (please read the whole thing, links omitted below): * * * * *
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June 4, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The New York Post cover story reports on some of the evidence gathered against Tarek Bazrouk, one of the Hamas supporters who overdid it at Columbia last year: “Columbia protestor had direct link to Hamas’ deadly al-Qassam Brigades militant group.” According to the story, Bazrouk was “a member of a chat group that received regular updates from Abu Obeida,” the official spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, according to documents filed
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June 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I ran into University of Minnesota Law School Dean William McGeveran at the May 13 Cardozo Society dinner in Minneapolis. I greeted him warmly and he reciprocated. The timing slightly anticipated Tim Walz’s befoulment of the law school commencement proceedings with his partisan and disgusting speech at the ceremony on May 17 that weekend. Walz’s speech made waves at USA Today, Fox News, and elsewhere. I wrote Dean McGeveran on
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May 28, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The CBS News/60 Minutes correspondent with the appellation Pelley tested the mettle of new Wake Forest graduates at commencement on May 19. He gave a 25-minute commencement address that went on for about 25 minutes too long. The Washington Free Beacon’s Zach Kessel was in attendance and broke the story last week in “60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley Tells College Grads: ‘Freedom of Speech is Under Attack’ By Trump Administration.” Michael
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May 17, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Everything National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood writes is worth reading. Among his many books, for example, I would point to 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project and Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. All his books — his Encounter Books page is here — are of interest. In the June issue of The Spectator’s World edition he has the essay “The Trump administration is giving us
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May 9, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In 2015 we had a prominent speaker with an unusual personal story as the scholar in residence at the Temple of Aaron in St. Paul. Dr. Alan Cooper is a Biblical scholar who is both learned and distinguished. As his professional bio has it: “Alan Cooper is the Elaine Ravich Professor of Jewish Studies and provost of The Jewish Theological Seminary. He joined the faculty in 1997 as professor of
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May 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Haverford College President Wendy Raymond demonstrated some of the uses of the passive voice in response to a line of inquiry pursued by California Third District Rep. Kevin Kiley at the House Education Committee hearing on anti-Semitism yesterday. Just how far are college administrators willing to go to accommodate the rank anti-Semitism of their students? Pretty damn far. Congratulations to Rep. Kiley for recognizing Raymond’s use of the passive voice
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May 6, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The Spectator has published Penn Law Professor Amy Wax’s anatomy of the suppression of dissent in higher education under the ideology of wokeism and other superstitions of the age. Perhaps I should refer to her as “the heretical Amy Wax.” Surely this cannot stand: Here I will focus on higher education, and one important aspect of its debasement: the growing practice of censoring and punishing free expression. Why has this
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April 24, 2025 — John Hinderaker
A more or less open state of war exists between President Trump and academia. Opening shots have been fired, most notably by Harvard in its lawsuit seeking to restore funding that the administration has frozen. As I wrote here, I expect that Harvard will win that case. But that is a battle, not the war. At Legal Insurrection, my friend Louis Bonham lays out a strategy that seems promising. It
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April 19, 2025 — Scott Johnson
MIT President Sally Kornbluth sent out a message dated April 17 to alumni appealing for opposition to measures undertaken and threatened (“current and growing threats”) by the Trump administration. Reader Steven Piet has provided us a copy of the message, which appears not to have been posted online with other communiques from the Office of the President. He has also provided us a copy of his response to the message.
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April 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Jeffrey Hart opened the minds of several generations of Dartmouth students. In September 1997, around the time that Professor Hart retired from Dartmouth, National Review published the tribute Jeffrey Hart: A Teacher Celebrated, with contributions by former students including Peter Robinson, William Sushon, Dinesh D’Souza, Oron Strauss, William Grace, John McGovern, Dan Coakley, Kevin Robbins, the Reverend Keenan Jones, and me. Bill Buckley introduced the compilation of tributes to Professor
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April 9, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Douglas Murray’s new book is On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization, published by HarperCollins under its Broadside Books imprint. Yesterday was its official publication date. On Monday Hugh Hewitt invited Murray to discuss his new book at length. I have posted the video below. The whole thing is worth listening to, of course, but I was struck at about 12:00 of the video when Murray
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April 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
On Sunday afternoon the Washington Free Beacon published its story on the testimony of former Columbia president Katrina Armstrong in the Title VI investigation of the school. Armstrong whipped up a hurricane of embarrassment on her way out the door. Armstrong privately assured Columbia faculty that the school’s public commitment to mitigating anti-Semitic harassment on campus was something of a ruse. The leak of that private assurance was more than
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April 7, 2025 — Scott Johnson
My daughter Eliana obtained a copy of the transcript of former Columbia president Katrina Armstrong’s testimony in the Title VI investigation of the school. Eliana has read the transcript so that you don’t have to. She reports on Armstrong’s testimony in the Washington Free Beacon story “‘No Specific Memory’: Columbia University’s Armstrong Tells Feds She Can’t Recall Specifics of Any Anti-Semitic Incident on Campus.” I don’t think an official has
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April 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Gadi Taub is an Israeli after my own heart. He explains Israel’s current internal political turmoil in terms that will sound painfully familiar to those of us on the right in the United States. See his Tablet column “Netanyahu Takes On Israel’s Deep State.” Highly recommended. We have a deep state of our own, of course, and we have seen it in action. Putting the deep state to one side,
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