Higher education
March 27, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Someone on the Zoom call with Columbia University president Katrina Armstrong leaked the transcript to certain press outlets, including the Washington Free Beacon. My daughter Eliana provides an illuminating summary (along with Columbia’s response) in the Free Beacon story “What What Columbia University President Katrina Armstrong Really Told Faculty Members About Changes the School Is Making.” Here is the top of the story: Nothing to see here. That’s what Columbia
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March 26, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against pro-Hamas groups including Students for Justice in Palestine. Some of the plaintiffs are members of families with hostages held by Hamas, some are Israeli Columbia students. The 79-page complaint has been posted online by the Washington Free Beacon to accompany Adam Kredo’s story. The complaint alleges that the student groups had “prior
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March 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a formidable spokesman for the foreign policy of the Trump administration. On Sunday Margaret Brennan wondered about the merits of the administration’s case to deport Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil. As though talking to a dummy, she enunciated her question asking whether there is a link to terrorism in Khalil’s case. In response Rubio made a comment that frequently applies to the hosts of the Sunday
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February 16, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The normalization of the genocidal mania of Hamas and other such groups in pockets of the United States has become apparent in the wake of the 10/7 massacres. CAMERA’s David Litman brought one striking case to light in the NR online story “Georgetown’s daughter of Hamas.” Unfortunately, it is behind NR’s online paywall. The Daily Mail picked it up in Rachel Bowman’s accessible story “Georgetown University graduate student revealed as
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February 7, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I have noted the Department of Education investigation of five universities including Columbia and the University of Minnesota announced this week. The investigations seek to determine whether the universities have fulfilled their duty under Title VI to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic harassment. JNS now reports on a lawsuit brought by 10 Jewish students alleging that the school has failed them. The case arises out of the pro-Hamas riots around
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February 6, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I wrongly disparaged the Star Tribune in “Investigation of a university above reporting.” The Star Tribune reported the story later that day in “University of Minnesota ‘firmly against antisemitism’ after new federal investigation is announced.” It’s a good straight news story. To what I wrote the Star Tribune adds that “[t]he scrutiny comes after a U law professor and former regent last winter filed a complaint about antisemitism in the
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February 5, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I took note of the Trump Department of Education’s investigation of five universities for their toleration of anti-Semitism. First on the department’s list is Columbia University and rounding it out is the University of Minnesota. I commented that Columbia should be razed and the ground beneath it salted — the Carthaginian solution. A prominent historian and teacher reasonably implored me: Please be a little more moderate in your language.
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February 4, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune affords the the University of Minnesota the sort of public relations treatment with which it covers Democrats. The logic of the Venn diagram must have something to do with it. Kamala Harris could not be reached for comment. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Education announced that it is investigating the treatment of anti-Semitism at five universities. I have here in my hand the list of five: •
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January 28, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Big law is another institution that has become an enemy of just about everything in which conservatives believe. The organized bar itself seems to operate as an arm of the left and the administrative state. Support for racial discrimination of the “correct” kind, for example, has long been obligatory. One can see it reflected in ABA posts such as Statement of ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross Re: U.S. Supreme Court decision
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January 22, 2025 — Steven Hayward
I have a daily file where I add news items on the downward spiral of higher education, usually intending to do a roundup or commentary on some of it, but the problem is that the daily flood of evidence is simply too much to keep up with and synthesize. But one news item today is worth noting: Sonoma State University in California, facing a growing budget deficit that stands currently
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December 10, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon has published executive editor Collin Anderson’s intensely reported story “‘Death to Jews’: Inside the Home of 2 SJP Leaders at George Mason University, Police Find Guns, Ammo, and Terrorist Flags.” It’s a long story reported with the assistance of the Free Beacon’s Jessica Costescu. This is how it opens: When police searched the home of two Students for Justice in Palestine leaders, a pair of sisters
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December 5, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The Chronicle of Higher Education seems to have decided to go into competition with the Babylon Bee with this feature: Affluent White Students Are Skipping College, and No One Is Sure Why White students are falling out of higher education more quickly than any other racial group, and recent data suggests that middle- and upper-income white students are skipping college at a higher rate than their lower-income peers. That flies
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December 2, 2024 — Steven Hayward
With declining enrollment and decades of overspending, the day of reckoning for colleges and universities is starting to hit. Here’s a summary of some of news from today’s Inside Higher Ed: • Saint Augustine’s University Facing an existential crisis, the private HBCU in Raleigh, N.C., plans to cut half its workforce to achieve fiscal compliance with accreditation requirements, officials announced. . . Among the reductions are 67 staffers, 37 full-time
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November 30, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In January 1933 the Oxford Union voted 275-153 to approve the motion: “That this House refuses in any circumstances to fight for King and Country.” The proposition became known as the Oxford oath. Winston Churchill was not amused. While others counseled that it be dismissed as youthful folly, he declined to ignore the proceedings at Oxford. Rather, he declared it “a very disquieting and disgusting symptom” and proceeded to explain
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November 24, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The prominent historian Niall Ferguson recently tells a story for our time in his Pharos Lecture “The treason of the intellectuals: How the Nazis conquered German universities” (video below) and in his 2023 Free Press essay “The treason of the intellectuals.” The video includes Ferguson’s conversation with Noel Malcolm beginning at about 32:00. On the subject of the conquest of German universities by the Nazis, I would add this footnote
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November 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Sometimes I think the mainstream media has taken up writing droll satire. Like this headline in The Hill: Schools, colleges brace for ‘a much more threatening political environment’ Educators and university leaders are on the edge of their seats as President-elect Trump makes his return to office with an aggressive posture toward K-12 and higher education. Trump has threatened multiple times to take away funding from schools if they do
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October 29, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Sad news today of the passing of Eva Brann, the long-time tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, at the age of 95. She was still leading seminars well into her 90s and was a legend well beyond the borders of St. John’s. Few teachers were as dedicated as she to the old tradition of the Great Books, for she understood the greatness of classic texts was intrinsic, and not
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