May 18, 2026

Archivists and Justice: A Call to Reform

An academic field that should be politically neutral is losing its way.

Fans of the classic, North Carolina-set sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show, immediately recognize the exclamation “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” The character Gomer Pyle frequently and humorously utters this expression. Many may…

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May 15, 2026

“Let People Be Free to Come Up with Ideas”

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have gotten a lot of attention over the past decade. In these pages, we’ve often lamented that universities’ focus on superficial measures of diversity undermines merit…

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May 14, 2026

Making Room for More Ideas in Higher Education

Late last year, I had the honor of being nominated by Governor Kim Reynolds to serve on the advisory board of the newly created Center for Intellectual Freedom at the…

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May 13, 2026

Huge University Spending Yields Little Value

Why do public university officials do the things they do? What drives their decisions to allocate scarce resources in some ways and not others? In his recent book The University…

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May 11, 2026

Student Loans: A Multi-Generational Financial Trap

When the United States began its experiment with federally backed student loans in the 1960s, no one predicted that, by the early 21st century, students would have run up over…

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May 8, 2026

Harvard Tries Grade Deflation

This academic year, Harvard has endured a dark night of the soul, including (among other troubles) facing down the consequences of grade inflation and searching for curricular absolution. In a…

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May 7, 2026

Taxpayers Shouldn’t Fund NIL

College athletics are big business. And states are increasingly competing to give their universities an edge in recruiting talented student-athletes. What began as an effort to allow athletes to profit…

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May 6, 2026

Rara Avis: Professor Finds Harvard’s Faults

Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University. Still teaching at the age of 94, he has just published a collection of essays, Where…

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50-State Comparison: Syllabus Transparency

In an era of the internet, AI, and constant information overload, most public colleges and universities in the United States still don’t consistently make syllabi and course information publicly available.…

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