On July 4 at Mt. Rushmore, President Trump praised Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Louis Armstrong; it was a significant political and cultural speech, comparable to Trump’s speech extolling Western … Continue reading “Higher Ed Is Stoking the Flames of the War on History”
On June 17, the Board of Trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill voted to end the moratorium on renaming campus buildings associated with white supremacy or … Continue reading “Did You Know? The Fight Over Renaming Buildings at North Carolina Colleges”
Academic freedom is under assault by people who want to control research and speech. One of their strategies exploits the gatekeeping functions of journal editors to censor unpopular ideas. The … Continue reading “Misusing Editorial Power to Censor Unpopular Research”
Universities’ frantic struggles to create fall semester plans that bring students back to campus often hinge on social distancing. While students are excited about the promise of an on-campus fall, … Continue reading “Fall 2020: The Semester of Isolation”
Rumors of the humanities’ decline have been greatly exaggerated, a new report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences says. While the popularity of specific majors has changed, overall, … Continue reading “The Future of the Humanities Is Not an Adjunct-Fueled Decline”
About 67 percent of four-year colleges plan to re-open in the fall for in-person classes, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Those re-openings tend to be in states with … Continue reading “Did You Know? The Partisan Split in Re-opening Colleges”
Academia is a troubled institution plagued by financial problems, falling academic standards, and poor educational outcomes. Especially concerning is its politicization; it increasingly sows racial discord, advocates for anti-American and … Continue reading “Can Higher Education Be Saved? The Hope for Governance Reform”
From the Executive Summary of Bolstering the Board: Trustees Are Academia’s Best Hope for Reform: Two conditions are needed to effect large-scale reforms in academia: a hierarchical, top- down system … Continue reading “Bolstering the Board: Trustees Are Academia’s Best Hope for Reform”
Two UNC system schools, Western Carolina University and UNC-Greensboro, have announced that they will not offer students housing refunds if the university closes due to another COVID-19 outbreak. Both schools … Continue reading “No Housing Refunds Put UNC System Students in Tough Spot”
If you had told me a couple of years ago that a book like Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism would … Continue reading “The Unbearable Whiteness of Being”