Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk
Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk Edited by Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 244 pages, $24.95 Books critical of higher education in America used to…
Posts tagged with
“diversity”
James Moeser’s very bad idea
RALEIGH – By now it is well known that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill made national headlines again for something that, depending upon whom you ask, demonstrates its animus against Christian groups or its passion for the principles of diversity. Specifically, UNC-CH is being sued by a Christian fraternity, Alpha Iota Omega, for officially derecognizing the group because the group wouldn’t sign a “nondiscrimination” pledge.
The ‘New Age’ university: at odds with American core principles
The last third of the twentieth century witnessed the rise and triumph of the post-modern or, better yet, the “New Age University,” whose core mission involves bringing America into a new age based on substantially altered principles and social forms.
Modest proposals from NCSU profs to work diversity into technical courses
North Carolina State University has a new “diversity czar.” This new czar “said professors should integrate diversity into the classroom of every discipline, no matter how technical.”
Harmony Remains Elusive, But N.C. State Still Celebrates
The Division of Student Affairs at North Carolina State University will be “Celebrating Race and Ethnicity” this semester. Really. It has even developed a full slate of programs by which to celebrate these all-important nouns.
‘Critical thinking’ often means not questioning your professors
Next to “diversity,” used as a synonym for discrimination by race, a favorite euphemism at universities today is “critical thinking.” The usual occasions for its use, however, are rather ironic — to stymie rather than stimulate critical thinking.
Just What the Dirty-Word Is Going On in Wilmington?
This past semester several political items were removed, as soon they appeared, from the student union at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Among them: anti-war flyers labeling President George Bush a “bully,” depicting Lady Liberty impaling a dove by its rectum on a sword, and having the U.S. flag being produced in the exhaust fumes of B-1 bombers; magazines containing a photograph of men engaging in anal sex; a large sign advertising “The Vagina Monologues” that called for all [offensive slang for vaginas] to “Unite!”; and flyers in support of war against Saddam Hussein.
Actually, only the last one was deemed offensive enough for removal from campus. The rest were allowed to stand.
Race-based admissions policies must go
The litigation over race-based admissions policies is probably the most important case the Supreme Court will decide in its current term. Those who think that it’s somehow progress for government institutions to treat classes of individuals differently because of their ancestry are pulling out all the stops to defend race-based admissions policies, including an intellectually dishonest argument that diversity enhances education and cries that the sky will fall if schools like the University of Michigan can’t stack the deck in favor of applicants in certain groups. Here are a few thoughts on this momentous case.
Conservatives on campus speak out against ideological intolerance
“Down with ‘Diversity,'” proclaims the October 2002 cover of New Sense magazine at Duke University, published by the students of the Duke Conservative Union. “Trampling UNC’s Intellectual Diversity,” proclaimed the March 2002 cover of Carolina Review, a conservative student publication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Review cover, which featured a grinning donkey treading underfoot the word “DIVERSITY,” also asked, “If all your professors are Democrats, is Carolina diverse?”
Supreme Court poised to offer long-overdue clarity on racial preferences
By next June the nation’s highest court could finally issue a much-needed clarification of the constitutionality of using racial considerations in college admissions decisions. The Supreme Court took up two cases in which white applicants argued that their applications to the University of Michigan and its law school were turned down because of their race.