My New Affirmative-Action Grading Policy
Dear UNC-Wilmington Students:
For years, my well-known opposition to affirmative action has been a source of great controversy across our campus, particularly among UNCW faculty. Many have assumed that my position on this topic has been a function of personal prejudice or “insensitivity” to the needs of various “disenfranchised” groups on campus and in society in general. In reality, my opposition to affirmative action has been based on personal experience.
A sneak peek at this year’s UNC Summer Reading program
My mole at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has uncovered what might be UNC-CH’s book selection for this year’s Summer Reading Program for incoming freshmen. Readers will recall the program created a nationwide stir last year with its selection of Michael Sells’ Approaching the Qur’án, which focused on the 35 most approachable suras in the religious text.
Racial preferences’ fate in North Carolina hinges on Michigan case
All eyes are on Michigan now, thanks to a case before the Supreme Court involving the University of Michigan Law Schools’ use of racial preferences in admissions decisions. It is a case being watched with extreme interest by N.C. higher-education officials , public and private.
Campus divestiture movements diverge on targets
Movements are underway on college campuses nationwide to cause them to “divest” in holdings that support some cause promoters find odious. The campaigns hearken back to those in the 1980s where colleges refused to do business with South Africa because of its policy of apartheid. The most well-known current campaign is the one seeking universities to divest in Israel, but there is another campaign underway to have universities divest in terror.
Federal commission urges changes to Title IX enforcement
In late February a federal commission released its final report on recommendations on reforming the enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Entitled “‘Open to All’: Title IX at Thirty,” the Secretary of Education’s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics praises the legislation for expanding athletic opportunities for women but criticizes how enforcement has led to the elimination of opportunities for men.
Shaw fires prof, evicts student for their criticism
Last fall Shaw University fired a professor for “disloyalty” and evicted a student from campus housing over a faculty resolution criticizing Shaw President Talbert O. Shaw and the Board of Trustees.
Dr. Gale Isaacs, head of the Dept. of Allied Health, admitted to helping write a resolution criticizing the university on several grounds.
Meanwhile, free expression at NC State is ‘too much’
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox of North Carolina State University issued a statement on tolerance this week. Published in Technician, N.C. State’s official student newspaper, Fox wrote that “Several students have told me about highly offensive, hurtful and disrespectful graffiti that appeared on the wall of our Free Expression Tunnel on Monday night.” Three sentences later she wrote, “The offensive graffiti has been removed, and I have asked our Campus Police to investigate this incident.”
Defense of free expression and inquiry at UNC-CH not thorough enough
“I have been proud,” announced Chancellor James Moeser of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in his “State of the University” speech this past September, “to speak for the entire community in defending our fundamental rights as Americans from any who would seek to limit the scope of free expression and inquiry. In the past 12 months, UNC has shown the world what it is to be a great, free, American public university.”
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.
New web site offers data backing up grade-inflation concerns
A Duke University professor of environmental science has reinvigorated the national debate over grade inflation. Professor Stuart Rojstaczer announced a web site, GradeInflation.com, wherein he has compiled data on over 50 colleges and universities nationwide showing how average grade-point-averages at them over time have risen. Rojstaczer also announced his findings in a Jan. 28 Washington Post column.