If All Men are Created Equal, Why Do We Need Grades?
I just finished a fascinating book, The Recovery of the West, by polymath Englishman Michael Roberts. Roberts became famous as a poet, but was trained as a scientist and spent…
Fall Uncertainty: College Leaders Have Left Students, Professors in the Dark
Colleges across the country are preparing for potential spikes in coronavirus cases in the fall. As some students return to campus, schools are making plans to protect the health of…
Higher Ed Is Stoking the Flames of the War on History
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…
Did You Know? The Fight Over Renaming Buildings at North Carolina Colleges
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…
Misusing Editorial Power to Censor Unpopular Research
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…
Fall 2020: The Semester of Isolation
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,…
The Future of the Humanities Is Not an Adjunct-Fueled Decline
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,…
Can Higher Education Be Saved? The Hope for Governance Reform
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…
No Housing Refunds Put UNC System Students in Tough Spot
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…
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
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…