We Must Reverse the Infantilization of Higher Education
Last week, I experienced the infantilization of the campus for the first time. I run the Center for Free Enterprise at Florida Southern College, where we emphasize that a realistic…
Bias Response Teams Chill Free Speech and Miseducate Students
In their Atlantic article, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukainoff identified a troubling development on American campuses. They wrote, “A movement is arising, undirected and…
Evidence, Not Emotion, Should Guide the Campus Concealed Carry Debate
In 2015, Time magazine reported that there had been 23 shootings on college and university campuses that year, including an attack at a community college in Oregon that claimed 10…
Five Questions to Ask Future UNC Board Members
Since 2010, the UNC system’s Board of Governors has become somewhat more conservative and more interested in serious educational reforms. Members of the Board have professed interest in decreasing costs,…
Sweeping Change at the Office for Civil Rights Is Imperative
Nowhere is the adage “personnel is policy” truer than in the federal education bureaucracy. With nothing more than a few Dear Colleague letters meant to provide “guidance” to nearly all…
What the Feds Can Do for Higher Education: Appoint Richard Vedder
Assuming that Betsy DeVos, the new secretary of education, has sufficient commitment and stamina, she will change how her department addresses K-12 education. Her support of school choice through charter…
The Spread of “New Civics” Is Cause for Alarm
One of the ways the college curriculum has changed for the worse in recent decades is the rise of what David Randall terms “the New Civics” in a hefty report…
Starving the Beast Prompts Choleric Call to Fatten a Sacred Cow
Listening to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law professor Gene Nichol’s radical riff ripping trustees and the UNC system’s Board of Governors as cowards, and Republican lawmakers as…
In Defense of Excluding Antisocial Student Groups
I pose a simple question: can free and civil discourse survive inclusion of those who would silence that discourse by any means possible—including violent intimidation? That seems to be a…
The Campus Free Speech Act: A Way to Restore the Marketplace of Ideas
Between the rise of safe spaces, trigger warnings, speaker disinvitations, and the often illiberal conduct of campus demonstrators over the past few years, it’s clear that the core constitutional value…