When Truth is No Longer Paramount
It is a running joke with my repeat students that “it depends” is the phrase most likely to set me off during a classroom discussion. Don’t get me wrong, I…
Archivists and Justice: A Call to Reform
Fans of the classic, North Carolina-set sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show, immediately recognize the exclamation “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” The character Gomer Pyle frequently and humorously utters this expression. Many may…
“Let People Be Free to Come Up with Ideas”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion have gotten a lot of attention over the past decade. In these pages, we’ve often lamented that universities’ focus on superficial measures of diversity undermines merit…
Huge University Spending Yields Little Value
Why do public university officials do the things they do? What drives their decisions to allocate scarce resources in some ways and not others? In his recent book The University…
Rara Avis: Professor Finds Harvard’s Faults
Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University. Still teaching at the age of 94, he has just published a collection of essays, Where…
How Accreditation Became a Shield for Campus Ideology
For years, universities have embraced accreditation standards that echo their own ideological commitments, especially around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). These standards haven’t felt like external requirements so much as…
What Is TransparUNCy Up To?
Earlier this year, Inside Higher Ed ran a puff profile of “TransparUNCy,” the unpronounceable left-leaning organization that has lately become one of the University of North Carolina’s “most effective watchdogs.”…
Higher Ed’s New Human-Subjects Problem
Intellectual rot within universities has become increasingly obvious. It stems from the widespread adoption of critical, feminist, and queer theories in academic work. The result has been a constant stream…
How the College Essay Declared War on Critical Thinking
Every fall, I attempt to convince my yearly cohort of college-counseling students that writing is the single most important skill they will ever learn. Many of them stare at me…
Less Than Words Can Say
If you saw the 2004 Pixar hit The Incredibles, you might remember that Mr. Incredible, a.k.a. Bob, captures in one line the reason our schools are failing. Resisting his wife’s…