Teaching Students Civil Dialogue in a Culture Hostile to Free Speech
It can be disheartening to witness how college culture has become inhospitable to viewpoints that fall outside of the ideological mainstream. For example, a March 2020 report by three professors…
Did You Know? Disrupt Texts Is the Latest Attack on the Western Canon
Penguin Classics is partnering with Disrupt Texts to replace Shakespeare and Homer with Ibram X. Kendi. What is Disrupt Texts? For the uninitiated, it is a new radical movement in classrooms which seeks…
The Spurning of Old Books: The Devaluation of the Past Threatens Higher Ed
Alan Jacobs’ new book, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind, is a coaxing argument to read “old books that come from strange times.”…
Reforming Higher Ed in 2021
The year 2020 brought changes that colleges would have never made by choice. Enrollment declines, remote classes, and dramatic employee cuts (for faculty and some staff alike) were unthinkable a…
Did You Know? Chinese Government Influence at North Carolina Colleges
Three universities in North Carolina host chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, a group with ties to the Chinese government. According to a May article in Campus Reform,…
To De-Politicize Art Schools, Students Need to Fight Back
It has never been harder to teach artistic individualism in America. A religious devotion to the causes of social justice dominates the ideas of professors in the academy, and David…
Blueprint for Reform: Trigger Warnings
Blueprint for Reform: Trigger Warnings is a policy guide for state legislators and university trustees. It examines the prevalence and impact of trigger warnings in higher education, highlighting concerns about…
Who Is Responsible for the Loss of Faith in Science?
In an essay in the liberal UK broadsheet The Guardian, multiple authors chart out the most important task for the incoming Biden administration: to “restore the faith in science.” “Joe…
Dear Humanists: You Have Done That Yourself
Every time I read an op-ed piece from some English professor (and isn’t it always an English professor?) whining about the demise of the humanities, in The Chronicle of Higher Education or elsewhere,…
Speaking Out Against Censorship in Academia
As academia becomes ever-more entrenched in groupthink, it can be intimidating to be a lone voice that refuses to toe the ideological line. And for good reason: failure to at…