UNC-Chapel Hill Officially Teaches What to Think, Not How to Think
When the University of North Carolina leadership and the state’s legislators capitulated to the frenzied mob that toppled a statue of a Confederate Army soldier at the entrance to the…
Did You Know? The Decline of Free Speech Zones
The term “free speech zone” can be misleading. While the name implies a policy that promotes free expression, free speech zones do the opposite. They confine political demonstrations to a…
Activist Academics Threaten the Integrity of Higher Ed
The rise of activist professors has shaped the culture in higher ed for decades. As activists have become more prominent, a familiar process has changed academic departments, pushing scholars out…
Why Students Have Turned Away from History
I taught history from 1976 through 2013 at Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon, the Naval War College, and Williams College. The 37 years of my career coincided with a drastic change in the…
A War Against ‘Normal’
A question of power is at the heart of the new and interesting book by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. The Anglo-American liberal duo did a tremendous service to the…
New Title IX Regulations Restore Due Process–But There’s a Battle Ahead
In the latest case where a male student sued his college over the unfair procedures it used to expel him, Colgate University in New York will go to trial. So…
The Academic and Social Benefits of Homeschooling
Homeschooling works. The roughly 2 million children who currently learn at home join a millennia-old practice supported by many government officials, scholars, college officials, and employers. While mainstream America has…
How Colleges Get Rid of Conservative Admins: An Example from UNC
When I accepted an administrative position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, friends warned me that I would not fit in as a conservative. I dismissed their…
What Scientific Decline?
As a neurobiologist working at a local university for more than 30 years, I read Edward Archer’s provocative critique of scientific research with interest. We agree about a number of…
‘Latin-What?’ Why UNC Should Abandon the Term ‘Latinx’
By now, most people who’ve attended a wealthy college—or those who tuned into the Democratic presidential debates—have likely heard or seen the word “Latinx.” The anglicized Spanish term is the…