A Letter to Conservatives: You Need College and College Definitely Needs You
Dear conservative parents and students, First, I would like to address conservative parents. Lately, I hear many of you questioning whether you should send your kids to college. Maybe they…
Either Support Our Politics or Find Another Field
The authoritarianism that increasingly characterizes the American professoriate is on full display in a case involving the master’s program in social work at Rhode Island College (RIC). A student who…
Shouldn’t an Entire Campus Be a Free Speech Zone—Not Just .02 Percent of It?
(Editor’s note: This article first appeared on Forbes.com.) Hostility to free speech has become a salient characteristic of American college campuses. Speech codes that make it dangerous for students (or…
A Tweet Too Far
When Drexel University political science professor George Ciccariello-Maher tweeted “All I want for Christmas is white genocide” on Christmas Eve, he handed the Philadelphia school an opportunity to play an…
American Studies: A Sad Tale of Academic Decline
My academic field, American Studies, is the interdisciplinary study of American cultures, past and present. Once it was a vibrant and useful discipline. Today, I’m sad to report, it is…
Your Generosity Is Helping to Improve Higher Education
As each year comes to a close, I take some time to review what the Pope Center accomplished during the previous 52 weeks, to analyze what challenges we still face,…
Merry Christmas!
In his new video “Just Say ‘Merry Christmas,’” Dennis Prager argues that efforts to replace “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” are misguided. In the name of “inclusivity,” he says, we…
The Department of Education De-Accredits an Accreditor
The final year of the U.S. Department of Education in the Obama administration is noteworthy for all its carnage. In September, the large ITT Tech chain of schools, which had…
The “Snowflake” Generation: Real or Imagined?
When universities institute things such as “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” they often justify doing so in the name of protecting students’ mental health. Critics, on the other hand, argue…
Student Loan Forgiveness: Uncle Sam’s Generosity Will Cost Much More than Previously Estimated
When politicians and Education Department bureaucrats began designing policies to lessen college students’ federal loan burdens, they weren’t concerned much with the cost to the taxpayers. Their imperative was coming…