Were admission to Harvard based solely on academic merit, Asian-Americans would comprise 43% of the freshman class, while African-Americans would make up less than 1%, according to an internal Harvard report discussed at a trial here Wednesday.” That’s the sobering lede of a Wall Street Journal…
Plus: 'Tis the season for around-the-clock coverage of Elizabeth Warren and around-the-clock Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel.
Plus: 'Tis the season for around-the-clock coverage of Elizabeth Warren and around-the-clock Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel.
Changing the college application process and emphasizing civics education in high school can create university environments where speech controversies are less likely to flare up.
Term limits for SCOTUS, anyone? In addition to TMQ, this week it's Tuesday Morning Courterback.
Term limits for SCOTUS, anyone? In addition to TMQ, this week it's Tuesday Morning Courterback.
Term limits for SCOTUS, anyone? In addition to TMQ, this week it's Tuesday Morning Courterback.
The government says there is evidence strongly suggesting that Harvard may be engaging in 'racial balancing.'
Funny how leftist academics mistreat their underlings.
A culture war divided against itself.
For students and society, the answer is a resounding "yes!"
Micah Mattix, exterminator.
Every week brings news of some fresh campus absurdity—tenured professors saying and doing idiotic things, students cursing and attacking speakers while college authorities do nothing about it, schools proudly denying students due process. When news circulated recently that Penn State has forbidden…
I used to despise the relative obscurity of my alma mater, Reed College. The name of the Portland, Oregon, liberal arts school has spurred more than a few quizzical looks in Washington when I’ve mentioned it. “Reed? Where’s that?” This has been a persistent source of chagrin and insecurity about my…
How bad is grade inflation in the humanities? So bad that when U.S. News & World Report issued its annual college rankings last week, it gave more credit to schools for graduating students in math and the hard sciences than it did in other disciplines. According to the publication’s press release:…
How bad is grade inflation in the humanities? So bad that when U.S. News & World Report issued its annual college rankings last week, it gave more credit to schools for graduating students in math and the hard sciences than it did in other disciplines. According to the publication’s press release:…
“Cal State Will No Longer Require Placement Exams and Remedial Classes for Freshmen,” reads a Los Angeles Times headline. Don’t think that the 23-campus California State University system dumped remedial ed because its entering students are so well-prepared academically these days that they don’t…
A few weeks ago Wellesley College invited Laura Kipnis to give a talk. Kipnis is not an especially controversial figure. She is a professor of media studies at Northwestern who teaches film and seems to be generally in line with old-guard feminism. Her one deviation was a piece she wrote for the…
When congressmen last fall considered cures for what ails the American university (repeal large college endowments' tax exemption to lower tuition costs, they said), a hero emerged in one witness from Kentucky's Berea College, where students labor to learn. Maybe, the unspoken prospect hung in the…
Dozens of professors at Middlebury College in Vermont are defending free, civil discourse after protests against a conservative author slated to speak there last week spiraled out of control.
An appearance by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray at Middlebury College was violently disrupted last week, as Jenna Lifhits reported in these pages. Now, Murray has recounted his experience:
It might be surprising to learn that Stalinist North Korea actually has a private university. But it's true: Since 2010, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), which is funded largely by western donors, has been educating many sons of the country's political elite.
When Hillary Clinton lost the election nearly four weeks ago, one of my graduate school professors ran her concession speech live during my international law class (the United Nations is supreme; universal healthcare is a right; George W. Bush is bad; etc.). His choice didn't bother me…
I began teaching at the University of Virginia at the height of the turmoil over the Vietnam War. Dissent was everywhere: There were marches on Washington and on campus. But there was always something different about the angry UVA students. For instance, upon returning from one march on Washington,…
One more unforeseen consequence of Donald Trump's election victory: College students who have been spending too much time at binge drinking or television watching now have a handy excuse for not turning in that required paper on time or for being unprepared for that exam. They can blame it on the…
New figures released by the Census Bureau Thursday show undergraduate and graduate enrollment at colleges and universities dropped 1.2 million—or 6 percent—from 2010 to 2015. The drop accompanies an overall decrease in school enrollment at all levels from 78.6 million to 77.1 million during the…
In his convocation address on Monday, Northwestern University president Morton Schapiro told wide-eyed freshmen that anyone who dares oppose trigger warnings, or who belittles the pain of those microaggressed, is an "idiot" and a "lunatic."
The University of California in Berkeley has brought back a student-led course on "Palestinian history" that had been condemned as anti-Zionist and biased against the state of Israel. The course, worth one academic credit, advocates a "decolonial alternative" for the region and had previously been…
The Yale Daily News recently published a guest column by C. Wallace Dewitt, class of 2003, noting that next year marks the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift. If the connection between the famous satirist and contemporary life at one of America's most revered—but rapidly…
Among the worst demographic groups for Donald Trump are college graduates and young people. A recent CNN poll, for instance, found that just 25 percent of voters under 30 say they're voting for the Republican nominee—far below the average of 38 percent GOP candidates have received with this group…
Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson recently ruffled professorial feathers with an impassioned anti-academic screed. His call for "destructive" reforms in higher education smacks of Freudian slippage. (Good ideas, according to the ruling tech paradigm, are "disruptive"—their "destructive" effects only…
Charles J. Sykes's latest indictment of higher education, Fail U., in stores Tuesday, comes at what's widely considered a low point for the American college. "Brainwashed Bernie fanatics," and a "crisis-level plague of indecency" have gripped campuses, reflected Rick Santorum in the minutes leading…
The Democratic party published a draft of its official platform last week that continues the Obama administration's attack on for-profit higher education. The relevant section of the platform reduces the entire for-profit university industry to the Trump University case, claiming that the school…
Writing for the Supreme Court in the Texas affirmative action case, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the school's use of race in admissions "can make a difference [as] to whether an application is accepted or rejected." The question for the Court, as Kennedy put it, was whether, "drawing all…
In its final year, the Obama administration is ramping up efforts to impose regulatory expansions affecting large swaths of the economy. The next target: higher education. The administration is poised to create a college tuition death spiral—and students and taxpayers will pay the price.
"This is a win," protesters declared after three weeks occupying Seattle University's humanities college.
The ascendancy of London's new mayor eerily resembles the election of a "moderate" totalitarian Islamist president of France in Michel Houellebecq's painfully sharp, controversially timed satire Submission. Meanwhile, the ever-growing slate of campus outrages reflects a subtler, no less insidious…
On May 23, the University of Missouri posted a video vaguely affirming intentions to be more welcoming after a destructive year of identity politics took its toll on the Columbia campus.
On May 11th, an article ran in the New York Times' philosophy blog, "The Stone," which bore the title, "If Philosophy Won't Diversify, Let's Call It What It Really Is." If you missed it, you can read it here: Its authors, Jay L. Garfield (Yale-NUS College, Singapore) and Bryan W. Van Norden (Vassar…
A while back, the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof wrote that his fellow progressives "believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren't conservatives." Universities, he continued, "should be a hubbub of the full range of political…
Sexual assault is a disgusting act that has no place in any part of society, an institution of higher education or elsewhere. But efforts to eliminate it should not be manipulated to curtail freedom in the process.
In 2010, the Georgia Board of Regents voted to adopt two policies for five of the state's public universities. One would restrict in-state tuition to only lawful residents of the state of Georgia and the other restrict admission to lawful residents of the United States. By 2010, neighboring South…
The undergraduate course "Men in Literature" was taught eight times from 2005 to 2015 at Springfield College in Massachusetts. It drew healthy enrollments and was reviewed favorably by a large majority of the students who took it. In 2010, the course was formally approved by the college curriculum…
The Scrapbook is old enough to remember without fondness the astounding spectacle of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1987 leading Stanford University students chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho! Western culture's got to go!" The witless infantilism of the chant perfectly encapsulated its substantive content:…
Young voters love Bernie Sanders. According to entrance and exit polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders beat Hillary Clinton among voters under 30 by nearly six-to-one.
Another college president has caved. After months of protests at Ithaca College alleging campus leaders are indifferent to racism, President Tom Rochon announced in January he would be stepping down before the end of his contract.
At the University of Missouri, feminist professor Melissa Click cried out “I need some muscle over here!” to expel a reporter from the Concerned Student 1950 protest in a public quad. A more apt encapsulation of what conservatives feel ails academia—identity obsession, rights-curbing,…
Next month the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, one of the most important cases this term. In 2008 Fisher, a white high school senior in Texas, applied for admission to the university and was turned down. She sued the school, claiming that its…
The Obama administration—easily the most ideologically progressive in modern American history—has been accompanied by both liberal triumphalism and liberal outrage.
As you may have heard, the denizens of Princeton University are in a tizzy over the fact that the school's most famous alum, former president Woodrow Wilson, was a racist. This hasn't exactly been a secret all these years, but college students have apparently run out of more relevant things to be…
For decades, the American university system has been creeping towards both moral and intellectual bankruptcy. But the events last week at Yale and the University of Missouri suggest we are reaching a tipping point, and that campus culture is transitioning from painfully idiotic to wantonly…
Over the past few weeks, students at universities across America have been throwing temper tantrums at the prospect of free speech and open dialogue. On Tuesday, John Kerry justified the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and differentiated it from the Paris attacks, by saying there was "a rationale that you…
It was a story too good to check. The day after some 200 activist students at Vanderbilt University marched into the administration building to deliver their demands for more diversity and inclusivity to the school's chancellor, the reactionary forces on campus struck back in the most disgusting…
Every few years in the Northeast, biologist John Cooley gets famous—because he’s the man who discovered the mating secrets of one of the insect world’s weirdest and most-publicized species: Magicicada septendecim, the 17-year cicada. True to their name, and unlike the bottle-green “annual” cicadas…
Amherst Uprising—"a collective of students on campus who came together as a result of the sit-In organized in Frost Library on 11/12/15"—has delivered demands to their university president. Number five on their list is pretty illustrative how far off the deep end these student protesters are…
In his weekly address on September 12, President Obama touted the Department of Education’s new “College Scorecard,” the latest, greatest tool to help high school students and their families make informed (dare we say educated?) decisions when picking a college. The website offers students a means…
Nearly everyone recognizes that student debt has risen to a level that will be difficult to sustain, given the nation’s slow-growing economy and the sagging incomes of too many college-educated Americans. Nearly 40 million Americans carry some form of student debt; more than 7 million are in…
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell addressed the topic of higher education at a Shelby County Chamber of Commerce membership luncheon. Joe Arnold, political editor for WHAS-TV, tweeted some quotes from McConnell during the event.
A front-page story in Tuesday’s Washington Post examines former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s record on ending affirmative action for college admissions. Through a 2000 executive order, Bush banned racial preferences in Florida’s public universities and colleges. The move was controversial at the…
Scott Walker was never going to win fans among the faculty at the University of Wisconsin. Four years ago, Wisconsin professors were in the state capitol protesting the governor’s plans to limit public employee collective bargaining powers. But, boy, did he make enemies this month when he proposed…
The office of House speaker John Boehner has a Buzzfeed-style blog post featuring pop superstar Taylor Swift that attempts to respond to President Obama's proposal to offer Americans two years of free community college. Titled "12 Taylor Swift GIFs for you," the post employs the popular animated…
Since I wrote about Naomi Schaefer Riley being fired by the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday, the story has moved along somewhat.
Late last night, in a shameful example of editorial cowardice, the Chronicle of Higher Education fired Naomi Schaefer Riley. Naomi is a good friend of mine, a sometimes contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and a fine writer. And the story of what happened to her is highly instructive.
Students are riled up at Vanderbilt University, but not in anticipation of a basketball game.
Mary Ann Glendon begins her chapter on Rousseau by recounting the story of Napoleon’s visit to the grave of that worthy on the estate of the Marquis René Louis de Girardin at Ermenonville and saying, “It would have been better for the peace of France if this man had never lived.” When the marquis…
A care package drive for deployed U.S. troops is receiving national notice after a professor at Suffolk University Law School criticized the operation.
Via the Twitter feed of Fareed Zakaria, a brief snapshot into the terrifying future of higher education. Currently, more American students are majoring in visual and performing arts than engineering:
If you want a glimpse of the way Rick Perry operates as an executive and a politician, consider the issue of higher education reform in Texas, which no one in Texas knew was an issue until Perry decided to make it one.
Politico: "In money race, it’s advantage Democrats"
Hot Air: "Jay Carney: 'The White House doesn’t create jobs'"
Of course he does: "Obama Seeks to Win Back Wall St. Cash"
University of Illinois at Chicago professors Barbara Risman, William Bridges, and Anthony M. Orum write this letter to the editor in response to “Fat City: Thank you, Illinois taxpayers, for my cushy life,” which appeared in a recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:
After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than…
The Washington Post has a review up of the new book by Andrew Ferguson, Senior Editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The new book, Crazy U, tells the story of Ferguson's struggles getting his son through the college admissions process.
A shocking story in the New York Post today. At a hearing about whether ROTC should return to Columbia University now that Don't Ask Don't Tell has been repealed, students openly mocked a disabled Iraq war veteran arguing in favor of the program: