BY HANK REICHMAN Proponents of the “completion agenda,” which strives to ensure that more students graduate from college, often fail to recognize a major reason that students fail to succeed or drop out: food insecurity and hunger. The problem has been highlighted on this blog (see, for examples, here and here) and by a growing…
BY ROBERT BIONAZ After four-plus years, our First Amendment lawsuit against the unethical practices of the lead defendant, former Chicago State University president Wayne Watson, finally ended with the school agreeing to pay $650,000 in attorney’s fees and damages. Additionally, Chicago State likely paid close to $1 million to the private law firm that defended…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and the co-author of the infamous recent “Sokal Squared” hoax against academic journals, was “found by his institutional review board to have committed research misconduct,” according to Inside Higher Ed. Some people wrongly think that Boghossian is guilty of fraud…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT The ongoing controversy surrounding the Confederate statue known as “Silent Sam” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has raised many issues relating to inclusivity and free expression. But as administrators have sought over the past month to find ways to lay the issue to rest, the controversy has…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at New York University, and Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), have written a new book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Haidt and…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School of Economics, was having a quiet sabbatical, spending it as a visiting scholar at Northwestern University, until someone looked up his many controversial writings. Now a petition signed by more than 4,400 (and supported by the Daily Northwestern editorial board) is demanding “Ban…
BY MARTIN KICH Business Insider reports: Many citizens and businesses around China have reportedly been forbidden to celebrate or put up decorations for Christmas this year. Local authorities appear to be following President Xi Jinping’s burgeoning war against religion and what it considers foreign influences. China’s Communist Party is officially atheist and is increasingly clamping…
BY THE FREDONIA UNIVERSITY SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE The following is the text of a resolution issued today by the Executive Committee of the State University of New York at Fredonia Senate Executive Committee on behalf of the Fredonia University Senate. Resolution in Support of a New Deal for SUNY and CUNY Fredonia University Senate Executive…
BY HANK REICHMAN Recently a minor brouhaha has emerged over the “Chicago Principles,” shorthand for the University of Chicago’s 2015 “Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression.” The Principles have been endorsed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and several dozen universities, but dismissed as a “marketing ploy” by others. Then,…
BY HANK REICHMAN In an opinion piece posted today on The Hill, Varsha Koduvayur, a senior research analyst specializing in Gulf States issues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute, argues that the Matthew Hedges affair “should be a wake-up call for universities.” Hedges is a British researcher who last…