Diversity Will Cure Our Ills!
Here is a recent announcement at Cal State Chico:
Conversations on Diversity – Spring 2012
As you begin preparing your coursework for Spring, please consider incorporating Conversations on Diversity into your syllabus and encouraging your students to attend. The Conversations on Diversity series (COD) focuses on the complexities of group and individual identities and how they influence one another. The gatherings provide a safe space for members of the campus community to consider the often sensitive issues surrounding identity. COD has been the committee’s attempt to expose and treat the various ills we see reflected on our campus and in our community–xenophobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, classism, ignorance, apathy, etc., as well as celebrate our differences.The series will be held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in BMU 210 on 2/22,3/7,3/28,4/11,4/25 (COD Awards). Themes and topics will be announced soon.
Aggressive Anti-Bullying Crusade Gathers Steam
What exactly is “bullying?” I once thought I knew, but that was long, long ago and far, far away. I could never be quite precise, but I wouldn’t have thought that the idea comprehended activity like eye-rolling, “teasing” or criticizing politicians online.
Well, get ready, because as CEI’s Hans Bader argues here, there’s a whole host of eager anti-bullying enforcers who haven’t yet found any limits to “bullying,” and they aim to protect us from a purported epidemic that’s sweeping the country.
Most of what Bader describes comes from the K-12 context, although even there, he indicates that some major concerns have arisen with respect to freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
But you just know that it can’t be very long before the anti-bullying bullies show up on college campuses already awash in sensitivity training, speech and harassment codes, kangaroo-court judicial procedures, anonymous accusations and knee-jerk administrations eager to jump in head first. You can easily imagine how the “anti-bullying” surge is likely to play out in this environment.
SCOTUS Strikes Down Raced-Based Redistricting in Texas
Word came late yesterday that the US Supreme Court had unanimously reversed three lower-court decisions ordering Texas to reconfigure in-state legislative boundaries along racial lines. Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity expalins the specifics here. As he notes, it’s beyond irony that the 1965 Voting Rights Act, intended to outlaw racial segregation once and for all, was invoked in these cases to effectively mandate it.
Although this decision is not directly concerned with academic matters, it’s obviously of interest to us in light of another Texas case, Fisher v. Texas, for which we’ve signed onto an amicus brief petitioning the SC to reverse a lower court’s upholding the use of race-based admissions in the University of Texas. To date, the SC has not granted certiorari, and you can’t assume that because the court issued this decision today, it will follow suit and accept the Fisher appeal tomorrow.
Still, we’re moderately hopeful that the court will do so, and reverse or at least trim back its unfortunate ruling in the 2003 Grutter case, which was not a good day for opponents of racial preferences.
U Florida Students Practice Civil Debate
Photo by Inside Higher Ed
Inside Higher Ed reports that the University of Florida is conducting an experiment worthy of a marketplace of ideas. With a $3 million grant from the Knight Foundation, the University recently put up a “Civil Debate Wall”: five wall-mounted touch screens with questions about controversial topics, such as “Is wealth distributed fairly in the United States?” Student passers-by have the opportunity to respond in short opinion statements. A camera overhead snaps a headshot, and the person’s response, picture, and first name go up on a screen.
It seems like a good idea for getting students accustomed to an attitude of respectful debate on a college campus. Ann Henderson, the university staff member who established the wall, told Inside Higher Ed she hopes it will help students learn to take a stand on hot-button issues but to do it with courtesy:
“We’re trying to say you can disagree with somebody, you can do it civilly, you can do it with respect,” she said.
That’s especially important, she said, at a time when political issues are polarizing and debate can be bitter. “At the end of the day, it’s not just about being polite,” Henderson said, “it’s about how to function in a democracy when you believe that and I believe this.”
Law Schools Under Critical Scrutiny
Legal education, with its ever heftier tuition, is getting a hard critical look from those in the know these days, and here’s a couple of them who don’t like what they see at all.
In this piece, Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute describes how trendy ideologies, such as feminism, “critical legal studies” or globalization have displaced traditional legal subjects such as property or torts, leaving law school graduates unprepared for their bar exams and actual legal practice.
Over at Minding the Campus, Charlotte Allen examines the growing controversy over allegations that law schools, even some in the top-tier, have been fudging job-placement statistics with respect to their recent graduates, many of whom end up stuck with debts of 100K or more.
As Bader has argued previously, it may be past time to think about abandoning the current iron-clad requirement that all candidates for the bar exam must first obtain a law degree. All of that steep tuition, only to find out that your “legal education” hasn’t prepared you anyway? As he concludes, there’s got to be another way, and I have to think that a lot recent law graduates would agree.
The Coming Assault on Beadledom
That’s the title of this review over at Phi Beta Cons by NAS board member Thomas Lindsay.
It assesses The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why it Matters, a new book by Benjamin Ginsberg also reviewed last August by Peter Wood at this site.
What catches Lindsay’s eye is the role of administrative expansion in driving up the costs of higher education, as layer upon layer of managerial types continue to proliferate, even in times of budgetary shortfalls.
Are Outside Donors Dangerous to Academe?
That is the question Scott Walter addresses in today’s Pope Center Clarion Call. He argues that the claimed threat to “academic freedom” if outsiders get to have any influence over the curriculum and the faculty is imaginary, and gives some interesting cases to support his point.
Far Worse Than Mere Dumbing-Down
In this essay on Minding the Campus, emeritus professor Robert Weissberg delivers a powerful indictment of the idea embraced by the American Political Science Association that knowledge is race-based and political science must adapt by changing its standards.
This shows just how far the race hustlers have gone in (as Tom Wolfe put it) “mau-mauing” the American university.
John Stossel Interviews Illinois Affiliate Head Jonathan Bean
You can watch our Illinois affiliate president Jonathan Bean here, as he discusses the role of business in breaking down racial barriers.
Jonathan is professor of history at Southern Illinois University, where he has frequently defended academic freedom and free speech.
His newest book is the anthology Race & Liberty in America.
Manhattan Institute/Pope Center Debate Yesterday
Yesterday, the Manhattan Institute and the Pope Center sponsored a debate over higher ed. The question was, “Do Too Many People Go to College?” I argued the affirmative and Peter Sacks the negative. You can read our prepared statements here.
One notable aspect of the debate, I think, was the continuing confidence of Sacks (and other defenders of the higher-ed establishment) in what “the research shows” on the purported “returns to higher education.” Nobody is paid just for having sat through courses — with the exception of a few government employees who get automatic raises if they complete various degrees. People are paid for using productive skills. If you learn something that improves your productive skills, you stand to earn a return on that education. The trouble is that for a large percentage of American college students, what work they do in college does little or nothing to enhance their productivity. What sense does it make to talk about “the return to education” for a college grad with weak basic skills and a job serving coffee?
NAS.org articles
- Collegiate Press Roundup Glenn Ricketts
- Two Styles of Academic Leadership Abraham H. Miller
- Civics Lessons Peter Wood
- Capitalism and Western Civilization - The Founding William H. Young
- Games of Chance Peter Wood
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