Higher Education

Self-impressed with its own cultivated “weirdness,” the college town of Austin, Texas, is a blue redoubt in a red state, so it’s no surprise that some students vulgarly protested the state’s concealed-carry law, which now allows concealed handguns to be carried on campus. New York Times reporter Dave Philipps couldn’t get enough of it, celebrating the protest in Thursday’s edition: “Texas…

As the fall semester begins, parents, students, taxpayers and donors should be made aware of official college practices that should disgust us all. Hampshire College will offer some of its students what the school euphemistically calls "identity-based housing." That's segregated housing for students who -- because of their race, culture, gender or sexual orientation -- have "historically…

The front page of Friday’s New York Times featured a welcome report by Anemona Hartocollis on how alumni aversion to left-wing protests and the squelching of free speech on campus is starting to hit those elite alma maters right in the pocketboo: “Amid College Protests, Alumni Are Less Fond and Less Giving." Hartocollis’ prominently placed article is a welcome corrective to the paper’s usual…

Hillary Clinton’s proposal to spend $350 billion on “affordable” tuition may have been outrageous, but at least it provoked some poignant comments on the pitfalls of big government.

Penn State prof Sophia McClennen, a Bernie Sanders backer, really dislikes Hillary Clinton. “We are literally watching the Clinton campaign drain any claim to nuance, critical thinking, reasoned logic, and attention to facts from the Democratic party,” alleged McClennen in a recent screed for Salon. “The fact that Clinton is now the favorite of many on the right...should be evidence enough of a…

In a Monday piece, the writer who goes by Doctor RJ dismissed opponents of the PC agenda as “white conservatives” who believe they’re being victimized by “a thought-policing left,” whereas in reality “this is not a situation where people are being silenced from expressing an opinion.” As the Doctor sees it, “When we break the political correctness argument down, it’s really about idiots wanting…

In a remarkable "Who do they think they're kidding?" exercise seen on Thursday, a New York Times editorial cited the findings of a Federal Reserve study released in late May showing that 76 millions are, in the Fed's words, "struggling to get by" or "just getting by." Gosh, I wonder why? The Times apparently wants readers to believe that these conditions couldn't possibly have anything to do…

Our public schools have for decades served not as education facilities - but as social services and indoctrination centers.  From which the average graduate can’t read the diploma they're handed - but they can roll a condom on a banana.  Where people are brainwashed into preferring failed-everywhere socialism over wealth-producing capitalism - but are blithering, blinkered boobs when asked why…

New York Times veteran liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof is usually good for one or two iconoclastic columns a year that make his usual fans petulant and his conservative critics grin. This year the two are on the same subject: Liberal intolerance in academe. His latest column in the Sunday Review is a follow-up to his May 8 surprise, which drew outrage from liberals aghast at the idea that…

In a Thursday morning column at Salon.com, leftist and longtime social critic Camille Paglia found it amusing that the New York Times thought that its supposedly major exposé about "a boastful, millionaire New Yorker (who) liked the company of beautiful women" was going to be considered big, game-changing news. In Paglia's view, the fact that the people at the Times believed they had something…

Universities have generated countless breakthroughs in science, technology, and medicine. Then there’s the product of higher education that Kevin Drum discussed in a Saturday post: “The first concrete movement toward gender-neutral bathrooms started at universities. Now it's becoming mainstream. Good work, idealistic college kids!" Drum remarked that some current campus obsessions -- “safe…

Mark Ruffalo makes a better Hulk than a commencement speaker. The Oscar nominee best known for his role in The Avengers, Shutter Island, and Spotlight, addressed this year’s graduates from Ringling College of Art and Design yesterday.

Most black politicians, ministers, civil rights advocates and professionals support Hillary Clinton's quest for the presidency. Whoever becomes the next president, whether it's a Democrat or Republican, will mean little or nothing in terms of solutions to major problems that confront many black people. We've already seen that even a black president means little or nothing. Politics and political…

Some on the left claim that Donald Trump is an ideological descendant of Ronald Reagan, never mind that Reagan was Mr. Conservative and Trump is Mr. Opportunist. Paul Campos, from the University of Colorado, makes a different Trump-as-heir-to-Reagan argument. In a Thursday Salon article, Campos opined that the Reagan revolution was less about right-wing views than “stupidity, celebrity, and…