Professors Do Live in Fear—But Not of Liberal Students
The myth of the radically leftist university is a culture-war staple, neatly appealing to anti-intellectualism, fear of youth, and fear of change—conservatism, in other words. It's also proven, of...
View ArticleI Had the “Least Meaningful Job in America”—and I Loved It
“No one’s parent looks down at the crib of their newborn child and says, ‘God, I wish my son or daughter grows up to be a parking lot attendant.’” This is what Harper Hellems, one of the parking lot...
View ArticleThe Trigger Warning Myth
In The Atlantic's latest cover story, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt insinuate that trigger warnings and "vindictive protectiveness" are be
View ArticleThe Rehabilitationists
In November 2013, a who’s who of America’s conservative legal establishment descended on the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., for an annual meeting of the Federalist Society, the most influential...
View ArticleCracking the Cartel
For 80 years, the Heisman Trophy has been awarded annually to the college football player “whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity.” Athletes from the University of...
View ArticleLust for Learning
My freshman American literature course presented me with many revelations, but one of the most indelible happened not inside the auditorium classroom where, twice a week, our professor stood onstage in...
View ArticleThink Out Loud
Twenty years ago, less than two years after I’d received my doctorate in religion from Princeton, I appeared with Cornel West, Derrick Bell, and bell hoo
View ArticleStanley Hoffmann Was One of the Great Professors of Our Time
Stanley Hoffmann, the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor emeritus at Harvard, died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this weekend after
View ArticleCollege Students Have Forgotten How to Fight the System
I can’t say that I was surprised when I heard that the latest chapter of our perpetual conversation about campus politics was playing out at Wesleyan University. Having spent my childhood there, I knew...
View ArticleThe Case Against Free College
In the United States, as in much of the rest of the world, college students receive three kinds of public benefits: tuition subsidies, living grants, and public loans. Through various combinations of...
View ArticleHow Many Hours Would It Take You to Work Off Today's College Tuition?
Politicians like to say, “I worked my way through college” to prove their work ethic. But four decades ago, a year of tuition could be worked off in a summer. Compared with today’s kids, they had it...
View Article"Think Out Loud," Hosted by the New Republic
In the New Republic's fall issue, contributing editor and Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson explores how the emerging black intelligentsia is embracing soc
View ArticleIs Sex Serious? College Women Won’t Be Satisfied Until They Decide.
I had been studying abroad in England for about a year when I finally got around to sorting through the orientation materials for my graduate program at Brown University. To my surprise, I was required...
View ArticleThe Vanished World of ‘Stoner’
Fifty years ago this November, in a half-full gymnasium at Southwest Texas State, Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law a bill that aimed to transform American higher education. The Higher Education Act of...
View ArticleVirgil, Hey
Ah me! I find myself middle-aged divorced lostIn the forest dark of my failures mortgage & slack breastsIt’s hard to admit nobody wants to do me anymoreNot even Virgil will lead me down...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The British Museum’s ‘Looting’ Problem
This weekend, headlines across the internet announced that the British Museum was to “return looted antiquities to Iraq.” Eight tiny artifacts, some of them 5,000 years old, were handed to Iraqi...
View ArticleViral Ads Don’t Guarantee Victory
On Twitter, where his handle is @IronStache, Randy Bryce seems like he’s already the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district—retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan’s seat. He isn’t....
View ArticleA New Golden Age for Trophy Hunters
President Donald Trump’s proposal last month to weaken the Endangered Species Act has sparked a familiar debate. Environmentalists say he’s shilling for the fossil fuel and logging industries, which...
View ArticleWhat France Means When It Talks About ‘Anti-Semitism’
“They spit when I walked in the street,” Joanna Galilli, 28, a French Jew, told the New York Times late last month. She, like many Jews in recent years, had left a suburb of Paris to move to the 17th...
View ArticleTV’s True Crime Voyeurism Reaches Its Crude End
American culture is in love with murder. It has always been this way: People like watching killers cavort in the movies, and trashy true-crime documentaries pull in the numbers. There’s a whole network...
View Article