In 2011, I taught a college class on the meaning and value of work. It was a general-education class, the sort that students say they have to “get out of the way” before they move on to their major courses. Few of the students were avid readers, and many held …
Read More »Top Law Firms Shrink From the Heat of the Mideast Conflict
Late in January, Katherine Franke, a prominent Columbia Law School professor and active supporter of the Palestinian cause, appeared on television to talk about a rally demanding divestment from Israel that had taken place on the steps of Low Library a few days before. What marked this protest from the …
Read More »Biden Administration Floats Student Loan Relief for Borrowers Facing Hardship
The Biden administration has proposed another student debt relief plan for eight million people who cannot repay their loans because of “financially devastating hardships,” Miguel A. Cardona, the secretary of education, said on Friday. The proposal, which will almost certainly face legal challenges, builds on the administration’s strategy of finding …
Read More »Philip Zimbardo, 91, Whose Stanford Prison Experiment Studied Evil, Dies
Philip G. Zimbardo, a towering figure in social psychology who explored how good people turn evil in the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, which devolved into chaos after college students acting as guards started abusing other students acting as prisoners, died on Oct. 14 at his home in San Francisco. He …
Read More »Opinion | Finger-Pointing if Trump Beats Harris
More from our inbox: Deluged in PennsylvaniaSpeech on CampusThe Fight Against Malaria To the Editor: Re “If Trump Wins, Who, or What, Will Liberals Blame?,” by Bret Stephens (column, Oct. 23): I can answer Mr. Stephens’s query about who or what liberals will blame should Donald Trump win the presidential …
Read More »Freshman Enrollment Appears to Decline for the First Time Since 2020
Freshman enrollment dropped more than 5 percent from last year at American colleges and universities, the largest decline since 2020 when Covid-19 and distance learning upended higher education, according to preliminary data released on Wednesday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, a nonprofit education group. The finding comes roughly …
Read More »Professors in Trouble Over Protests Wonder if Academic Freedom Is Dying
Maura Finkelstein, an anthropology professor at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, was an avid poster on social media. She called a fund-raiser for the Israeli war effort “students raising money for genocide,” and she frequently ended her posts with the words “Free Palestine.” After complaints, federal civil rights investigators and the …
Read More »Opinion | I Don’t Want to Live in a Monoculture, and Neither Do You
Few things can change your perspective for the better more than being attacked from both sides of America’s culture war. If you think the left is uniquely intolerant, how do you process right-wing censorship? Or if you think the right is uniquely prone to political violence, how do you process …
Read More »Opinion | College Officials Must Condemn On-Campus Support for Hamas Violence
Although college campuses are much quieter this fall than they were last spring, some of the anti-Israel language at some schools is frightening in its celebration of Hamas’s violence. What feels different is the repeated glorification of the Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 people last year on Oct. 7 …
Read More »Zumba Teacher? ‘Anti-Woke’ Cleric? 38 Candidates Line Up to Head Oxford University
One is an Anglican clergyman who presents himself as the “anti-woke candidate.” Another is a left-wing activist who boasts that he has never “invaded any Middle Eastern countries.” Still another is a Zumba teacher who says her cardio training would help her face the rigors of the job. These are …
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