See Thru Edu is a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
Thomas K. Lindsay, Ph.D., Editor in Chief and Director, Center for Higher Education, Texas Public Policy Foundation
Even I have grown weary of the commentaries decrying the recent nuttiness on college campuses. I’ve certainly written my share of commentaries on all of this, but more recently have been focusing my thoughts on what we need to do to turn this situation around.
A college professor is supposed to teach his subject and serve as a role model for students, at least when it comes to civility and respect for the rights of others. Often, however, professors feel justified in engaging in behavior that wouldn’t be tolerated in children, as a recent case at Fresno State University shows.
The posters on cultural appropriation, the student demonstrations, the protests, the seminars ad nauseum are all the more pernicious in that their real damage is hidden.
If we really want to stop bias and high-handedness in higher education, we need to make less of the occasional outrages and focus more on the ordinary outlooks and activities of entire academic areas where tendentiousness and partisanship have become standard operating procedure.
In the end, Jacobson’s talk took place and amazingly enough, there were no neo-Nazis or white supremacists in evidence. The whole protest was based on fabrications.
Activists are disrupting lectures to protest “white supremacy,” but many students are taking steps to stop them.
Daniels assumed the Purdue presidency in 2013. In his quest to make college more affordable, he wasted no time.
When the indomitable high school math teacher Jaime Escalante took on the challenge of teaching tough inner-city kids mathematics, he did not fret about whether they would find the subject too “white” for them. He just taught the concepts and the students learned them.
Fun. It’s something the Left despises. With the über-fun holiday of Halloween just around the corner, what better way to ruin it than with university campaigns dedicated to “offensive costumes” and student temper tantrums over “cultural appropriation?”
If anybody can come up with a better way to tackle this problem of sustained disruption and violence, please do let us hear it.
