In 1983, having spent four years earning a PhD in English, I instantly turned down the reasonably secure entry-level faculty position my alma mater offered me and chose instead to sign up for that most financially insecure of all professions:…
Societies advance through the creation, expression, and evaluation of alternative ideas. Therefore, for almost a millennium, we have had universities where ideas and discoveries are born and different perspectives are debated in “marketplaces of ideas” or “learning communities.” Yet there…
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. — Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night In the 21st…
Despite some welcome pushback from Elon Musk at Twitter, cancel culture continues to be all the rage. There are many ways of canceling someone apart from banning them on Twitter and all of them and some have been tried on…
My name has now been added to the long and depressing list of high-profile academic “cancellations.” I recently resigned my tenured position at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, due to an episode — sadly typical of American higher education…
Last year was a bad year for academia. Every week, the Chronicle for Higher Education documented faculty disillusionment, student anxiety, staff burnout, and the lingering censorial snitch culture that thrives on COVID. Yes, 2022 was full of high-profile disappointments, from…
Abandoning almost all pretenses of scholarly inquiry and academic rigor, Arizona State University opened a new center this fall semester dedicated to telling the story of Muslims in America. Called the Center of Muslim Experience in the US (CME-US), it…
Against the Tide: The Best of Roger Scruton’s Columns, Commentaries, and Criticism By Roger Scruton (Bloomsbury Continuum, 256 pages, $28) Nearly everything in this collection originally appeared in a newspaper or a magazine, among these the one you are holding…
“Disinvitation season” used to be a season when student activists worked to disinvite usually conservative commencement speakers. Now it’s “cancel culture” — a year-round 24/7 pursuit to muzzle all who fail to embrace ideological purity. The internet enables people with…
