Category: Education (higher ed)
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No More Legacy Admissions in Virginia
by James A. Bacon Bills to ban preferential treatment for relatives of alumni at Virginia’s public universities flew through the 2024 session of the General Assembly in remarkable time. In a legislature marked by intense partisan divisions, companion bills passed subcommittees, committees, and the full Senate and the House of Delegates on unanimous votes. According…
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Scott Surovell’s End Run Around Jason Miyares
by James A. Bacon The battle for control of higher-ed institutions in Virginia is boiling over into the state legislature. Senator Scott Surovell, D-Mount Vernon, has submitted a bill, SB 506, that would allow Virginia’s public universities to hire their own legal counsel in place of lawyers answering to the Attorney General. The bill would…
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The Most Woke Universities in Virginia
by James A. Bacon Borrowing a methodology from a Harvard computer science prof, Jay Greene and Mike Gonzales with The Heritage Foundation have calculated a wokeness ranking for Virginia’s public universities: the number of times “social justice” appears in a university’s course catalog. Measured by the absolute number of “social justice” mentions, James Madison University…
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“Enacting Racial Change by Design”
by James A. Bacon The backlash against Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in higher-ed and the corporate world may be gathering momentum across the country, but the University of Virginia is rolling out a new DEI initiative oblivious to the shift in the national mood. UVA’s College of Arts & Sciences has launched a program this…
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VMI Loses DEI Court Case: a Win-Win Situation
by Jake Spivey In Virginia’s ever-shifting landscape of diversity, equity, or opportunity, and inclusion, a powerful decision has been made. Following the sensational, yet unproven, allegations of exceptionally bad behavior and poor leadership at Virginia Military Institute in late autumn 2019, the administration and Board of Visitors attempted to quickly effect conclusive actions that would…
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Pleasure Activism at JMU’s Queer Teach-In
by Stu Smith On October 4th 2023, Adrienne Maree Brown presented her work on Pleasure Activism at JMU as part of a Queer Teach-in. This Teach-in was hosted by JMU’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. As you will soon hear from JMU’s Coordinator for Cultural and Affinity Spaces, Kwyn Riley, “This conversation serves as…
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Look What UVA Is Hiding
by James A. Bacon Acting on behalf of The Jefferson Council, Walter Smith has filed a complaint in Henrico County against the University of Virginia, seeking a remedy for its refusal to supply documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Smith serves in a volunteer capacity as chair of the Council’s research committee. The suit…
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What Does UVA Need in a University President?
by James A. Bacon For anyone following governance issues at the University of Virginia, Bill Ackman’s Twitter broadside against Harvard’s now- dethroned president Claudine Gay and its governing board is must reading. Ackman, the hedge-fund manager-turned-activist who spearheaded Gay’s overthrow, identifies serious systemic problems at Harvard, from its ponderous DEI bureaucracy to a tuition policy…
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Nooses, Masks and Double Standards
by James A. Bacon In the fall of 2022 a furtive figure was caught on videotape draping a noose around the Homer statue on the Grounds of the University of Virginia. The university administration immediately declared the act a hate crime. University police launched an investigation, enlisting the FBI to help in the search for…
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A Hostile Environment for Jews
by James A. Bacon Matan Goldstein is a rarity at the University of Virginia — a Jewish student unafraid to openly defend Israel in its war with Hamas and oppose Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a pro-Palestinian group that praised Hamas’ October 7 terror attacks on Israeli citizens. The Israeli student has appeared on…
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Virginia Child Victims in the Left’s War on the Enlightenment and Science
by James C. Sherlock Modern progressivism is religion, defined by Webster as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.” The critical theory progressive, that is to say the modern American progressive, rejects proudly and publicly, root and branch, both the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolutions of the 16th through…
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W&L Students Trained in Privilege, Identity, and Intersectionality
Once upon a time university students spent their college years, to use the vernacular of the time, “finding themselves.” It was a journey they undertook on their own by sampling from a wide range of courses, experimenting with sex, alcohol and drugs, and floating ideas — and shooting them down — in dormitory bull sessions.…
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Standards of Learning, Educational Reform and the Blob
by James C. Sherlock Readers opine that I am throwing ideas into institutional quicksand when advocating for education reforms. But I hope not. For example, in my most recent series I have suggested that Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) process needs fundamental reform with the integration of learning and teaching standards. Critics have written with…
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How Unbiased Is UVa’s Religious-Diversity Task Force?
by James A. Bacon The University of Virginia task forced assigned the job of ensuring that UVa is “welcoming” to all religions includes two faculty members who signed an open letter criticizing UVa President Jim Ryan for failing after the October 7 terrorist rampage afflicted upon Israel to acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinian people.…
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The Asymmetrical Application of Free-Speech Principles
by James A. Bacon Clifford S. Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management, did a masterful job of distilling the free-speech debate on college campuses to its essence. Though he had in mind the disastrous testimony of the three Ivy League presidents last week regarding Palestinians and Jews, his Wall Street Journal op-ed describes the dilemma…