The dangerous rise of ‘Chinese Bezique’
In one of Joseph Conrad’s early stories he mentions an old seaman who delighted in a card game he called…
The education of Zohran Mamdani
Zohran Kwame Mamdani, having secured the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor, is in the national spotlight. At the…
How Harvard lost America
President Trump’s proclamation, “Enhancing National Security by Addressing Risks at Harvard University,” pays a compliment to that crossroads of brilliance…
The fight to make science great again
If one were looking for dismal assessments of the Trump administration’s contributions to the vitality of American intellectual inquiry, the…
Anna Peterson’s New York Times article has restored my faith
Are contemporary faculty members at risk from false accusations made by supporters of Governor DeSantis? Or more generally President Trump? Has…
The unforgiving history of student loans
Republicans in the House are considering a bill to make major changes in federal student loans for college, and President…
The Trump administration is giving us excellence, not equity
Americans are not a naturally gloomy people. We don’t necessarily expect things to go our way, but when they don’t,…
What the Singer Sewing Machine teaches us about student loan repayment
The Singer Sewing Machine Company is credited – that’s the right word – with popularizing the idea of the installment…
Harvard against America
This is drumming season. That’s the time of year when the woodpeckers stake out their territories by tapping out tattoos…
Luigi Mangione’s bad education
Luigi Mangione is officially the “suspect” in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but he is plainly the culprit,…
Minouche Shafik and the great tragicomedy of Diversity in our time
Minouche Shafik has reigned as president of Columbia University. Culture wars, like the kind involving actual armies, have casualties. Shafik…
The fight for civilization in higher education
The idea that Western civilization ushered in an age of oppression, cultural destruction, environmental degradation and all manner of human…
The perils of Harvard and Claudine Gay
History sometimes rhymes. You can’t expect things to work out the same way every time. But sometimes events are so nearly…
Claudine Gay’s way with words
Claudine Gay is a self-declared “transformational” president of Harvard University. She campaigned for the job by promising to retire the…
Behind the anger of the young American Hamas apologists
“Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath,” opens Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Iliad. The goddess Homer summoned isn’t named,…
The shrinking lifespan of the college president
Twenty-five years ago I published an essay titled “Dogfish.” It was not about the little sharks that skim along the…
The slow death of ‘balanced literacy’
To start a fire, you need a match, something that burns and air. So to speak. If you don’t have…
Disinfo-nation: the new censorship is here to stay
Lying is the great American pastime. We’ve been at it ever since some of the Pilgrim fathers shined on some…
The virtue-signaling behind the renaming of the Middlebury College chapel
Early on the morning of September 27, 2021, Middlebury College president Laurie Patton had a stone bearing the name of…
In defense of cranky professors
Thanks to a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, firing faculty members for “lack of collegiality” is suddenly…
Shakespeare in black and white
Sarah Karim-Cooper first came to public attention at the cosmetics counter. Her book on makeup in Renaissance theater, Cosmetics in Shakespearean…
Stanford’s Marc Tessier-Lavigne and the messiness of modern science
The president of Stanford University, neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has resigned in the shadow of an investigation that revealed that some…
Why legacy students aren’t a civil rights issue
I just caught the news that four pages in a notebook dated 2014 and stuffed into a couch cushion have…
A better way to go to college: at sea
I have been pondering ways to rescue young Americans from the trouble and often the waste of the four-year undergraduate…
Why the Supreme Court’s Harvard decision matters
The decision is all anybody can talk about. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s the banner headline in the New York…
