Universities
Campus free speech is a thing of the past
Not that long ago, the sorts of views that were verboten on a university campus were genuinely out-there and nasty:…
Universities don’t need to be lectured about racism
I’ve been contacted by a professor at a leading Russell Group university who is worried about the spread of progressive…
Adversity is the new diversity – and it disadvantages everyone
To clear up any confusion, American SATs are closer to A-levels than to British primary-school SATs. In my day, this…
Men are playing with fire by having drunken sex
It is late, on a wet Tuesday evening in November, and I am driving home, listening to endless talk of…
Why I hate ‘the n-word’
One of the depressing aspects of writing a column attuned to social hypocrisy is so rarely running short of new…
Free speech is officially dead in British universities
When I first read about plans for a new academic periodical called The Journal of Controversial Ideas, I got the…
Sending more people to uni isn’t the answer
Imagine a world where employers judged applicants solely on their dress. Anyone in frayed clothes or scuffed shoes would never…
The neo-Marxist takeover of our universities
According to Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, America’s universities have succumbed to ‘safetyism’, whereby students are protected from anything that…
Our great universities are struggling – but not because of Brexit
British universities have serious problems. The recent strikes protesting against a sudden reduction in pension rights were unusually effective, and…
You can’t beat Corbyn with Miliband – but the Tories are trying to anyway
Tuition fees have all but killed the Liberal Democrats. The breach of their manifesto pledge to abolish the charges, compounded…
The curious star appeal of Jordan Peterson
Last Sunday night a capacity crowd of mainly young people packed into the Emmanuel Centre in London. Those who couldn’t…
Letters: the tyranny of ‘equality of outcome’ in education
Equality of outcome Sir: Rod Liddle exposes some deep flaws in the way children are prepared to play their part…
Letters
In defence of General Lee Sir: In your leader ‘America’s identity crisis’ (19 August) you state that ‘When General Lee…
Varsity blues
A vast cohort of bright young things have secured their university places with A-level success this week. But things are…
Generation Snowflake: how we train our kids to be censorious cry-babies
Another week, another spate of barmy campus bans and ‘safe space’ shenanigans by a new breed of hyper–sensitive censorious youth.…
British universities are whipping up a mad boom that’s bound to go bust
Town halls and unringfenced government departments are feeling the pinch, but one corner of British public life is conspicuously flush.…
Michael Dobbs’s diary: Talking House of Cards with President Xi
I’m a lucky man. My novel House of Cards transformed my life, yet I wrote it almost by accident nearly…
The tangled story of dreadlocks, from Milton to YouTube
‘Why are you filming this?’ ‘For everyone’s safety.’ Those are the last words in a 46-second video that was watched…
Stepford students’ new target: other Stepford students
In 1793, on the eve of the Terror in France, the royalist journalist Mallet du Pan coined the adage ‘The…
In defence of discrimination
David Cameron has accused universities of being xenophobic, racist and prejudiced against the poor. He is too much of a…
Corbyn's purge of the Oxbridge set
Labour was once the clever party. Under Jeremy Corbyn, its front bench is purged of Oxbridge intellectuals
There’s too much bunkum talked about the arts and education
At the last minute, a friend invited me to a ‘Distinguished Speakers Dinner’ at the Oxford and Cambridge Club earlier…
What Scottish professors have to fear from Nicola Sturgeon’s power grab
In the grounds of Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University stands a one-tonne sculpture. Roughly hewn and about five feet high, it carries…
Edmund de Waal’s diary: Selling nothing, and why writers need ping-pong
On the top landing of the Royal Academy is the Sackler Sculpture Corridor, a long stony shelf of torsos of…
What I’ve learned helping to found a specialist free school
King’s College London Mathematics School is precisely one year old. And on 13 August it woke up to AS-level results…
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