Universities
The proof that free speech in universities is in peril
About 18 months ago, I attended a debate at Policy Exchange, the think tank founded by Nick Boles, Francis Maude…
Why do we still struggle to see Xi’s China as a threat?
Why do we still struggle to see Xi’s China as a threat?
Open letters have become ransom notes
In the States, the ‘open letter’ is enjoying quite the formal renaissance. Curiously, recent examples of this newly popular epistolary…
The lost boys: the white working class is being left behind
Britain’s forgotten demographic
What would it mean to ‘decolonise’ the Classics?
Can the Classics escape the grip of their past?
What should you charge for a virtual conference?
From time to time, every industry must adapt to some inconvenient technological advance. Suddenly, some part of what you offer…
The perils of owning an erotic Nazi toy
My parents told me that their wartime childhoods were punctuated by the expression: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’…
Six weeks is too long for an election campaign
The number of parties represented in national election debate multiplies. There are now seven crowding on to television podiums and…
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
We’re training our children to be thin-skinned, censorious and belligerently entitled
British universities are whipping up a mad boom that’s bound to go bust
British higher education is in a boom that’s bound to go bust
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…
