Philip W. Semas, president and editor in chief of the Chronicle of Higher Education, is irritated at the Wall Street Journal. On May 9, the Journal ran an editorial castigating the Chronicle for "craven-ness" in firing conservative blogger (and former Wall Street Journal editor) Naomi Schaefer Riley. She had argued in the Chronicle that college black-studies programs are little more than 60'-style radical advocacy and ought to be eliminated. What is fascinating about Semas's complaint, expressed in a four-paragraph letter published yesterday in the Journal, is that it continues a process of quietly shifting the reason for the firing away from Riley's supposed failure to meet "the Chronicle's basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles" (as a statement by Chronicle editor Liz McMillen declared). The likely reason for this shift: the Chronicle had never communicated any standards to its bloggers, as several media reporters have pointed out.

Continue reading "The Chronicle Can't Seem to Get its Story Straight" »

A new report from Demos, a policy and advocacy center, titled The Great Cost Shift: How Higher Education Cuts Undermine the Future Middle Class "examines how state disinvestment in public higher education over the past two decades has shifted costs to students and their families."

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Why did the Chronicle of Higher Education fire Naomi Schaefer Riley? Writing on the American Thinker site, Abraham Miller offers a deft and elegantly phrased explanation: "for revealing what almost everyone on any campus knows, but is reluctant to say, about black studies: it is a political cause masquerading as an academic discipline, and if there were real intellectual, and not political, standards on campus, it would be shut down."

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The removal of Naomi Shaefer Riley from the blogging staff of the Chronicle of Higher Education has been widely circulated in the cybersphere and the press, including Riley's own account in the Wall Street Journal and many of our own contributors at Minding the Campus. All of them understand the psycho-political dynamics behind the whole affair, but people unfamiliar with the social climate of higher education may not understand how Riley could have provoked such a harsh and voluminous reaction from the academic community, albeit given her provocative post.

Continue reading "The Insecurity of Black Studies" »

One of the finest virtues of mindingthecampus.com, in addition to its willingness to permit me to speak my mind on many matters, is its mix of insiders and outsiders who comment about this crazy quilt called academia. The word itself is interesting - Merriam-Webster online reports its first use in 1946, which leaves over two thousand years for the now less-used academe with the quaint reminder in the OED: "The best academe, a mother's knee." Indeed, the best academe has been a subject of intense debate for as long as something like it has existed, though, I reckon that mothers know best that sometimes you have to step back and take a deep breath.

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The controversy over the Chronicle essay by Naomi Schaefer Riley provided an unusually rich insight into the mindset of defenders of the academic status quo. Over and over again, Riley's critics advocated either a blatant double standard or transparently absurd positions. Take a few examples:

On the double-standard front, in a twitter exchange with FIRE's Adam Kissel and me, Indiana (PA) professor John Wesley Lowery criticized Riley on the following grounds: Riley's "essays were intellectually dishonest. A. [Readers should] know field is worthless by reading dissertations B. I didn't."

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Mona Charen, The Corner

This is a test of integrity. Naomi Schaefer Riley has been fired by the Chronicle of Higher Education for expressing views that some liberals find uncongenial. That's it. Just uncongenial (she critiqued the doctoral theses of candidates in black studies). Not "offensive." Not even that weasel word "insensitive" -- far less "racist." This represents a profound corruption of the principles that should animate academia and a free society generally. Where are the liberals protesting this assault on liberty and civility? Waiting . . .

Continue reading "The Chronicle's Firing of Naomi Schaefer Riley:
Excerpts from Commentary, Pro and Con" »