Liam Hoare has penned the most complete deconstruction of Massad's argument, and I can add little to his points. But as Massad has re-emerged to embarrass his university, it's worth remembering that Columbia knew exactly what it was getting when it decided to grant him tenure.

Massad's shameful in-class behavior first came to public attention thanks to the investigative reporting of Jacob Gershman, then of the New York Sun. (The Sun, which folded in 2008, remains very much missed for its consistently first-rate coverage of higher education.) Already under criticism for allegedly threatening to remove a Jewish student from class if she did not acknowledge Israel's supposed atrocities against Palestinians, in 2005 Massad used one of Columbia's "Core" classes to assign one book about Israel which included "a map of 1967 Israel that is labeled 'Palestine.'"

What distinguished Gershman's reporting, however, was his ability to bring readers inside of Massad's classes. (Massad refused to speak to the Sun, and declined to post lecture notes publicly.) One student noted that Massad had described as Zionist myths the facts that "Ancient Hebrews of Palestine lived exclusively in Palestine" and "Mod. Euro. Jews are direct biological descendants of Hebrews." Another student took notes of Massad offering a tasteless joke: "What makes a Zionist a Zionist? A Jew who asks a Jew to send a third Jew to Palestine." Even a hopelessly compromised Columbia "investigation" faulted Massad for his classroom antics.

The professor's scholarship similarly substituted blind adherence to ideology for the honest pursuit of the truth. As Martin Kramer has noted, Massad's heavy ideological bias distorted his findings from the start of his career, and it appeared as if Massad's weaknesses were enough to deny him tenure. But Columbia then granted him a highly unusual second tenure review, and, over the protests of much of the New York media, he squeaked through. Ironically, Columbia did so on the basis of a book that earned the following review from the American Historical Review: "If Massad's evidence is to be trusted, then he is completely wrong in his conclusions."

Massad was then, and still is, a scholar who cared more about advancing his anti-Western, anti-Jewish ideology than true scholarship. And despite all this, Columbia went out of its way to keep him permanently. No wonder the school chose not to comment on his latest screed.

“Conservative student groups must flood the systems with complaints about every Vagina Monologues performance, classroom reference to “testosterone poisoning,” and every single “Sex Week” event until reason returns. It’s an Alinsky principle: Make them live up to their own book of rules. And remember: There’s a lot to make conservative and libertarian students feel uncomfortable on almost any campus.”
—Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

“So, to say the least, this new mandate will have a chilling effect on sexual speech on campus.  There’s no way you could discuss any sexual behavior in class.  Not only couldn’t you discuss Lolita,  Shakespeare and the racier parts of the Old Testament might have to be purged from the curriculum.  I make a big deal of the issue of the relationship between incest and philosophy that Aristophanes brings up in a witty and vulgar way in the Clouds. Students don’t usually welcome the opportunity to have a conversation about incest, and especially about how questionable their revulsion to it is. Book V of the Republic, with the community of women and all that—that always creates a bit of an unwelcoming environment for some students.  Well, it’s supposed to; it’s supposed to get them thinking about the possibility that what we regard as natural sexual differences are merely repressive conventions.  Once I’ve written that, I realize that we just won’t be able to teach most of the content of “women’s studies” classes anymore. A big objection any professor would have to these Puritanical regulations is that they empower student affairs staffs to have a bigger role in schoolmarmishly regulating the campus environment, including assuming a more intrusive role in determining what goes in the classroom and in ordinary conversations between professors and students, and students and students.”
—Peter Augustine Lawler, Big Think

…what defenders of free speech on campus, such as the estimable FIRE, among others, may miss is the contradictory place the university has become. Having embraced the sexual revolution and encouraged an atmosphere of promiscuity, much of higher education has now created a legalistic, centralized crackdown on talk about sex. We have become what Tocqueville implied our condition would be without the influence of mores: a bureaucratic nightmare. If we can’t rule ourselves, we will have rules, myriad of them, made for us.”
—Ken Masugi, Library of Law and Liberty

“Obama promised fundamental transformation. This is part of it. Freedom of speech is sacrificed, and a new army of sexual-harassment “specialists” will descend on America’s campuses to enforce the new dispensation.”
—Mona Charen, NRO

Racial preferences are becoming more and more unwieldy and divisive as the United States becomes more and more multiethnic and multiracial.  But they are thought necessary because without them there would be “underrepresentation” of some groups.  The same logic, by the way, is behind the use of “disparate impact” lawsuits:  They are attractive because this is another way to address the “underrepresentation” that results from merit-based selection. 

But the principal reason for some groups’ failure in the aggregate to achieve will not be solved by using racial preferences and is ignored by them – the principal reason being illegitimacy.  That’s the problem that should be addressed, rather than pretending there is something wrong or unfair with merit selection.

It is, of course, no surprise that the groups with the highest illegitimacy rates are the groups that are struggling economically, educationally, with crime, and so forth (and this is true not only between racial groups but within them). To take just one example, here are the latest high-school graduation rates (the numbers were are taken from January 22, 2013, Washington Post article reporting on data collected for the class of 2010 by the National Center for Education Statistics and released that week):  Asians,  93 percent; non-Hispanic whites,  83 percent; Hispanics, 71.4 percent; American Indians/Alaska Natives, 69.1 percent; and African Americans, 66.1 percent. 

See any parallels between the pairs of numbers in the two preceding paragraphs?  If not, you have a promising future as a liberal social scientist.

So here’s a modest proposal: Why don’t the NAACP and similar organizations take all the money they use to challenge and complain about the standards that their groups (in the aggregate) don’t meet when it comes to university admissions, selective high-school admissions, school discipline, mortgage loans, police and firefighter tests, felon disenfranchisement laws, employment policies that look at criminal records, etc., etc., and use that money to figure out ways to bring down the illegitimacy rates that drive all these other disparities? 

It’s all really very simple:  We should all treat people as individuals, not as members of this or that racial group; and we should all wait until we’re married to have children.  Do those two things, and race relations will be just fine.

Roger Clegg is president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity.

More precisely, the authors, Matthew N. Gaertner, a researcher at Pearson's Center for College and Career Success and Melissa Hart, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado, argue that properly constructed class-based preferences can lead to more racial diversity, i.e., a larger number of underrepresented minorities (URMs) being admitted, than current race-based preferences. A preliminary version of the article is available here.

Analyzing random selection of applicants admitted and rejected at the University of Colorado in 2008 and 2010, the authors describe a complex class-based construct built on a highly complex “disadvantage index” and “overachievement index.” The latter is relatively simple: it measures the degree an applicant’s grades or standardized test scores exceed those typically earned by those in their socioeconomic group.

exp(−2.07 − 0.07(1) − 0.06(3) + 0.39 − 0.15(1) − 0.003(70) − 0.03(15) + 0.0001(100) + 0.86(2.7) + 0.6(−0.21))
1 + exp(−2.07 − 0.07(1) − 0.06(3) + 0.39 − 0.15(1) − 0.003(70) − 0.03(15) + 0.0001(100) + 0.86(2.7) + 0.6(−0.21))

= 0.391

exp(−2.07 − 0.07(1) + 0.11(2) + 0.71 − 0.15(0) − 0.003(15) − 0.03(18) + 0.0001(400) + 0.86(2.7) + 0.6(−0.21))
1 + exp(−2.07 − 0.07(1) + 0.11(2) + 0.71 − 0.15(0) − 0.003(15) − 0.03(18) + 0.0001(400) + 0.86(2.7) + 0.6(−0.21))

= 0.636

This is not the place and I am not the person (I dropped out of math before  arithmetic got hard) to evaluate these and other similar measures. Readers will have to go to the study itself to judge the variables that went into these equations and the results that came out. What is important here is the authors’ conclusion that the “privileging” of their complex class-based identifications produced more URM admits than CU’s straight race preferences.

Holding constant high school GPA and standardized test scores, URMs are 1.4 times more likely than non-URMs to be admitted under CU’s race- based policy. By contrast, under the Disadvantage and Overachievement Indices (again holding constant high school GPA and standardized test scores) applicants identified for primary factor consideration are 5.7 times more likely to be admitted.

If this study survives the analysis it deserves, it could undermine the argument that overt racial preferences are necessary to achieve racial diversity, but it is not without its own problems (which perhaps will be addressed when the final study is published). First, since it is so clearly intended to produce an admissions system that will admit significant numbers of URMs, it could easily run afoul of any standard of discrimination that relies on intent.

Another question concerns the identity of the expanded numbers of URMs. The preliminary study defines URMs as “Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans,” but it doesn’t disaggregate them. Since some of the disadvantage characteristics would favor Hispanics over blacks in Colorado and elsewhere (such as language spoken at home and rural domicile and high school), it would be useful to see a breakdown of the URMs by race and ethnicity.

This class-based affirmative action is built on “privileging” intricately determined socioeconomic identity even more than race preferences “privilege” race, and the authors recognize that the resulting admission of students with lower academic qualifications than their non-preferred peers makes it vulnerable to “mismatch” criticism. They recognize the criticism, but are not at all persuasive in refuting it. They argue, for example, that “replacing race-based affirmative action with a class-based approach will not substantially affect aggregate measures of academic qualifications” (emphasis added), but that’s only because the class-based affirmative action doesn’t admit sufficient numbers to lower the entire class. For individuals, however, the “mismatch” problems could be substantial.

Regarding the hypothetical “James” referred to above, for example:

while his raw academic credentials may not understate his potential, when James enters CU he will be able to draw on life experiences that most of his undergraduate peers will not. Thus, James should bring views and perspectives to the University that would be absent were he refused admission.

If the mismatch between James and his peers is too great, he will probably be at the very bottom of his class and may well not graduate, but at least he can provide “diversity” to others as long as he lasts. This would not seem to be a good or even moral bargain.

Indeed, one of the authors’ judgments that I believe casts a threatening cloud over their entire study is their argument, expressed in a footnote, that “the mismatch theory has been subject to significant and credible challenge.” Any proposed admission system that relies on rejecting the accumulating evidence supporting the work of Richard Sander, Stuart Taylor, and others — which in my view has not been credibly challenged — has a long, steep, uphill path to climb.

But there is another controversy emanating from Washington that should also be of great concern to citizens who care about the education of the nation’s young men and women and the status of free speech and thought in our country. And once instituted, the policy involved could metastasize into other domains as well.

On May 9, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Justice wrote a letter to the president of the University of Montana, mandating a broad new sexual harassment standard for that institution. But rather than limiting itself to that institution, the letter portrayed itself as “a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country to protect students from sexual harassment and assault.” This would be fine if the standard for harassment were properly defined, consistent with the standard proffered by the United States Supreme Court in 1999 Davis case.

Sadly, the ED/DOJ standard makes a mockery of the Davis standard. Rather than adhering to the reasonable balance the Supreme Court struck, the new mandate maintains that “sexual harassment should be more broadly defined as ‘any [my italics] unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,’” including “verbal conduct.” Any verbal conduct that someone happens to find “unwelcome?” Has our government forgotten the famous maxim of Justice Holmes, one of the godfathers of the modern doctrine of speech, that freedom of speech means “freedom for the thought we hate?”

Laws dealing with standards of conduct almost always include an objective “reasonable person” provision. Indeed, this has been a mainstay of established harassment law, as the Davis test demonstrates. Conduct and expression do not constitute harassment unless they are severe, pervasive, and “objectively offensive.” But not according to DE/DOJ’s new definition! Under the new definition, it is harassment simply if a target or subject of the expression considers it so, no matter how extreme or unreasonable such interpretation might be.

This is not a standard at all, but rather a recipe for endless prosecutions of speech about sensitive matters that highly and extremely sensitive (or politicized) persons find objectionable. And we all know that this result would often disempower any sexual discourse of which dominant ideologies on campus disapprove. Anyone who has studied First Amendment law knows instantly that such a subjective “standard” turns First Amendment and free speech principles on their heads. It might be appropriate to Alice’s Wonderland, governed by the “standards” of the Queen of Hearts. But not to a constitutional democracy that was “conceived in liberty,” as Lincoln said.

So what might have inspired this path-breaking move by the government whose officials have taken an oath to protect the Constitution? And what does the policy tell us about our government? Here are some initial thoughts to stir further thinking.

First, it is evident that a misguided feminist agenda is being extended. A first step was taken a few years ago when the same federal outfits called on campuses to change the standard of proof employed in campus sexual misconduct cases.

Many schools, including mine, previously required student judicial boards to find defendants guilty by “clear and convincing evidence,” which is the second highest standard of culpability next to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. Clear and convincing evidence is usually translated as “substantial probability” of guilt. The new standard—which Wisconsin and other schools adopted under the threat of losing their federal funding—is “preponderance of the evidence,” which simply means “more likely than not.” Given the campus politics of sexual misconduct and the training of student adjudicators about which I have been informed, “preponderance” in these cases often boils down to de facto presumptions of guilt. (See Judith Grossman, “A Mother, A Feminist, Aghast,” Wall Street Journal op-ed)

The new harassment standard appears to be the next step in this process. Many citizens who, like me, brandish liberal feminist credentials find this movement degrading of women because it treats them as second class citizens who are incapable of withstanding the rigors of free speech and due process. The new standard implies that women are essentially victims, not responsible agents who can handle “unwelcome” ideas that fall short of constituting harassment reasonably and objectively defined. Constitutional feminists should be insulted.

Second, the policy is yet another example of something I always tell my students, but which most citizens, voters, and even the press do not often heed: the powerful roles played by unelected bureaucrats who comprise a necessary part of the presidential entourage. It matters whom administrations appoint to key bureaucratic posts, as does the persons these individuals appoint and whom they promote among the bureaucracy careerists. National government is primarily government by bureaucracy; and bureaucrats can have their own agendas and incentive systems that are not always in sync with the norms and beliefs that We, the People, bring to the Constitutional Table.

The new sexual harassment policy behooves us to examine who is behind the new policy, what they believe about constitutional freedom, and what they believe regarding the appropriate relationship between means and ends. As Louis Brandeis, the other godfather of modern free speech doctrine wrote, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.” Can anyone say “IRS”?

Finally, the new DE/DOJ policy reminds us, yet again, that we must remain on guard against threats to our freedom, and organize politically to stop questionable movements. It is reassuring to see that such groups as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and Minding the Campus are on the case. (Minding the Campus is carrying an essay on the matter by Harvey Silverglate, one of FIRE’s founders.) So is the academic freedom group I lead at Wisconsin, the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights, which will take necessary political action as we have in many other cases. Only organized countervailing pressure can check bureaucratic power when it needs checking. As Madison wrote in Federalist #51, “Ambition must be made to counter ambition.”

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is telling universities to institute speech codes. And not just any old speech codes: Under these speech codes, universities would be required to prohibit students from, for instance,

1.    saying "unwelcome" "sexual or dirty jokes"

2.    spreading "unwelcome" "sexual rumors" (without any limitation to false rumors"

3.    engaging in "unwelcome" "circulating or showing e-mails of Web sites of a sexual nature"

4.    engaging in "unwelcome" "display[] or distributi[on of] sexually explicit drawings, pictures or written materials"

5.    making "unwelcome" sexual invitations.

This is not limited to material that a reasonable person would find offensive. Nor is limited to material that, put together, creates a "hostile, abusive, or offensive educational environment." (I think even speech codes that would have these requirements are unconstitutional, but the speech codes that the government is urging would in any event not have these requirements.) Every instance of such material of a "sexual nature," under the government's approach, would be "sexual harassment" and would need to be banned.

Why do I say this? The explanation has quite a few moving parts, because of how the government has articulated its theory. But here's a brief summary.

1. The OCR has long taken the view that, just as Title VII's ban on employment discrimination has been read as prohibiting speech or conduct that is "severe or pervasive" enough to create a "hostile, abusive, or offensive environment" based on sex for plaintiff and for a reasonable person, so Title IX (the educational analog) does the same for speech and conduct in educational institutions. Colleges and universities, according to the government, must therefore institute speech and conduct codes that ban such speech and conduct.

Those courts that have considered the issue have held that such speech codes in public universities violate the First Amendment on their face (to the extent they cover speech), because they are too vague or overbroad (i.e., apply beyond the few unprotected categories of speech, such as threats or "fighting words"). See, for instance, some of the cases cited in this guest post by FIRE's Greg Lukianoff. The government's pressuring the creation of such codes in either public institutions or private institutions would likewise violate the First Amendment. But the government takes a different view. Though it agrees that "harassment" codes shouldn't be read in ways that violate the First Amendment (which is tautologically true), they apparently think that a great deal of speech "of a sexual nature" on campuses is unprotected by the First Amendment, as suggested by the materials discussed below.

2. Now, in an investigation involving the University of Montana (and see also this document, the government has apparently gone further:

a. The government has specifically faulted the University for defining "sexual harassment" as being limited to conduct or speech that is severe or pervasive enough to create a hostile environment, or conduct or speech that would be objectively offensive to a reasonable person. "Whether conduct is objectively offensive is a factor used to determine if a hostile environment has been created, but it is not the standard to determine whether conduct was 'unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature' and therefore constitutes 'sexual harassment.'"

b. Instead, according to the government, "sexual harassment" is simply "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature and can include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature, such as sexual assault or acts of sexual violence." And what constitutes "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature"? An earlier OCR document, defining, conduct "sexual in nature" as "sexual conduct," says that "Examples of sexual conduct include":

1.    making sexual propositions or pressuring students for sexual favors;

2.    touching of a sexual nature;

3.    writing graffiti of a sexual nature;

4.    displaying or distributing sexually explicit drawings, pictures, or written materials;

5.    performing sexual gestures or touching oneself sexually in front of others;

6.    telling sexual or dirty jokes;

7.    spreading sexual rumors or rating other students as to sexual activity or performance; or

8.    circulating or showing e-mails or Web sites of a sexual nature.

Finally, the government does not limit such "sexual conduct" to conduct said directly to the offended person. Speech displayed or said to people generally may qualify if one of the viewers finds it offensive (as one can again tell by looking at hostile work environment cases, given that the government routinely analogizes to them).

c. So "sexual harassment" is defined that broadly -- and though the government concedes that such sexual harassment is legally actionable only if it is objectively offensive, and "severe or pervasive" (or perhaps both "severe and pervasive," as Hans Bader's post on this argues), the government insists that universities should punish each such instance of conduct:

1.    "The Agreement will serve as a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country to protect students from sexual harassment and assault."

2.    "To resolve the concerns identified in the Letter of Findings, the University will take effective steps designed to: prevent sex-based harassment [defined to include 'sexual harassment' -EV] in its education programs and activities ...."

3.    "By July 15, 2013, the University will update its program to provide regular mandatory training ..... [that] will ... make students aware of the University's prohibition against sexual harassment, sexual assault, and retaliation."

4.    "On May 4, 2012, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights mailed notification to the University indicating that OCR was opening a Title IX compliance review to assess whether ... the University's implementation of [its] policies and procedures ensure the elimination of sexual harassment and sexual violence, appropriately respond to such harassment and violence, prevent future harassment, and eliminate the hostile environment and its effects that result from such harassment."

5.    "To improve the campus climate, the University is providing more training for students that defines sexual harassment, including sexual assault, and makes clear it isunacceptable."

6.    "Other actions [following a sexual harassment complaint] may also be necessary to address the educational environment, including special training, the dissemination of information about how to report sexual harassment, new policies, and other steps designed to clearly communicate the message that the college or university does not tolerate, and will be responsive to any reports of, sexual harassment.

And I assume the government means exactly what it says here -- that even individual instances of "conduct of a sexual nature" that aren't severe or pervasive or objectively offensive must be punished -- and isn't just using "sexual harassment" to mean "speech that creates a legally actionable hostile environment." After all, the government expressly condemned the University of Montana (see 2a above) for using "sexual harassment" to mean speech that creates a legally actionable hostile environment; "sexual harassment," the government stressed, is simply "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature" (whether or not objectively offensive "and can include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature, such as sexual assault or acts of sexual violence." And though some of the statements I quote above discuss what the University of Montana is about to do, it's clear from context that the government is arguing that universities must in general be doing this.

These individual instances, then -- sexual jokes, sexually themed posted material, sexual propositions, and so on -- is what the government is saying should be treated as "unacceptable," should not be "not tolerate[d]," and should be "prevent[ed]," "prohibit[ed]," and "eliminat[ed]."

3. In the University of Montana situation, as well as in others in the past, the core issue has had to do with alleged sexual assault of varying degrees. No specific speech-cases were discussed.

But that's a big part of the problem: Serious problems involving alleged physical assaults, and university's potential failure to properly deal with such assaults, have long been merged -- by the government and others -- with sexually themed speech. The policies the government is seeking deliberately aren't limited to physical assault, but expressly cover speech. How universities should deal with alleged physical assaults by students against other students is a difficult question. But the government's demands of universities go far beyond those questions, and extend to speech that is protected by the First Amendment and that, in any event, ought not be the subject of university discipline (even if it's juvenile and rude).

The Higher Education Act is up for reauthorization this year, so this is an especially good time to talk about improvements to it. (We ought to consider repealing it instead, but almost nobody in Congress would support that.) One idea, recently advanced here by Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is to stop allowing students to use Pell Grants for remedial coursework.

"A huge proportion of this $40 billion annual federal investment," Petrilli writes, "is flowing to people who simply aren't prepared to do college-level work. And this is perverting higher education's mission, suppressing completion rates and warping the country's K-12 system."

Absolutely right. Higher education should not be devoted to attempts (often unavailing) to catch up on basic material that was not learned during students' K-12 years (and perhaps not even taught) and the use of federal money to draw them into college lowers the incentives for students to do well during their primary and secondary education.

Petrilli is not the first person to connect easy, federally-subsidized college admission with the decline of K-12 standards. In his 2010 book The Lowering of Higher Education in America, Jackson Toby (professor emeritus of sociology at Rutgers), observed that effect.  He argues, "Since marginal students know while they are still in high school that they will be able to be admitted and get financial aid at some college, they lack an incentive to try to learn as much as they could in high school...."

Government subsidies and market interventions always have unintended consequences and federal student aid is no exception. Transforming higher education from something that young people had to strive for into a near entitlement has had a lot of adverse unintended consequences and the undermining of basic learning is foremost among them.

What if we could reform Pell grants the way Petrilli and Toby suggest?

Petrilli admits that one possibility is that colleges and universities would disguise remedial courses by making them appear to be more than mere repetition of high school material and thus giving credit for them.  I have no doubt but that some institutions would try that. The steady stream of students and funds they have become dependent upon makes it tempting for them to play the system.

But what about the more hopeful prospect - that this change would compel high schools to raise their standards and stop passing students who haven't really learned anything? Even if it had that effect only in small measure, it would nevertheless be worthwhile because the miserable educational results for many students (and not just inner-city, minority kids) is one of our worst national problems. Young people who are told that they're doing fine when in fact they are not learning the fundamentals of reading and writing and mathematics are put on a bad course. At best, some of them squeak through college after taking remedial classes; at worst, many fail to develop the personal discipline and rudimentary skills needed to hold any but the most menial of jobs.

I think that the federal government should abandon the financing of higher education entirely, but putting a limit on Pell grants so the money cannot be used for remedial courses is a good step in the right direction.  

The University of Virginia prides itself on being "Mr. Jefferson's university," where unfettered free speech is both practiced and respected in the manner called for in his First Inaugural address when Mr. Jefferson (as locals still reverentially refer to him) fervently urged his fellow citizens to let misguided and even evil notions "stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

Jefferson may have had to contend with such unpleasantries as the Alien and Sedition Acts, but at least he was spared having to confront the scourge of political correctness that in recent times has appeared even in his very own beloved "academical village."

One of the characteristics of political correctness is that it does not content itself with stamping out error. It also denounces truths and facts that it finds inconvenient, as a prominent UVa graduate and donor learned the hard way. As the Washington Post reported this week:

Four legendary investors gathered at the University of Virginia in late April to share their philosophies and strategies for success, personal fulfillment and philanthropy. All four were men, white and aging, and that prompted several audience members to submit questions wondering: Where are the women? 

Paul Tudor Jones II, a 1976 U-Va. graduate and billionaire Greenwich-based hedge fund manager, took a stab at answering. According to those who attended, Jones explained how traders must have extraordinary focus and commitment, working long hours and forgoing personal time. A lot of women opt out of such a high-intensity career, he said, especially once they have children. 

From the heated response you might think Jones had urged female business students and graduates to remain barefoot and pregnant. His comment, as the Chronicle of Higher Education put it, "upset alumni and faculty members," but "upset" hardly captures the furor that ensued. The Post reports that Carl P. Zeithaml, dean of UVa's McIntire School of Commerce where the panel took place, "said that he immediately received complaints from alumni and faculty members who were concerned and, in some cases, appalled by the substance and framing of Jones's comments," and he sent a long email to all students and staff trying to contain the damage, emphasizing "on behalf of the School" that "everyone, including women and underrepresented minorities, should enthusiastically and optimistically pursue the careers in which they have an interest and for which they have an aptitude" and not "be dissuaded by a few statistics."

Jones apparently didn't offer any statistics, presumably assuming that he was merely making an uncontroversial observation of the the facts of high pressure corporate life, but he certainly could have.

In her Fiscal Times column recently, for example, Liz Peek quoted Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that the number of women over 20 not in the labor pool has soared -- "from 40 million in 2000 to nearly 49 million today." The labor force participation rate of women today is down to 58.8 percent, compared to a rate for men of 72.5 percent. Of the women not working, Peek writes, the most problematic group "consists of highly educated women who drop out (or 'opt-out') when they have children." Regarding a relevant subset of that group, Peek points to a recent article by Vanderbilt law professor Joni Hersch, who found that "the largest gap in labor market activity between graduates of elite institutions and less selective institutions is among MBAs, with married mothers who are graduates of elite institutions 30 percentage points less likely to be employed full-time than graduates of less selective institutions."

McIntire is definitely an elite institution, as is UVa's Darden School of Business. I wonder if anyone at either knows what percentage of female graduates remain in the labor force -- and given the response to Paul Tudor Jones's casual observation, if anyone would be willing to say.

The book, The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism,  was sent out by The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank. Dr. Alison Bridges, chairman of the department, and Dr. Craig Clements, an assistant professor, knew precisely how to deal with such transgressive literature.  Oddly, it didn't occur to these Greenshirts that documenting a book burning might raise eyebrows. However, when Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That posted the picture and invited readers to share their feelings with the SJSU administration, the picture disappeared from the department's website. Luckily, Watts screensaved it. The university is declining to comment.

As Watts waggishly commented in his original post, look at the pictures that adorn the office: Maybe they just couldn't help themselves.

There is one clear exception to the introductory, "first-year" nature of the listing.  It is "English Literature (ENGL 1001W--Introduction to Literature: Poetry, Drama, Narrative)." The heading sounds like a general entry-point into college-level work in a discipline, and so does the brief summary that follows: "Basic techniques for analyzing/understanding literature. Readings of novels, short stories, poems, plays." In fact, though, the course has a whole other purpose.

The reading list contains 86 titles, nearly all of them contemporary works frankly multicultural in nature and addressing themes of race, gender, sexuality, and homophobia. It includes three novels by Toni Morrison and two by Amy Tan, but none by Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, James, Crane, Wharton, Fitzgerald, or Cather.  Faulkner has one entry, and so does Kate Chopin, Hemingway, Hurston, and Ellison, but that's about it for American classics. Apart from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, classic British literature is completely absent. The first "sample syllabus" inserts Hamlet among 24 possible readings but adds the remark, "while not part of the CIS curriculum, we may explore it."  For drama, the list has no ancient or British playwrights and no Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, or Arthur Miller, but Tony Kushner's Angels in America and August Wilson's Fences are there. As for poetry, June Jordan's Kissing God Goodbye and Billy Collins' Picnic Lightning, but not Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, Frost, Eliot, Millay, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, or Sylvia Plath.

The reading list and social themes produce something else than an Introduction to Literature class.  The learning outcomes aim at certain interests and dispositions, as one can see from the "Inclusivity Statement" from the second sample syllabus, which declares: "Racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism and other forms of bigotry are inherent in our culture." The first sample syllabus assumes such sins may happen when it warns, "While 'contested space', i.e. debate and intellectual challenge, are academically necessary and encouraged, it is inappropriate to promote racism, sexism, homophobia, class-ism, ageism, or any other forms of bigotry in this classroom."  The course adds a literary theory component as well, which presents to students, among other things, "Marxist, feminist, postcolonial and LGBT criticism."

How to respond to such a tendentious curriculum?  I wrote an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last week objecting to the course because of the flaws listed above. My conclusion recommended that UM widen the reading list, allowing schools that favor a classic literature curriculum to win college credits for their students.  But two days later, the director of College in the Schools answered my call with an op-ed of her own which dismissed all the criticisms. It was filled with misleading statements:

• The author says that "CIS students read books from the late 19^th century and 20^th century," but out of 86 titles, only three come before 1900, one short story and two novels from 1899.
• The author says that I object to the course because it "does not focus on the authors he believes students should read."  Note the dishonest adjustment of my recommendation from "widening the reading list" to "making students read other things." This turns me into the restrictive voice, not the CIS leaders.
• The author says that I accuse CIS of attempting to foster a "negative social critique of American society," but I wasn't the one who wrote the "America is inherently racist and sexist" statement, or the one who chose so many books that do, indeed, allege rampant evil -isms in American society.

There is more to say, but the bigger problem remains. The University of Minnesota is using the strong enticement of college credit to inject a social ideology into high schools, one that passes under the false advertising of introductory literary study. When that project was exposed and a constructive correction was urged, UM administrators responded with denial. 

The distinction between "teaching quality" and "student satisfaction," thought subtle, is an important one. The extant scholarly literature on RMP data--like the voluminous scholarly literature on student evaluations of teaching--supports the claim that there is a positive correlation between course easiness (or at least easiness as perceived by the students) and student evaluations. That is why we only consider RMP to be a measure of "student satisfaction," since this relationship between course easiness and overall rating may indicate that student evaluations reflect something other than true teaching quality. Nevertheless, there is sufficient support in the RMP literature (see our methodology for a brief discussion of this) that RMP ratings generally correspond with the ratings given by students in official student evaluations of teaching administered by the colleges themselves such that we believe it is justifiable to consider RMP data as a measure of student satisfaction.

Now for your claim that fraternities "promote...sexual assault." Surely you are aware that claims that college campuses are hotbeds of rape, whether inside or outside of fraternity houses, are hugely exaggerated, blown up by bogus statistics and feminist ideology that regards any drunken encounter that a college woman regrets the next morning (or the next month) as a "rape." I advise reading or rereading Heather Mac Donald's 2008 article "The Campus Rape Myth" in City Journal. The Obama Administration Education Department's insistence that colleges use a lower standard of proof than would be acceptable in any criminal courtroom to find college men "guilty" of rape (and thus ruin their lives, at least in the short run) has only exacerbated this problem. I'm sure that genuine rapes do occasionally occur in fraternity houses, as well as elsewhere on college campuses, but I've seen nothing to suggest that those crimes occur more frequently in Greek houses than not.

Same goes for "academic cheating" and "binge drinking." I've never seen evidence that more of either takes place in fraternity houses than elsewhere in college life. The big cheating scandal at Harvard last year occurred entirely outside of a fraternity context.

Finally, about the "political refuge" function of fraternities and sororities. Sure, it's brave to stand up for your politically incorrect beliefs on campus, facing down ridicule and even accusations of hate speech. I encourage everyone to do so. That's not the point, however. The point is creating and maintaining a culture--a circle of friends, a set of values--that is a bulwark against the behemoth of enforced conformity to whatever ideological movement that professors and administrators happen to be pushing: anti-capitalism, global warming, feminist hysteria about the wicked ways of men. Fraternity conservatism can often be gross and immature "South Park" conservativism, but it can also plant in college students' hearts a respect for individual liberty that will ultimately mature into something more principled.  

This imbalance bodes poorly for Republicans in 2016, though it is unlikely that the Democrats will come up with a candidate as personally appealing to 22-year-olds as is Obama.  (Can you see Hilary Clinton delivering a speech to college students in 2016 promising to alter the terms of their student loans in exchange for their vote?).  Still, social conservatism is anathema to most youths, and we're likely to see more "Julia"-like videos distributed to them in the months before voting day.

But there is one trend working in Republicans' favor: the midterm elections.  CIRCLE has another report out this week that warns of a coming plummet in the youth vote in 2014. A table shows what happens to the 18-29 cohort in off-years--it plummets by half.  In 2004, 49 percent showed up to vote, but in 60 only 25 percent did; in 08, it reached 51 percent, but 2010 only 24 percent.  While the 2010 massacre of Democrats in Congress was attributed to Big Government overreach by the Obama Administration, the steep drop in the youth vote turnout was a significant factor.

They give various reasons for dropping out in the midterms, including "too busy," lack of interest, "didn't feel like my vote would count," and "forgot."  Whatever the cause, though, the general pattern holds, and unless Democrats repeat their successful get-out-the-vote efforts of last year, a Democrat gain of seats is jeopardized.

Expect, then, strenuous "get-out-and-vote" activities on campus next year, along with more proposals geared precisely to their benefit (and that turn youth populations into "clients").   Watch closely, too, for civic engagement programs on college campuses, even those without any trace of partisanship.  One of CIRCLE's consistent findings is that civics-oriented curricula and extra-curriculars have a decided effect on voter participation.  The more young people are exposed the them, we find, the higher their engagement.  With the youth vote so solidly on the liberal side, we should examine statements about civic engagement programs and proposals not simply on the grounds of their relation to the burdens of citizenship in a free republic, but also as possible sources of support for one political party.

(And speaking of the Grey Lady, what's happening to her? The Times recently ran a front-page, above-the-fold, lengthy piece on the infamous Pigford litigation -- concluding that the "compensation effort" against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for anti-black bias "became a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain $130 million in fees." "The total cost could top $4.4 billion," the article concluded.) 

Update (5/9): The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley, as noted here by John Rosenberg, points out that the California story is even happier than the Times story would indicate:  Not only was there the "rebound" effect the Times concedes with regard to ENROLLMENT, but with regard to GRADUATION (the more important number) the number of Latinos and blacks has dramatically increased.