When Naomi Schaefer Riley was fired by the Chronicle of Higher Education for her trenchant remarks on Black Studies programs, most of those who criticized the firing saw in it a display of the campus left’s intolerance. Fair enough, but this episode also has a much broader meaning.
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The Chronicle’s firing of Naomi Schaefer Riley was shocking, but no surprise. If you value your job in any position connected with higher education, it is probably wise to avoid being critical of “diversity,” affirmative action and, especially, Black Studies. I learned this lesson in 1997 when, as a Regent of the University of California […]
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Troubles continue to mount for the black studies program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Three weeks ago an internal review of the program showed 54 phantom courses over three years–classes that had never actually been taught. Last week, the Pope Center’s Jane Shaw reported that the university had asked “the North Carolina State Bureau of […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Posted by Mark Bauerlein and Richard Vedder 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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, which used to be the pre-eminent publication covering higher education, the inmates are now running the institution. Editor Liz McMillen’s disgraceful capitulation to the mob demanding the head of Chronicle blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley for having the temerity to criticize the field of black studies ironically demonstrates the […]
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