Miscellanies du Jour - 2015-04-10

  • Fairness dictates that we note the University of Michigan decided that their students were mentally stable enough after all to endure the showing of American Sniper on campus. Clearly they were unable to stand ridicule of their politically-correct wussiness.

    Katherine Timpf provides a list: "Seven Other Things That Have Been Declared ‘Unsafe’ at Colleges" Among her examples…

    2. Face paint of any color at any event ever

    Last October, Arizona State University’s athletics department banned facepaint — “whether the theme is black, maroon, gold or white” — because ASU is an “inclusive and forward-thinking university” and they must make sure that “everyone feels safe and accepted.” They did not explain whether or not any students had actually reported feeling threatened by the paint, and if so, how those students were handling their lives currently.

  • At Minding the Campus, John Leo summarizes a new report from the National Association of Scholars: "Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism". From the report:

    To the unwary, “sustainability” is the newer name for environmentalism. But the goals of the sustainability movement are different. They go far beyond ensuring clean air and water and protecting vulnerable plants and animals. As an ideology, sustainability takes aim at economic and political liberty. Sustainability pictures economic liberty as a combination of strip mining, industrial waste, and rampant pollution. It pictures political liberty as people voting to enjoy the present, heedless of what it will cost future generations. Sustainability’s alternative to economic liberty is a regime of far-reaching regulation that controls virtually every aspect of energy, industry, personal consumption, waste, food, and transportation. Sustainability’s alternative to political liberty is control vested in agencies and panels run by experts insulated from elections or other expressions of popular will.

    The University Near Here has its very own Sustainability Institute. They don't advertise their hostility to economic and political liberty, but I imagine they would do so if plied with enough organic, locally-produced wine.

  • [Amazon Link]
    (paid link)
    George Leef has an interesting and provocative article looking at a new book by Kevin Carey: The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. It's about the impending breakout of low-priced higher education. Folks in the employ of your traditional bricks-and-mortar universities, beware:

    One implication of the rise of the University of Everywhere seems to be that in the future, students who are serious about learning and demonstrating their capabilities will stop enrolling in the typical college or university. Those institutions have developed great expertise in hauling in money but remarkably little expertise in teaching and assessing student outcomes.

    Why it's enough to make a University administrator sound like Governor William J. Le Petomane: "We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!"

    I've put Carey's book on the top of the to-be-read pile.

  • Despite the blog's title, we don't do a lot of puns here. But this one gave me a chuckle:


Last Modified 2024-01-26 4:45 PM EDT