Recommended Articles for 1/20/10

Ashley Thorne

  • Article
  • January 20, 2010

NBC: Yale President Responds to T-Shirt Controversy

"I think of all Harvard men as sissies" from F. Scott Fitzgerald's book This Side of Paradise (which I'm currently reading) was deemed offensive to homosexuals. Also check out FIRE's coverage of this case.

Chronicle of Higher Ed: Yale, the (High School) Musical

Yale redeems itself with an awesome (albeit long) admissions video.

Slate: The Opening of the Academic Mind (via Minding the Campus)

A book review of Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas. "Professors, the people most visibly responsible for the creation of new ideas, have, over the last century, become all too consummate professionals,  initiates in a system committed to its own protection and perpetuation."

Joanne Jacobs: More Students Refuse to State a Race

"'We shouldn’t be judged by our race,' said senior Jessica Mae Belcher, 17, whose roots are African and Cherokee. She prefers 'none of the above' because 'we’re all different, but we’re all the same, too.'" See also McClatchy:

Doug Craig, who's been principal at Laguna Creek for 10 years, appreciates the students' desire to be judged on their merits, not their race. "I'd love to look at individual kids and leave it at that, but we wouldn't even know there was an achievement gap if we didn't measure our kids," he said. "There must be a systemic reason and we need to figure out what causes it and how to fix it."

Stanford Review: The Man-Made Myth

"Email and poster bombardments encouraging students to live sustainably (with the goal of cutting CO2 emissions) are based on flawed reasoning. [...] We have grown up in a society in which the myth of man-made global warming is so thoroughly pervasive, doubt is heretical. But science proves human carbon dioxide emissions are not responsible for global warming."

Stanford Review: ES 10 Students Take on Climate Change Skeptics (via Campus Reform)

"While much of the layman world still debates the reality of human-induced global warming, the scientific community treats it as unquestionable fact. And, like scientists, says Head TA Jess McNally, in ES10 'We don’t debate climate change; it is just something we teach.'" "ES10 is environmental ed, and so, it should result in a change of behaviors."

New York Times: Professor is a Label That Leans Left

College professors are liberal because of typecasting - the same reason why nurses are women and cops are conservative.

Chronicle of Higher Ed: The Poetry is in the Proof

Why liberal arts students should learn mathematical proofs.

Minding the Campus: What is the AAUP Up To?

A review of Cary Nelson's No University is an Island. "Nelson's position on teaching social justice points to a related problem. He provides a ringing defense of academic freedom, but is reticent to discuss the legitimate limits to this freedom."

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