Conservative Conversation and Community
When we are discussing the Iranians or others in the Middle East, I understand their dismissing the Holocaust as a real event. It goes with the territory, so-to-speak.
But when I heard that a Boca Raton, FL principal wrote in a 2018 email to a parent that “not everyone believes the Holocaust happened,” my jaw dropped.
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By popular demand from listeners, we’re bringing back “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, on this special edition for the July 4 holiday. Many listeners asked us to offer up mini-tutorials on various aspects of the American Founding and political thought in general, so we break down the Declaration of Independence, drawing notice to […]
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FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff is in National Review this week with a rather simple message for conservatives: There are actually a lot of things we can feel good about regarding the state of free expression on college campuses today.
The welfare of campus discourse is not perfect, of course, and its easy to sense that the issue is only getting worse–especially as free speech on campus gets no shortage of media exposure. The playing field has also changed in other fundamental ways. College students today are more aligned against free speech than they were ten or even five years ago, for reasons Greg and Jonathan Haidt expound on at length in their bestselling book The Coddling of the American Mind.
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Weeks ago, Ricochet members discussed talents and aptitudes. It is generally acknowledged that some people are better than others at particular skills and trades. But there was debate about nature versus nurture; if excellence is available to any practicioner with enough hard work and training. Today, let’s change the focus slightly. Can anyone be trained […]
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Jim Geraghty of National Review and guest host Gregory Knapp praise White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham’s actions to protect the press from North Korean interference. They cover the announcement from Iran that they have resumed enriching uranium. And they discuss the Democratic Party’s sudden embrace of busing to resolve racial disparities. More
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Tuesday’s bike ride was a 50-miler(*) from Sidney to North Lewisburg, Ohio. It was my closest ever approach to Columbus from the west, by any means of transportation. Along the way, I took photos at four township halls.
I had hoped one of them might be a picturesque old schoolhouse. There are some like that in Ohio and other parts of the Old Northwest. But today’s were all pole barns, broadly defined. These are usually less interesting, but one of the sites did have some traces of the old connection between township government and schools, from the days before school districts became independent of local governments, for better or worse.
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My hometown of Birmingham in the United Kingdom has been rent for weeks by parental demonstrations against a new “Sex and Relationship” education mandate for primary (elementary) school children, and things are getting rather heated. Parents are objecting to the fact that, although they can request that their children not be taught the “Sex” part of the classes, they cannot remove their children from the “Relationship” part. That the “Relationship” part covers relationships between same-sex couples, which the parents find inimical to their core beliefs.
Fairly restrained coverage can be found in The Telegraph, but The Guardian has the photo that’s worth a thousand words (full disclosure: my family never read The Guardian. We only read The Telegraph. After a servant had ironed it, of course):
MoreJim Geraghty of National Review and guest host Gregory Knapp discuss the Mexican government deploying 10,000 troops to the border to crack down on illegal immigration to the U.S. They cover the real concentration camps that the Chinese have constructed. And they discuss Bernie Sanders’ plan to wipe out all student loans. More
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After seven years in the higher-ed administration industry, during which I largely dealt with “Title IX” issues, and having largely shepherded my own kids through college unscathed, I now have nieces and nephews on their way into the Octagon that is college life today. I doubt I’ll have a chance to tell them what they need to know, but I might be able to tell their parents.
I want to write something that explains to them what is happening on campuses today, the dangers it poses to their kids, and what they can do to make themselves safe. I’d start with four suppositions:
MoreDavid French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss Harvard’s decision to rescind the admittance of Kyle Kashuv, a Parkland shooting survivor and conservative, for controversial past statements. They analyze the general misinformation and public ignorance about Medicare-for-All. And for today’s crazy martini, they discuss O.J. Simpson joining the Twittersphere. More
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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss what readers can expect in Jim’s new book, Between Two Scorpions. Joe Biden flip-flops on trade and calls President Trump “an existential threat” to the United States. Meanwhile, Democrats in Iowa grow more uncertain as to who they will support from the busload […]
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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America praise Texas Governor Greg Abbott for a series of conservative legislative victories. They also react as YouTube admits it is suppressing what it deems “borderline” content. And in a double crazy martini, they discuss Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (literally) running from Republican competition while reportedly entertaining […]
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Before he wrote Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon was a professor and I suspect a very good one. On his great road trip he clearly pined for the academic life or lifestyle: when he wasn’t sleeping in his truck, he found modest hospitality at this or that university. As much as this appealed to […]
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Is it because most are government backed against default? Is it because colleges can knowlingly raise their prices due to the availability of loans in the first place? These are extreme examples in this article, but it does raise the issue once again: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-27/debt-laden-americans-flee-country-escape-crushing-student-loans More
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So the last time I wrote a post was July 17, 2018. Sure, I comment around here from time to time (last time: April 16, 2019), and I was on quite the streak of promotions. However, I feel I am not contributing much to the conversation around here, and given I submitted grades this morning and am more or less on my own clock now, I’m going to attempt -this week -to have a thing a day I say something about. Doesn’t have to be long. Doesn’t have to be profound. My goal is just to say something about five things this week. Once a day. We’ll go from there.
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MoreAs I was in the car today, I listened to the latest Power Line Podcast, with Steve Hayward and Phillip Magness — of yesterday’s Thing a Day. In the course of the conversation, they discuss the idea of the “neoliberalizing” of the university, subjecting the university to the market, and some similar ideas. In particular, they discuss the death of the humanities being accompanied by an increase in humanities professors and more humanities requirements — even as humanities majors decline. They also discuss the idea that the university is being undermined by exposure to the market — which they do not agree with.
I don’t know whether neoliberalizing is the right description — I definitely don’t think the problem is “exposure to the market” given how regulated the higher education sector is. However, I would like to push back a little in a couple of places.
MoreI had never heard of Kevin M. Kruse, of Princeton, until this semester. There’s nothing particularly shocking about that — he’s a historian and I am not. I think his name bounced around the edges of my awareness, but this semester I was on a panel discussing religion in the Founding Era, and one of the panelists was using Kruse’s book One Nation Under God as the primary source for his argument. Today, I saw this exchange on twitter:
MoreActually, that's called a plurality. 1860 vote totals:
Those doubts have largely vanished, but litigation in Brown was only the opening chapter of a protracted struggle that, as political science professor Gerald Rosenberg showed in his historical study of Brown, The Hollow Hope, ultimately required Congress and the Executive to overcome massive resistance from many southern states. By now, the original mission of Brown—formal desegregation—has been unquestionably achieved. There is also widespread agreement that while much progress has been made, much more work has to be done to increase educational opportunities for all students. But this consensus on ends has not been matched by a consensus on means, as was evident in the prepared testimony before the House Committee.
MoreAt first glance, the latest legislation passed in the Florida State Senate is a step forward. It allows all teachers to be eligible for the “guardian program,” which would allow them to carry guns in school. But there is a catch: School districts would have to approve participation in the program and teachers would have […]
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They caught a bunch of parents using a “consultant” to bribe various college people, like soccer coaches, to get their little Olivias into “elite” colleges. (USC? are you kidding?). I won’t wax moralistic. I don’t care. The world has real problems. Whether one one rich white kid goes to Ivy U and another one has […]
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