Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
It’s now readily apparent that we’re in the midst of a new wave of college student protests. From the ConcernedStudent1950 movement that led to the ouster of University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe to the Million Student March that spanned 110 campuses and called for a debt-free education, campuses across the nation are witnessing an…
Oberlin, a private college with a $50,000 tuition, has entered once more into this year’s Tedious Campus Culture War Debate. After hearing complaints that its sushi program wasn’t good enough for reasons of racism, the place of learning has issued an apology. http://gawker.com/oberlin-debate… The New York Times reports that this particular campaign for justice began…
The noted liberal arts school explores new frontiers in getting offended. University dining halls aren’t exactly famous for serving gourmet dishes, but Oberlin students say their meals aren’t merely bad—they are racially inauthentic, and thus, a form of microaggression. It’s one thing to quietly gripe about the quality of dorm food (students have likely been…
I was quoted in a couple prominent publications yesterday, repeating my complaints with Oberlin’s protest against the supposed cultural appropriation of bad cafeteria food. Predictably, this resulted in both a lot of praise and a lot of criticism on social media. I don’t take either too deeply to heart. But I am disappointed that, from…
Photo Students cheered as the statue of Cecil Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town. Credit Charlie Shoemaker/Getty Images Johannesburg — NOT long after I moved from the United States to South Africa six years ago, I took a walk in a city called Bloemfontein. The scale of the downtown is huge, reflecting…
Should You Repay Your Employees’ Student Loans? What’s This? Associations Now Brand Connection provides opportunities for advertisers to connect with the Associations Now audience. All content is paid for by the advertiser. The Associations Now editorial staff is not involved in creating this content. A growing trend in the financial and consulting sectors…
Despite the media scare stories, trigger warnings are not widely used by college professors across the country, according to a survey released in full on Tuesday. They’re not even widely demanded by students. And when they are used, the warnings address both liberal and conservative concerns. The nonscientific survey, conducted by the National Coalition Against Censorship,…
Conference season invokes the stuff of Hieronymus Bosch’s apocalyptic paintings.Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Mike Watson Images/Thinkstock, painting by Hieronymus Bosch. One of the advantages of an academic career is that most universities take a two- or three-week winter break. While students clog the overhead compartments of America with fetid laundry and…
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia AP Photo/Jim Mone During oral arguments in a pivotal affirmative action case on Wednesday morning, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia raised the suggestion that African American students might belong at less rigorous schools than their white peers, and that perhaps the University of Texas should have fewer black students in…
Recent calls for the removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs finds similitude, if not echoes, in University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Rhodes Must Fall movement which succeeded, as it were, in removing the statue of Cecil John Rhodes from where it had stood on the campus grounds…