Home >> United States & Canada Education Providence College’s Vendetta against Western Civilization
Kyle Bristow - 12/16/2009
Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), which is a right-wing organization that has chapters at nearly a dozen universities across the United States, was recently prevented from being established at Providence College, a private, Catholic school located in Rhode Island. In a packed meeting, the student government—called the “Student Congress”—voted against approving YWC as an official university club in a vote of 16 to 12, and after the deplorable vote was taken, the crowd and some of the student government representatives burst into applause and celebration. Teaching the Controversy
Ron Coody - 3/24/2009
The recent passing of Darwin Day continues to generate discussion in various quarters as to exactly what, if any, is the relationship between the question of evolution and the question of creation. The folks involved in promoting Intelligent Design, have in the past few years sought repeatedly to make a legal and scientific case for what they call “teaching the controversy” of evolution. The idea is that Darwinian theory, that all organism originated from a common ancestor and evolved over the eons by random mutation and natural selection, in spite of evidence for it, also has some glaring p... Hate Speech At San Francisco State University
Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D. - 3/3/2009
The fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in the recent Gaza incursion may have brought a tentative peace to that region, but on campuses in California — the veritable ground zero of anti-Israel sentiment in the academy — the debate over the 60-year conflict has gained a new, and more insidious, momentum as student demonstrations, protests, and denunciations of racist Zionism, a “brutal occupation,” and “genocide” of Arabs were heard on campuses worldwide. The Encyclopedia Britannica 2009
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 9/9/2008
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2009 (established in 1768), both in its Ultimate (now also called "Student and Home") and Deluxe versions, builds on the success of its completely revamped previous editions in 2006-8. The rate of innovation in the last three versions was impressive and welcome. It continues apace in this rendition with Britannica Biographies (Great Minds and Leaders), Classical Music (500 audio files arranged by composer), and a great Workspace for Project Management (a kind of friendly digital den). Generous 6-12 months of free access to the myriad riches of the Britannica Online complete the package. The Anti-Conservative Agenda at Michigan State University
Kyle Bristow - 8/26/2008
Every semester I email the student newspaper of Michigan State University, the State News, to see if they would let me write biweekly columns for the paper. The newspaper, which is funded through student tax dollars, is notoriously left-wing, and has a history of firing the unpaid columnists if they articulate the conservative point of view in their columns. Jason Van Dyke, now a lawyer in Texas, was fired from the newspaper when he wrote a column about the militancy behind the homosexual movement. Nate Sherman, a political science major, managed to get only two columns published—one about ... Dumb me down, Scotty!
Ursula Siebert - 7/16/2008
Languages have become more dynamic, acquiring new vocabulary from other cultures. English is particularly adept at borrowing from other languages. I'm propagating a new word, Volksverdummung, i.e. deliberate deception of the public. The time is right. Daily political occurrences and their reporting in the mainstream media justify its introduction. Culturist Censorship, Free Speech and Dangerous Ironies
John Press, Ph.D. - 4/5/2008
I submit most of my blog entries to internet article distributors. Recently, several of my articles have been rejected for the political beliefs they convey. Dangerously, this censorship does not stem from malice or ambition; it stems from increasingly commonplace cultural assumptions about what can be said. Latinos’ Education Failure is Their Own Fault!
John Press, Ph.D. - 3/24/2008
Latinos score lower than whites on tests and drop-out of school more often and it is largely their fault!!!! The same goes for Black American youth! Wow!!! That was risky. One can get fired for saying such things. So to cover my buns let me just clarify that nothing in this paragraph had anything to do with race. Culture, not I.Q. or innate ability, explains this discrepancy. And if you really want to minimize the achievement gap between Latinos, Asians, Whites and Blacks, you should read on. Michigan State University Refuses to Revoke Mugabe’s Honorary Degree
Kyle Bristow - 3/6/2008
Michigan State University is known for a lot of things. It has a good basketball team, a decent football team, and its students—the Spartans—riot in the streets every few years or so. (Riots have occurred in 1997, 1998, 1999, and most recently, on April 2, 2005.) What is not widely known is that MSU gave in 1990 an honorary degree in law to the dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, when he spoke at the university. Honorary degrees are not earned through coursework; they are given to people by the university as a symbolic trophy to honor their achievements in life. Whiteness Studies: Understanding Culture or Promoting Hate?
John Press, Ph.D. - 2/13/2008
Culturists and other Americans should all know about whiteness studies because they command a lot of respect in academia's humanities departments. The book "How the Irish Became White" by Noel Ignatiev popularized whiteness studies. Whiteness studies has an interesting perspective. However, logical fallacies, culturist ignorance and destructive tendencies make this field an overall disaster for America. Academia influences our culture and teaches tomorrow’s leaders. For these reasons, it behooves those of us who are concerned with the fate of America to be aware of whiteness studies and culturist critiques of it. Answer to “The Demise of the Expert and the Ascendance of the Layman”
Sammy Elrom - 12/28/2007
In spite of the eloquent phrasing and admirable language, I find the article "The Demise of the Expert and the Ascendance of the Layman" to be troubling. The Demise of the Expert and the Ascendance of the Layman
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 12/22/2007
In the age of Web 2.0, authoritative expertise is slowly waning. The layman reasserts herself as a fount of collective mob "wisdom". Information - unsorted, raw, sometimes wrong - substitutes for structured, meaningful knowledge. Gatekeepers - intellectuals, academics, scientists, and editors, publishers, record companies, studios - are summarily and rudely dispensed with. Crowdsourcing (user-generated content, aggregated for commercial ends by online providers) replaces single authorship. Affirmative Action Grading In Universities: Part 7 - To Be Of Use
Prof. Nicholas Stix - 11/5/2007
"You've got to look under rocks," said Chris Christopoulos. Chris was a hotel technology instructor at Sullivan County Community College. Chris meant, "To make money." I creatively misunderstood the line to be about getting at the truth. Of course, if you look under enough rocks, you run across more than a few snakes. Affirmative Action Grading In Universities: Part 6 - The Garden State
Prof. Nicholas Stix - 10/22/2007
"What do you call a black man with a Ph.D.?" Malcolm X famously asked, forty years ago. He answered, "A nigger!" What was once true of an educated black man, is today true in academia of an educated white man with the outcast status of adjunct professor. For in academia, caste rules. Affirmative Action Grading In Universities: Part 5 - Smoking Guns
Prof. Nicholas Stix - 10/20/2007
"But many colleges have night classes so you could have worked and gone to college also pay for your education although some other programs to help pay on some where you don't pay or some where you don't pay at all so you were lazy." Affirmative Action Grading In Universities: Part 4 - Fighting City Hall
Prof. Nicholas Stix - 10/19/2007
"What do you call a black man with a Ph.D.?" Malcolm X famously asked, forty years ago. He answered, "A nigger!" What was once true of an educated black man, is today true in academia of an educated white man with the outcast status of adjunct professor. For in academia, caste rules. Affirmative Action Grading In Universities: Part 3 - Plagiarism
Prof. Nicholas Stix - 10/18/2007
Plagiarism might not seem like a method of grade inflation, but it has developed into one, as so many professors and administrators have turned a blind eye to pervasive plagiarism, as to implicitly encourage it. Instructors give plagiarists high grades for fraudulent work, while giving honest students — whom they are ultimately punishing for their honesty — lower grades. Affirmative Action Grading: Part 2 - Crime Scenes
Prof. Nicholas Stix - 10/16/2007
When people think of criminals, they usually conjure up images of street muggers, carjackers, and stock swindlers. They need to add to that rogues' gallery, images of college presidents, English Department chairmen, and professors. Affirmative Action Grading In Universities: Part 1 - Reality Testing
Prof. Nicholas Stix - 10/15/2007
As I write, college professors around the country are looking at their grade books, and holding the following internal monologue: "Well, her attendance is terrible, she hasn't done her assignments, and her test average is a 'D,' but she's black, and she could get me fired, so I'll give her a B+. But he's white, so I'll lower his grade to avoid being called a racist. Now this third student is totally illiterate, but she's Puerto Rican, so I'll give her a B-." Such internal monologues are typical for professors in what I call the "Asphalt League" of public higher education, a.k.a. academia's urban precincts. Selective Bias In Media And Academia
Prof. Barry Rubin - 10/14/2007
It’s a difficult philosophical problem. President Shimon Peres said in regard to the invitation to Iran’s president to speak at Columbia that there’s a difference between academic freedom and freedom to lie. In other words, there must be some determination of what is reality. The Failure of Western Universities
Fjordman - 10/14/2007
Kari Vogt, historian of religion at the University of Oslo, has stated that Ibn Warraq’s book “Why I am Not a Muslim” is just as irrelevant to the study of Islam as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are to the study of Judaism. She is widely considered as one of the leading expert on Islam in Norway, and is frequently quoted in national media on matters related to Islam and Muslim immigration. People who get most of their information from the mainstream media, which goes for the majo... Why Did Columbia host Ahmadinejad?
Mohammad Parvin and Hassan Daioleslam - 9/25/2007
Iran's President Mahmood Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak at Columbia University on Monday September 24th. This arrangement is not accidental. The event would have not been possible without the tireless and focused efforts of the well known Tehran advocate Dr. Gary Sick, an influential figure in Columbia. Cyber Profs Set Up A Communal Writing Project To Establish A Standard For Decentralized Legal Scholarship
Angelique van Engelen - 9/16/2007
A group of cyber professors specializing in law and intellectual property rights are conducting an interesting experiment; they are writing a communal article, just to prove that decentralized legal scholarship might be a rather viable concept. The subject? Intellectual Property. Those two words. Geographical Ignorance is Bliss?
Dr. Norman Berdichevsky - 8/31/2007
“No child left behind? This has been one of the popular and hollow political catch-words used in recent electoral campaigns in the U.SHow far behind was “Beauty queen” and contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton, a hopeful in the “Miss USA Teen Pageant”, who outdid Grouch Marx’s best one-lines with her off-the-cuff response as to why one-fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Her explanation was….” I personally believe that ….uh… Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps,". These poor folks are obviously another group of d... Education With The Right Direction
Dr. Ravindra Kumar - 8/15/2007
What I understand the education with right direction, of course of the imagination of Mahatma Gandhi too, and on which I have emphasized time-to-time in India and abroad, is a process containing four kind of learning. It may be called complete education also, and through it, as I believe the real objective of education can be fulfilled. In it, apart from general education that is imparted according to the syllabus fixed to the purpose at different level, there is a provision of physical, moral and technical learning. AEYRheads In American Academia
Stephen W. Browne - 8/6/2007
Until I came back from Eastern Europe I hadn’t often had to put up with a certain kind of person that infests the universities and intellectual circles of America and Western Europe. I refer to the kind of "progressive" intellectual I call the Achingly Earnest Young Radical, or AYERhead for short. You know the kind I mean, the ignorant, arrogant know-it-all little twerps who revel in their superior insight at having discerned the true patterns of history, the ulterior designs and the true motives of the rapacious ruling class. Thou Shalt Not Lie: Teaching Creationism and Evolution
Iqbal Latif - 5/29/2007
School children who see the exhibits in the Creation Museum in Kentucky will be confused when they learn in school that the universe is 14 billion years old rather than 6,000. Those who believe God created the heavens and the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago say their views are finally being represented by the Christian creators of the 27 million $ sprawling museum. Resistance to Learning
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 4/21/2007
The denizens of the Balkans resist learning. They reject newfangled knowledge not because they are traditionalists - but because they are craven and because they are pragmatic. Jay Bennish Is The Tip Of The Iceberg
Ross Kaminsky - 3/25/2006
For those of who haven't heard the story, Overland High School teacher Jay Bennish was reinstated Friday after a brief suspension following remarks comparing President Bush to Hitler. If you want to hear the 21 minute recording of an anti-American hate screed posing as a high school geography class, click HERE. It's well worth a listen. You won't believe your ears. One in 20 U.S. adults not literate in English
Bhuwan Thapaliya - 1/22/2006
Despite remarkable efforts by the Government of America to uplift the status of its adult’s English literary rate, a federal study shows that about one in 20 adults in the U.S. are not literate in English, which means 11 million people lack the basic skills to handle many simple day to day tasks. Caustic Soda: The Need To Test For Benzene
Ross E. Getman, Esq. - 9/25/2005
Five hundred dead fish in Japan, including eels and carp, are a reminder that sometimes dangerous chemicals are involved in the production of soda. Two thousand six hundred forty gallons of sodium hydroxide (better known as caustic soda or lye) leaked into a river from a Coca-Cola factory. The sodium hydroxide is used to sterilize plastic beverage bottles. In an unrelated development, internal documents disclosed for the first time this past week by a whistleblower demonstrate the importance of testing certain sodas regularly for a different dangerous chemical: benzene. Economics and Race in New Orleans Evacuation Effort
Ross Kaminsky - 9/11/2005
Speaking to the National Baptist Convention in Miami yesterday, Howard Dean not only implicitly calls President Bush and the administration racists, but also uses the tragedy to push for a larger welfare state and higher taxes. The quote that all the media outlets are picking up is: "the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not." In a way there is some truth to his words, but not in the way he means them. It's true that economics played a role in the sense that it was much more difficult for the very poor to leave. It also appears ... America's Second Civil War
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 9/6/2005
[Reprinted with permission from: "The Second Civil War in the USA and its Aftermath" by Sam Vaknin] "The polities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries swung between extremes of nationalism and polyethnic multiculturalism. Following the Great War (1914-8), the disintegration of most of the continental empires - notably the Habsburg and Ottoman - led to a resurgence of a particularly virulent strain of the former, dressed as Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism. Universities, Entertainment and John Edwards - The Copyright Complex
David H. Rothman - 6/5/2005
Had Nikita Khrushchev really banged his shoe against a desk at the U.N. in October 1960? The spring before, missiles had downed an American U-2 spy plane deep in Soviet territory, and Khrushchev was now waging the Cold War in full fury after a delegate from the Philippines accused the USSR of "swallowing up" Eastern Europe. Witnesses could not agree whether or not the shoe had hit the desk. But something else was clear on a grander level. When Dwight Eisenhower gave his farewell address in early 1961, Washington was undeniably fixated on defeating the Russians. Many in Eisenhower's place would have left office while simply mouthing the usual platitudes in favor of A Strong Defense. Academic Terrorism: Prof. K.C. Johnson On Discrimination Against Non-Leftists At Brooklyn College (CUNY)
David Storobin, Esq. - 5/19/2005
Prof. K.C. Johnson was involved in a nationally-known tenure fight. Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he's teaching, denied him tenure in the Fall of 2002 on the grounds that they disagreed with his politics. After being denied tenure by Brooklyn College, CUNY heads intervened and granted it to Prof. Johnson whose teaching and scholarship was described as "excellent". Today, K.C. Johnson describes from a Professor's point of view what is happening at Brooklyn College, including his tenure fight and students' response to what has been described by the media as "Academic Terrorism". Battle of the Titans - Encarta vs. the Britannica
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 4/14/2005
The Encarta Encyclopedia - and even more so, the Encarta Reference Library Premium 2005 - is an impressive reference library. It caters effectively (and, at $70, cheaply) to the educational needs of everyone in the family, from children as young as 7 or 8 years old to adults who seek concise answers to their queries. It is fun-filled, interactive, colorful, replete with tens of thousands of images, video clips, and audio snippets. Is Education a Public Good?
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 3/12/2005
Epictetus, an ancient Greek Stoic philosopher wrote: "We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free."
Contrary to common misconceptions, public goods are not "goods provided by the public" (read: by the government). Public goods are sometimes supplied by the private sector and private goods - by the public sector. It is the contention of this essay that technology is blurring the distinction between these two types of goods and rendering it obsolete. |
