The ASUC Senate’s deeply misguided vote to divest UC funds from companies affiliated with the Israeli military is, in one sense, utterly irrelevant. Despite its best efforts, the coterie of far-left activists that dominates student politics rarely influences university policy — Chancellor Birgeneau helpfully reminded us that the regents’ investment portfolio will Read More…
In her provocatively titled new book “The End of Sex,” noted religion and sexuality scholar Donna Freitas does something rather unusual — she attacks the notorious college “hookup culture” from the feminist left. Commentators sometimes nostalgically lament the supposed collapse of courtship among young people. But as of late, feminists Read More…
Progressives are bracing for a devastating defeat in the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on the affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas. If the justices restrict race-based affirmative action, they will “erase 50 years of progress,” one activist declared in The Nation. That’s an overstatement, but there is wide Read More…
The Republican Party’s best possible argument against government intervention in the economy is that it has negative unintended consequences — in particular, that it harms the vulnerable. Of course, this isn’t usually the case — government programs, from Pell Grants to food stamps, have helped expand opportunity and lift millions Read More…
Last month, the gatekeepers to some of America’s top colleges gathered at a four-star hotel in Los Angeles to discuss what The Chronicle of Higher Education called “the next frontier” in college admissions: the evaluation of applicants’ “noncognitive” attributes. Put less glamorously, the assembled admissions experts brainstormed ways for the admissions process Read More…
In an interview during the 2012 election season, a prominent American politician spoke highly of advocates of traditional marriage. They are motivated by an impulse to “preserve and strengthen families,” he said. He avoided framing the debate over gay marriage as a civil rights issue, calling it instead a disagreement Read More…
“Generations, like people, have personalities,” wrote the Pew Research Center in an introduction to its detailed 2010 report on the characteristics of young voters, “and Millennials — the American teens and twenty-somethings who are making the passage into adulthood at the start of a new millennium — have begun to Read More…
Dear Nicholas Dirks, Congratulations on your selection as UC Berkeley’s next chancellor. Your reputation will rise or fall depending on your ability to navigate an unpredictable and sometimes explosive political environment, win the trust of students who are notoriously wary of authority and guide the world’s leading public university through Read More…
Nearly all high-skill jobs are rapidly becoming digital and quantitative. Doctors and health care providers are scrambling to adapt to new electronic medical record databases. Journalists are increasingly expected to be proficient in Web design and computer graphics. The finance industry has been taken over by mind-twisting mathematical models. Even Read More…
“If the Republican Party cannot win in this environment,” declared conservative luminary George Will in September, “it has to get out of politics and find another business.” Fox News host and Tea Party darling Laura Ingraham agreed, telling Republicans, “if you can’t beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut Read More…