ACTA's Must-Reads

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By contrast...

If the Young America's Foundation list of 2005's twelve "most bizarre and politically correct courses" is a prime example of how not to expose problems in academe, FIRE's "speech code of the month" program is an example of how to do it. As noted here earlier this week, YAF's list is an anti-intellectual attempt to tar certain colleges and certain courses with a very wide, indiscriminate, and, ultimately, reactionary brush; by contrast, FIRE's speech code of the month program is an exemplary instance of how to use publicity judiciously to expose institutional wrongs.

Proof: This year alone, both Dartmouth College and Albertson College have repealed their speech codes. Dartmouth revised its policies after receiving a "red light" rating at FIRE's speechcodes.org site (now Spotlight). Albertson College's policies were featured as FIRE's speech code of the month last summer--and the college has responded by eliminating its rules against "[a]ny comments or conduct relating to a person's race, gender, religion, disability, age or ethnic background that fail to respect the dignity and feelings of the individual." Colleges and universities do not as a rule willingly relinquish their misguided hold over student expression--which is what keeps FIRE in business. Albertson and Dartmouth are thus to be commended--and so is FIRE for using the power of publicity so constructively.

To close out 2005, FIRE has published a list of the year's top speech codes. They include Stevens Institute of Technology, which forbids "sexist jokes," "comments regarding a person's attire," "displaying or discussing materials pertaining to males or females in a demeaning manner," and "propositions"; North Carolina Central University, which forbids "public profanity"; the University of Nevada, Reno, which forbids "offensive language"; and Northern Arizona University, which has banned "negative comments."

One can only wonder where these schools found the finely honed legal minds that advised them to put such overbroad and unworkable wording into their policies. And one can hope that with the help of a little exposure, the leaders of these schools will undertake to adopt policies that are more consistent with both the principles of free inquiry and the law.

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Quote of the day

Comes from Mark Schneider, commissioner of statistics at the National Center for Education Statistics. Commenting on the Center's recent findings regarding drastically declining literacy among American college graduates, Schneider expressed his own dismay in unforgettably stark terms: "What's disturbing is that the assessment is not designed to test your understanding of Proust, but to test your ability to read labels."

According to the Center's latest findings, only 41% of graduate students tested in 2003 scored as "proficient" readers, while only 31% of undergrads did. That's a lot of tuition for not a lot of result. But, as Dolores Perin of Columbia Teachers College notes, the problem is not so much that colleges fail to educate students as that colleges are admitting students that have not been educated by the K-12 system, and then failing to remediate them properly. Functional illiteracy is hardly produced in college--but it is being ignored, neglected, and hence exacerbated there.

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Evaluating the curriculum

Young America's Foundation has published its list of 2005's twelve "most bizarre and politically correct college courses." They are:

1. Princeton University's The Cultural Production of Early Modern Women examines "prostitutes," "cross-dressing," and "same-sex eroticism" in 16th - and 17th - century England, France, Italy and Spain.

2. The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie: Race and Popular Culture in the United States at Occidental College in California explores ways "which scientific racism has been put to use in the making of Barbie [and] to an interpretation of the film The Matrix as a Marxist critique of capitalism."

3. At The John Hopkins University, students in the Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll in Ancient Egypt class view slideshows of women in ancient Egypt "vomiting on each other," "having intercourse," and "fixing their hair."

4. Like something out of a Hugh Hefner film, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania offers the class Lesbian Novels Since World War II.

5. Alfred University's Nip, Tuck, Perm, Pierce, and Tattoo: Adventures with Embodied Culture, mostly made up of women, encourages students to think about the meaning behind "teeth whitening, tanning, shaving, and hair dyeing." Special projects include visiting a tattoo-and-piercing studio and watching Arnold Schwarzenegger's bodybuilding film, Pumping Iron.

6. Harvard University's Marxist Concepts of Racism examines "the role of capitalist development and expansion in creating racial inequality." Although Karl Marx didn't say much on race, leftist professors in this course extrapolate information on "racial oppression" and "racial antagonism."

7. Occidental College--making the Dirty Dozen list twice--offers a course in Stupidity, which compares the American presidency to Beavis and Butthead.

8. Students at the University of California--Los Angeles need not wonder what it means to be a lesbian. The Psychology of the Lesbian Experience reviews "various aspects of lesbian experience" including the "impact of heterosexism/stigma, gender role socialization, minority status of women and lesbians, identity development within a multicultural society, changes in psychological theories about lesbians in sociohistorical context."

9. Duke University's American Dreams/American Realities course supposedly unearths "such myths as 'rags to riches,' 'beacon to the world,' and the 'frontier,' in defining the American character."

10. Amherst College in Massachusetts offers the class Taking Marx Seriously: "Should Marx be giving another chance?" Students in this course are asked to question if Marxism still has any "credibility" remaining, while also inquiring if societies can gain new insights by "returning to [Marx's] texts." Coming to Marx's rescue, this course also states that Lenin, Stalin, and Pol Pot misapplied the concepts of Marxism.

11. Brown University's Black Lavender: A Study of Black Gay & Lesbian Plays "address[es] the identities and issues of Black gay men and lesbians, and offer[s] various points of view from within and without the Black gay and lesbian artistic communities."

12. Students enrolled in the University of Michigan's Topics in Literary Studies: Ancient Greek/Modern Gay Sexuality have the pleasure of reading a "wide selection of ancient Greek (and a few Roman) texts that deal with same-sex love, desire, gender dissidence, and sexual behavior."

This is quite a list--not least because of its failure to provide links to the full online course descriptions and because of the manner in which it unapologetically mixes apples (bizarre courses) and oranges (politically correct courses). As such, it's hard to know just what sort of legitimate work this list is supposed to do.

There is much to be concerned about when it comes to the question of the higher education curriculum. As a nation, we have more or less done away with the idea of a common educational core centered on solid liberal arts training, opting instead for a "smorgasbord" approach that enables students to choose from an endless array of increasingly trivial-seeming, disconnected, and ideologically fraught courses. We need to be actively discussing the pressing question of just what a college education is and of what a college graduate ought to know and ought to be able to do. We need, too, to be considering how the proliferation of both intellectually suspect courses (such as the Barbie course noted above) and doctrinaire courses (of which the Marx course listed above may be one) compounds the problems we are having with the basic work of ensuring that America's college graduates can read, write, and reason with some degree of skill. But sensationalistic and anti-intellectual documents such as the YAF's list do more to hinder than to help the progress of such necessary inquiry. The list relies on its own trumped-up shock value--and as such asks people to be just as shocked that Marx might find his way onto a college syllabus as that Barbie might, and to be appalled that topics such as race and homosexuality might be treated as legitimate subjects of study.

Certainly a case can be made that ideological agendas inflect a great many college courses on hot-button topics such as race and sexuality, and certainly, too, marxism remains a favored academic analytical rubric while alternative perspectives (such as, for example, those outlined by Hayek) receive far too little intellectual play on campuses. But a list of provocative titles and cherry-picked quotes do little, if anything, either to help define the problem or to point to possible solutions. They serve simply to demonize higher education as a caricature of left-wing absurdity, and as such they contribute to the political polarization that is presently making it so very tough to have substantive, inclusive discussions about what must be done to ensure that American higher education is all that it ought to be.

Read about ACTA's own detailed report on the decline of the college curriculum, The Hollow Core: Failure of the General Education Curriculum, here

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More scandal fatigue

DePaul University deserves to be on the list of universities whose bad administrative behavior has been a repeated source of embarrassment this year.

Last spring, DePaul suspended adjunct professor Thomas Klocek for getting into an argument with some pro-Palestinian students who were promoting their views at an informational table. The students were offended that Klocek disagreed with their position, and filed a complaint against him. Without according Klocek the minimal due process of allowing him to face his accusers, and in blatant disregard for the free expression and open debate that is supposed to characterize university life, DePaul punished Klocek by removing him from the classroom and then defaming him. Klocek is currently suing the university for defamation of character.

This fall, DePaul confirmed the impression it created last spring: that it is a campus where a political double standard reigns supreme, and where individuals who do not subscribe to the university's official ideological orthodoxy are silenced and punished. DePaul paid political provocateur Ward Churchill thousands of dollars to come speak--but then punished the College Republicans when they sought to criticize both Churchill and the university's decision to invite him. When the CRs posted a flyer that protested Churchill's visit simply by citing Churchill's own words, they received a disciplinary warning and were banned from attending the follow-up discussion session with students Churchill had scheduled. When they protested this treatment, they were also banished from DePaul's Cultural Center.

DePaul has worked hard this year to shame itself publicly and to make it clear to all that it is not a university where a genuine concern for intellectual diversity and robust, open debate thrives. The university's culminating effort on this front was its bad faith response to FIRE when that organization intervened on behalf of the College Republicans. Misquoting school policy and misrepresenting the facts of the case, DePaul responded to FIRE that the university's actions toward the CRs was entirely consistent with school policy and that no wrong had been done. FIRE has gone public with the details now, after giving DePaul a substantial period of time in which to think better of its indefensible stance.

DePaul is now in for another fatiguing round of self-induced scandal. One might ask at this point what the university would do differently if it were actively trying to destroy its own reputation.

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Scandal fatigue

The title of this post comes from a Colorado Daily piece on the reputational trials and tribulations (Ward Churchill, athletic recruiting violations, "racially motivated" incidents, false accusations of date rape) that the University of Colorado has suffered in recent months. But the term might be far more widely applied; the University of Colorado is far from alone in its ungainly habit of landing in the news for the inappropriate and unflattering behavior of its faculty, staff, and students.

The University of California, for example, is arguably experiencing scandal fatigue at present, as outrage about corrupt administrative salary practices and skyrocketing fees is compounded by the news that illegal aliens attending state campuses enjoy a discounted in-state tuition rate of $6,700 per year, while U.S. citizens from other states pay $24,500. This last has become the subject of a lawsuit alleging that the University of California has violated federal law by discriminating against out-of-state students.

One might also count the University of North Carolina among the scandal-fatigued. As FIRE noted last week, UNC can't seem to go a year without making headlines for its chronic inability to respect students' First Amendment rights. This year, the University is distinguishing itself by prosecuting students at the Greensboro campus who protested the school's unconstitutional "free speech zones" outside the free speech zone.

Academic scandal fatigue, as the Colorado Daily uses it, appears to refer both to the public's exhaustion at seeing an institution of higher education endlessly and repetitively embarrass itself and to the phenomenon of a university's repetitive, incidental self-shaming over time. In other words, scandal fatigue arises when a college or university not only can't seem to get it right, but also can't seem to get the ongoing chronicle of its failings out of the media. As such, it's a useful phrase for a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly common as people pay ever more attention to the ways and means of higher education administration.

Readers are invited to submit additional examples of academic scandal fatigue in the comments below.

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Another one for Margaret Spellings

It's official: College students can't read. Worse, fewer can read today than could read a decade ago. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, only 25% of college graduates count as "proficient" readers, while only 31% of people who have done some graduate work score as "proficient." A decade ago, 40% of college graduates were proficient; 45% pf people who had done graduate work were. Proficiency, as defined by the test, is "using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential." InsideHigherEd.com has the details, but the upshot is that as more and more people go to college, fewer are graduating with the skills a college degree is supposed to guarantee. This appears to be owing in part to the fact that colleges are admitting large numbers of underprepared students (most of them from impoverished and ethnically marginal backgrounds); it appears also to be owing to the fact that colleges aren't doing enough to remediate those students once they are enrolled.

InsideHigherEd.com cites several college officials' speculations on why the numbers are increasingly bad. These include the cultural deification of uneducated dropouts who have made it big, the failure of inner city schools to prepare students properly, the failure of young people to read for pleasure, and the rise of a mass culture that emphasizes superficiality and continual change over thoroughness, focus, and depth.

What's not mentioned: the failure of college English departments to teach reading and writing skills, the failure of college administrations to require students to demonstrate competency in reading and writing in order to graduate, and the alacrity with which colleges across the country have, in the name of promoting a more diverse student population, managed to make the degree an increasingly worthless piece of paper. Also not mentioned: the manner in which the rising costs of tuition don't correlate with an improved quality of education.

Parents, students, and legislators should be outraged. And trustees should be ashamed. It's not just intellectual diversity that trustees need to ensure, but basic academic accountability. A college or university that graduates students who can't read or write--and this is what the national assessment essentially documents--is one that is fraudulent. That the majority of schools appear to be doing just this does not mitigate their dishonesty--it just makes it all the more shameful.

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ACTA publishes report on intellectual diversity

In a report released yesterday, ACTA urges higher education trustees to take responsibility for ensuring that intellectual diversity is respected and protected on their campuses. Entitled Intellectual Diversity: A Time for Action, the report performs two crucial operations: It documents the hypocrisy of higher education administrators who have paid lip service to the importance of intellectual diversity but who have done nothing on their campuses to promote it, and it outlines a series of strategic steps trustees can take to ensure that their institutions are doing all they can to cultivate an environment that truly values a variety of perspectives and cherishes the robust debate that arises when those perspectives clash constructively.

Last June, the American Council on Education and 29 other organizations issued a "Statement on Academic Rights and Responsibilities" that pledged their support for "intellectual pluralism and academic freedom." Published in response to studies and reports suggesting that America's colleges and universities are, by and large, politically one-sided entities that discourage and even punish viewpoints that are at odds with their official, liberal orthodoxy, the statement presented itself as an act of good faith that both acknowledged a problem and promised to address it. But when ACTA wrote to one hundred of the nation's top colleges and universities in September, asking them to document any actions they had taken in response to the ACE statement, not one was able to report doing anything at all to address the problems the ACE statement had defined. Most schools said their existing policies were sufficient--even though those policies have done nothing to avert a pervasive national problem. And only one school, the University of Oregon, could even report taking about the statement. There, the president convened the deans for a "work session" on the statement, but there was no report on what that session contained and there has been no follow up.

In a press release issued yesterday, ACTA president Anne D. Neal said, "It's all talk and no action. ... Higher education simply can't have it both ways. Colleges and university presidents say they, alone, are able to correct the situation in the classroom, but then they refuse to do anything but offer lip service to the idea of intellectual diversity. If the academy were faced with just one study showing racism or sexism in the classroom, they would take immediate actions to address the problem. Here we see study after study pointing out a breathtaking lack of intellectual diversity on campus and nothing is done about it. The double standard is outrageous."

ACTA's report reminds trustees that they abdicate their fiduciary responsibilities when they fail to take responsibility for their institution's commitment to intellectual pluralism in the face of much evidence that campuses are becoming bastions of liberal bias. ACTA also offers guidelines for what trustees can do to ensure that their institutions are living up to the ideals of free inquiry that are the basis for effective higher education. These include conducting "a self-study to assess the current state of intellectual diversity on campus and identify areas for improvement," "incorporat[ing] intellectual diversity into institutional statements and activities on diversity," eliminating speech codes, encouraging balance in speakers and panels, "establish[ing] clear campus policies which ensure hecklers or threats of violence do not prevent speakers from speaking," including "intelllectual diversity concerns" in teaching guidelines and course evaluations, "amend[ing] hiring, tenure, and promotion guidelines as well as student grievance guidelines, and guaranteeing student press freedom.

ACTA's report grows out of Neal's July critique of the ACE statement's rhetorical spinelessness. It will be up to trustees now to put some muscle into their schools' commitment to the principles outlined there.

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Will on Rumsfeld v. FAIR

One of the most striking things about the oral arguments presented last week in Rumsfeld v. FAIR is how provincial the Supreme Court justices managed to make FAIR's case look. FAIR's argument is that the Solomon Amendment violates law schools' expressive rights when it compels those schools to allow military recruiters on campus if they want their institutions to continue to receive federal funding. In essence, law schools are protesting the fact that the Solomon Amendment does not allow them to protest "don't ask, don't tell" by barring military recruiters from campus. But the glaring holes in this argument--that law schools are not barred by Solomon from expressing their disapproval of "don't ask, don't tell," that law schools freely express how much they do disapprove of "don't ask, don't tell," and that law schools could bar recruiters altogether if they could convince their institutions to forego federal funds--were readily identified by the justices, and just as readily exposed for the illogical lacunae they are. In this sense, last week's oral arguments marked an embarrassingly public display of academe's ideological insularity. The sheer provinciality of FAIR's argument--which was apparently conceived without a clear sense of how it might play to judges who business it is to take a content-neutral view of expressive issues--is perhaps the most interesting and revealing thing about it.

Certainly this is George Will's sense. In a Washington Post op-ed published yesterday, Will had some harsh but fair things to say about what FAIR's case can tell us about the modern academic temperament. "The entitlement mentality produces petulant insistence on an ever-higher ratio of rights to responsibilities," Will begins. "Unsurprisingly, this mentality flourishes on campuses, where tenured faculty and privileged students live entitled lives supported by the taxes and generosity of others. The mentality was on vivid display in the Supreme Court on Tuesday when an association of 36 law schools and faculties asserted an audacious entitlement." He continues thus:

During oral arguments last week, the schools had many occasions to wince. Regarding the schools' theory that any conduct can be imbued with "communicative force," Justice Antonin Scalia wondered whether the schools might also justify banning military recruiters during a war the faculty disapproved of, because allowing the recruiters would be tantamount to the schools' endorsing the war.

Or because the professors object to the military's barring women from combat or using land mines. The possibilities are as numerous as the professors' reasons for interposing their moral sensibilities between Congress and its constitutional power to "raise and support armies."

Furthermore, more than four other justices probably share Scalia's incredulity concerning this implication of the schools' argument: When an individual or institution gives as a reason for violating the law the fact that he or it wants to send a message, the violation acquires First Amendment protection. By such reasoning, a school barring blacks from campus could say its conduct is infused with an expressive purpose, hence shielded by the First Amendment.

The schools' selective sensitivity about that amendment is amusing, given that many universities use speech codes to enforce "progressive" sensibilities and compel students to pay fees that finance speakers and other expressive activities offensive to many of those compelled. Schools eager to ban military recruiters from a few hours of access to students who want to meet them have faculties that expose students to a one-sided bombardment of political views. Furthermore, universities are nurseries of "progressives" who support campaign regulations by which government supervises the quantity, content and timing of political speech, and who favor public financing of campaigns, which requires millions of taxpayers to fund political advocacy they oppose.

Will reads Rumsfeld v. FAIR as both an expression of the arrogance that saturates academic culture and as a potentially historic opportunity for the Supreme Court to check that arrogance while exposing it for what it is. As such, law schools' attempt to convince the Court that the Solomon Amendment disrespects their rights may ultimately do a great deal more to help the public understand just how willing those schools are to disrespect anyone who disagrees with their official political positions.

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SCOTUS on Solomon

This morning's New York Times reprints a remarkable exchange between several Supreme Court justices and E. Joshua Rosenkrantz, the lawyer for FAIR:

In the argument on Tuesday, the law school coalition's lawyer, E. Joshua Rosenkranz, had difficulty gaining traction as he urged the justices to uphold the appeals court's judgment that the Solomon Amendment amounted to "compelled speech" by forcing the law schools to convey the military's message. Chief Justice Roberts made his disagreement unmistakable.

"I'm sorry, but on 'compelled speech,' nobody thinks that this law school is speaking through those employers who come onto its campus for recruitment," the chief justice said. "Nobody thinks the law school believes everything that the employers are doing or saying."

The lawyer adjusted his focus. The law schools have their own message, "that they believe it is immoral to abet discrimination," he said.

This time, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took issue. "But they can say that to every student who enters the room," she said.

"And when they do it, your honor, the answer of the students is, we don't believe you," Mr. Rosenkranz said.

"The reason they don't believe you is because you're willing to take the money," Chief Justice Roberts interjected. "What you're saying is this is a message we believe in strongly, but we don't believe in it to the detriment of $100 million."

Bob Dylan has a phrase for moments like this one: You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

"It seems to me quite a simple matter for the law schools to have a disclaimer on all of their e-mails and advertisements that say the law school does not approve, and in fact, disapproves of the policies of some of the employers who you will meet," reflected Justice Kennedy. "That's the end of it." Here's hoping those words are prophetic.

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ACTA on Rumsfeld v FAIR

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Rumsfeld v. FAIR today as everyone from The Wall Street Journal to the ACLU weighed in on whether the government should have the right to withhold federal funding from colleges and universities that bar military recruiters. A notable staff editorial from the Washington Post argues that the Solomon Amendment is at once unfair and entirely legal:

The First Amendment is not an entitlement program that requires that such money come with no strings attached. The law (known as the Solomon Amendment, after the late New York Republican representative Gerald B.H. Solomon) does not require that universities promote the policy: They remain free to denounce it. The law simply demands that they not frustrate military recruitment while opening their bank accounts to large grants.

As a moral matter, however, the government is defending the indefensible -- a fact that the litigation, which necessarily focuses on the legalities, may tend to obscure. The major problem with "don't ask, don't tell" is not its effect on the First Amendment rights of law schools. Rather, it's that the military continues to expel patriotic Americans who want to serve their country at a time when it needs all hands to fight two wars.

And at the American Enterprise Online, ACTA president Anne D. Neal argues that higher education officials have a fiduciary obligation to ensure that schools do not interfere with students' ability to decide for themselves whether they want to pursue a military career:

...whether the Court decides yea or nay--a decision it will not likely reach for many months--it's time for trustees to step up to the plate and do what fiduciaries are supposed to do: act in the best interests of students and the public. It defies logic how a university like Yale can claim it is educating its students when it is denying them basic information about possible careers in the defense of our country.

Rather than hiding behind the faculty and administrators, trustees should guarantee students the right to learn about military careers. Indeed, to do otherwise allows the political activism of administrators to undermine the fundamental right of students to think for themselves and make their own decisions--including whether or not they support or oppose the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The essence of a university experience should be the free exchange of ideas and principled debate. But when it comes to military recruiters, it appears that too many of our colleges believe that there should be no debate--and no cost--to adhering to "principle."

Members of our military know all too well that principles are often protected at a great price. It's time for the academy to learn that lesson, as well. If they're going to accept government money with one hand, then they can't hold the door shut with the other.

Full reporting on today's events is still pending, but the Harvard Crimson is suggesting that the lead attorney for FAIR may have blown his clients' case this morning when he answered a question from Justice Breyer:

Breyer asked Rosenkranz: "Do you agree with the government that the statute as fairly interpreted is violated when schools issue rules uniformly applied to all employers that you can't come in if you have the discrimination against hiring gay people?"

"Yes, your honor," Rosenkranz replied.

So far, the Crimson reports, only Justice Souter appears to be sympathetic to FAIR's case.

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Stay tuned

Tuesday the Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, the controversial case that will decide whether colleges and universities may bar military recruiters from campus. At issue is whether the Solomon Amendment, which compels schools accepting federal funding to allow recruiters on campus, violates the expressive rights of schools that wish to protest "don't ask, don't tell."

ACTA has taken the position that it is reasonable for the federal government to peg funding to compliance with federal law, and that schools owe it to their students to allow them to make their own decisions about what sort of career they want to pursue after graduation. In October, ACTA urged trustees across the nation to rethink their positions and to recognize that they have no business placing institutional activism ahead of students' futures.

The Associated Press speculates that the composition of the court may determine the decision in this case:

The Supreme Court often splits 5-4 in free-speech cases, so it is hard to predict the outcome, as well as how the impending retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may affect the case.

If Samuel Alito, President Bush's nominee to succeed O'Connor, is confirmed by the Senate before the case is decided, then Alito could be called on to break any tie vote. The ruling will likely take months to complete.

Alito, who worked as a lawyer for the Reagan administration, probably would be sympathetic to the government's arguments that college access is necessary to fill military jobs, Morrison said.

O'Connor has been a moderate in gay rights cases, voting in 2003 to prevent states from making the private sexual conduct of gays a crime. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a blistering dissent, saying that the court had "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda."

But speculation is cheap, and, well, speculative. This will be a case to watch.

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How not to do it

Earlier this fall, University of Richmond president William E. Cooper chose exactly the wrong words to describe his plan of raising the school's academic standards. In a "state of the university" address, Cooper announced that "the entering quality of our student body needs to be much higher if we are going to transform bright minds into great achievers instead of transforming mush into mush, and I mean it." Students and alumni are predictably outraged at the insult Cooper has offered them; some have begun wearing "Mushheads Unite" buttons to school basketball games, and an online petition arguing that Cooper should be replaced had garnered enough signatures that the university's board of trustees in now looking into the problem of what can be done about Cooper and his impolitic commentary. So loud has been the uproar among offended students that no one appears to have noticed that Cooper's comment insults the Richmond faculty just as thoroughly as it insults students. When he talks of "transforming mush into mush," he seems to be saying that the experience of attending Richmond only confirms and maintains the muddleheadedness students bring with them to college.

Cooper arrived at Richmond from Tulane in 1998 and has since then devoted himself to improving the university's reputation. He's undertaken a $200 million capital campaign, he's committed the school to footing the bill for students' demonstrated financial need, he's extended benefits to same-sex partners of faculty and staff, and, this fall, he raised tuition 31%, claiming that the increase will help finance improvements and renovations.

Richmond's board of trustees met yesterday to decide whether to relieve Cooper from his post. The board decided not to.

Thanks to Maurice Black for the link.

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