higher education Archives - Ethics & Public Policy Center
For Liberalism To Hold Any Meaning, Colleges Need Religious Exemptions
Left-liberals must recognize that sustaining the bargain of liberalism in a time of big government and ascendant cultural leftism requires generous accommodations for traditional religious believers and their institutions.
Tom Cotton Introduces Campus Free-Speech Bill
Tom Cotton’s Campus Free Speech Restoration Act is at the leading edge of the fight to restore liberty and constitutional principle to our college campuses — and to our country.
Taking Back the Academy
The illiberal impulses that have undone our universities are now spilling into the culture at large and tearing the nation apart. After six decades of disastrous decline, culminating in today’s woke revolution, is it too late now to save the academy?
The American University Must Reaffirm Its Liberal Character
This core mission of the American university is the common ground of American society, apart from partisan rancor and mob tactics, and dedicated to the proposition that all positions are created equal and up for debate.
Two Secularizations and the Fate of Conservatism
Ever since William F. Buckley’s day, the conservative movement has grown in response to the departure of secular radicals from the national consensus, first with the increasing rejection of traditional religious morality by the left, more recently with the left’s departure from core tenets of liberal democracy and its refusal to embrace our national and civilizational stories.
Fossil Fuel Divestment versus Institutional Neutrality: A North Carolina Test Case
Institutional neutrality means that universities should avoid taking official political stands at the institutional level, such as divestment from fossil fuels, since such actions tend to pressure faculty and students holding contrary views into silence. This is particularly true for public universities such as the University of North Carolina Asheville, for they belong to every citizen of the state.
A Cost-of-Living Agenda
There’s room to pursue an agenda on the right that would tackle inflation in health care, housing, and higher education, and with time there could be some interest in it too. But on the left, it certainly looks like doubling down on the restriction of supply and the subsidization of demand is all we’re going to see at this point.
Fix Free Speech or No Higher-Ed Act Reauthorization
All indications are that Congressional Republicans have decided against including free-speech protections in the coming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, in significant part because House Democrats are refusing to go along. That has got to change.
The High-Priced Spread, Revisited
Thanks to a renaissance in Catholic higher education, Catholic parents serious about real education and real formation have options other than so-called “elite” universities.
The Politics and Policy of Trump’s Campus Free-Speech Order
President Trump’s decision to issue an executive order protecting freedom of speech on America’s college campuses marks an inflection point in a decades-long struggle over the direction of the American academy.
