This guide briefly retraces the rise of ideologically charged residential life programming on campuses and shows how such programs, despite their seemingly innocuous goals, in fact undercut the principles of rational inquiry that are foundational to the academic enterprise. It concludes by outlining the practical steps trustees should take to ensure that their institution’s housing programs respect student rights and suggests other more meaningful ways of engaging students.
As colleges and universities acknowledge the connection between behavioral health and student success, ACTA releases this powerful report calling for a new level of awareness and collaborative action by presidents and trustees to address student alcohol and drug use. The report provides examples of successful, evidence-based programs implemented at institutions across the country, and it emphasizes that the most effective approaches […]
This guide for trustees reports on the dangerous decline of academic freedom and intellectual diversity on college campuses. The foreword, by Benno Schmidt, chairman of the CUNY Board of Trustees and former president of Yale, comes at a time when duly-invited graduation speakers are made unwelcome, campus speech codes threaten the free exchange of ideas, […]
In 2005, a consortium of higher education organizations issued a statement affirming the importance of intellectual diversity. A survey by ACTA found, however, that not a single institution had taken concrete steps to further that goal. This report is designed to help boards of trustees and their institutions address the issue of intellectual diversity and […]
Faced with steadily mounting evidence that the elite colleges really are politically one-sided and that students are feeling pressure to conform to their professors’ political views (see, for example, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s latest opinion survey of students at www.goacta.org), Lionel Lewis contends in the January-February issue that it doesn’t matter, because […]
At journalism school I flunked my class in “Trends: How to Identify Them, How to Invent Them.” So I’m not qualified to peg what follows as a genuine social or cultural trend. But it’s happened in four state legislatures already. And we can always hope. Most recently it’s been percolating in Missouri, where Representative Jane […]
It’s the end of the school year, which means caps and gowns, graduation parties and, lately, commencement speakers who withdraw at the last minute amid controversy. International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde became the latest graduation speaker to back out after student protests, telling Smith College Monday that she will not be speaking at […]
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