American universities have long been citadels of political correctness but, in the past year, the noose has gotten even tighter. In many places, classic literature and great books have been banished or at least subjected to the prior censorship of “trigger warnings,” lest their content prove discomforting to some students. “Microaggressions” are practically universal. “Speech … Read more
“Do not try to teach a pig how to sing.” That was a piece of advice given to me when I was a young man, by a witty and cavalier drag queen, someone who never had the benefit of reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The closest thing to intellectualism in our lives, circa 1991, was … Read more
The other night I testified (via telephone) before the Alaska state legislature, on the standards their public schools are adopting for classes in English. I’d read the standards but didn’t have them in front of me, so I was taken aback when one of the representatives plucked a directive out of all the verbiage and … Read more
The Church today has a troubled relation to the academy and media. The reasons are quite basic. Secular intellectual authorities believe they stand for a way of understanding the world, free unprejudiced inquiry carried on by disinterested professionals, that is sufficient as well as uniquely correct. The Church considers neutral secular expertise insufficient, since the … Read more
For Catholic parents with intelligent high school children, this can be a trying time. A good many ostensibly Catholic universities have simply become indistinguishable from the mass of U.S. colleges. Take Georgetown, for example, which the New York Times gleefully reports has become a gay-friendly campus. During the month of “OUTober,” described by the Times … Read more
Is the world getting better or worse? It’s an important question, since the value of current social policy depends on the answer. Ordinary people tend to see current tendencies as a problem, but opinion leaders are more likely to discredit the past in favor of youth, novelty, and progress. With that in mind, mainstream public … Read more
While perusing a secular newspaper this morning, my eyes fell upon an opinion piece entitled, “Who will teach our boys to become men?” The author bemoaned the plague of gun violence among boys, but he did not suggest a way in which this type of violence could be mitigated. This is not surprising for a … Read more