2024: 5 op-eds from the Campus Reform Higher Education Fellows

Campus Reform published a number of commentaries in 2024, including those authored by our Higher Education Fellows. Here are five examples.

1. PROF. JENKINS: ‘Social justice’ is injustice by another name

For all their talk about “progress” and incessant posturing as the smartest people in the room, campus leftists haven’t had an original idea in decades. They just keep recycling the same tired theories in the hope they might seem fresh to a new generation of students.

Take “social justice,” for example. Blessedly, I hadn’t heard that phrase in a while, so I wondered if it had been eclipsed by trendier ones like “white supremacy” and “decolonization”—themselves rebrandings of Obama-era “systemic racism.”

2. PROF. GIORDANO: Toxic spread of campus fragility continues

Our colleges and universities, once bastions of critical thinking, have become factories of fragility. Many of today’s graduates emerge from college unprepared for the demands of the real world. They prioritize feelings over facts, and self-indulgence over personal responsibility. Emotions have replaced objective analysis, competency, and professional standards. Worst of all, this campus-bred behavior has infected workplaces across the country, where entitlement takes precedence over the demands of any job. The result? A workforce that stifles economic growth and an America losing its competitive edge in the 21st century.

3. TASHJY: There were no milk and cookies at Normandy

How is it possible that in two generations, our country could go from producing the “greatest generation,” which liberated millions of people from fascist and Nazi oppression, to a generation that is arguably the most narcissistic and emotionally fragile ever?  

Look, don’t get me wrong, passion is good, but what we have these days, particularly among many college students, is a lot of passion with very little perspective.

4. OPINION: Four things conservative students should do to prepare for college during an election year

Conservatives need to do more to be prepared for what they are going to face on campus. This is especially true during an election year. During an election year, politics is heightened on campus, and students often face even more pressure to embrace progressive views.

Here are four things conservative students should do to prepare for college during an election year.

5. TASHJY: Anti-Israel agenda motivated professors to abandon academic freedom principles

After more than 100 years as the “primary defender of academic freedom” in American higher education, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) rejects its long-held principles with its controversial endorsement of academic boycotts.

While the AAUP claims that its recent embrace of academic boycotts is not intended to target Israel, make no mistake, it is clearly motivated by an anti-Israel ideology and, to some, smacks of anti-Semitism.