Category: Education (higher ed)
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Virginia’s Upper Body
Finding inspiration in all the wrong places by Gordon C. Morse Virginia Senate Democrats – the leadership, primarily – have taken a wrecking crew mentality to higher education and exposed themselves to condemnation for doing the very things they passionately denounce others for doing. In this instance, on Thursday afternoon, the majority Democrats serving on…
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Be Careful What You Wish For
by Dick Hall-Sizemore President Trump has directed the Secretary of Education to expand the reporting requirements of institutions of higher education in order to determine if any of those bodies are still using race as an admissions criterion. Accordingly, the Secretary has directed the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to collect the following data…
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Miyares Excoriates “Utter Travesty” Against Women Swimmers
by Scott Dreyer At 10:30 a.m. on August 25, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares held a press conference at the Salem library to reveal his office’s investigation into alleged abuse by Roanoke College officials against members of the 2023-24 women’s swim team. About twenty people attended the event, including five Roanoke County elected officials, some local media, and…
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Former Swim Team Captain Exposes Abusive, Vengeful Staff
by Scott Dreyer On August 25, Attorney General Jason Miyares held a press conference at the Salem library to share the findings of his office’s investigation into how Roanoke College treated members of its women’s swim team, a controversy that first erupted in the fall of 2023 and went on to make national headlines. Miyares…
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Maybe Ryan Should Have Toughed it Out
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The Trump administration has found that George Mason University (GMU) has violated federal law with its DEI policies. A spokesman for the Dept. of Education said, GMU “waged a university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race.” The penalty? The president of the university, Gregory Washington, must…
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Selling JMU to Itself
Academic department puts million-dollar mark on football field by Joe Fitzgerald There either is or should be a rule that says if your organization is doing something that makes absolutely no sense to most of the people outside and many of the people inside, you should explain it better or do it differently. Specifically, if…
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A New President for The University
And oh so many to manage and lead. by Gordon C. Morse The University of Virginia, it announced on Monday, has an interim president. His name is Paul G. Mahoney and he’s been around for a while – living and working within the body of the beast – and that’s promising. He has friends; he…
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Hold the Presses! Gregory Washington Still Has a Job!
Against the backdrop of hysterical warnings that the George Mason University Board of Visitors might fire President Gregory Washington, GMU’s first Black president, at its meeting today, the Board gave him a raise. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement — only 1.5 percent — but it was a raise. Apparently, that means he still has…
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Virginia Democrats Get Win in Fight Over Appointments
As reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Fairfax circuit court has sided with the Virginia Democratic Senate in its fight with Gov. Youngkin over some of his appointments to boards of visitors of institutions of higher education. The judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting recent appointees to the Board of Visitors at the University of…
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Million Dollar Job Opportunity
I knew UVA’s woke administrators were well-compensated. But who knew the president was raking in about a million bucks a year? by Kerry Dougherty Thinking about a career switch? Need to earn more money? Want to live in a mansion with a staff? Have I got an opportunity for you: there’s an opening in the…
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Autumn’s Unsettling
by Gordon C. Morse It’s mid-summer and hot. Let’s imagine the fall, cooler air and assume James Carville is right. “The Democratic Party,” he wrote in The New York Times, “is steamrolling toward a civilized civil war.” Carville would hold off the fight temporarily. Need more Democrats in Congress, he says. Focus on the 2026…
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UVA Launches Presidential Search Committee
by James A. Bacon With Senate Democrats warning the University of Virginia to wait until next year to appoint a new president, the Board of Visitors has embarked upon its first crucial step — selecting a 28-person search committee. According to a university statement released yesterday, the special committee tasked with recommending candidates to the…
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A Power Play Remarkable for Its Audacity
by James A. Bacon The lead of this Virginian-Pilot article might be a tad inaccurate, but it hits close to the mark: Virginia Democratic legislators said Thursday that they would not confirm a permanent replacement for former University of Virginia president Jim Ryan, who was ousted last month under pressure from the Trump administration. I…
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File This Under, “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”
Virginia Tech is implementing a new admissions-application process for the next academic year. Snowed under by a record 57,600 first-year applications last year, Tech will be using AI to help sort through all those essays. States the Virginia Tech news bureau: The changes include shifting the university’s early admissions application deadline from Nov. 15 to…
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Bacon’s Rebellion Proud to Be Part of Shadowy Clique of Puppet Masters
by James A. Bacon I didn’t know it but, apparently, I’m part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. I’m so clued in to the machinations of the conservative claque seeking to rid higher-ed of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion that I predicted that George Mason University President Gregory Washington might be forced to step down over DEI…