The hottest Campus politics Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways

Columbia Grad Students Get a Reality Check

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 626 implied HN points • 15 Mar 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

The UAW warned Columbia's graduate student union to drop radical or political demands, saying those demands would keep the national union from supporting a strike.
Although student workers authorized a strike, the UAW controls whether it can happen and has said it won't fund or green-light a walkout until the students keep negotiating with the university.
The situation shows a clash between the local union's political priorities and the national union's pragmatic strike strategy, and without compromise the students may not get the backing they need.

Columbia’s Modern Arab Studies Chair Contenders Have One Thing in Common: Hating Israel

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 343 implied HN points • 12 Feb 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

Columbia is overhauling its Middle Eastern studies programs and replacing the Modern Arab Studies chair after losing federal funding and reaching a settlement.
Several top candidates and committee members have publicly taken strongly critical positions toward Israel, including framing violent events as responses to Israeli policies, which raises concerns about ideological bias.
Despite university promises to ensure "balanced" curricula, the candidates' views suggest the program may stay politically slanted, fueling accusations and institutional consequences.

Education Links, 1/30/2026

In My Tribe • 334 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

Colleges should promise students real career experience, teach adaptable technical skills, and build the uniquely human strengths that machines can’t replicate before graduation.
Research shows learning is faster when students study worked examples, explore open-ended problems, learn in spaced chunks with breaks, and automate basic skills so working memory can focus on higher‑order thinking.
Large outside funding and DEI operations can influence campus culture and how discrimination complaints are handled, so universities need stronger transparency, oversight, and accountability.

Corporate Soap Opera at UATX

In My Tribe • 531 implied HN points • 17 Jan 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

Personality and ego conflicts get amplified into supposed principled battles. Many disputes are more about people than deep ideological differences.
The school’s challenges go beyond DEI to include debates over AI, curriculum, and earlier rushed commitments. A lack of shared priorities means individuals launch initiatives that often collide.
Stronger internal processes and some bureaucracy are needed to manage trade-offs and reduce drama. A change in leadership may have made the place better positioned to improve things.

What Happened to Columbia’s Antisemitism Monitor?

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 482 implied HN points • 27 Jan 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

Columbia agreed to a $221 million settlement with the federal government and was required to create a monitorship to address allegations of antisemitism.
Bart M. Schwartz, a veteran compliance consultant from Guidepost Solutions, was appointed to oversee the university’s compliance with the agreement.
Insiders report the university failed to fully cooperate with the watchdog, undermining the monitorship’s effectiveness and fueling campus controversy, including protests over suspensions of SJP and JVP.

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What Qatar Bought from Carnegie Mellon for $1 Billion

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 315 implied HN points • 02 Feb 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

Qatar has poured far more money into American universities than other countries, spending about $6.6 billion since the 1960s and outpacing China.
Carnegie Mellon received roughly $1 billion from Qatar and runs a campus in Doha.
A Jewish student's antisemitism lawsuit and unsealed court documents have raised questions about whether large Qatari gifts come with strings or influence university decisions and policies.

University Civics Centers: what is the point?

In My Tribe • 258 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

State-funded civics centers are being created to teach citizenship and foundational texts, but their purpose is unclear: are they meant to reform universities or to educate citizens for self-government?
Nonviolent, disciplined protest and reliance on courts are presented as more effective and constructive ways to protect rights and persuade the public, while violent direct action risks turning movements into public-order problems.
Many civics centers are bureaucratic and face trade-offs with other priorities; focused events like teach-ins could be valuable, but students are overextended and institutions need to consolidate and prioritize initiatives.

Have universities become bastions of ideology instead of truth?

Heterodox STEM • 206 implied HN points • 04 Feb 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

Many universities show ideological conformity, with measurable patterns of disagreement and exclusion on campus.
That conformity risks harming truth-seeking—examples like frequent deplatforming around topics such as Israel-Palestine show both sides try to silence opponents, though the full effect on research and teaching is still uncertain.
Policy responses should protect academic freedom with clear time, place, and manner rules and avoid treating exposure to opposing viewpoints as harassment or creating biased protections for particular groups.

The UATX Brand

In My Tribe • 410 implied HN points • 03 Jan 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

UATX presents itself as a traditional, non-ideological liberal arts school focused on Great Books and in-person learning, but many outsiders mainly see it as a right-wing counter-institution.
The institution is caught between three conflicting identities — a rigorous classical college, a conservative ideological project, or a political movement — and trying to be all three at once looks unsustainable.
AI advisers recommend a pivot to a 'Practical Liberal Arts' combining a Great Books core with project-based, industry-linked concentrations and transparent outcomes, but the free-tuition, donor-dependent funding model could make the school prioritize donors over students.

A Modern-Day Academic Rapprochement

Heterodox STEM • 135 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

DEI ideas that started on campus have spread into big corporations and now shape hiring and workplace culture, which critics say undermines merit-based advancement and open debate.
Corporate leaders can and do pressure universities—using partnerships and donations—to push administrators to rebuke or silence faculty who criticize DEI, creating a chilling effect on academic freedom.
University administrations often respond by issuing bland DEI statements and promoting bias training instead of defending free speech, though there is growing political and public pushback against this trend.

Zachary Patterson: University ‘decolonization’ is a threat to academic freedom

Heterodox STEM • 384 implied HN points • 23 Nov 25

🚌 Education Campus politics

Universities are adopting decolonization plans that aim to decentre Eurocentric knowledge and cultivate a stated “critical consciousness” across programs, drawing on critical theory and post‑colonial ideas.
Academic freedom and political neutrality are important for universities to act as truth‑seeking institutions, and when a university takes political positions it can make faculty feel less free to teach, research, or comment on opposing views.
Decolonization efforts are presented as rooted in thinkers like Paulo Freire and Frantz Fanon and are portrayed as a neo‑Marxist or radical political approach that could impose an agenda on curriculum, risk public trust, and jeopardize funding.

Is Internal Reform of Academia Possible?

Unsafe Science • 183 implied HN points • 14 Dec 25

🚌 Education Campus politics

Academia is seriously skewed by left-wing ideological capture that affects theory, methods, hiring, teaching, funding, and publishing. That bias leads to censorship, politicized journals, and distorted scholarship.
Many insiders block reform through denial, deflection, and a ‘now is not the time’ or ‘can’t do’ mentality, and some reformers weaken efforts by worrying about optics or jargon instead of acting. Common excuses include claiming reform is a right-wing plot, minimizing the problem, or endlessly debating terms.
Internal reform is possible but difficult and requires sustained, practical action like working groups, viewpoint-diversity initiatives, and firm pushback against obstructionary rhetoric. Progress will be slow and needs a mix of patient inside efforts, outside pressure, and educating skeptics with evidence.

Academia’s most notorious thought criminals unite to discuss controversial topics

Heterodox STEM • 192 implied HN points • 04 Dec 25

🚌 Education Campus politics

A group of academics urged open, uncensored debate on taboo or controversial topics, arguing that free discussion is needed to challenge prevailing campus norms.
They criticized a strong egalitarian and cultural-relativist mindset, saying it can block honest inquiry about human differences and raise real concerns about cultural compatibility and assimilation.
Universities were described as facing a crisis of protests, weak leadership, and mission drift, prompting debate over whether outside pressure or government leverage is necessary despite potential harms to international students and STEM.

Media School Research: Sedatives, Politics, Somatic Healing, and Racial Justice

Heterodox STEM • 120 implied HN points • 27 Nov 25

🚌 Education Campus politics

Researchers are examining somatic healing and so-called “sedative technologies” that soothe and regulate bodies in response to racial trauma. While these practices can calm individuals, they may also limit more disruptive, collective ways of responding to ongoing racial violence.
A best-selling book popularized body-focused trauma therapies and helped spark widespread interest in somatic approaches. Many scientists, however, criticize the book’s claims as pseudoscientific, so its authority is contested.
Media schools increasingly study topics like bodily regulation and trauma using qualitative case studies rather than traditional experiments, blurring lines with humanities and social science. Institutional shifts can also lead to conflicts over student journalism and administrative censorship when reputation is prioritized over reporting.

The 1915 AAUP Warned the AAUP Not to Become the AAUP of 2025

Unsafe Science • 109 implied HN points • 21 Nov 25

🚌 Education Campus politics

A major faculty organization has shifted from defending academic freedom to taking partisan progressive positions. Examples include endorsing DEI-based faculty evaluations, permitting academic boycotts, and supporting divestment actions.
A century-old warning said academic freedom should not be used as a shelter for uncritical partisanship, because that breeds outside intervention and damage to universities. Current policies show that warning coming true by inviting controversies that harm internal order and public standing.
These partisan moves carry real risks: DEI criteria can be vague and unevidenced, boycotts are likely to be applied selectively, and divestment campaigns can be hypocritical and damaging to a university's reputation. Such outcomes may undermine, rather than protect, academic freedom.

The Price of the Epstein Frenzy

Critical Mass • 10 implied HN points • 16 Feb 26

🚌 Education Campus politics

The release of millions of Epstein-related documents has sparked a moral panic that treats mere association as guilt by association.
Universities and media outlets are cutting ties and cancelling programs linked to anyone connected with Epstein, even when there’s no evidence those people knew about or took part in his crimes.
Those retroactive punishments are dismantling useful educational programs and resources, hurting students and the public more than they advance justice.

Scapegoats: Deborah Lipstdat on how Anti-Semites go Mainstream

The Octavian Report • 0 implied HN points • 23 Dec 25

🌍 World Politics Campus politics

Antisemitism is seeping into mainstream politics on both the Left and the Right, and people often fail to recognize or take seriously antisemitic attitudes when they come from their own side.
Criticism of Israel can cross into antisemitism or be used to delegitimize Jewish life, which pressures students and academics to self‑censor and fuels a toxic environment.
Combating antisemitism is hard: education and speaking out help but aren’t a complete solution, and panic, denial, or conspiratorial rhetoric only make the problem worse.