Thomas Albert Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University. Oxford University Press, 2006. Many German theologians were “liberal” in the sense of how they viewed Scripture, deconstructing it and applying a pseudo-scientific "higher critical” approach to search for “sources.” And they had replaced Christian ideas/principles with secularized replacements, or reduced Christianity down to cultural advance. So the impact of Christianity on civilization (sanctification) was secularized to simply "German culture." The advance of Christian truth about humanity and the planet was secularized to simply "German science and technology." Politically, we would call them “conservatives” and "nationalists" even though they were “liberal” on Scripture.

Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies. Oxford University Press | Amazon page, 2010. Engages with the rise of the German university. See also Father John Whiteford, Orthodox Biblical Interpretation and Protestant Biblical Scholarship. Father John Whiteford’s blog, July 27, 2018. An Orthodox interaction with the JEPD Hypothesis of German higher criticism.

Paul V. Mankowski, Why Universities Went Secular. First Things, Jan 1993. Argues that sloth is the true cause.

Jon H. Roberts, James Turner, The Sacred and Secular University. Amazon page, Mar 2000. Argues that the study of science/technology and the humanities gave rise to the elective system and dethroned theology from its place in a Protestant framework of knowledge; but doesn't explore whether the Protestant theology itself contained the seeds of its own unmaking, from Augustinian irrationality in theology (absorbed by Luther and Calvin) to John Locke's view of creation as exploitable resource

Margaret Spellings and Cheryl Oldham, A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education. U.S. Department of Education, Sep 2006. See comments by Chris Gehrz, Salt and Light. The Pietist Schoolman | Substack, Mar 27, 2025. “Van Engen happens to be a Christian scholar. Last year his book, Word Made Fresh, won a Christianity Today Book Award for “[showing] readers how poetry is for everyone—and how it can reinvigorate our Christian faith.” But he teaches at Washington University in St. Louis and is primarily concerned with challenging such secular research universities to make a more effective case for themselves. May God bless any such endeavor. R1 institutions like Van Engen’s have done much to make American higher education what a Republican presidential commission called “one of our greatest success stories,” and what that group said nearly twenty years ago is still true today: Americans shouldn’t “take our postsecondary superiority for granted.”

Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies. Oxford University Press | Amazon page, 2010. Engages with the rise of the German university. See also Father John Whiteford, Orthodox Biblical Interpretation and Protestant Biblical Scholarship. Father John Whiteford’s blog, July 27, 2018. An Orthodox interaction with the JEPD Hypothesis of German higher criticism.

James O'Toole, Class Warfare: When Harvard Declared Its Distrust of the Boston College Degree, the Jesuits Claimed Religious Discrimination. They May Have Been Right, But There Was More to It. Boston College Magazine, Winter 2012. Explains the historical perspective of Drew Faust, Scholarship and the Role of the University: Remarks at the Boston College Sesquicentennial. Harvard, Oct 10, 2012. Explains the shift to the German university model as freed from the classics.

Rachel Alexander, Suspicions Confirmed: Academia Shutting Out Conservative Professors. Town Hall, Jun 10, 2013. Although Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn, Sr., Forget What the Right Says: Academia Isn't So Bad for Conservative Professors. Washington Post, Mar 11, 2016.

Ray Williams, The Cult of Ignorance in the United States: Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of America. Psychology Today, Jul 7, 2014.

Emily Yoffe, The Campus Rape Overcorrection. Slate, Dec 7, 2014.

Beth McMurtrie, Why Colleges Haven't Stopped Binge Drinking. New York Times, Dec 14, 2014.

Jonathan Chait, How the Language Police Are Perverting Liberalism. New York Magazine, Jan 27, 2015.

Miroslav Volf, Lower Education: Why Universities Must Not Ignore the Meaning of Life. ABC News, Apr 14, 2015.

Samuel Goldman, Can America Learn from German Universities? The American Conservative, Jun 17, 2015.

Michael Lewis, Harvard Admissions Needs "Moneyball for Life". New York Times, Jun 20, 2015.

Jonathan Chait, Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say. New York Magazine, Jan 27, 2015.

The Onion, Parents Dedicate New College Safe Space In Honor Of Daughter Who Felt Weird In Class Once. The Onion, Jul 15, 2015.

Julie Scelfo, Campus Suicide and the Pressure of Perfection. New York Times, Jul 27, 2015.

Veruska Cantelli and Flavio Rizzo, The New Paladins of the Humanities. Warscapes, Jul 28, 2015.

Michael Lind, Let's Abolish Social Science. The Smart Set from Drexel University, Aug 25, 2015.

Peter Gray, Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges. Psychology Today, Sep 22, 2015. About student neediness

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind. The Atlantic, Sep 2015. About students demanding protection from words and ideas they don't like.

David Brooks, The Big University. New York Times, Oct 6, 2015.

Viviana Maymi, Here's How I Was Raped. Harvard Crimson, Oct 8, 2015.

Christina Cauterucci, Georgetown Students Want Their School to Pay a Novel Form of Reparations. Slate, Nov 13, 2015.

Ross Douthat, A Crisis Our Universities Deserve. New York Times, Nov 14, 2015.

Conor Friedersdorf, Brown University's $100 Million Inclusivity Plan. The Atlantic, Nov 24, 2015.

Fareed Zakaria, On College Campuses, Separate is Still Unequal. Washington Post, Nov 26, 2015.

Susan Svrluga, College President: "This is Not a Day Care. This Is a University!" Washington Post, Nov 30, 2015.

Due Quach, Poor and Traumatized at Harvard. Medium, Jan 2, 2015.

Samuel Goldman, Why Isn't My Professor Conservative? The American Conservative, Jan 7, 2016. A drop in right-wing faculty doesn't prove a rise in academic bias

Robert Frodeman & Adam Briggle, When Philosophy Lost Its Way. New York Times, Jan 11, 2016.

Kevin Carey, Academic Freedom Has Limits. Where They Are Isn't Always Clear. Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 15, 2016.

Robert Tracy McKenzie, Academic Freedom in a Christian Context. blog, Jan 18, 2016.

Catherine Rampell, Liberal Intolerance is on the Rise on America's College Campuses. Washington Post, Feb 11, 2016.

Conor Friedersdorf, Ohio State Turns the Concept of 'Safe Space' Against Student Protesters. The Atlantic, Apr 14, 2016.

Peter Berkowitz, Our Polarized Politics Are Tied to Flaws in Education. Real Clear Politics, May 6, 2016.

Nicholas Kristof, A Confession of Liberal Intolerance. New York Times, May 7, 2016. Although Gina Neff, The Lie of Liberal Intolerance on Campus (Medium, May 9, 2016) is worth noting, even if she only addresses hiring of professors as opposed to culture

Nik DeCosta-Klipa, Sex Abuse at New England Schools is Widespread. Boston Globe, May 8, 2016.

The New Criterion, Safe from Safe Spaces - One the Rare Good Sense of a College Administrator. The New Criterion, May 2016.

Nicholas Kristof, The Liberal Blind Spot. New York Times, May 28, 2016.

Nathan Heller, The Big Uneasy: What's Roiling the Liberal Arts Campus? The New Yorker, May 30, 2016.

Jonathan A. Cole, The Chilling Effect of Fear at America's Colleges. The Atlantic, Jun 9, 2016.

Jonathan Haidt, The Tyranny of Social Justice Warriors. Liberty Pen, Jul 2, 2016. 12 minute youtube video

Rod Dreher, Peter Thiel Was Wrong. The American Conservative, Jul 27, 2016.

Anthony Berteaux, In the Safe Spaces on Campus, No Jews Allowed. Washington Post, Sep 15, 2016.

Conor Friedersdorf, A College is a Community But Not a Home. The Atlantic, Sep 24, 2016. Relates to Nancy Abelmann, The Intimate University: Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation. Amazon page, Nov 20, 2009.

Jonathan Haidt, Two Incompatible Sacred Values in American Universities. Duke University, Oct 15, 2016. 60 minute lecture

Rod Dreher, Tony Esolen Contra Mundum. The American Conservative, Nov 1, 2016.

Alexandra DeSanctis, On Campus, Salvaging Love from the Ruins (National Review, Nov 3, 2016.

Gene Callahan, How the Cultural Marxists Failed by Winning. The American Conservative, Nov 17, 2016.

Patrick J. Buchanan, Obama's World: Utopian Myth?  The American Conservative, Nov 18, 2016. On the resurgence of nationalism, and some positives

Ted Galen Carpenter, The Demise of Anti-War Liberals? Cato Institute, Nov 18, 2016.

John Tierney, The Real War on Science: The Left Has Done Far More Than the Right to Set Back Progress. City Journal, Autumn 2016.

Pinkaj Mishra, Welcome to the Age of Anger. The Guardian, Dec 8, 2016. Liberal democracies trending towards authoritarianism; liberal rationalism has difficulties explaining this.

Nicholas Kristof, The Dangers of Echo Chambers on Campus. New York Times, Dec 10, 2016.

The Young Turks, The Democratic Party Takeover Has Begun. The Young Turks, Jan 23, 2017. About corporate money paying for a weak Democratic Party

Bruce Goldman, Two Minds: The Cognitive Differences Between Men and Women. Stanford University Medicine, Spring 2017. On the neuroscientific study of gender differences. See also Leonard Sax, A New Study Blows Up Old Ideas About Girls and Boys. Psychology Today, Mar 27, 2019. Studies of the neural development of fetuses show major differences between girls and boys, challenging the views of Judith Butler and Cordelia Fine that “gender” has no biological basis.

Conor Friedersdorf, The Book That Predicted Trump’s Rise Offers the Left a Roadmap for Defeating Him. The Atlantic, Jul 6, 2017.

Damon Linker, The Real Reason There Are Fewer Conservatives On Campus. The Week, Aug 2, 2017. Also commenting on the drop in right-wing faculty not being a rise in academic bias

Caroline Kitchener, How Campus Assault Became So Politicized. The Atlantic, Sep 22, 2017.

Christian Smith, Higher Education Is Drowning in BS. Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 9, 2018.

Alison Gopnik, When Truth and Reason Are No Longer Enough. The Atlantic, Apr 2018. In his new book, Steven Pinker is curiously blind to the power and benefits of small-town values; an example of the enthrallment of the "new left" with secular liberalism rather than Christian liberalism

Yoram Hazony, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment. Wall Street Journal, Apr 6, 2018. Today’s advocates oversell the benefits of unfettered reason. They dismiss the contributions of tradition, religion and nationalism to human progress

Caitlin Flanagan, Mutually Nonconsensual Sex. The Atlantic, Jun 1, 2018. Troubles with Title IX when alcohol is involved on both sides

Robert Chao Romero, Critical Race Theory in Christianity Part I: The Christian-Ethnic Studies Borderlands. Blog, Sep 7, 2018. Gives a very illuminating personal account of being a pastor, immigration lawyer, and professor teaching at UCLA in Ethnic Studies, as well as a good response to recent conservative evangelical denials that social justice is an organic and fundamental part of the Christian gospel message.

Renee Graham, The When It's OK to Be Black - Just Not Too Black. Boston Globe, Sep 14, 2018. Colleges are less likely to admit black students who express interest in racial justice

Ross Douthat, The Meritocracy Against Itself. New York Times, Oct 3, 2018. Re: elite Ivy League students protesting Kavanaugh

Rod Dreher, Bartleby the Bigot. The American Conservative, Nov 9, 2018. About Isabella Chow at UC Berkeley and the vote over transgenderism

Claire Lehmann, Camille Paglia: It’s Time for a New Map of the Gender World. Quilette, Nov 10, 2018. See also Jonathan V. Last, Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror. Weekly Standard, Jun 15, 2017.

Colleen Flaherty, Q&A Goes Horribly Wrong. Inside Higher Ed, Jan 7, 2019. Re: the field of classics

Patrick J. Deneen, The Illiberal Libertarianism of Higher Education. The American Mind, Jul 1, 2019.

Nicholas Lemann, Two Views of the Tumult on American Campuses. New York Times, Aug 20, 2019. As colleges become more racially diverse, debates continue about ideological diversity.

Ed West, Why the Rich Are Revolting. UnHerd, Jun 10, 2020. An interesting history about the disjuncture between revolts led by middle/upper class people and those led by poor people; religion should be an another thread historically but does not feature here.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Krystal and Saagar Blast Cancel Culture Meltdown Over Chomsky, Rowling Letter Defending Free Speech. Rising | The Hill, Jul 8, 2020.

Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky, Matt Stoller: It’s Time To Break Up The Ivy League Cartel. Rising | The Hill, Jun 11, 2021. Othe problem with endowments and power; the struggles of lower to middle tier colleges; the comparison between the Ivy Leagues with the great land-grant universities that were the result of Reconstruction

Peter Boghossian, My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit. Common Sense with Bari Weiss, Sep 8, 2021. Re: Portland State University; the wider concern is that diversity, equity, and inclusion can become so dogmatic that moral reasoning is sacrificed.

Richard Wolff, Economic Update: Germany Shifts Left. Democracy at Work, Nov 15, 2021. At the 17:30 minute mark, discusses Yale University and the resignation of Beverly Gage because the Brady and Johnson donors who didn’t like Dr. Gage used their money to get Yale to put Henry Kissinger in charge of a panel to oversee Dr. Gage. Wolff says Yale has a long history of muzzling critics of capitalism.

Saagar Enjeti, Class Divide Grows as Non-White Voters Flee Dems.  Breaking Points, Jul 14, 2022.  Cultural leftism is statistically driven by college education.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, How Culture War Ate American Politics. Breaking Points, Oct 8, 2023. When economic policy is hard to politically change, and especially when Bill Clinton moved more to the economic right, cultural war issues are easiest to focus on politically.

Natasha Lennard, University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza. The Intercept, May 16, 2024. As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure. “Many scholars committed to Palestinian liberation can no longer do their jobs. That’s because many of the professors most supportive of Palestine don’t have jobs anymore. This is nowhere truer than in the Gaza Strip — where all 12 universities have been reduced to rubble, and more than 90 professors have been reported killed during Israel’s assault on the territory. The gravity of what United Nations experts warn could amount to U.S.-backed “scholasticide” has no equivalent on American soil.”

Daniel Engber, The Business-School Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Bigger. The Atlantic, Nov 19, 2024. The rot runs deeper than almost anyone has guessed.

Amy Goodman, "Erasing History" from the U.S. to Germany: "Wars Are Won by Teachers," Says Prof. Jason Stanley. Democracy Now, Feb 21, 2025. Actually Vladimir Putin said, “Wars are won by teachers.” “As the Trump administration attempts to dismantle higher education in the United States by redefining discrimination in schools, fighting so-called woke ideology, attacking diversity, equity and inclusion programs, gutting the Department of Education, and threatening funding for research and higher education, we speak with Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley, whose latest book is "Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future." He says Trump's assault on education is part of the authoritarian playbook since "universities are centers for defending democracy." He also urges university presidents to speak out more forcefully. "It used to be that our presidents were supposed to speak out in favor of democratic values. Now university presidents are being told, 'Oh, you have to preserve your institutions.' Guess what: Universities are core democratic institutions.””

U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights Sends Letters to 60 Universities Under Investigation for Antisemitic Discrimination and Harassment. U.S. Dept of Ed, Mar 10, 2025. Letters warn of potential enforcement actions if institutions do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.

Ryan D. Enos and Steven Levitsky, First They Came for Columbia. The Harvard Crimson, Mar 14, 2025.

“So far, America’s leading universities have remained virtually silent in the face of this authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education. That must change. Harvard must stand up, speak out, and lead a public defense of our freedom to speak and study freely.

Autocrats — both left-wing and right-wing — always attack universities. The public rationale varies. Some, like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, reportedly accuse universities or students of supporting terrorism; others, like pro-government outlets in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, accuse them of working for foreign interests; still others, like Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, accused universities of supporting “neoliberalism” and corruption.

But these are pretexts. Universities are independent centers of ideas and often prominent centers of dissent. Autocrats are allergic to sources of dissent, so they almost invariably seek to silence, weaken, or control them.

The Trump administration is no different. Its claim to be fighting campus antisemitism rings as hollow as Ortega’s reported claim to be fighting terrorism in Nicaragua’s leading Jesuit-run university. The administration has weaponized the fight against antisemitism as a means to another end: punishing and weakening universities.”

Jessica Priest, Texas Bill Would Increase Oversight of Universities’ Hiring, Curriculum and Compliance. The Texas Tribune, Mar 13, 2025. Senate Bill 37 would create a state office to investigate complaints against universities and require governing boards to ensure courses don’t endorse certain ideologies.

Franklin Foer, Columbia University’s Anti-Semitism Problem. The Atlantic, Mar 17, 2025.

Christopher Eisgruber, The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia. The Atlantic, Mar 19, 2025. Robust federal funding helped make American universities the world’s best, but it also created a huge risk. Universities had acquired a public patron more powerful than any private donor; their budgets became heavily dependent on that single source. If the United States government ever repudiated the principle of academic freedom, it could bully universities by threatening to withdraw funding unless they changed their curricula, research programs, and personnel decisions. That’s what the Trump administration did this month when it canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia without the legally required due process. The government told Columbia that the money would be restored only if the university met various conditions, which included placing its Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department “under academic receivership” and making unspecified but “comprehensive” reforms to its student admissions and international-recruiting practices.

David Cole, Eugene Volokh, Michael C. Dorf, A Statement from Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia. ACLU, Mar 20, 2025.

Molly Farrar, Brandeis Bans Masks, ‘Trespassers’ After Pro-Palestine Protest. Boston.com, Apr 10, 2025. “Acknowledging that it was almost entirely Brandeis students and that it was led by a Jewish group would lead to a PR disaster for Zionist administrators ahead of admitted students weekend," protest organizers said.

Rick Pidcock, Trump, Harvard and Bob Jones University: The Resurrection of Racism. Baptist News Global, Apr 21, 2025.

Akela Lacy, We’re Publishing the Speech That Harvard Suppressed for Mentioning Genocide. The Intercept, Jul 5, 2025.

“Harvard Divinity School refused to publish this year’s commencement speech after one of its speakers went off-script to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza, as The Intercept reported last month. Now, The Intercept is publishing recent Divinity School graduate Zehra Imam’s part of the speech for the first time.

The suppression of the speech came as Harvard University received public praise for refusing to abide with demands from the Trump administration in its stated crusade against antisemitism at the nation’s universities, which the administration has used to justify a crackdown on speech advocating for Palestinian rights. Earlier this week, Trump again threatened to cut Harvard’s federal funding — this time, all of it — after the administration found that the school had violated the Civil Rights Act and tolerated antisemitism on campus.” 

Liz Bucar, What If Trevor Noah Is Right About the Left and Religion? Religion, Reimagined. Feb 10, 2026.

“Mamdani was doing his thing, diagnosing the problem with Democratic politics:

“Republicans have a limitless imagination. And as Democrats, we’re constructing an ever lowering ceiling of possibility. You know, and we are robbing ourselves of ambition and imagination, and we’re telling people that their choice is between settling or sacrifice. And neither of these are enough. You have to have an affirmative vision of how life can be better than this, because this life already is suffocating people.”

That’s when Trevor drops his theory about religion. His co-host Eugene Khoza immediately pushes back a little, “I don’t think religion is declined. I think faith.”

Trevor nods: “Yeah, the two have been combined for a long time.” Then he gets specific:

“One of the things that faith requires of you is the ability to believe that this current state that you are in is not the end. There is a possibility that something can be greater. And even though you cannot see it, you believe that it can happen. It requires literally everything that you just said.””