Why is there so much difficulty and controversy surrounding campus speakers? To be sure, only a small portion of the overall pool becomes a problem -- David Horowitz, Bill Ayers, the Minuteman founder, etc. -- but why should invited guests ever push administrators into cancellations, presentation conditions, added fees, and other odd stipulations? What are they afraid of?

The handling of David Horowitz by St. Louis University is a case in point. People might remember that, several months back, his talk was cancelled, and recently a new wrinkle has come up. Here is Horowitz' version:

"The administrator in charge, Dean Scott Smith, had told the student whose group had invited me that 'Horowitz would never be allowed to speak on a platform alone at Saint Louis University. He could be invited only if there was another speaker on the program to oppose his point of...

For teens (12-17-year-olds), blogging is down and networking is up. That's the finding in a new report from Pew Research, whose Internet & American Life Project is one of the longest ongoing survey initiatives out there. The summary appears here.

While 28 percent of teen users in 2006 claimed that they keep a blog, that number now stands at 14 percent. And while 76 percent of them claimed in 2006 to comment on blogs at social networking sites, we are now down to 52 percent. For all adult users over the same period, the numbers haven't much changed.

Meanwhile, while 55 percent of teen users went to socal networking sites in Nov 2006 and 65 percent of them in Feb 2008, we are now at 73 percent. That is one point higher than the rate of 18-29-year-olds who network. Overall,...

At the World Economic Forum last week over in Davos, Switzerland, another figure rose up to warn of the dangers that the digital revolution pose to reading. He stated, "The one that I do worry about is the question of 'deep reading.'" Surveying the plethora of "instantaneous devices," he declared that "you spend less time reading all forms of literature, books, magazines and so forth." The habits damage reading skills, and they damage cognition, too, he maintained, although he took a moment to defend gaming as an activity that can improve certain reasoning skills.

The turn away from "deep reading" especially affects the young, he declared, which is why the story was headlined, "Google boss worries about teen reading." Yes, the speaker was Google chairman...

We've heard lots of talk about the revolutionary nature of Web 2.0, the conversion of whole populations from passive receivers of information (and propaganda) into active citizens and critical consumers and content-creators. Skeptics don't buy it, at least not all of it. I'd put the hype component at around 90 percent. But that does leave 10 percent of innovative, engaging, informative colloquy in the Web 2.0 universe, and readers of Brainstorm may find an example of it here at a site called "The Future of Education: Charting the Course of Teaching and Learning in a Networked World."

Among the features is a forum hosted by Steve Hargadon, and if you look at the line-up of guests he has in the coming weeks you'll see that it presents leading voices in various discussions and controversies over the...

Here is a story in the Colorado Daily, a community newspaper in Boulder. It provides a video clip of a campaign ad by Tom Lucero. Lucero has been a regent of the University of Colorado for several years, and he's now running as a Republican candidate in the district. The video cites Lucero's work in bringing Ward Churchill under investigation, and the story in the Daily has this from Churchill himself:

"Responding to the commercial, Churchill quipped in an e-mail: 'I can think of no one who better reflects the principles and integrity of Colorado Republicans than Tom Lucero.'

He added: 'Who knows? He might even have what it takes to be the next Dick Cheney.'"

Last year, the University of Minnesota College of Education set about reviewing its curriculum, calling the project the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative. The College formed a set of "task groups" to address different aspects of the program, one of them being the "Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group." In July, the group issued its recommendations.

The first learning outcome the group identified was this: "Our future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression."

Another outcome is: "Future teachers will recognize & demonstrate understanding of white privilege."

Another one is: "Future teachers are able to explain how institutional racism works in schools."

And another one, this a schema of U.S....

Many commentators from Neil Howe to Steven Johnson have praised the Millennials as the most civic-minded youth cohort since the 1960s. One of their favorite data points has been the rise in youth voting since the 1990s. The 2004 election saw a big jump in the youth vote of around nine percentage points, and in 2008 it rose another two to three points.

Still, just barely half of them (51 percent) did bother to show up in November 08, leading some youth-vote skeptics to question decalrations such as Time Magazine's designation of 2008 as "The Year of the Youth Vote." The last three major state elections -- New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts -- have corroborated the skepticism. Here is a report by CIRCLE on youth voting rates, with this summary:

"About 15 percent of Massachusetts citizens between the ages of...

Back in 2003, I moved to Washington DC to work in a federal agency for a few years. The first four months I lived in a basement in an old townhouse on P Street in Georgetown, but then had to decide whether to buy or rent. I found a real estate agent to show me a half-dozen small condominium units around Connecticut Ave in Woodley Park and Cleveland Park. The prices were crushing.  A 400-square foot unit on New Hampshire Ave ran for $350,000. DC taxes and fees of various extractions piled on more cash up front, and I backed off and took a lease in the old Kennedy-Warren building.

It was a mistake. If I'd taken the plunge, I could have sold the unit two years later at a sizable profit.

Why? I asked the real estate agent in 2003 the reason for the high prices. He told me that just in the last year they had accelerated, and it looked like the trend would continue...

Everybody's furious about the bonuses being paid out to finance folks, but nobody quite knows what to do about it.  This solution from The New York Times editorial page is a non-starter, and this op-ed in The Wall Street Journal explains why.  In the latter, Jonathan Macey explains what has to happen:

"Politicians are frustrated because they are virtually powerless to stop the flow of bonus payments to bankers. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio) thinks that the U.S. should follow the lead of Britain, France and Germany and levy heavy taxes on bonuses. While such action might placate some people, it is the shareholders, not the banks, who will end up paying this tax. Worse, this sort of tax...

Every elected official is a potential enemy of the people.

That should be every free citizen's abiding premise. No matter how good and noble and well-intentioned politicians and representatives are, they can't entirely resist the blandishments of power and privilege for very long. The lesser temptations of the system steadily become part of the daily air they breathe.

This is why the Founders inserted freedom of the press in the First Amendment -- not because they respected journalists (they despised them), but because they understood that centralized government made it hard for the people to know what officials were up to in the corridors of power. Opacity was understood as the ally of corruption, transparency the enemy. Journalists were to be the watchdogs.

Obama voiced the point again and again last year, as this