Recent floods, tsunamis and disasters such as the BP oil spill mean concerns about the environment and our impact on our surroundings are rarely off the news agenda – all the more reason why people with specialist knowledge will be in demand.

Douglas Campbell – Adhering to a set of ethical standards is our greatest expression of human freedom and individuality, writes Douglas Campbell.

Nicholas Capaldi outlines four ways of persuading someone to do the right thing.

Liz Mandarano – While the topic is hot, Congress and the White House should take the opportunity to exclude investments in college savings plans from the estate and gift tax regulations — just as they do tuition.

Ashley Thorne – Once again, Williams College will cancel classes for Claiming Williams day, which this year will include a "Panel on White Privilege" and a lunchtime session, "Let's Talk about Sex."

Peter Wood – Should we approach higher education with more skepticism? 'Tis the season of paradox. In a widely noted op-ed in The New York Times, Judah Cohen, identified by the Times merely as “director of seasonal forecasting at an atmospheric and environmental research firm,” …

In a first step meant to deliver a blow to the corporate privatization of university education, such stalwarts of the San Francisco scene as attorney and political activist Matt Gonzalez, Outlaw poet Alan Kaufman, Pirate Radio’s Diamond Dave Whittaker, Beat legend and San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane Di Prima, Revolutionary Poets Brigade Chairman Bobby Coleman, and Berkeley University Bookstore founder Martin Holden…

Mark Seavey – I’d like to share some thoughts sent to me by my friend, Chad Garland, President of the Illini Veterans Student Organization.

A Penn State student that has previously posted audio clips of songs praising Osama bin Laden has now published a tune in tribute to the Swedish suicide bomber, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly. Emerson Begolly, who operates online under his nom de jihad, Asadullah Alshishani and is listed on the Penn State directory as an undergrad in the Letters, Arts and Sciences department, posted his nasheed (Islamic chant) on the infamous Ansar AlJihad forum last week – just two days after al-Abdaly’s attempted terror attack. Begolly’s song vows to “blow their heads right off their shoulders” and that “martyrdom is what I wanted best”.

Warner Todd Huston – A poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a “project” run out of the University of Maryland, was the toast of the left-wingers last week for its finding that Fox News viewers were the most “misinformed” during the 2010 election cycle.

Ashley Thorne and Stephen Balch – Penn State is revising its statement on academic freedom to permit faculty members the right to bring one-sided opinions on controversial topics to class. The radicalized AAUP thinks this is a good idea. We don't.

Robert P. Murphy – In a recent post "Triumph of the Austrian Economists," David Frum laments the displacement of the respectable Chicago School as the economists of choice among the political Right. Frum fails to see that conservative Republicans are justified in switching their allegiance to the Austrian economists, because supply-side monetarists have a glaring blind spot when it comes to the Federal Reserve.

Jason Fertig – What do graduation rates really tell us? College graduation rates are fashionable metrics in higher education circles. Low rates can cost public institutions state funding and can also accelerate educational reforms, such as the adoption of more distance courses to meet nontraditional students’ needs.

Thomas Byrne and Anton Howes: Those of us who support tuition fee reform find it absurd our peers are protesting against a more generous deal

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, has published a statement, “Racism at Wesleyan?” on the use of the term “racist” in higher education.

Professor Kaukab Siddique of Lincoln University thinks the Jews have "taken over America" by "devious and immoral means."

Peter Wood – Peter Wood responds to critics who characterize the National Association of Scholars as ultraconservative.

Iain Pears – The humanities can't compete with the sciences for research funding. But they could help restore the status of teaching

That is the best way to address the serious issues of student debt and abusive practices and achieve real reform at all colleges, rather than an anti-business, anti-private sector agenda to harm just for-profit career colleges.

Ed Dante – The man who writes your students' papers tells his story. The request came in by e-mail around 2 in the afternoon. It was from a previous customer, and she had urgent business.