These resources explore the secular university as a reaction to the Christian university. It explores the experience of people from religious, spiritual, moral, and philosophical standpoints.

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 book, 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

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 (Amazon book, 2010) also engages with the rise of the German university; see also Father John Whiteford, Orthodox Biblical Interpretation and Protestant Biblical Scholarship (blog, July 27, 2018)

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) and 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 (NY Times, Dec 14, 2014)

Jonathan Chait, How the Language Police Are Perverting Liberalism (NY 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" (NY 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 (NY 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 (NY 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 (NY 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 (NY 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 (NY 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 (NY 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 book, 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 (NY 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 less likely to admit black students who express interest in racial justice

Ross Douthat, The Meritocracy Against Itself (NY 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) and 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 (NY 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) 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) on the 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.