James Huffman

Jan 17, 2024 | dcjournal.com | James Huffman

What will come of the presidents of three of America’s most prestigious universities being called on the congressional carpet to explain their responses to Hamas’ brutal assault on innocent Israelis? Will the resignations of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Harvard President Claudine Gay mark a turning point for American higher education?

Jan 12, 2024 | mindingthecampus.org | James Huffman

zero comment The scene was deeply troubling. Hundreds of college students proclaimed that Hamas’ October 7, 2023, assault on Israeli civilians was a heroic and justified act of liberation. It confirmed a level of ignorance engendered by decades of decay in our colleges and universities. But equally troubling is the fact that the United States Congress immediately intervened.

Oct 6, 2023 | quillette.com | Holly Lawford-Smith |Yascha Mounk |James Huffman

On 26 September, I participated in a New Zealand Free Speech Union debate on the motion “Be it resolved, #nodebate: some discussions will only cause harm.” During the ensuing discussion, the moderator Josie Pagani pressed one of the speakers for the motion—Damian Sycamore of The Opportunities Party—to say exactly what kind of harm discussion can cause. Damian’s reply:Harm looks like when your whole existence is negated. That’s harm.

Sep 15, 2023 | quillette.com | James Huffman |Angel Eduardo |Holly Lawford-Smith

Bertrand Russell is well known as a philosopher and mathematician. But few know that during his lifetime, he was cancelled—to use the contemporary term—by the New York judiciary and by mid-twentieth-century religious conservatives. Both those conservatives today who seek to ban books and regulate curricula and those progressives who wish to censor everyone who disagrees with them would do well to reflect on the Bertrand Russell case.

Sep 1, 2023 | chicago.suntimes.com | James Huffman

This weekend’s anniversary of the end of World War II, coming at a time when we continue to talk heatedly about the film “Oppenheimer,” reminds me of how long I showed images of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud to introduce class lectures on wartime Japan. They were dramatic; they evoked power; they were horrific. And students loved them. I could have used other images. I might have shown a photo of a man I met in 1979 at the Hiroshima bomb memorial.