RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/american-campus-as-a-factory

Universities were already in big trouble when 2020 rolled around. The combination of skyrocketing tuition (up more than double the rate of inflation since 1980) and an increasingly inferior education had made college a hard sell for many American families, and demographic trends looked likely to put further pressure on declining enrollments. But that was all B.C.—Before Covid-19, which is shaping up to be a potentially lethal event for the American academy.

When the virus emptied campuses in mid-March of 2020, schools had to refund payments for spring room and board and forgo income from sports, while still paying coaches. Small colleges lost millions in revenues, and big universities lost hundreds of millions. Professors scrambled to adapt to an online medium that was unsuited to teaching and learning across a range of disciplines, from performance arts to laboratory science. Students found themselves back in their parents’ homes, staring at classes on Zoom, from which, they quickly discovered, it was easy to hide (just turn off the video). Administrators who had sold their universities more as “high-touch” summer camps with “wraparound student services” than as academically rigorous institutions suddenly realized that the market for their product had all but disappeared. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, nationwide freshman enrollment is down a whopping 16.1 percent this academic year, while overall undergraduate enrollment is down 4 percent. Industry-wide program eliminations, layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts are well under way.

What will college education look like A.D.—Après le Déluge? University administrators are generally not inclined to let a crisis go to waste, and the coronavirus is no exception. Since April 2019, I’ve been writing and speaking about the academic destruction of the University of Tulsa, where I taught from 1988 to 2020. It has become clear to me and my colleagues that what is in store for higher education as a whole is visible in microcosm in the sorry fate of our institution. If you cherish liberal education—if you believe that American colleges and universities must aspire to form free citizens, broad-minded individuals capable of independent judgment and action—you may wish to stop reading now. My tale, as Hamlet’s ghost says, will harrow up thy soul.

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/so-there-was-a-law-professor-at-georgetown

A law professor at Georgetown Law School, Sandra Sellers, has been fired because she is racist. She revealed her racism in a Zoom conversation with her colleague David Batson who nodded along to what she said. Batson is now on leave.

Racism is everywhere, it’s our job to stamp it out, and Sellers’ racism was smoked out. She’s out. Social justice has been done.

Sandra Sellers is a racist because she said this:

“I hate to say this. I ended up having this, you know, angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks. Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, ‘Oh, come on.’ You know. Get some really good ones but they’re also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.” 

Sellers said this in a rather unfiltered manner. The term “Blacks” is hardly a slur but is unideal, for example. She didn’t know anyone was listening.

However, the idea that what she said was racist, and the idea casually aired among Georgetown’s black law students that she isa racist, illustrates an extremely vague usage.

It’s a common one, also, and bears some examination. We are taught not to do this, to assume that if black people and their “allies” call something racist then it just is. Part of this is the idea that impact trumps intent. It doesn’t matter what you (didn’t) mean – what matters is how it felt to me.

But what are the reasons here for the impact felt? If racism is such a defining factor of our society, might we not at least share a certain clarity on what racism is?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/12/georgetown-law-professor-fired-for-saying-black-students-underperform-in-her-class-n1432003

A Georgetown University law professor was fired and another placed on administrative leave when a Zoom conversation between the two went viral.

The private conversation between Professor Sandra Sellers and Professor David Batson came to light and set off a firestorm, with thousands of students signing petitions demanding “action” from the school.

School dean Bill Treanor said he was “appalled” and that the statements made by the two professors were “reprehensible.”So what did Sellers and Batson say that set off this ruckus?

NBCNews:

“I hate to say this — I end up having this, you know, angst every semester — that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks. Happens almost every semester,” Sellers says.

“Mmm hmm,” Batson says and nods.

“And it’s like, oh, come on,” Sellers continues. “Get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/be-less-white-law-school-edition/

The “co-deans” of Case Western Reserve University School of Law recently emailed the student body to exult in the fact that their school ranked 144th out of 200 law schools for “whiteness.” That is, Case Western Law School is “less white” than 143 other law schools in the country. The school proudly notes that “we have the ‘least white’ student body of all of the other law schools in Ohio,” except one.

The whiteness ranking is issued by Vernellia Randall, professor emerita of the University of Dayton School of Law. Professor Randall ranks schools by how much “excess whiteness” they have. She explains in her email to the co-deans (which they included in their email to the student body):

Excess Whiteness is the degree to which a law school is more white than the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) Applicant Pools and state population. Thus, excess whiteness was determined by subtracting the school’s total whiteness from the percent of whites in the various application pool. The results were then summed. Of the 200 law schools in this report, 21 Schools (10%) had no excess whiteness,  153 schools (76.5%) had more whites in their first-year class than was in the National LSAC application pool. One hundred twenty-four schools (62%) had more whites in their first-year class than the state applicant pool.  One hundred nineteen schools (59.5%)  had more whites in their first-year class than was in the regional pool. One hundred and thirty-nine schools (69.5%)  had more whites in their first-year class than was in the state population.

Note that irrelevancies such as GPAs and LSAT scores don’t enter into the analysis. Race is the only salient factor.

Lest there be any doubt that this is just an academic data point, Professor Randall explains:

The Whiter the law school, the less the school is preparing the legal community for serving the United States of America’s diverse racial population.

Apparently, white lawyers can’t adequately represent “diverse” clients. If so, can “diverse” lawyers adequately represent white clients?

Some thought we’d achieved peak academic absurdity when math was declared racist. Not even close.

For those interested in how law schools are failing America by enrolling “excess” white students,  the research is available here.