RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/university-austin-meteor-higher-education/

Americans are beginning to seek alternatives to our established menu of colleges and universities. In fact, not just Americans. Students from other countries are also choosing alternatives to studying in the US. The combined effect has been a sharp drop in American college enrollment, which is down overall by about 8 percent over the last two years, and more than 14 percent at community colleges. International student enrollment is down a total of 15 percent, but that masks an even more serious problem: enrollment of new foreign students fell last year by 46 percent.

Some of this, of course, is due to Covid. And some of it is due to a demographic shift: fewer babies born 17 to 20 years ago means fewer young people to fill the seats in lecture halls. But other contributing factors are more mysterious. Why has there been a precipitous drop in the number of males who choose to go to college? (The male/female ratio among students is now 4:6.) Why have so many colleges declared themselves “systemically racist”? Why have colleges turned campus life into a pressure cooker of ideological conformity? Why do those who run colleges and universities think their path to success is to copy what all the other colleges and universities are doing?

The recent announcement of the formation of a new institution, the University of Austin (UATX), which intends to break with the herd mentality, was met with met with high praise in many quarters, and with extreme disdain by many supporters of the legacy institutions. Let’s stick with the disdain for the moment. Hank Reichman, professor emeritus of history at California State University and former American Association of University Professors (AAUP) vice-president, is about as close as one could get to the perfected voice of higher education’s leftist establishment. The day after UATX sent out its birth announcement, Reichman happily noted in a post titled “Welcome to Rogues’ Gallery University” that the announcement had “garnered widespread ridicule on academic social media.”

What was it that prompted the ridicule? Reichman focuses on the members of UATX’s board of advisors, and borrows the sneer of the progressive law professor Paul Campos who characterizes these advisors as “our most ludicrously self-regarding and mawkishly preening intellectuals.” The rest of Reichman’s essay is a long string of ad hominem attacks against individual UATX advisors.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/we-cannot-rest-mary-grabar/

Voters this election rejected the teaching of The 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory, as proven by the results of Virginia’s gubernatorial race and, less publicized but as equally telling in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, where nineteen-year-old, Nicholas Seppy won a seat on the school board. Seppy said he thought that the history of slavery should be taught in the classroom, but it should be taught objectively.

I agree with him. That’s why I wrote Debunking The 1619 Project and before that Debunking Howard Zinn.

So hats off to Christopher Rufo who exposed these toxic materials and to Seppy and Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin who listened to parents who were rightfully outraged.

But we cannot rest. The radical “educrats” who believe they are the ones to remake your children never do.

Over the years I have seen how “educators” introduce a topic, put on a pretense of retreating, and then sneak back. This happened with the teaching of Ethnic Studies in California, which was withdrawn for about eighteen months after complaints about antisemitism. Then—surprise!—it was signed into law by the governor. Superficial changes had been made but the promotion of politicized ethnic identity—what the educrats wanted—will remain for all California high school graduates.

Similarly, the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which claims to “establish clear, consistent guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade,” was rebranded under various names by states. But the damage remains as demonstrable knowledge of the subject matter was replaced by students’ ability to “collaborate” and accept “diversity.” As I pointed out back in 2012, Common Core broke down the distinctions between nonfiction and fiction. English teachers were tasked with having students read “cold” such historical materials as the Gettysburg Address.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/saving-childrens-books-wokeness/

There is something deeply sinister happening in the world of children’s literature. Whereas the children’s section at your local library or bookstore was once filled with fables and fairy tales, it’s now filled with titles like The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish and Race Cars: A Children’s Book About White Privilege and How Mommas Love Their Babies featuring wholesome lines like “Some mommas dance all night long in special shoes. It’s hard work!” The illustrations accompanying that page are an outdoor shot of a strip club at night, with glowing neon lights and a woman protesting for fair wages for strippers.

This is a recent tweet from the author:

Other children’s book writers, those who want to write what was once considered appropriate for kids, are stymied. One aspiring writer told me, “I’ve been in the query process the last two months and I cannot believe how many agents are requesting LGBTQ children’s books.”

Another aspiring author echoed her remarks, shedding light on the inner workings of the process, “The agents and publishers ARE the gatekeepers, making sure the books that are being published are aligned with the current agenda. If you aren’t familiar with it, check out this site. It is a summary of the twitter posts by agents and editors about their manuscript wishlists. Some are so transparent, they will state they only want LGBTQ+ stories, or demand a book set in WWI, ‘but make it queer.’ Some agents have stated they will only accept books on climate change until they have a cohort of writers defending the environment. It is deflating and concerning and frustrating, both as a teacher and as a YA historical fiction writer. The YA historicals that are being published often pervert the history to force a queer romance.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/university-austin-spark-new-enlightenment/

The University of Austin, America’s newest university, was launched this month. I am one of five founders, because I am convinced that higher education is at considerable risk. A new ideology — sometimes called social justice, and revealed in numerous ways, but most succinctly called “woke” — is taking a huge toll on the free exchange of ideas.

Safe spaces and trigger warnings are demanded by students, and many faculty as well, rather than recognizing that challenge, risk, and discomfort create strength of will, and wisdom. Instead of being the adults in the room, scared and hapless administrators capitulate to their demands.

We are told that borrowing from other cultures is inherently predatory — “cultural appropriation” — rather than being one of the most ancient ways that humans have expanded our repertoire, making connections between both people and ideas. We are asked to believe anew in original sin, this one based on skin color. Faculty and students who step outside of the new orthodoxy risk being ridiculed, shouted at, even chased off campus. Tenure means nothing when a mob is at the door. The very concepts of objective reality and merit are taken to be offensive at best, outdated and untrue at worst.

These are instantiations of a self-limiting ideology that mocks the very premises of America’s founding documents, and of the mottos of many established universities as well. Harvard proclaims veritas; Yale adds lux to the mix. But there is little truth in the woke ideology, and little light.

These manifestations of the new ideology are a caricature of deep thought, from the naivete of the beliefs to the insistence that they not be questioned. But there are forces older and yet more influential in play, which for decades have bent research and curriculum to their will.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/19/racial-essentialism-has-no-place-in-education/

In the public schools of Evanston, Illinois, they came for the 14-year-old son of parents of Congolese and African-Amercian descent. He had foolishly harbored a desire to one day become a lawyer. They told him, sorry, not gonna happen. Systemic racism, see? You’re less able. Injured. Please harbor no such dreams. Whitey still has his boot on your back.

His mother Ndona Muboyayi told her story to a writer from The Atlantic. She went to teachers to ask, is this true? The answer in so many words was, yes. And that won’t be changing. She was appalled.

Forbidden thoughts are actionable. In post-election high dudgeon, New York Times columnist Gail Collins described blowback to racial essentialism in Virginia schools this way: “. . . given Republicans’ crazed howling about teaching the history of racism in America, voters were being misled in the way they were being urged to think there was something wrong with the schools.” 

Similarly, an old and dear friend, long a progressive, wrote to me of recent schools-based revolt: “a handful of hysterical parents, whipped up by political campaigns, cannot and must not be allowed to dictate policy. 

But as Muboyayi told The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, “Of course I want my children to know about slavery and Jim Crow. But I want it to be balanced out with the rest of the truth. They’re not taught about Black people who accomplished things in spite of white supremacy; or about the Black people today who got ahead, built things, achieved things; and those who had opportunities that their ancestors fought for.”

Chicago public schools, too, are in the front lines of the racial pity parade that progressives need in order to feel whole. CPS declares that in 2020 one of “multiple traumatic crises” affecting families, one for which it must correct on a daily and deep basis, is “lasting legacies of systemic racism.” 

Chicago public schools believe a big problem for underachievers is the pigmentation of students who, on the whole, do better. Which includes whites. And so the CPS website features a video called “Whiteness” from noted consultant Glenn E. Singleton. It’s a word salad of racialized NuSpeak.

“Whiteness” includes gems such as this one:

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/columbia-journalism-school-to-hire-a-director-of-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/

Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism is hiring a Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) to incorporate anti-racism initiatives into the school’s curricula.

The responsibilities of the role include: “a review of the school’s policies and expectations on DEI, possible sessions on running an inclusive classroom, defusing volatile classroom situations, presenting sensitive material, avoiding triggering language, discussions of DEI in the news, anti-racism lectures and workshops, a review of best practices on DEI in the profession and required readings.”

At the end of the year, the director will be required to conduct a survey of graduating students, full-time faculty, adjuncts, and staff to assess the impact of the DEI initiatives on the campus.

The director is also expected to “implement a self-study of Deans and department heads and their actions and observations related to DEI.” The director will also be tasked with creating a “code of ethics on DEI” for the Journalism School, that all faculty, staff, and students must comply with.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/editorializing-hamas-richard-l-cravatts/

When Elmer Davis, director of FDR’s Office of War Information, observed that   “. . . you cannot do much with people who are convinced that they are the sole authorized custodians of Truth and that whoever differs from them is ipso facto wrong” he may well have been speaking about those well-meaning, but misguided college students who rail against a world in which their dreams of social justice for the oppressed and weak are not being realized, despite their best efforts.

That same tendentious behavior now seems to be exploited by editors of college newspapers who have purposely violated the central purpose of journalism and have allowed one ideology, not facts and alternate opinions, to hijack the editorial composition of their publications and purge their respective newspapers of any content—news or opinion—that contradicts a pro-Palestinian narrative and would provide a defense of Israel.

The latest example of this social justice advocacy parading as journalism was in full display in a November 9th editorial, “In support of Students for Justice in Palestine,” written by the Editorial Board of The Daily Campus, the University of Connecticut’s student newspaper.

“The UConn Students for Justice in Palestine held a rally last week to bring attention to injustices in Palestine,” the editorial read, and “[s]peakers discussed the oppression and violence experienced by the Palestinian people, the connection of our university to such injustices and the role of community members in supporting Palestine’s fight for freedom.”

Troubling to the editors, apparently, was the fact that UConn Hillel “also held a demonstration nearby in direct opposition to the ideas behind UConn SJP;” in other words, Hillel attempted to provide a balance to debate by presenting its own views and facts relevant to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

https://abigailshrier.substack.com/p/how-activist-teachers-recruit-kids

Incensed parents now make news almost daily, objecting to radical material taught in their children’s public schools. But little insight has been provided into the mindset and tactics of activist teachers themselves. That may now be changing, thanks to leaked audio from a meeting of California’s largest teacher’s union.

Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents.

Documents and audio files recently sent to me, and authenticated by three conference participants, permitted a rare insight into the CTA’s sold-out event in Palm Springs, held from October 29-31, 2021. The “2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities,” provided best practices workshops that encouraged teachers to “have the courage to create a safe environment that fosters bravery to explore sexual orientation, gender identity and expression,” according to the precis of a talk given by fifth grade teacher, C. Scott Miller

“How We Run a ‘GSA’ in Conservative Communities”

 Several of the workshops advised teachers on the creation of middle school LGBTQ clubs (commonly known as “Gay-Straight Alliance” clubs or “GSA”).  One workshop—“Queering in the Middle”—focused “on what practices have worked for successful middle school GSAs and children at this age developmentally.”

But what makes for a successful LGBTQ middle school club? What to do about meddlesome parents who don’t want their middle schoolers participating in such a club? What if parents ask a club leader—point blank—if their child is a member?

“Because we are not official—we have no club rosters, we keep no records,” Buena Vista Middle School teacher and LGBTQ-club leader, Lori Caldeira, states on an audio clip sent to me by a conference attendee. “In fact, sometimes we don’t really want to keep records because if parents get upset that their kids are coming? We’re like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe they came?’ You know, we would never want a kid to get in trouble for attending if their parents are upset.”