RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/10/01/the_worst_campus_in_america_for_free_speech_110642.html

Inside the 2021 College Free Speech Rankings

For the second straight year, survey data shows that a small private school in western Indiana is the nation’s worst college for free speech.

DePauw University again finished last in the 2021 College Free Speech Rankings, the second annual campus-speech-related survey and rankings project sponsored by the research firm College Pulse, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and RealClearEducation. More than 37,000 students at 159 colleges and universities participated in the survey, and their responses helped determine each school’s place in the 2021 rankings.

What contributed to DePauw’s low ranking? Survey results and student responses to open-ended survey prompts suggest that DePauw’s biggest speech-related challenge may be the censorious views of its students. Only 30% of DePauw students said it was “never acceptable” to use violence to stop a speech on campus, meaning more than two-thirds of students surveyed feels violence can be an appropriate response to disagreeable speech. Seventy-six percent of students surveyed said they would oppose allowing a speaker on campus who believed abortion should be illegal. Some students feel censorship is the appropriate response to speakers with “harmful” views.

“I do not hold views that are harmful to others so [self-censorship] is not a problem I face,” one DePauw student told pollsters.

Only seven percent of DePauw students reported having “never” felt unable to express their opinion on a subject.

Many DePauw students also lack confidence in the administration’s commitment to free speech. Only 57% of DePauw students felt the administration was likely to defend a speaker’s right to express himself in a speech-related controversy, compared to 89% of students surveyed at top-ranked Claremont McKenna College.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/the_disastrous_impact_of_illegal_immigration_on_public_education.html

Public school students have been subjected to school shutdowns, online learning at home, social distancing, plexiglass cubicles, all day wearing of masks, and now vaccinations with an experimental drug that is causing myocarditis and other serious reactions in healthy children.

At the university level, at least 78 students at LSU who have refused vaccination have been unenrolled from the university with 50 percent of their tuition forfeited.  The University of Virginia unenrolled 238 students for not complying with its vaccine mandate.  Penn State has suspended students who failed to get their weekly COVID test.  Hundreds of other universities have mandated the vaccine for this fall, with some even reimposing mask mandates on fully vaccinated students due to the rise in delta variant cases.

Yet illegal immigrants cross the southern border without being asked to show proof of vaccination.  They’re not required to wear masks or to distant themselves even though they’re bringing in communicable diseases.

With the resettlement of thousands of Afghans in 46 states, there is the frightening chance of an epidemic of diseases that have been all but wiped out in America. 

According to the CDC, there have already been outbreaks of viruses such as varicella, mumps, tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, hepatitis A, and coronavirus.  Most frightening of all is the possibility of an outbreak of polio which can lead to paralysis or even death.   Afghans also are expected to bring in gastrointestinal infections, including shigellosis, giardiasis, cryptosporidiosis, hepatitis A, rotavirus, and viral diarrheal diseases.

These migrants are flooding our already packed classrooms for a free education at the expense of the American taxpayer. 

To further complicate matters, numerous foreign languages are spoken within a classroom and the children are unaccustomed to our culture — in some cases, they don’t know how to use a toilet.  These children require an enormous amount of a teacher’s time at the expense of American students.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/29/its-time-to-end-government-run-schooling/

The National Center for Education Statistics recently published K-12 enrollment data for the 2020–21 school year, and it showed a 3 percent drop—about 1.5 million kids from the previous year. With a total k–12 enrollment of about 51 million students in the United States, that equates to a loss of 1.5 million children. The largest segment of the leavers and no-shows were kindergarteners and pre-k kids, whose enrollment dropped by 13 percent last year. As American Enterprise Institute policy maven Rick Hess points out, “Such figures are unprecedented; public school enrollment has grown almost every year during the 21st century, with any declines coming in well under 1%.” 

While the main reason for the exit is COVID-related, there are other reasons to bail. The latest NAEP—also known as the nation’s report card—reveals that just 37 percent of U.S. 12th-grade students are proficient in reading and a pitiful 24 percent are proficient in math. It’s important to note that these results are from 2019, before the teacher union orchestrated COVID hysteria forced schools across the country to shut down.

So where are the escapees going? Some parents are availing themselves of the new private school options throughout the country. According to the latest available data, 18 states have created seven new choice programs and expanded 21 existing ones this year.

Charter schools also have experienced more growth in 2020-21 than they have in the past six years, according to data released last week from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. While traditional public schools were losing students, independently-run charter schools in 39 states saw an influx of 240,000 new students, a 7 percent increase over last year, more than double the rate of growth from the prior year.

Additionally, homeschooling has been booming. The Census Bureau reports that between 2012 and 2020, the number of homeschooling families remained steady at around 3.3 percent. But by May 2020, about 5.4 percent of U.S. households with school-aged children reported they were homeschooling. And by October 2020, the number jumped to 11.1 percent.

With so many government-run schools not meeting their customers’ expectations, perhaps it’s time to think about doing away with them. Entirely. I know I will be charged with heresy—being a right-wing shill for corporations, anti-union, a crackpot, and worse, in some quarters, but let’s get real. As a country we did quite well before the government stuck its large bureaucratic nose into our lives, and we can do so again.

http://• https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/free-speech/2021/09/back-to-burning-books-again/

The Ontario Catholic School Board’s decision to burn books deemed politically incorrect, a move prompted by Canada’s activist answer to fauxboriginal Bruce Pascoe,  became a hot issue in this month’s Canadian election.  Although the book burning began in 2019 and has just come to light it represents yet another powerful warning about the dangers of totalitarian cancel-culture and mind control.

What occurred in Canada is just one example of how widespread and virulent cancel-culture has become.  Targets include Tintin and Asterix, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Noddy, Thomas the Tank Engine and six children’s books written by Dr Seuss. All are considered guilty of either sexism, racism or cultural appropriation. Adult books are also targeted including Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird for having using the ‘N’ word, Moby Dick for killing whales and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for privileging the love between a boy and girl (condemned as promoting heteronormativity).

Couched in terms of impartiality and balance, critics argue such books are offensive and discriminatory. The reality is cancelling children’s stories like Snow White — out of favour because the Prince fails to get informed consent before kissing the sleeping maiden– is as dangerous as it is absurd. Stories and books written years ago are unfairly judged and cancelled because of today’s censorious, politically correct view about what is acceptable.  Like the moralistic puritans of old, cultural-left activists refuse to allow or entertain anything that fails to conform to their strict, inflexible ideology.

Stopping students reading literature now deemed politically incorrect in the belief they will be corrupted and converted automatically into racist, sexist and homophobic bigots also ignores that the overwhelming majority of young people are smart enough and independently minded not to be conditioned.

https://www.nationalreview.com/author/brittany-bernstein/

A majority of college students support shouting down speakers with whom they don’t agree, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

Sixty-six percent of students said they supported speaker shout downs, an increase of 4 percentage points over last year, the study found. Meanwhile, 23 percent said they support going so far as to use violence to stop a speaker, an increase of 5 percentage points from last year.

Wellesley College and Barnard College, both of which are elite women’s colleges, had the highest number of students supporting the use of violence, at 45 percent and 43 percent respectively.

Sean Stevens, a senior research fellow in polling and analytics for FIRE told National Review in a recent interview that the shift is likely reflective of the national political climate of the last year.

The country was rocked by months of rioting and counter-protests beginning in summer 2020 with the murder of George Floyd. Protests for various causes persisted through the general election in November, culminating in the deadly January 6 Capitol riot when a mob of former President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.

Stevens noted that the FIRE study results echoed findings from similar studies by the American National Election Studies and other outlets that have asked Americans about the acceptability of violence and have seen upticks in their data as well.

The results come as part of FIRE’s 2021 college free speech rankings. FIRE, a non-partisan, non-profit group that focuses on protecting free speech rights on U.S. college campuses, worked alongside College Pulse and RealClearEducation to survey over 37,000 students at 159 of the country’s largest and most prestigious campuses.

FIRE then compiled a list of free speech rankings assessing a school’s free speech climate based on seven main components: openness to discussion of controversial topics, tolerance for liberal speakers, tolerance for conservative speakers, administrative support for free speech, comfort expressing ideas publicly, whether students support disruptive conduct during campus speeches, and FIRE’s speech code rating.

The top five colleges for free speech, according to the rankings, included Claremont McKenna College, University of Chicago, University of New Hampshire, Emory University and Florida State University. The worst five colleges were Boston College, Wake Forest University, Louisiana State University, Marquette University and DePauw University, which ranked last.

Public schools largely performed better than private schools, accounting for just five of the bottom 30 schools on the list.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/21/ivy-league-detention-centers/

When a 10 percent transmission rate is 150 percent higher than a college or university’s rate of admission, when it is improbable that adults will contract COVID-19 from teens but almost impossible for teens to avoid rejection from the adults (so-called) in the room—the adults who decide whom shall enter the classrooms at Harvard or Princeton or Columbia—the life of the mind is dead. 

Or, in the spirit of and to paraphrase William F. Buckley, I would rather be judged by the first 40 people in a jury pool than by the 40 people who judge applicants to Harvard College.

I would rather be a defendant in a criminal trial, free to have my lawyer examine prospective jurors, than submit my fate to a jury whose biases are no secret and whose deliberations are a sham. 

I question this jury’s ability to deliberate, except to say the jury’s silence is deliberate: that its results lack evidence, that record-low acceptance rates do not prove an incoming class is the most learned and literate and civic-minded class in the history of Harvard or Princeton or Columbia; that this class has no class, that it is a monoculture more discriminatory than the finals clubs or eating clubs of the past, proud of its hatred and unwilling to study or emulate the best of the past.

To know the consciousness of this class is to understand the power of false consciousness.

What this class fails to convince others to believe is that all other classes are unfit to lead and are too unintelligent to learn. What this class believes about itself is that it has a mandate to rule, based not on the consent of the governed, but according to the consensus of those who demand to govern everything.

This belief, the belief that a so-called meritocracy is meritorious, is a threat to freedom and democracy.

What, after all, do meritocrats know about democracy in America, or democracy, or America?

The question is rhetorical, while questions abound about this class’s fluency in the rhetoric of Americanism. That this class is not conversant in the language of Adams or Jefferson is no surprise. That this class is ignorant of the lyricism of Lincoln and deaf to the mystic chords of memory is no accident.

The cultural illiteracy of this class is of a piece with the moral illiteracy of the jury responsible for this class. 

The two are illiterate in a tangible way, for they do not revere that which they do not know to respect. 

They see places to study, not paradises to behold, for they do not admire the architecture or honor the names engraved in stone, never stopping to hold America in their hands, never reading the works of great men or walking in humility toward works of greatness, never looking to the lights inside the Memorial Rooms of Harvard’s Widener Library or the New Lights of Princeton’s Firestone Library or at the words in lights outside Columbia’s Low Memorial Library.

To these armories of liberty, students and jurors shrug.

Because of these students and jurors, a nation weeps.

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/09/21/as_colleges_moved_online_to_combat_the_pandemic_a_plague_of_self-censorship_raged_on_110636.html

If a tree falls in the wilderness and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? That could be the start of an interesting philosophical conversation. On the other hand, if there’s an interesting philosophical conversation to be had—does it stand much of a chance of actually happening in today’s college classroom? As the newly released 2021 College Free Speech Rankings reveal, the answer depends on which college you’re attending.

The past year in higher education has been defined by COVID-19. The pandemic has altered students’ lives and forced many to adapt to online learning. But the quality of the education students receive is being impacted by a different sort of contagion—an epidemic of fearful silence.

More than 80% of American college students in our latest survey say that they self-censor in the classroom, on campus, and online.

The 2021 College Free Speech Rankings represent the largest survey of free speech on campus ever conducted. This year we surveyed more than 37,000 students at more than 150 U.S. colleges and universities. RealClearEducation produced the 2021 College Free Speech Rankings in collaboration with the research firm College Pulse and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The rankings are presented via an easy-to-use, interactive website, where parents and students can compare schools side by side and see how their favorites compare in the area of free speech.

This year, Claremont McKenna College—a small liberal arts college in Southern California—received the No. 1 ranking. Rounding out the top five are the University of Chicago, the University of New Hampshire, Emory University, and Florida State University.

It’s worth noting that 17 of the top 25 are public colleges or universities. On the flip side, 20 of the bottom 25 are private institutions. So, if you’re looking for a better environment for free speech, your local State U might be the best place to start your search.