RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://davidlat.substack.com/p/the-newest-insanity-out-of-yale-law?token=

I realize that the tag line for Original Jurisdiction is “news, views, and colorful commentary about law and the legal profession,” not “the latest controversies and scandals at Yale Law School.” But one of my missions is telling readers about what we’d be gossiping about at the water cooler if we were all back in the office—and right now, the subject is once again YLS.1

Some of you are rolling your eyes right now and saying, “Seriously, Lat—Yale Law School, again?” If you have YLS fatigue, stop reading here; I take no offense.2

For those of you still reading, here’s the latest out of Yale Law School, reported in the Washington Free Beacon by Aaron Sibarium (who really owns this beat, having previously broken the news of the YLS party-invite controversy):

The Yale Law School administrator caught on tape pressuring a student to apologize for an allegedly racist party invitation pushed the Yale Law Journal to host a diversity trainer who told students that anti-Semitism is merely a form of anti-blackness and suggested that the FBI artificially inflates the number of anti-Semitic hate crimes.

The comments from diversity trainer Ericka Hart… shocked members of the predominantly liberal law review, many of whom characterized the presentation as anti-Semitic, according to a memo from Yale Law Journal editors obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

“I consider myself very liberal,” a student quoted in the memo said. But Hart’s presentation, delivered September 17 to members of the prestigious law review, was “almost like a conservative parody of what antiracism trainings are like.”

The administrator involved in both incidents is Yaseen Eldik, YLS’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. There’s some dispute over the exact nature of Eldik’s involvement in bringing Hart to the YLJ editors, with Yale law professor Monica Bell claiming on Twitter that Eldik didn’t urge the hiring of Hart and simply provided her contact info to the YLJ.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/04/the-year-of-the-parent/

Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, my parents could send me off to school and assume I would be taught by people who shared their values. As the recent Virginia election demonstrated, however, those days are long gone. To be sure, most educators today work hard, and do their best to give kids a balanced education. But there are too many who don’t, and parents, who are rightly worried, are now speaking out. In fact, according to a Fox News survey, 80 percent of parents are “extremely” or “very” concerned about what our public schools are teaching. Whether it is the sexualization of six-year-olds, white kids being told they are oppressors, or children being forced to chant Aztec prayers, many parents are fed up. A few recent examples:

In Broward County, Florida, a teacher took her elementary school students to a gay bar as a way to learn about the homosexual community.

In eastern Kentucky, students gave lap dances to the staff as part of Hazard High School’s homecoming week festivities.

In Loudoun County, Virginia, a high school boy wearing a dress has been accused of raping a girl in the women’s bathroom, the second time he has been accused. Neither case was pursued by the district superintendent, who, when asked about why he didn’t act, incoherently blamed Donald Trump’s rejiggering of Title IX regulations. One particularly insightful student put things into perspective: “If you can make a child stay home for refusing to wear a mask, you can also make a child stay home for raping another student.”

With parents now awakening, there is a campaign afoot to diminish their input on what children are learning in school. After the National School Boards Association sent a well-publicized letter to Joe Biden on September 29, in which the organization contended that there is a serious threat to our “schools and its [sic] education leaders” due to a “growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation (at school board meetings) occurring across the country,” the organization was rightly excoriated for it, and on October 22 issued an apology. It seems that the communiqué was the work of NSBA CEO Chip Slaven and president Viola Garcia, with no board input. But apparently, there’s more to the story.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/teachers-unions-are-serpent-cradle-americas-jim-mccoy-and-lloyd-pettegrew/

Abraham Lincoln once warned us that “The philosophy of the classroom in this generation will be the philosophy of politics, government and life in the next.” It is no secret that the founding fathers had grave concerns about the new emerging federal government becoming too large and intrusive in the lives of our nation’s citizens. In fact, over-reach by those serving and administering in the central government almost seemed to be a predictable outcome.  As a result, the founding fathers took very specific steps to limit the powers of the new federal government. The Supremacy Clause of our Constitution is found in Article VI, Section 2, specifying which powers the federal government has and which powers are retained by the state and local governments.

President Andrew Johnson signed legislation creating the first Department of Education in 1867. Its main purpose was to collect information and statistics about the nation’s schools. However, due to concern that the Department would exercise too much control over local schools, the new Department was demoted to an Office of Education in 1868. Until 1979, the organization and administration of education in America was solely in the hands of each state government and its local communities. With this model, America’s public education system became the envy of the world…until October 1979, under the Jimmy Carter Presidency, when Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88), amalgamating offices of several federal agencies, and creating our present serpent in the cradle—the DOE in May 1980. This has become the mindless federal bureaucracy beholden to national teacher unions.

A true political democracy in America requires an educational system and processes that are free from overt political pressures and prejudices. As Thomas Sowell recently pointed out, the social and political institutions and traditions need to be objectively taught, along with science, mathematics and the language arts. Screed like Marxism and CRT have no place in state-sponsored schools. An example of the teacher union mindset comes from New York School Talk that pushes the educational union point of view. They say, ”Every adult in a school building gets a union. Most are members of the United Federation of Teachers, and together they are incredibly powerful and effective. They negotiate all the rules. They can influence hiring and firing procedures, and everything about teaching.” Absent in their “objective” talk line is anything about students’ and parents’ educational interests.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/public-education-has-always-been-about-don-feder/

Glenn Youngkin’s upset victory in the Virginia governor’s race shows the power of parents who are furious about public school indoctrination.

Education became a central part of Youngkin’s campaign. Without it, he would not have mobilized millions of concerned parents across the Commonwealth and sailed to victory against an ex-governor in a blue state.

Election night coverage included an interview with a woman who survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution, who said she stood in a cold rain for 8 hours that day handing out ballots. With laser-like focus, Xi Van Fleet said the contest in Virginia came down to Marxism versus Americanism.

The most important part of Youngkin’s victory speech was when he emphatically voiced his commitment to choice in education. Ban Critical Race theory? Absolutely. Listen to families? Of course. But, ultimately, public education can’t be reformed.

Public schools were created not to educate, but to indoctrinate. From Marx to Dewey to the current leadership of the Democrat Party and the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, revolutionaries have always targeted youth and seen schools as the spearhead of the revolution.

When he was governor of Virginia in 2015, Terry McAuliffe (who was deservedly defeated in this election) was pushing Critical Race Theory in the schools, something he claimed did not exist in his 2021 campaign for governor.

When McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach,” he was articulating a first principle of public education going back to its beginnings in the early 19th century: “Give us your money. Give us your kids. Then close your eyes. Shut your mouth. And let us do our job of transforming society.”

Today, the cutting edge is Critical Race Theory (whites are inherently evil), the 1619 Project (America is inherently evil) and what one proponent called the Queering Up of public education.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/pernicious-racism-anti-racism-sara-dogan/

The Top Ten

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
University of Kentucky
University of Minnesota
Stanford University
Virginia Tech University
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Texas Tech University
Arizona State University
University of Florida
University of California-Los Angeles

(Universities are not ranked within the top ten.)

Introduction

Over the last year, Critical Race Theory has become a household term, promoted by the left as essential to racial progress and denounced by the right as a racist throwback to the Jim Crow era of racial segregation.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a radical revision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream that each American be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” While Dr. King and the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s promoted “colorblindness,” CRT insists on the exact opposite view, teaching that our character, our beliefs, and our place in society is predetermined by our skin color. By this reckoning, Whites are deemed to be inherently racist, born into a framework of “white supremacy” which infiltrates all American institutions. By contrast, racial minorities, and especially Blacks are regarded as perpetual victims of the “white supremacist” society into which they were born.

Taking its cues from Marxism, Critical Race Theory divides society into oppressors and the oppressed—categories which all-to-neatly correspond to whites and racial minorities. And just as with Marxism, CRT holds that the only way to truly eliminate racism is to destroy our institutions and rebuild them on the foundation of “racial equity.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/virginia-parents-have-had-enough-of-woke-lies-at-their-schools

Asra Q. Nomani is vice president of strategy and investigations at Parents Defending Education and a former Wall Street Journal reporter.

A diverse movement of concerned parents has arisen to oppose critical race theory.

Falls Church, Va. — Since Wednesday, October 6, Fairfax County Public Schools staffer Rob Kerr has been teaching a weekly two-hour course to teachers here at Marshall High School called, “AC-1608: How to Be an Antiracist Educator.”

If you happen to be white, look out — through the lens of this teaching, you’re racist. Consider this module in Kerr’s course: “Exploring and Understanding Whiteness,” which includes listening to a podcast by Bettina Love. She is the founder of the radical Abolitionist Teaching Network, whose core philosophy is that America’s schools, and especially its white teachers, are “spirit murdering” black children.

The Fairfax County “Antiracist Educator” syllabus, revealed here for the first time, borrows key concepts from the dour, divisive doctrine known as critical race theory, which holds that all white people are intrinsic oppressors of all minorities and especially black people. Lessons include “the Creation of Racist Systems,” “the building blocks of racism in the United States,” not to mention the ills of “whiteness.”

Education officials and politicians deny critical race theory is taught in K–12 schools, in a pattern of deception that parents are facing nationwide. We’ve heard of white lies, where folks fudge the truth. These are “woke” lies. But we’re now standing up with moral courage as unapologetic parents in a mama bear — and papa bear — movement. And we’re not just standing up against critical race theory. There’s a whole list of dubious woke education polices we’re fighting. These include: the elimination of merit exams for entry into once-elite schools; the elimination even of advanced math; the curating of pornography by some school libraries; and the cover-up of sexual assaults in schools.

Indeed, we’re seeing a “revenge of the parents.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/10/31/ballooning-ivy-league-endowment-forecasted-to-top-1-trillion-by-2048/?sh=3d82b6263a37

Why are Harvard, Yale, and Princeton charging $80,000 or more for tuition, room, and board?

The Ivies added $44 billion to their endowments this year, and new estimates show their collective endowment could exceed $1 trillion by 2048.

Organized as charitable non-profits, the Ivy League is a cash generation machine. Their collective endowment now stands at approximately $188.2 billion, which is up from $144 billion in 2020.

Now, critics are questioning whether the Ivies have gamed the federal, state, and local tax systems to operate as educational charities. These schools pay little or no taxes on their investments, endowment gains, and property.

Here are the new endowments by school: Harvard ($53.2 billion), Yale ($42.3 billion), Columbia ($13.5 billion), Brown ($6.9 billion), Dartmouth ($8.5 billion), UPENN ($20.5 billion), and Cornell ($10 billion). (Princeton is the only school not yet reported; however, we forecast their endowment at $33.3 billion, up 25 percent from $26.6 billion in 2020.)

Harvard’s endowment now stands at over $10 million per undergraduate student. Yale is just shy of this number at $9 million. Brown, far behind its colleagues, boasts just over $1 million in endowment assets per undergrad student.

However, the Ivies billion-dollar optics problem is soon to become a trillion-dollar optics problem. The size of their endowments is set grow substantially over the next couple of decades.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com forecast that the collective endowment of the Ivy League could surpass $1 trillion by 2049. This buildup of wealth for supposedly charitable educational purposes will trigger a host of public policy, legislative, and legal arguments. For example, Harvard alone could have $300 billion, or nearly $60 million per undergraduate student in endowment assets, by 2049.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/no-white-people-didnt-invent-slavery-and-conquest

It’s unclear what, exactly, they’re teaching Africana studies professors these days, but it apparently isn’t world history.

Rutgers University Professor Brittney Cooper, whose area of expertise is in women’s and gender studies and Africana studies, believes subjugation and military conquest didn’t exist in the world between “brown and black” people until white people arrived on the scene with their colonialism and white supremacy.

“I think that white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate,” she said this week during an appearance at the Root Institute conference.

Cooper continued, launching into a wild, fact-free tirade about “white people,” saying, “It’s not that white people don’t know what they have done. They know. They fear that there is no other way to be human but the way in which they are human. So, you know, you talk to white people, and whenever you really want to have a reckoning about it, they say stuff like, you know, ‘It’s just human nature. If y’all had all of this power, you would have done the same thing, right?'”

“And it’s like, no, that’s what white humans did. White human beings thought, ‘there’s a world here and we own it.’ Prior to them, black and brown people have been sailing across oceans, interacting with each other, for centuries without total subjugation, domination, and colonialism,” Cooper added.

This is a lot to unpack.

For starters, to what oceans, exactly, is she referring? The Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, or Southern? If she believes “black and brown” people regularly sailed across these oceans for “centuries” before white colonialism, interacting peacefully with each other, this would come as a shock to a great number of historians and archaeologists.