RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/05/a-university-capitulates-to-the-woke-mob/

May and June were lovely months. The cherry trees in Riverside Park put on their annual extravaganza. The eastern redbuds came a beat later with their mysterious clusters of lavender flowers bursting straight out of their bark. And free-range New Yorkers met the sunlight, maskless as the day they were born. This glorious freedom was bound to fade, but not before we had one more gift: the revelation that the trustees of the University of North Carolina had summoned the courage to say “no” to the proposal that Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the New York Times‘ now-infamous “1619 Project,” be appointed with tenure to UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism. 

I expressed my delight in this development several weeks after it was reported. And while the American higher education establishment was seething with resentment over the decision, it looked like those UNC trustees had the gravel to stick with their unpopular choice.

Now we know better. Last week, in a 9-4 vote, the UNC trustees approved a grant of tenure to the award-winning journalist. No explanation was offered, but the decision followed an intense campaign of vilification of the trustees for their failure to recognize Hannah-Jones’ exceptional merits.

Kudos to the four trustees—Dave Boliek, Haywood Cochrane, Allie Ray McCullen, and John Preyer—who had the fortitude to stand against the surrender. 

The vote is a significant defeat for those of us who hope to see American colleges and universities cease their seemingly relentless slide into the politicization of their faculty, curricula, and academic standards. 

Hannah-Jones’ tenured appointment, of course, is far from the first time that a public university board has capitulated to pressure to go along with a meretricious appointment, and it won’t be the last time either. It feels a little different, however, because it was preceded by that short spring of hope. 

What should we make of the trustees’ reversal? Some of the lessons will be abundantly clear to Hannah-Jones’ supporters. Noise works. Bluster, threats, and intimidation are effective ways to advance an academic appointment that is meritless on its face. University trustees are as susceptible to social and political pressure as anyone else. The trick is to spot their particular vulnerabilities. 

The other lesson is more speculative. UNC has willingly sacrificed some of its reputation for high academic standards in order to appease its woke critics, to land a celebrity journalist, and to stave off the threat of a boycott by some other black academics. 

The university faces a potential cost in doing this—the cost of reputational damage. That cost, of course, is unknowable at this point. Will the Hussman School fail to attract some good students who are turned off by the prospect of studying under a teacher who has conspicuously played fast and loose with the facts? Or will her celebrity and the controversy itself yield a bonanza of starstruck students? Plainly, UNC faces no reputational cost within the progressive American professoriate which rallied to her cause. But what happens among alumni, parents, and taxpayers in North Carolina? 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/universities-dont-celebrate-diversity-they-crush-it/

What the ideologically monolithic campus approach to ‘diversity’ forgets.

American universities have made it a part of their mission to embrace so-called diversity. Through a combination of outreach groups, equity officers (so official!), affirmative-action policies, and more, schools across the country have implemented measures to be as “accepting” as possible. To an extent, colleges are right to take steps to prevent the formation of a homogenous student body. Part of a university’s job is to prepare undergraduates for the rest of their lives. If all the students at Columbia were wealthy white kids from the Upper East Side, they wouldn’t be living in an environment that represents the world around them. But as they are so prone to do, the bureaucrats residing in the ivory tower have overcorrected.

As has been described in countless works, intellectual diversity at universities has greatly suffered. The pervasive cloud of wokism has seeped into almost every branch of academia. Law professors cut portions of curricula, such as the study of laws pertaining to rape, Jim Crow, and abuse, to avoid offending their students. Public medical schools punish discussion of “microaggression theory.” Worst of all, untold numbers of faculty have faced repercussions for expressing the slightest disagreement with the woke, hyper-inclusive ideology that progressives peddle.

But it is not only intellectual diversity that suffers in today’s college climate. Even the diversity that admissions officers favor, diversity of background, is weakened by wokeness.

The unhinged drive toward inclusion has resulted in some terribly exclusive practices. According to a report published by the National Association of Scholars, covering 173 private and public universities from all 50 states, over 70 percent of the schools surveyed offered separate, racially designated graduation ceremonies and residential areas. Elite institutions such as Harvard and Columbia have hopped on the bandwagon. But how will the broader student body reap the benefits of a diverse campus if the students opt into self-segregated programs?

One particularly innovative school, Chapman University, a midsize California university, has decided to host not one, not two, but seven individual graduation ceremonies based on students’ various ways of self-identifying. As one can imagine, there are problems with this. For one, it creates an almost comical scenario for Chapman students who fit under multiple categories. Maybe a gay, disabled, and Afro-Latino student should get five graduations! But, more seriously, the profusion of separate ceremonies detracts from the primary purpose of commencement. It is supposed to be a time when students in STEM, humanities, and business programs abandon their differences for the sake of celebrating their accomplishments together. Students toss their caps as one because they have finished as one. It seems wrong to have them throw their caps in separate groupuscules.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/an_antiwhite_video_at_a_pricey_private_school_set_off_a_firestorm.html

If there’s a silver lining to the COVID madness that swept America, savaged the economy, and allowed Democrats to put Joe Biden in the White House, it’s that a combination of distance learning and leftist hubris meant that the cultural Marxism in America’s classrooms hit home – and nowhere with greater impact than in New York, when upper-middle-class, White leftists discovered that the schools to which they’re paying huge sums annually are dedicated to teaching anti-White racism. The latest example was pricey Spence School, a staple for New York society girls. While the story broke three weeks ago, it’s heated up all over again because furious mothers have rejected the school head’s mealy-mouthed non-apology.

The story first exploded when Gabriela Baron, a first-generation American of Cuban descent, wrote a scorching letter to Spence School explaining why she was pulling her daughter out of the school. As the New York Post explained when the story first came to light,

Hispanic tech exec Gabriela Baron fired off a scorched-earth letter to the prestigious Upper East Side institution last week seething that the video — shown to her eighth-grade daughter and classmates on graduation day — “openly derides, humiliates and ridicules white women.

“They sat there in their graduation dresses while the white mothers of the white students – many of whom volunteer, donate, call, email and do whatever the school asks of them – were tarred and feathered in a video their teacher showed them. While their white female teachers were mocked,” Baron raged in the missive, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/02/bard-college-funded-by-soros-will-teach-course-on-prison-abolition/

A private college in New York, funded by far-left billionaire George Soros, is about to offer a course on how to “sell” the idea of abolishing all prisons to the broader population, Fox News reports.

The controversial course, “Abolishing Prisons and the Police,” will be offered this fall at Bard College, a private liberal arts college that received $500 million from Soros via an endowment earlier this year. The course description explicitly says that its intent is to inform students on how to “sell abolition to the masses and design a multi-media ad campaign to make prison abolition go viral.”

The description continues, saying that the class “explores what’s to be gained, lost, and what we can’t imagine about a world without prisons. Through the figure of abolition (a phenomenon we will explore via movements to end slavery, the death penalty, abortion, gay conversion therapy, and more), we will explore how and why groups of Americans have sought to bring an absolute end to sources of human suffering.”

The class, listed as part of Bard’s broader “Hate Studies Initiative,” then goes on to say that students “will explore a history of the punitive impulse in American social policy and seek to discern means of intervening against it.”

In addition to the radical materials of the course itself, the professor who will be instructing the class has his own history of radicalism. Professor Kwame Holmes wrote an op-ed last July titled “Why Abolish the Police?”, which suggested that neighborhoods should develop their own “pods” designed to “create intentional agreements around safety.” He also tweeted that people should “reach out to five neighbors and create a pact amongst yourselves to call each other before you call the police” in the event that a crime is witnessed.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/the-culture-wars-come-for-the-american-historical-association/

Today’s historians prize emotion over evidence and fiction over fact.

On June 16, I received an email from the American Historical Association (AHA), of which I am a member, trumpeting its “firm opposition” to anti–critical race theory legislation nationwide. Amid our culture of near-omnipresent virtue signaling, wherein businesses and organizations rush to embrace the woke cause du jour, I could have been forgiven for paying this instance no mind.

It turned out to be worth a closer look. The message noted that the AHA had authored a statement, joined by the American Association of University Professors, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and PEN America, bemoaning “Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History.” It has since been co-signed by 130 organizations and counting, many of which represent institutions of higher education.

The statement is a tour de force in presenting both disingenuous arguments and fake narratives.

These bills, the statement reads, intend “to suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States.” If that were the aim of the legislation, we all should share their outrage.

Yet state governments are not trying to expunge racism from history textbooks. Consider the bill that was recently proposed in Texas. At no point does it mandate that public schools drop the history of racism in America from their curricula. Any class on American history worth taking can and should cover the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow, as well as emancipation and the civil-rights movement. Slavery and racism are indelible sins of our country’s past. On that you’ll find universal agreement, within the AHA and any other educational organization.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-nea-adopts-motion-to-promote-critical-race-theory-in-americas-schools

The NEA, which is the largest teachers union in the country, adopted several actions in favor of critical race theory indoctrination in American schools during their Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly this weekend.

The NEA’s Business Item 39 states that the “USA’s economy/social order is built on interactions between different cultures/races” and that “To deny opportunities to teach truth about Black, Brown, and other marginalized races minimalizes the necessity for students to build efficacy.”

As such, they have decided to implement a plan that will publicize “information” on what critical race theory is and “what it is not.” They will bring in staff to education union members who “want to learn more and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric.”

The plan will provide a “study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.”

They say that this will “convey [the NEA’s] support for the accurate and honest teaching of social studies topics, including truthful and age-appropriate accountings of unpleasant aspects of American history, such as slavery, and the oppression and discrimination of Indigenous, Black, Brown, and other peoples of color, as well as the continued impact this history has on our current society. The Association will further convey that in teaching these topics, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/02/a-major-education-realignment-in-the-works/

According to data released by Education Week, America’s government-run schools lost almost 1.3 million students this year. (Delaware, Illinois, and North Carolina didn’t supply enrollment statistics, so the true number is probably somewhat higher.) The downtick was due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its overwrought response, including draconian lockdowns and subsequent forced digital learning—mostly occurring in school districts with strong teachers unions.

While undoubtedly some of the “missing” kids will return when schools open their doors in August and September, to be sure many will not. And for those who don’t, increasing numbers will have more choices than ever.

As EdChoice Director of Policy Jason Bedrick notes, 14 states have enacted 18 new or expanded educational choice policies so far this year. Additionally, it’s expected that six additional states will usher in new or expanded choice programs. On a national level, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has introduced the Children Have Opportunities in Classrooms Everywhere Act, which would “modernize how, and to whom, we distribute our K-12 resources.” Lee explains that his bill “would allow low-income families with children in grades K-12 to apply for federal education funds that they can choose to put toward the public schools in which their children are enrolled or toward an education savings account, known as a 529 account.” (Education savings accounts [ESAs] allow parents to pull their children from a public school and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple, uses.)

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.

Many polls reflect the fact that the ZIP-code-mandated education system just isn’t cutting it anymore for many Americans. The American Federation for Children reports that 65 percent of voters support school choice, with 69 percent of blacks and 67 percent of Hispanics in favor, according to just-released survey results. An EdChoice poll shows that when given a fair description of school choice types, a great majority are in approval. For example, 80 percent of black and Hispanic parents support ESAs, and 76 percent of white parents are in favor.

Even in California, where the private option is nonexistent, things are happening. In a recent poll, voters were asked if they’d approve a ballot initiative establishing ESAs, and a majority said they would. In fact, 54 percent of voters said they’d vote “yes” if given the chance, while only 34 percent said they’d vote “no.” Support among black and Latino voters was even higher, with 71 percent and 66 percent respectively in favor. Toward that end, the California School Choice Foundation will be sending an education freedom initiative to Sacramento for title and summary in July.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/classroom-censorship-comes-to-the-university-of-oklahoma/?utm_source=

An on-campus workshop instructed faculty in how to suppress unwelcome speech.

Late last month, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) obtained a video recording of an “Anti-Racist Rhetoric and Pedagogies” workshop that was presented to faculty in the English Department at the University of Oklahoma. Originally held in April 2021, this hour-long workshop was intended to teach instructors how to eliminate racist comments and shut down unwanted speech in the classroom without fear of administrative repercussions. The tactics and guidelines set down in the workshop are so broad that they threaten basically any speech that those who might apply them dislike.

Assistant teaching professor Kelli Alvarez led a presentation titled “Setting an Anti-Racist Tone,” in which she describes the expectations she sets for her classes each semester. In her class, students are to avoid “derogatory remarks, critiques, and hate speech” in the classroom and in their writing (18:10). She also has her students read “When Free Speech Becomes Unfree” by Ibram X. Kendi. According to Alvarez, the premise of the article is that “there’s no such thing as free speech” and that someone is paying for what we say, emotionally and physically.

In the workshop, Alvarez continued with the false claim that hate speech is not protected by the Constitution, and failed to cite any Supreme Court case that supports this argument. Instead, she encouraged instructors to tell their students, “No, you don’t have the right to say that. Stop talking right now.” She maintained that students can and should disagree with one another. But if their disagreement is “rooted in the oppression and denial of humanity and someone’s right to exist,” it is not allowed. That would be denying someone “their basic human rights” and “human dignity,” which is “not conducive or productive.”

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/06/30/is_harvard_sacrificing_science_to_wokeness_783577.html

There is a cultural shift underway affecting all aspects of American life. Though hard to define, it usually takes the form of an emphasis on what is known variously as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, wokeness, anti-racism, and the like. Several scholars and writers have been raising the alarm about its anti-intellectual and illiberal aspects. Heather Mac Donald has shown how it has permeated the university. Is there reason to be suspicious?

One might suspect that the new ideology only affects intrinsically political areas of study, such as Government and History. But in fact it has infected every area, even science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Below is a sampling of new policies at Harvard that reveal how this ideology is affecting STEM education.

A few clicks away from the homepage of Harvard’s prestigious medical school, one finds among their “anti-racism initiatives” the following: “We will develop new classes for master’s and PhD students to acknowledge the ways in which racism is embedded in science.” What in the world does it even mean to say that racism is “embedded” in science? It has been pursued, certainly, by flawed people—but science is the pursuit of universal truth. It cannot itself be racist. At best, such classes will simply be a waste of time. At worst, as the language above suggests, they will attempt to indoctrinate students by teaching them that they, and the medicine they practice, are inherently racist.

Not even mathematics, the most rigorous and least ideological of the STEM disciplines, is unscathed. Harvard’s math department is currently implementing suggestions from last year’s town hall concerning “diversity and anti-oppression.” It is suggested to no longer require the GRE for graduate admissions, and, shockingly, to “reform Math 55 culture and content” for the sake of “promoting equity.” Now, Math 55 is known as the hardest undergraduate math class in the country—some years more than half the class does not finish. The rationale underlying these suggestions is unmistakable: there are not enough women and minorities succeeding in the department, so let us lower the standards to make our classes and programs more diverse. Such thinking has become disturbingly common. It’s both condescending and an open admission that diversity is more important than rigorous education. Is it lamentable that some years Math 55 has no women? Perhaps. But that is preferable to encouraging students to take it who may not succeed or lowering the standards for all.  

A final example, this time from the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). Buried on the 17th of the 37-page SEAS Strategic Plan for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging it is recommended that a “comprehensive training program” be created for all members of SEAS to address “bias, privilege, inclusive leadership, gender identity, etc.” including inviting speakers and in-house training. But what does this have to do with engineering? Naturally, they neglect to mention the cost of such a program or how it advances the core mission of SEAS.