RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-set-to-push-critical-race-theory-on-u-s-schools/

The woke revolution in the classroom is about to go federal. In an early but revelatory move, President Biden’s Department of Education has signaled its intent to impose the most radical forms of Critical Race Theory on America’s schools, very much including the 1619 Project and the so-called anti-racism of Ibram X. Kendi. (Kendi’s “anti-racism” — which advocates a massive and indefinite expansion of reverse discrimination — is more like neo-racism.) Biden is obviously co-opting conservatives’ interest in reviving traditional U.S. history and civics to deliver its perfect opposite — federal imposition of the very ideas conservatives aim to combat.

Biden’s Department of Education has just released the text of a proposed new rule establishing priorities for grants in American History and Civics Education programs. That rule gives priority to grant “projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives.” The rule goes on to cite and praise the New York Times’ “landmark” 1619 Project, as well as the work of Critical Race Theorist Kendi, as leading examples of the sort of ideas the Biden administration wants to spread.

The programs immediately targeted by Biden’s new priority criteria for American history and civics grants are small. Once in place, however, those criteria will undoubtedly influence the much larger and vastly more dangerous “Civics Secures Democracy Act.” That bill would appropriate $1 billion a year, for six years, for history and civic education. Support for leftist “action civics” is already written into the priority criteria of the bill itself. I have argued that additional anodyne-sounding priority criteria in the Civics Secures Democracy Act — criteria favoring grants targeted to “underserved” populations and the mitigation of various racial, ethnic, and linguistic achievement gaps — would be interpreted by the Biden administration as a green light to fund Critical Race Theory in the schools. The new draft federal rule for grant priority in American history and civics education makes it clear that this is indeed the Biden administration’s intent.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/top-ten-most-racist-colleges-and-universities-10-toptenracistuniversitiesorg/

The David Horowitz Freedom Center is exposing prestigious American campuses as the “Top Ten Most Racist Colleges and Universities” for enacting policies and programs that are allegedly “anti-racist” but which in reality promote racial discrimination and a return to Jim Crow. 

A report and video on Brandeis University, #10 on our list, follows below.

The full report on the Top Ten Most Racist Colleges and Universities may be read HERE . 

#10: Brandeis University

“Whites-only” spaces are making a comeback—not in the Jim Crow South, but at prestigious American universities. Brandeis University in Massachusetts recently created one such racially segregated program for the ironic purpose of allegedly combatting racism. 

The voluntary six-week anti-racist training program is led by Brandeis’s Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion. In an Orwellian paradox, the program deliberately segregates white students in order to lead them in “racial sensitivity training” such that they can “come to a deeper understanding of how whiteness moves.”

When questioned as to the wisdom of segregating students by race, Brandeis officials astonishingly declared it a matter of safety not to allow whites and blacks to converse about racial issues until the white students have been sufficiently shamed for their innate racism.

According to Joy von Steiger, a clinical psychologist who serves as a “Racial Justice Educator” at Brandeis, it is essential that white students participate in the sensitivity training so that they do not “case harm.” She added, “It doesn’t have to be kumbaya, but white folks in particular have to have done enough work” to safely exist in shared spaces with non-whites.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/raceobsessed_brearley_school_claims_victimhood_when_challenged.html

Andrew Gutmann, who was pulling his daughter out of Brearley, an expensive private school in New York (annual tuition $54,000), wrote an open letter explaining exactly what was wrong with its “anti-racist” racism. A walk through the school’s website and the school head’s response to Gutmann’s letter prove that, if anything, he understated how bad things really are there.

Brearley, in New York, caters to rich leftists. It has a cachet. From Jane Foley Fried, the head of the school, on down to every administrator and faculty member, everyone is highly credentialed.

On its “statement of beliefs” page, Brearley boasts that it “challenges girls of adventurous intellect and diverse backgrounds to think critically and creatively and prepares them for principled engagement in the world.” If one goes by the school’s response to Gutmann’s letter, there is no evidence that either the faculty or the students have any critical thinking skills.

The same page includes statements about Brearley’s “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” and its being “Antiracist.” The school’s website also has a page dedicated to “Diversity and Equity.” It repeats the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” and “Anti-racist” statements, but the important item is a lengthy calendar showing the energy and time the school dedicates to “diversity.”

There are constant meetings and seminars for parents and students, all of them led by various facilitators, and most of them divided along racial lines. I cannot urge you strongly enough to check out the calendar because it is a stunning example of the accuracy of Guttman’s claim that:

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way.

[snip]

I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners.

[snip]

I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.

(Again, if you haven’t read Gutmann’s letter, you must — and then share it with others.)

Brearley responded with a letter from Principal Jane Fried. It demonstrated how the wokerati invariably cast themselves as victims. And I do mean victims: Fried speaks of physical and psychic terror as if Gutmann had threatened their lives rather than challenging their beliefs.

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-american-jewish-academic-center-smears-israel/

Is this the kind of programming that the donors to the Feinstein Center want their money used for?

Why is a major academic center for the study of American Jewish history, which was founded by a stalwart friend of Israel, falsely accusing Israel of “state violence against Palestinians”?

The Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, at Temple University, was founded—and for many years directed—by the late Dr. Murray Friedman, a distinguished historian and longtime leader of the American Jewish Committee in Philadelphia.

I had the privilege of attending presentations by Murray Friedman and I know what a strong supporter of Israel he was. He is surely turning over in his grave at the news that his center is now being used to spread anti-Israel lies.

On April 20, the Feinstein Center will be hosting a public program called The Weaponization of Discourse: Israel/Palestine, Antisemitism, and Free Speech on Campus

The Feinstein Center’s advertisements for the event declare that it will explore, among other things, what it calls “increased state violence against Palestinians.” The phrase “state violence against Palestinians” means that Israel, as a state, is carrying out a policy of committing war crimes against Palestinian Arabs. That’s false.

I expect Arab propagandists to spread such lies. I don’t expect the falsehoods to come from an academic center that was founded by a pro-Israel scholar, and is funded in part by donations from pro-Israel members of the Philadelphia-area Jewish community.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/you-have-to-read-this-letter?token=

……If you don’t know about Brearley, it’s a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It costs $54,000 a year and prospective families apparently have to take an “anti-racism pledge” to be considered for admission. (In the course of my reporting for this piece I spoke to a few Brearley parents.)Gutmann chose to pull his daughter, who has been in the school since kindergarten, and sent this missive to all 600 or so families in the school earlier this week.

Dear Fellow Brearley Parents, 

Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child’s education is irreparable. 

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed. 

I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/open-letter-butler-universitys-students-justice-richard-l-cravatts/

Your group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has a long history since its founding in 1993 of bringing vitriolic anti-Israel speakers to their respective campuses.

And your recent invitation to the Marxist, former Black Panther, Angela Davis (pictured above), a supporter of the destructive Boycott Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, to speak at Butler affirms your group’s radicalism and its history of creating a hostile climate on whatever campus you have a chapter. SJP members apparently wish to live in a world where only your predetermined virtues and worldview prevail, and feel quite strongly that, in the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, at least, the answers are black and white, there is a moral side and an immoral side, and that anyone who does not, or cannot, see things as clearly and unambiguously as you woke students do is a racist, an oppressor, or a supporter of an illegal, apartheid regime trampling the human rights of the blameless, hapless Palestinians.

Your former president at Butler even promoted conspiracy theories about a Zionist cabal working behind the scenes to have the Angela Davis speech canceled. “Days before Butler University’s shameless censorship of Angela Davis,” wrote Roua Daas, the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Student Government Association at Butler University, “the Student Government Association was bombarded by pressure from Zionist students [emphasis added] who claimed to oppose Davis’ event because of her support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement — a grassroots demand for nonviolent economic pressure against Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine.”

In her letter in the Butler Collegian, Daas wrote that “This is not the first time this school year that these students [emphasis added] have attempted to silence free speech and prevent political events on campus,” continuing her denigration of Zionists on the Butler campus. “Many will recall failed attempts this past fall to use student senate resolutions to cancel student organization events and place limits on topics that could be discussed,” she added, referring to the debate on campus last fall over the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. 

“This is also not the first time that Zionists have attempted to deplatform Angela Davis for her supportive stance on Palestine,” Daas added, and “institutions which silence the voices of Black radicals such as Davis are complicit in the systems of racism and oppression which hurt BIPOC people within and beyond Butler University.”

Apparently, it is irresistible for SJP to avoid inviting controversial speakers to speak against Israel, even murderers, as long as they are willing and able to defame Israel, attack Zionism, point to the alleged racism of the Jewish state, and find common ground of oppression between the Palestinians and people of color on campus and elsewhere.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/14/child-abuse-in-plain-sight/

I come from a time when schools existed to teach the ABCs, basic math and the amazing story of the American founding. While it’s true that Horace Mann, the man who first promoted universal public education, was a central planner, government schools usually turned out educated students whose values comported with those of their parents. But these days, driven by fads and pseudoscience, many schools seem to exist to frighten children by forcing them into believing some craze-du-jour that is often alien to their parents. Of late, the global warming (or is it climate change?) and gender fluidity fads have been cruelly forced upon children as young as five.

Then, most recently, we had the hysterical response to COVID-19. The ensuing school lockdowns have led children to live lives of social isolation, which have increased rates of anxiety, depression and suicide. Additionally, the learning loss has been incalculable.

And now, many of those who have been able get back to in-person classes are being subjected to woke schooling and its foundational underpinning, critical race theory. Those who condemn CRT pedagogy, which maintains that racism is pervasive and permanent, and divides students into “oppressor” and “oppressed” factions, usually comes from those who have an issue with its inherent radicalism. But what about its effects on children’s psyches?

In an eye-opening piece, Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation President Lewis Andrews writes,

woke curricula involve much more than warped views of history, the scientific method, and social relations—they also employ instructional methods that have been shown to inflict serious psychological harm completely independent of what is being taught. These include the frequent use of shaming, forced public confessions of so-called ‘privilege,’ the acceptance of one’s socioeconomic background as an excuse for not achieving, and the promotion of ideological conformity as the best way to deal with social conflict.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/04/statement-of-prof-william-a-jacobson-opposing-cornell-faculty-senate-proposed-critical-race-mandates/

The Cornell University Faculty Senate is considering today three proposals developed in the aftermath of a July 16, 2020 “anti-racism” initiative launched by the President of the University. An online Faculty Senate vote will be held at some later date in the near future.

I have written about this initiative, and how it has gone off the rails under faculty and student activism, in the following posts:

I also wrote an Op-Ed at Real Clear Politics about the initiative as it worked its way through the Faculty Senate Working Group process, Higher Ed Approaches the Antiracism Training Abyss:

The cumulative effect of these initiatives is coercive not educational, tying academic and professional performance to a deceptive concept of “antiracism” that in reality is neo-racist and endangers free expression. Dissent will be silenced when grades, evaluations, continued employment and professional advancement are tied to meeting top-down mandates, creating an environment of compelled activism and compliance in which opposition is defined as inherently racist.

Cornell already ranks low in protecting student free expression. Like so many institutions of higher education, it is also now putting at risk its ability to protect academic freedom for its students and faculty. Hopefully, the Cornell senior administration will pull the campus back from this brink.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-4-13-the-georgetown-affair-new-levels-of-progressive-reality-denial

Just a few months ago (December 2020) I declared that the “essence of progressivism is refusal to deal with reality.” I had some pretty good examples in that post, but none of them can top the current convulsions that are upending Georgetown Law School. At Georgetown recently, a teacher made the mistake of uttering a small dose of reality while speaking to a colleague. This occurred after a recorded class had concluded and everyone else had signed out, but while the recording of the class was still running. Needless to say, the recording of the teacher’s remarks promptly hit Twitter. Thereupon, all hell broke loose.

The subject of the reality that must not be spoken is of course the current all-consuming obsession of academia, namely race. The question I pose is, are Georgetown, and for that matter all of academia, taking this obsession so far as to fully undermine their principal mission?

Probably, you are familiar with how this started. The after-class discussion took place in early March between Georgetown teachers Sandra Sellers and David Batson. Here is video of the key portion of the discussion. The offending words came from Sellers, referring to the performance of students in her class:

“I hate to say this, I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks. Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, oh come on. It’s some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom, it drives me crazy.” 

Before getting to the reaction to that remark, let me discuss how the reality of affirmative action plays out for a law school like Georgetown.

The Law School Admission Test is taken by nearly all aspiring law students who want to attend a high-ranked school. The LSAT is specifically designed to predict success in law school. Like all such tests, it is far from perfect, and any individual student may far over-perform or under-perform his or her LSAT results. But averaged over the full range of the test takers, the LSAT is reasonably accurate. I have found it difficult to locate LSAT results by race, but in this article last fall in the City Journal, Heather Mac Donald came up with a racial breakdown of LSAT results for the year 2004, which she sources to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: