RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://reason.com/2021/04/07/microaggressions-uva-student-kieran-bhattacharya-threat/

Kieran Bhattacharya is a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. On October 25, 2018, he attended a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions. Dissatisfied with the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter—Beverly Cowell Adams, an assistant dean—Bhattacharya raised his hand.

Within a few weeks, as a result of the fallout from Bhattacharya’s question about microagressions, the administration had branded him a threat to the university and banned him from campus. He is now suing UVA for violating his First Amendment rights, and a judge recently ruled that his suit should proceed.

Here was what the student said.

“Thank you for your presentation,” said Bhattacharya, according to an audio recording of the event. “I had a few questions, just to clarify your definition of microaggressions. Is it a requirement, to be a victim of microaggression, that you are a member of a marginalized group?”

Adams replied that it wasn’t a requirement.

Bhattacharya suggested that this was contradictory, since a slide in her presentation had defined microaggressions as negative interactions with members of marginalized groups. Adams and Bhattacharya then clashed for a few minutes about how to define the term. It was a polite disagreement. Adams generally maintained that microaggression theory was a broad and important topic and that the slights caused real harm. Bhattacharya expressed a scientific skepticism that a microaggression could be distinguished from an unintentionally rude statement. His doubts were wellfounded given that microaggression theory is not a particularly rigorous concept.

But Nora Kern*, an assistant professor who helped to organize the event, thought Bhattacharya’s questions were a bit too pointed. Immediately following the panel, she filed a “professionalism concern card”—a kind of record of a student’s violations of university policy.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/university-torontos-festering-anti-semitism-richard-l-cravatts/

In a country where multiculturalism has a reverent following and criticism of protected minorities has essentially been criminalized as “hate speech,” it is more than ironic that on some Canadian campuses radical students have taken it upon themselves to target one group, Jewish students, with a hatred that is nominally forbidden for any others.

On March 4th, for example, yet another troubling event was scheduled to be held at the University of Toronto, this time a panel discussion tellingly entitled, “Liberated Students in a Colonised [sic] Campus: Reflections on the Palestinian Experience at the University of Toronto,” sadly co-sponsored by the University’s Institute of Islamic Studies, Department of History, and Centre for the Study of the United States. 

As B’nai Brith Canada noted in a condemnatory statement, the marketing materials for the event included a drawing of some individuals, one of which was Ghassan Kanafani, a murderous figure that, as B’nai Brith pointed out, is “a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist entity in Canada. Kanafani forged connections between the PFLP and other far-left terrorist groups, including the Japanese Red Army . . . .”

“The University of Toronto has an antisemitism problem,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “It is morally grotesque that the University is advertising an event using the sympathetic portrayal of a terrorist whose group has been responsible for so many murders, airplane hijackings and suicide bombings targeting innocent civilians.”

This is not the first time in recent history that B’nai Brith has felt compelled to critique the anti-Israel, often anti-Semitic goings-on at the University of Toronto, and the organization’s frustration is exacerbated by the fact that its prior pleadings for administrative actions to correct the toxic atmosphere at U of Toronto have largely gone unanswered.

In June of 2020, for example, B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, together with two U of Toronto professors, Stuart Kamenetsky and Howard Tenenbaum, produced a lengthy and substantive report, “Confronting Antisemitism at the University of Toronto: A Path Forward,” written for the University’s president, Meric Gertler. That report, which fastidiously reviewed a long list of anti-Israel events and their effect on Jewish students, went largely ignored by the university’s administration, troubling in light of the many bigoted events cataloged in the report.

At this particular university, as one example, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) is the only student union in Canada with a committee dedicated to promoting the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and in 2019 outrageously rejected Hillel’s request to recognize the “Kosher Forward” campaign to have kosher food offered on campus since, as the Union decided in their grotesquely anti-Semitic way, Hillel is pro-Israel and therefore kosher food should not be allowed. In doing so, the B’nai Brith report noted, “the UTGSU openly discriminated against Jewish student rights, despite its mandate to represent all university students, and faced no consequences for doing so.”

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2021/04/08/oxford-professors-excellent-thread-on-viewpoint-diversity-and-the-lefts-sneering-dismissal-of-it-n382068

Teresa Bejan is an associate professor of political science at Oxford University who I’ve written about before. Last summer she posted an insightful thread about the nature of free speech. Yesterday she posted a related thread on Twitter about viewpoint diversity. You’re probably familiar with the term which, simply put, means the idea of having a variety of ideological views represented at the table in the same way you might seek to have racial diversity. But the idea of viewpoint diversity often gets shrugged off by progressives who are fond of suggesting something along the lines of why represent the views of troglodytes at a university.

Today Bejan addressed those issues in a thread on Twitter, making a case that viewpoint diversity should be welcome and that those who dismiss it would never dismiss any other claims of insufficient diversity.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/04/ron-desantis-announces-initiative-to-promote-teaching-civics-reject-critical-race-training/

Ron DeSantis is shaping up to be the model of what a Republican governor should be. This is what leadership looks like.

The College Fix reports:

Governor Ron DeSantis’ new curriculum initiative will promote teaching civics, disavow critical race theory

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, recently announced a new initiative to promote civics education.

The “Civic Literacy Excellence Initiative” would create “a new professional licensure endorsement for educators in civics education,” according to a news release from the governor’s office.

Teachers who earn the endorsement would be given a $3000 bonus, according to the details of the proposal. Another $16.5 million would be available for civics education for principals and teachers.

“A high-quality education begins with a high quality curriculum, which is why I remain laser focused on developing the best possible civics education standards,” the governor said in his statement. His proposal still needs to be introduced and passed by Florida legislators.

It will “promote high-quality civics education for Florida students and reward classroom educators,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis also criticized critical race theory, stating ideologies like this have no place in Florida.

“There is no room in classrooms for things like critical race theory,” the governor said during his press conference. Part of his revamping of education in the state will include improving the curriculum, DeSantis said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-will-liberals-reclaim-free-speech-11617813301?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Mr. Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is co-author, with cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, of “Free Speech and Why You Should Give a Damn.”

‘Professor, why are you so conservative about free speech?” Several students have asked me versions of this question recently, which speaks volumes about universities right now. I’m a liberal and a Democrat: I’m pro-choice, pro-ObamaCare and vehemently anti-Trump. But I’m also a strong supporter of free speech, which marks me as a right-winger on campus.

That’s because my fellow liberals have largely abandoned free speech to conservatives. Turn on Fox News, and you’ll see “cancel culture” decried in bright lights. But in the liberal press—and most of all in the liberal academy—free speech has become a rhetorical third rail. Sure, we’ll invoke it when Republican state lawmakers try to ban critical race theory. But in our own house, free speech is seen increasingly as a tool of repression rather than liberation.

Here’s how the argument usually goes: White people love free speech, because it lets them say any hateful thing they want. But the real burden of it falls on racial minorities, who are forced to absorb constant slights and slurs against their very existence. That’s why we need to police racist speech: to protect its victims.

The problem is that people will inevitably differ about which speech qualifies as racist. The term has become our own scarlet letter, an all-purpose way to prohibit ideas you dislike. So we need to defend the free-speech rights of everyone, even avowed racists. The best response to hateful speech is to raise your own voice against it, not to ban it.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/04/05/investigative_issues_elite_students_melding_of_meritocracy_and_wokeness_reveals_deeper_ruling_class_rot_771375.html

Every level of American education, from earliest grades to elite universities, is informed, to a greater or lesser extent, by two apparently contradictory forces: competition in the name of meritocracy, and identitarian notions of social justice. Meritocracy and wokeness seem to be at odds, particularly in debates about criteria for college admissions or the continued existence of selective public secondary schools. Between those who see meritocratic admissions as giving fair rewards to hard work and ability, and those who demand that schools focus on students’ identities rather than individual performance, there appears little room for compromise.

But the two positions have unexamined common ground, coexisting in the consciousness of students and teachers. At the University of Chicago, where I have taught for three years, I see students combine meritocratic and identitarian ideas in ways that reveal these two apparently antagonistic modes of thought to be not only compatible, but complementary symptoms of our collective failure to think honestly about the real purposes of education. Notions of meritocracy and social justice alike direct our attention away from the way our schools do not simply reward competence or resist inequality, but also shape the character of our elites and our very nation.

My students have experienced their schooling as both a long, isolating competition and as a continuous solicitation to stage their membership in racial and other identity groups. By the time they come into my yearlong great-books-style seminar, “Self, Culture, and Society,” they have been through more than a decade of evaluations that compare them to peers through supposedly objective (and therefore, uncriticizable) measures of competence. They are ranked not so much by teachers as by rubrics and metrics, and they learn to see the world in terms of such individualizing but impersonal rankings.

In almost every instance, my students come to study at the University of Chicago not because some particular quality about this school (its “nerdy” reputation, location, etc.) appealed to them, but because it was the “highest-ranked” school that accepted them. Once here, they organize their leisure and career aspirations around rankings. Many student clubs require potential members to submit applications and undergo interviews, and students seem to get a certain sadistic thrill from doing to others as the educational system has done to them. Already in their sophomore years, they are applying for internships that will open paths to careers in consulting and finance, which they also perceive in terms of rank—only a few “top” firms in New York, they have learned from peers and parents, are worthy of a bright young person’s ambition.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ivy-league-acceptance-rates-fall-to-record-lows-due-to-covid-19-11617767857?mod=searchresults_pos1&page=1
Ivy League Acceptance Rates Fall to Record Lows Due to Covid-19 Harvard accepts just 3.4% of applicants, while Columbia admitted 3.7%

A pandemic-fueled surge in applications translated into record low acceptance rates this year for the country’s elite colleges, including most of the Ivy League.

Harvard University admitted 1,968 candidates, or 3.4% of the 57,435 people who applied. The previous lowest acceptance rate was 4.6% two years ago. Applications surged 43% over last year.

Yale University accepted 4.6% of the 46,905 people who applied. The applicant pool grew by 33% over last year, when the school accepted 6.6% of applicants.

Columbia University in New York City was the second hardest school to get into among the Ivies. Of the 60,551 students who applied, just 3.7% were accepted—down from 6.3% last year.

The eight schools making up the Ivy League and several other highly selective colleges late Tuesday notified applicants whether or not they had secured a slot for the coming fall’s first-year class. Notices went out a week later than in previous years to give admission officers time to vet the deluge of applications.

Hundreds of additional colleges, including most elite schools, stopped requiring an ACT or SAT standardized-test score as part of the admissions process this year because it was difficult to safely sit for the exams during the pandemic. The test-optional policy boosted applications as the number of open seats declined when a disproportionate number of students deferred admission due to the pandemic.

“Ten percent of the class entering this fall were admitted a year ago, and decided to take a gap year,” said Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions at Duke University, where a 25% uptick in applications drove the acceptance rate to a record low 5.8% from 8.1% last year. “That left fewer places than usual.”

More than 100,000 students applied to New York University and the school accepted 12.8%—a record low. Among those accepted, 20% are the first in their family to go to college, 20% are low income, and 29% come from traditionally underrepresented groups, the school said.

At Dartmouth, where the acceptance rate dropped to 6.2% from 9.2% last year, 48% of accepted students identify as Black, indigenous or other people of color, the school said, while 17% are the first in their family to attend college.

“It is safe to say this is the most broadly diverse accepted class in the long history of Dartmouth,” said Lee Coffin, vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/systemic-social-justice-activism-college-campuses-jay-bergman/

Amidst considerable fanfare, Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) announced recently the creation of the John Lewis Institute for Social Justice.  In a formal statement marking the occasion, Zulma Toro, the president of CCSU, claimed that the university’s mission was “to prepare students to be thoughtful, responsible, and successful citizens.”

At first glance, this objective seems incontestable, and the advocacy of social justice an excellent means of achieving it.

But when one delves deeper into the purpose of the institute, and learns what exactly social justice means to those who established it, it becomes clear that the institute is a vehicle for turning students into political activists advancing left-wing causes: the next sentence in the president’s statement acknowledges that the institute was created to satisfy students’ desire “to become more informed and involved in social justice initiatives after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.” 

That in the absence of any juridical determination one would describe these two deaths as “killings” is consistent with the common misconception that white police are generically racist and kill black Americans in large numbers because of their skin color.  The truth is the exact opposite: according to Peter Kirsanow, a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, in 2016 police shot to death 16 unarmed black victims and 22 unarmed white victims – while in the same year making 408,873 arrests for violent crime.

The same disparity between perception and reality applies to the larger indictment of America that the creators of the institute apparently share: that our country is “systemically” racist, and absent the intervention of social justice activists like those the institute seeks to generate, irredeemably so.  

This charge is false as a matter of evidence and contradictory as a matter of simple logic.  

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/06/educational-freedom-is-on-the-move/

I wrote early last month that COVID-related lockdowns were leading many states to implement or advance already existing school choice measures. Just a few weeks later, it is happening at breakneck speed.

Legislators and parents have become fed up, and are doing what they can to regain control of the educational lives of children. They have watched as private schools flourish, while many of the government-run variety—typically at the behest of the teachers’ unions—have been shuttered. Also, because of forced online learning, parents have been given a Zoom-view as to just what teachers are—and are not—teaching.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, 50 school choice bills have been introduced in 30 states this year. Kentucky voted in a tax-credit-funded education savings account, its very first school choice legislation. As Lindsey Burke, director of the Heritage Foundation Center for Education Policy, explains, “Students from families with incomes below 175 percent of the federal poverty line will have access to education savings accounts. The program is available to students living in counties with more than 90,000 residents, and will initially be capped at $25 million.”

In North Carolina, House Bill 32 is currently working its way through the legislative process. If passed, the “Equity in Opportunity Act” will increase funding for the existing voucher program and allow more students to apply for scholarships.

Perhaps the most interesting state to advance educational freedom is West Virginia, which on March 29 passed the most expansive school choice program in the country. Under the new law, all parents have unrestrained options. If parents choose a private school for their kids, they will receive 100 percent of their state education dollars—$4,600 annually—to help defray expenses. In addition to private school tuition, parents can use the funding to homeschool or for other education expenses.