RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/culture/tyler-o-neil/2020/09/04/amid-riots-washington-and-lee-university-offers-a-class-on-how-to-overthrow-the-state-n893961

This fall at Washington and Lee University (removal of Lee pending), students will learn reading writing, arithmetic — and “How to Overthrow the State.” As antifa riots have continued in Portland for almost 100 nights, students at the Virginia university named after George Washington and Robert E. Lee* will study Marxist revolutions in the Global South, complete with role-playing regime change.

Writing Seminar 100-18, “How to Overthrow the State,” will award each student three credits toward graduation.

“This course places each student at the head of a popular revolutionary movement aiming to overthrow a sitting government and forge a better society,” a course description explains. “How will you attain power? How will you communicate with the masses? How do you plan on improving the lives of the people? How will you deal with the past?”

“From Frantz Fanon to Che Guevara to Mohandas Ghandi and others, we explore examples of revolutionary thought and action from across the Global South,” the description adds. “Students engage these texts by participating in a variety of writing exercises, such as producing a Manifesto, drafting a white paper that critically analyzes a particular issue, and writing a persuasive essay on rewriting history and confronting memory.”

While there is nothing wrong with studying Marxist revolutionaries like Che Guevara, it does seem a bit unnerving that a university class would encourage students to emulate them and to “overthrow the state” — especially amid violent riots and looting in cities across America.Conservatives, who are already rightly worried about academia undermining American patriotism and teaching Marxism, naturally condemned the Washington and Lee course.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-radical-indoctrination-11598829048?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Conservatives and fair-minded liberals are alarmed that high schools are drawing up plans to teach the “1619 project,” the New York Times ’ revisionist account of race and the American founding, in history classes. The reality is turning out to be worse. The largest state in the union is poised to become one of the first to mandate ethnic studies for all high-school students, and the model curriculum makes the radical “1619 project” look moderate and balanced.

Last year California’s Assembly passed its ethnic-studies bill known as AB 331 by a 63-8 vote. Then the state department of education put forward a model curriculum so extreme and ethnocentric that the state Senate’s Democratic supermajority balked. The curriculum said among other things that “within Ethnic Studies, scholars are often very critical of the system of capitalism as research has shown that Native people and people of color are disproportionately exploited within the system.”

The bill was put on ice, but protests and riots in recent months gave Sacramento’s mavens of racial division more leverage. The education department delivered a new draft model curriculum this month, and AB 331 has been revived. It passed a Senate committee Aug. 20 and is expected to go before the full body soon. If Gov. Gavin Newsom signs it, the legislation would require all school districts to offer a semester-long ethnic studies class starting in 2025.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/todays-college-classroom-is-a-therapy-session-11598654387?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Now retired after having taught 30 years in the English department at Northwestern University, I continue to receive announcements from the school. One not long ago carried the heading “Seven Honored with Teaching Award.” I read it wondering if these models of superior teaching might in some way illuminate the question of whether the value of in-person education is worth the risk of coronavirus exposure.

What I learned is that, of Northwestern’s seven 2020 McCormick Teaching and Alumnae Award recipients, a majority are so “welcoming” and “supportive,” so ready “to foster inclusive and anti-racist learning spaces.” One of the recipients seeks to integrate “methodological rigor, impactful engagement, and human sensitivity” into every aspect of her teaching. A student says of another awardee that the “nurturing and supportive environment” of his classes much improved his learning. The department chair(man? woman?) of yet another of the award winners says that her “classrooms are a rare phenomenon: a safe and nurturing forum for learning and debate. . . .” If this sort of thing goes on at universities, it must be redoubled in high schools and elementary schools.

Reading about these award-winning teachers makes one wonder if teaching has become the pedagogical equivalent of psychotherapy. Ought teaching to be primarily about building self-esteem in students, “nurturing” and above all making them feel “safe?” And what do you suppose an “inclusive and anti-racist learning space” looks like?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/black-only-student-housing-nyu-campus-jason-d-hill/

In yet another gesture of shameful appeasement to racist demands by black students for yet more racial self-segregation in the Age of Post-Oppression, New York University recently opened negotiations with students to create black resident floors on campus next year. A “themed engagement floor” for black students is being advanced by a group called “Black Violets NYU.” The group has complained that the overwhelming presence of white students has made it difficult for black students “to connect.” Black Violets has also called for more black professors in its politics department, and for the creation of a black student lounge on campus.

In June of this year, students at Rice University had demanded that the University fund a “non-residential Black House” on campus. They also wanted a statue of the university’s founder removed. Other demands included that new students’ requests for black roommates be met during orientation weeks. This demand is clearly at odds with federal civil rights laws. Other demands included that course descriptions have tags indicating what race and ethnic groups are involved, since  several course titles did not make it clear if diverse perspectives were offered in their course materials. 

We must jog our memories and remember that in June, 2017 Harvard University held separate commencement ceremonies for black graduate students. One hundred and twenty students attended the third LatinX commencement ceremony replete with Latin music. Emory University and Henry College held diversity and inclusion year-end ceremonies. The University of Delaware joined a growing list with “Lavender” graduations.

There is no doubt that by the time this article is published there will be a multiplicity of schools meeting mostly new black students’ demands for special black student lounges, all-black dorms, black seating spaces in cafeterias, and more spaces such as we witnessed at Evergreen University — where white people are absent for days so black students can have a time on campus to feel special as black people. What next? All black libraries with only black authors, black gyms, black professors teaching only black students to avoid the racial trauma of being taught by a white instructor? If you think this is hyperbolic, observe that one of the demands made by the black students at Rice University is that the school hire more black counselors and therapists, and that they be trained in how to handle racial trauma.  

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/making-marx-proud-todays-campus-lunacy/

Earlier this summer, a survey posted on Twitter posed this question: “If you were dropped 2,000 years back in time with nothing but the knowledge you have now, what would you do?”

A man named Timothy Snediker replied as follows: “Easy. I would find and assassinate Jesus of Nazareth. Theologically speaking, it would be really important to get him before his calling and ministry begins, so that gives me roughly a decade to make it to Palestine, locate the man and make my move.”

Shocking, isn’t it? It should be to any decent person, regardless of faith. You’re wondering, “Who is this Snediker guy? A prison inmate? A mental patient? A Satan worshiper?”

He’s actually a teaching assistant at the University of California-Santa Barbara, pursuing his doctorate in religious studies. If he had suggested the murder of Mohammed or Martin Luther King, you can bet he would be looking for work and none of us would care if he never found any. But he is ensconced at progressive UC-Santa Barbara, where a socialist religion teacher can advocate killing the most perfect man who ever lived and likely still land tenure.

It would not surprise me if some of this character’s students will soon be burning down businesses and police precincts, claiming simultaneously that certain lives matter, but not all. Ideas have consequences.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-8-23-progressive-racism-in-practice

What is “racism,” and what is “anti-racism”? This is one of those subjects on which I just see the world completely the opposite from the vision of the current crop of woke progressives. The woke progressive program calls for things like diminished law enforcement, increased state handouts and social service programs, and even “reparations,” as the “anti-racist” remedies for racism. By contrast, in a post in April 2019, I wrote that these same sorts of things only provide evidence of:

the utter contempt in which the self-anointed elites of our country hold members of minority groups, most particularly African Americans. Somehow, these elites — or at least some very substantial number of them — have decided that African Americans are not capable of accepting personal responsibility in life or of being treated like adults.

For today, let’s consider how this issue plays out in the context of student discipline in public K-12 schools. The students in question are not adults yet, but they shortly will be. The question is whether there is an expectation that minority students are capable of becoming responsible adults, and whether their education reflects such an expectation, versus an expectation that they are on track become sub-adults in a lifetime of permanent dependency. For the research here, I’ll be relying mostly on information compiled by Thomas Sowell in his excellent new book Charter Schools And Their Enemies.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/china-american-universities-administrators-must-fight-beijing-authoritarian-influence/

The CCP seeks to make American campuses less conducive to open inquiry, and more dangerous for students and professors. It can’t be allowed to succeed.

With many American universities conducting classes online during the fall semester, some college professors are worried that the Chinese Communist Party will attempt to monitor lessons about topics that are politically sensitive to Beijing. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday on the steps that instructors are taking to protect their students from CCP surveillance as U.S.–China relations continue their downward trajectory amid the coronavirus pandemic and China’s Draconian crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.

The digital classroom is ripe for potential security breaches. Video-conferencing platform Zoom, which is widely used by universities, has in recent months faced allegations that it bows to pressure from the Chinese government. In June, for example, Axios reported that the company had temporarily suspended the account of a U.S.-based dissident for his participation in a virtual panel about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. But even for universities that use different video-conferencing software, the possibility of surveillance still exists. Under the new Hong Kong national-security law, Beijing claims the authority to prosecute anyone, Chinese or otherwise, who engages in what it deems subversive speech outside of China. Beijing has already charged American citizens for such actions. And while Chinese students have been hassled for things that they do and say in the United States before, the law’s astounding claim of universal jurisdiction puts them at greater risk.

All of this has alarmed a number of American educators. Rory Truex, an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, told the Journal that he will warn his students that his course touches on topics of concern to the Chinese government. He’s also introducing a system whereby students will submit work labeled with numeric codes, not their names, so that they are not linked to the views that they express in written assignments. In a commentary for China File, Truex and four other instructors have also offered advice for how educators should navigate the difficulties of securing their online classrooms against CCP surveillance by, among other things, setting policies on recording class sessions.