RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/race-exception-academic-free-speech-era-black-richard-l-cravatts/

As if further evidence were needed to confirm that race—and talking about race—is still the third rail of social debate, one only has to look at the paroxysms of moral indignation arising from the death in Minneapolis last month of George Floyd under the knee of a brutal police officer. In the wake of country-wide protests and demonstrations by Black Lives Matter and the group’s supporters, the discussion has, of course, come to campuses, those “islands of repression in a sea of freedom” where coddled, virtue-signaling students regularly take it upon themselves to purge their schools of dissenting thought—that is, any views not in lockstep with their progressive ideas of the power and sanctity of identity politics.

More importantly, the notion that a vocal minority of self-important student ideologues can determine what views may or may not be expressed on a particular campus is not only antithetical to the purpose of a university, but is vaguely fascistic by relinquishing power to a few to decide what can be said and what speech is allowed and what must be suppressed; it is what former Yale University president Bartlett Giamatti once characterized as the “tyranny of group self-righteousness.”

The belief that students are able to purge unpopular views from their campuses if they wish has, of course, been festering for some years now, long before George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis.

https://www.nas.org/?utm_source=National+Association+of+Scholars+General&

The coronavirus pandemic has been a bull in the higher ed china shop. Administrators were forced to send students home prior to finishing the spring semester, and many graduates participated in remote commencement ceremonies complete with virtual walks across stage. Countless hourly workers—those working in dining halls, public safety, facilities, etc.—were furloughed or laid off while diversity bureaucrats continued to collect generous paychecks. Colleges and universities lost revenue at an alarming rate through tuition and room and board remission; decreased donations and yield from investments; and declining enrollment for the 2020-21 school year, to name a few factors.
 

While closing down last semester was difficult, reopening in the fall will be harder. Schools, even in rural areas, are under immense pressure from federal, state, and local authorities to both reopen and to obey health protocol faithfully, not to mention the concerned faculty and students who have to weather this storm and face its immediate and long-term consequences. Traditional, in-person higher education was simply not designed for “social distance”—many institutions have been forced to rebuild their educational infrastructure from the ground up.
 

It’s now mid-July, and time’s up. Colleges and universities around the country have begun announcing their eagerly anticipated reopening plans for the fall semester, which range from online-only instruction and closed campuses to in-person classes and nearly full-capacity operation. The Chronicle of Higher Education is tracking the reopening plans of over 1,100 colleges and universities, compiling some useful data in the process. We see that, for example, a whopping 85% of American colleges and universities are “planning for in-person” or “proposing a hybrid model” (part in-person, part online).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/uc-death-cops-lloyd-billingsley/

On June 2, retired St. Louis police captain David Dorn, 77, was guarding a friend’s pawn shop when he was gunned down in a murder reportedly live-streamed on Facebook.

“Our highest respect to the family of David Dorn, a Great Police Captain from St. Louis, who was viciously shot and killed by despicable looters last night,” tweeted President Trump. “We honor our police officers, perhaps more than ever before. Thank you!” On July 4, at the White House, the president paid tribute again.

“We are especially moved to be joined by the family of a great man – fallen officer David Dorn,” Trump said. “A 38-year veteran of the St. Louis Police Department who was killed last month in the city he devoted his life to defending.” Among Democrats, support for Dorn was hard to find, and the case marks a stark contrast to the killing of a police officer in Davis, California.

On January 10, 2019, convicted criminal Kevin Limbaugh gunned down Natalie Corona, only 22 and a rising star in the Davis police department. Officers from across the country, joined by thousands of locals, attended a memorial service for Corona. Over at UC Davis, on the other hand, one professor openly supported the murder of police officers.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/pricey-private-schools-to-teach-black-lives-matter-classes

Elite private schools are being pressured by Black Lives Matter supporters to include materials on “institutional racism” in curriculum and student life programs. 

Black Lives Matter has driven protests against police brutality and earned donations from brand name corporations eager to avoid becoming targets of activists themselves. Prep schools are their next target, a move given momentum through mass protests following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died while a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes during an arrest. 

Swaths of private secondary schools have since pronounced support for Black Lives Matter, or at least its principles. That includes the Brearly School, the Chapin School, Collegiate School, the Dalton School, Emma Willard, Gilman, the Groton School, the Loomis Chaffee School, Miss Porters School, Phillips Academy Andover, Phillips Exeter Academy, Sidwell Friends, the Spence School, Tabor Academy, the Taft School, and Westover School.

Many came out with “anti-racism” statements last month, following accusations from some alumni of color on “Blackat[name of school]” Instagram accounts, claiming they experienced instances of racism during their time as students at the institutions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-for-reopening-schools-11594681985?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Everything else about the coronavirus has become politicized in America, so why not a return to school as well? That’s the depressing state of play as President Trump pushes schools to reopen while Democrats heed teachers unions that demand more federal money and even then may not return. The losers, as ever, would be the children.

***

The evidence—scientific, health and economic—argues overwhelmingly for schools to open in the fall. Start with the relative immunity of young children to the disease, which should reassure parents.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 children under age 15 have died from Covid-19. In a typical year 190 children die of the flu, 436 from suicide, 625 from homicide, and 4,114 from unintentional deaths such as drowning.

Only two children under age 18 have died in Chicago—fewer than were killed in shootings in a recent weekend. In New York City, 0.03% of children under age 18 have been hospitalized for Covid and 7.5 in one million have died. The death rate for those over 75 is more than 2,200-times higher than for those under 18.

Children so far have been shielded from the virus compared to working adults. But even pediatric cancer patients at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering were about a third less likely to test positive than their adult care-givers, and only one of 20 who tested positive required noncritical hospital care. In Sweden, which kept schools open, only 20 children under age 19—0.6% of confirmed cases—have been admitted to the ICU and only one has died.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/11/brooklyn-college-announces-anti-racist-agenda-for-professors/

In what one professor calls “affirmative action” grading, Brooklyn College wants to “re-educate” instructors whose minority students have lousy grades, The Post has learned.

In an eight-point “anti-racist” agenda shared with the school community this month, college president Michelle Anderson said the school had “recently raised funds to offer professional development to faculty in classes with the highest racial disparities in outcomes” and the most grades of D or F or withdrawals.

“We must identify and address the structural obstacles that Black students and students of color more generally face at the College,” she wrote, adding, “We need to create stronger systems of support for their academic and career success.”

But one Brooklyn College professor said the plan sounded like “grade affirmative action,” where students would be tracked by race, and the profs of failing students chastened by “the threat of a re-education camp and the accompanying stigma.”

The professor wondered if some faculty members would inflate grades “in order to avoid the stigma of being subtly labeled a racist.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/10/calling-out-the-head-cheerleader-for-cop-killers/

During the George Floyd riots, Weber State University criminal justice professor Scott Senjo posted tweets that displeased the school’s bosses. Senjo apologized, resigned, then rescinded his resignation. Weber State then placed him on leave and now announces that Senjo is “no longer employed at the school.”

North of the border, University of British Columbia board of governors chair Michael Korenberg “liked” tweets by Dinesh D’Souza, a tweet wishing Donald Trump a happy birthday, and a tweet critical of Black Lives Matter. The Antifa-affiliated “UBC Students Against Bigotry,” protested Korenberg’s “likes” and he duly resigned, issuing a groveling apology and a statement that he supports Black Lives Matter. 

In such a totalitarian environment, it might be instructive to focus on a university professor who made statements of utter depravity yet managed to keep his job with the full approval of the administration. This takes us to Davis, California, a short stretch down Interstate 80 from the state capital of Sacramento. 

On January 10, 2019, convicted criminal Kevin Limbaugh gunned down Natalie Corona, 22, a rising star in the Davis Police Department. The community hailed Corona as a hero who paid the ultimate price for her service. Thousands of people, including police officers from across the country, attended a memorial for the slain officer. 

Over at UC Davis, on the other hand, one professor openly supports the murder of police officers. 

That would be Joshua Clover, a full professor of English and comparative literature, whose publisher Verso Books describes him as a Communist. Born in Berkeley in 1962, Clover is an alumnus of the prestigious Boston University and the Iowa Writers Workshop. He once bagged an NEA grant as well as the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-challenger-of-the-woke-company-policy-11594405846?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

“There are, Mr. Loury stresses, many aspects of American life “in which race will assert itself. And I want not to seem to be failing to acknowledge that.” There is certainly some discrimination in policing and the courts, he says. “But it can explain maybe 15% or 20% of the gap between black and white incarceration rates, not the whole thing.” Most of the difference, he insists, turns on the behavior of people.“If you want to call that racism, then you’re calling everything racism.”

Next spring Glenn Loury will teach a new course on freedom of expression to students at Brown University, where he’s a professor of economics. “We’ll read Plato, Socrates, Milton, John Stuart Mill, George Orwell and Allan Bloom, ” he says, stressing that Bloom’s best-known work, “The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students,” is as relevant as it was when published in 1987.

Mr. Loury is thinking about adding “the Paxson letter” to his syllabus, so that his students might critique it. That June 1 missive to “the Brown Community” from Christina H. Paxson, Brown’s president, asserted that “oppression, as well as prejudice, outright bigotry and hate, directly and personally affect the lives of millions of people in this nation every minute and every hour.” It committed the university to “programming, courses, and research opportunities” that promote “equity and justice.”

Mr. Loury scorns the letter as Ms. Paxson’s “company policy” and “the Black Lives Matter view of the world reflected from the Brown University college president’s office.” On June 5, he published a rebuttal in City Journal. Ms. Paxson’s letter was signed “by everybody,” from deans to the general counsel and even the investment manager for Brown’s $4.2 billion endowment, Mr. Loury tells me by Zoom from his home in Providence, R.I. “That made it an official policy,” he says. “I don’t think universities should have official policies about contentious political issues.”

If they do—“if we foreclose debate over contentious issues by declaring that there’s only one way for a decent person at this university to think about them”—“how can we fulfill our mission of teaching our students to think critically?” Scholarly inquiry ought to consist of an exploration of the evidence, the “moral commitments,” the political issues and the historical context. The Paxson letter makes these “hard questions” more perilous to ask.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/506762-trump-tells-treasury-to-review-universities-tax-exempt-status

“Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains,” Trump continued.”

President Trump on Friday threatened the tax-exempt status of and funding for universities and colleges, claiming that “too many” schools are driven by “radical left indoctrination.”

“Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues,” Trump tweeted. “Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!”

Trump did not name specific institutions whose tax-exempt status he wants the Treasury Department to review. Most private and public colleges and universities are exempt from taxes because they qualify as 501(c)(3) organizations.

It would fall to the IRS, a bureau of the Treasury Department, to conduct the review that Trump described. However, federal law prohibits the IRS from targeting groups for regulatory scrutiny “based on their ideological beliefs.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/07/27/the-closing-of-the-american-mind%e2%80%88/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

The media and the universities have mostly lost interest in fair debate

Cheers, but just two of them, for this special issue of National Review on the defense of America’s heritage and heroes.  

Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, it was inevitable that a strong reaction would take place. All elements of American society joined in condemnation, from the president, to members of Congress, to the black leadership, to the population at large. Protests ensued, directed first at the police and then at targets indifferently charged with a measure of blame, from the federal government, to the nation’s historical legacy, to the newly minted abstraction of “systemic racism.” Dismissing the plea of Floyd’s girlfriend to remember that George “was about love and about peace,” and the assertion of Floyd’s brother that his family is “peaceful” and “God-fearing,” mobs soon formed within and alongside the protesters, bringing arson, violence, murder, and the widespread destruction of property, estimated to be among the most costly ever for an eruption of civil unrest. Mass iconoclasm against monuments, statues, and symbols of the West became the order of the day, as the lawless made a jubilee of the suspension of police enforcement.

Assembling important thinkers to set straight the historical record of America is assuredly a good thing. It should help make clear that Christopher Columbus, though a harsh commander, was a brilliant and dauntless explorer; that George Washington, rumored to have chopped down a cherry tree, was a man of extraordinary skills of leadership; that Thomas Jefferson, for all his moral shortcomings, was a statesman of unparalleled intellect; and that Abraham Lincoln, coming from a deprived background, succeeded in keeping the Union together and emancipating the slaves. These persons merit recognition for the good they did for the nation, which is certainly more than what the woke today, who celebrate their superiority by claiming to live lives without flaws, have contributed. 

Why then not go ahead and extend a full three cheers to this special issue? If there is a reason, it is the premise that if only the real facts are made known, the false reasoning and deceptive narratives behind so many of the ideologically tinged historical accounts of our time will eventually come tumbling down. The truth will set us free. But the reality is more dire than many suppose. America is now well down the road to losing its capacity to respond to argument. Let’s be clear about terms. Arguments are encountered everywhere today, filling almost every nook and cranny of intellectual space. But a repetition of arguments is not the same as the willingness and ability to argue, or the same as cultivating a disposition to consider alternative viewpoints. American society is now arranged from top to bottom, institutionally and sociologically, to suppress the encounter with different ideas and to fix thoughts automatically on set positions.