RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/brown-university-letter-racism

Last week, in the aftermath of the national fury that has erupted, and continues, over the apparent killing by a Minneapolis police officer of a black man, George Floyd, while he was being taken into custody, a letter appeared in my inbox from Christina H. Paxson, president of Brown University, where I teach. The letter, sent to thousands of students, staff, and faculty, was cosigned by many of Brown’s senior administrators and deans.

“We write to you today as leaders of this university,” the letter begins, “to express first deep sadness, but also anger, regarding the racist incidents that continue to cut short the lives of black people every day.” It continues:

The sadness comes from knowing that this is not a mere moment for our country. This is historical, lasting and persistent. Structures of power, deep-rooted histories of 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. Black people continue to live in fear for themselves, their children and their communities, at times in fear of the very systems and structures that are supposed to be in place to ensure safety and justice.

I found the letter deeply disturbing, and was moved to compose the following response, which I shared with a colleague. I’m happy now to share it as well with City Journal’s readership.

Dear ____:

I was disturbed by the letter from Brown’s senior administration. It was obviously the product of a committee—Professors XX and YY, or someone of similar sensibility, wrote a manifesto, to which the president and senior administrative leadership have dutifully affixed their names.

I wondered why such a proclamation was necessary. Either it affirmed platitudes to which we can all subscribe, or, more menacingly, it asserted controversial and arguable positions as though they were axiomatic certainties. It trafficked in the social-justice warriors’ pedantic language and sophomoric nostrums. It invoked “race” gratuitously and unreflectively at every turn. It often presumed what remains to be established. It often elided pertinent differences between the many instances cited. It read in part like a loyalty oath. It declares in every paragraph: “We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident.”

New York, NY, June 4, 2020 — Can university officials force their professors to call male students by feminine titles and pronouns? That’s the issue in the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case of Meriwether v. Francesca Hartop and other officials at Ohio’s Shawnee State University. Professor Meriwether appealed after the federal district court ruled that his using masculine pronouns for a male student was not “speech” protected by the First Amendment.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) disagrees and filed an amicus curiae brief supporting the professor on Wednesday, June 3, 2020.

NAS President Peter Wood explains, “This isn’t just about a pronoun, it’s about what that pronoun means. It’s about endorsing an ideology. Forcing the use of a pronoun based on gender perceptions rather than sex is forcing the professor to endorse the idea that he rejects—the idea that individuals decide for themselves what sex or gender they are. And this is happening in a philosophy class, where adults should be able to freely and vigorously debate hot-button topics like gender identity.”

The NAS is a leading non-profit advocate of more than 3,000 scholars for intellectual freedom in American higher education. 

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/03/advice-from-a-professor-for-college-bound-freshmen-2020/

If you’re starting college this fall, you probably just finished high school. Congrats! If you will begin attending a college or university in the fall, you have some major changes on the horizon. I have enormous sympathy for all of you who graduated high school this year. You got screwed: screwed out of what was supposed to be the most carefree period of high school, screwed out of prom, screwed out of graduation. Let me join all the other adults you know in saying that I’m sorry for what you’ve lost from COVID-19.

But I’m not only sad for your class—I’m worried about you.

Academically speaking, college will demand much more from you than high school did. High school seniors often don’t give their full effort in the final year, but all of you have been “going” to school online for the last two months, and I’m concerned that this will make your college transition even more difficult (if we are able to get back to in-person class meetings by the fall). 

You should begin mentally preparing yourselves now for the work of your freshman year. Most of your professors will be eager to help you succeed. I’m a 42-year-old professor and I’ve been working or studying at a college or university since I was 18. Below is some bold advice. I know you didn’t ask for any advice, but please don’t hit me with the “OK, Boomer” thing. As a young member of Generation X, it wasn’t that long ago that I was a student. I hope the suggestions below help you make a smooth transition.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/lying_for_diversity.html

The University of California’s recent decision to replace the SAT and ACT with some future “fairer” test so as to boost black and Hispanic enrollment has generated immense controversy. A key argument was that whites and Asians enjoy an unfair advantage since they, unlike blacks and Hispanics, can afford the extra after-school tutoring available in so-called cram academies.

This justification for this attack on meritocracy is totally false.

Begin with some facts regarding access to these suddenly politically relevant cram academies. Not surprisingly, given the importance of standardized tests such as the SAT, and the minimal investment necessary to open a storefront facility and hiring some college graduates as instructors, they are common in California. Just google “SAT prep California” and a plethora of Mom and Pop businesses pop up with names like Scorebuilder Test Prep or Mr. Testprep. All supply positive ratings on their websites plus more detailed testimonials from successful college applicants, boast of their expertise and may offer money-back guarantees unless scores increase.

This is free market, consumer-sensitive capitalism on steroids, and these academies typically offer customized one-on-one tutoring, very small classes, convenient scheduling, and preparation for a variety of tests and will target any potential clientele provided there is adequate demand.   

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/28/dozens-of-universities-face-lawsuits-for-failing-to-provide-on-campus-learning/

College is absurdly expensive. While some of the mark up comes from the schools’ reputations, much of the price tag is in exchange for the experience. Access to professors, relationships with classmates, and academic, athletic, artistic, religious, and social activities and groups are all a major part of both the “college experience” and the education itself. These aspects, and their associated benefits, are lost when classes are moved to Zoom, or worse, prerecorded lectures. Further, college campuses provide resources for students which are lacking at home, including quiet study locations and access to comprehensive libraries.

While many schools acknowledged the need to refund students for the portion of their on-campus dorms and meal plans unused, many believe that tuition should be likewise discounted, for the commensurate drop in quality and failure to deliver the promised experience.

And since schools themselves aren’t offering the financial credit, students at various universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Drexel, Georgetown, Liberty, UC Berkeley, Michigan State, Vanderbilt, and others, are banding together in class action lawsuits. The students are suing on three counts: breach of contract, conversion, and unjust enrichment.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/distance_learnings_downfall_.html

Disasters, it is said, often have silver linings, and in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, this might be a widening access to computerized learning. Now, it is alleged, as a result of school closings, thousands of youngsters, disproportionately poor and members of minority groups, will finally possess the advantages of their more affluent schoolmates. In California, for example, thanks to Google’s generosity, some 4000 students will enjoy free Chromebooks while 100,000 rural households will have no-cost  Internet access for three months. Moreover, the LA schoolboard had previously allocated an emergency $100 million to provide free laptops while partnering with Verizon for free Internet. According to Linda Darling-Hammond, the California State Board of Education president, Google’s (and similar corporate) generosity will double the number of students with Internet access to help close the digital gap all the while also instructing teachers and parents how to master distance learning.

All sounds terrific, of course and, perhaps the race-related (and income) achievement gap will finally close, or at least narrow. Alas, don’t bet on it. Formidable obstacles will impede these good intentions and, most notably, distance learning may well exacerbate achievement gaps, the very opposite of what is intended.

Recall another Los Angeles’ venture to overcome dreadful academic achievement levels via a computer-for-everyone initiative.  In 2013 the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) decided to give every student a tablet computer loaded with a digital curriculum. 21st century here we come! The plan was to buy some 650,000 Apple iPads (only 43,261 were actually acquired) along with the necessary networking equipment, labs and the software from Pearson, a major education publisher. Total cost, financed by school bonds, was nearly $1.3 billion. The district’s superintendent John Deasy predictably foresaw the initiative as helping to close the race-and ethnic-related achievement gap. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/academia_bows_to_islamic_terror.html

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, but not everyone shares in the cost.

Even fewer comprehend that the threat to our democracy is more likely to come from the internal erosion of our civic institutions than from external forces.

The most corrupting influence on our democracy is rooted in political correctness in our education system. Whereas there once was an emphasis on civic education as a means to imbue the citizenry with the values of the Constitution, that emphasis has long been diminished.

From elementary school through college, basic requirements in American history and civics have been replaced by political trendiness.

Consequently, it is not surprising that our educational system has produced generation after generation of college administrators who suffer from an embarrassing ignorance of the fundamental political values of the republic.

These present-day Gletkins (the character who embodied the ideology of Stalinism in Arthur Koestler’s classic, Darkness at Noon) have been suckled on a steady diet of political correctness, and so it follows that they are quick to trample basic liberty when it gets in the way of political expediency.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/499385-trump-rips-columbia-as-disgraceful-institution-after-study-showed

President Trump ripped Columbia University as a “disgraceful institution” in a new interview released Sunday after it released a study last week concluding thousands of lives could have been spared in the U.S. if shutdowns weren’t delayed.

Sharyl Attkisson asked the president about the study, which determined almost 36,000 deaths from COVID-19 through early May could have been avoided if social distancing and lockdowns had started earlier. 

The president called the fact that the university would issue the study “a disgrace” on the show “Full Measure.”

“Columbia is a liberal, disgraceful institution to write that because all the people that they cater to were months after me,” Trump said.

“And I saw that report,” he added. “It’s a disgrace that Columbia University would do it, playing right to their little group of people that tell them what to do.”

Trump cited his January travel ban on foreign nationals from China as evidence of his administration’s early actions, adding that he took “tremendous heat” for the decision at the time. 

Columbia University did not immediately return a request for comment.

The study focused on transmission in metropolitan areas and concluded that social distancing efforts reduced the rates of COVID-19 contraction. The research was conducted with counterfactual experiments, which researchers acknowledged are based on hypothetical assumptions.