RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/culture/tyler-o-neil/2020/07/20/virginia-school-district-ur

When elementary students near Washington, D.C., return to school in the fall, either virtually or in-person, they may learn about race and race-based slavery at the tender age of 5 years. Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) has encouraged teachers to adopt an elementary curriculum from the far-left smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — a curriculum that includes lessons on race, slavery, and “hard history” for the K-2 age bracket.

“SPLC is pushing Marxist ideology more or less. They’re really pushing those concepts of ‘revolution’ and ‘dismantling the system’ that we have,” a Loudoun County father of two told The Washington Free Beacon’s Chrissy Clark, who first drew attention to the curriculum. “So rather than everyone coming together and building something great together, it’s about destroying what’s been built.”

Following the horrific deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police, Superintendent Eric Williams said, “The painful impact of these harrowing deaths is and will continue to be significant, all the more so because of our keen awareness of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on people of color.” He further pledged to implement a strategy aiming for the “disruption and dismantling of white supremacy, systemic racism, and hateful language and actions.”

Recommending the SPLC’s “Teaching Tolerance”

In May, LCPS released a “comprehensive equity plan” that included “Utilize Justice Anchor Standards-Teaching Tolerance.org” as an “action step” for the 2020-2021 school year.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/let-re-education-begin-student-fascists-demand-richard-l-cravatts/

As campuses across the country are roiled in paroxysms of self-righteous indignation over race, some black students, enraged and emboldened by the murder of George Floyd under the knee of an abusive white police officer, have formed coalitions and presented elaborate, and breathtakingly audacious, lists of demands which they have nailed to the doors of their respective university administrations.

“The power to be found in victimization, like any power,” wrote Shelby Steele in The Content of Our Character, “is intoxicating and can lend itself to the creation of a new class of super-victims who can feel the pea of victimization under twenty mattresses.” Apparently, the new victims in the current culture of aggrievement on campus have been irritated by the ‘hard pea’ of racism and want everyone else to know and feel their pain, as well, since the lists of demands from the campus crybullies invariably includes one well-intentioned, but intellectually pernicious, item; namely, mandatory sensitivity training for all students, faculty, and staff on the topics of diversity, oppression, racism, and other maladies purportedly afflicting black students on today’s campuses.

In early June, for example, black student leaders at the University of Miami sent the administration a list of 11 recommendations, including their important goal of implementing a “mandatory university-wide diversity, social justice and cultural sensitivity training program.”

At the University of Pittsburgh, black students there, “Black Pitt,”  apparently “are exhausted mentally, physically, as well as emotionally[and] [each] day we find ourselves overcompensating to make up for the University’s failures at combating racism on campus, in the classroom, and amongst students.” In order to change the racist character of the Pitt campus, the audacious students seem to desire to upend the entire academic structure of the institution and to “Transform the mission of the focus of our academic curriculum to be inclusive and comprehensive regarding the plight and triumphs of Black people.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/california-school-boards-support-anti-semitic-robert-spencer/

A Leftist protester in Portland recently announced that the goal of the riots that have recently swept the nation is the “abolition of the United States as we know it,” to the applause of her audience (which included not just miseducated children, but a middle-aged priest who should have known better). Rioters around the country, who are overwhelmingly young, middle-class Americans, have made abundantly clear their incandescent hatred for the United States. In the midst of all this, the California Department of Education has given us a vivid illustration of how we got here. It has developed an “Ethnic Studies” curriculum that would make Josef Goebbels proud.

The Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reported Thursday that “more than a dozen California school boards have adopted resolutions in support of the state’s proposed ethnic-studies model curriculum, despite it have come under fire for containing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content, and not addressing issues of anti-Semitism or including Jewish Americans.”

It’s all happening under the cover of darkness, deception, and coronavirus distraction, thanks to a group called “Save CA Ethnic Studies.” A letter to the California Department of Education (CDE) protesting the curriculum states: “School board members asked to vote on the resolution are not shown the original draft curriculum, and not informed about the enormous outpouring of criticism it engendered or that a CDE process is well underway for the curriculum’s redesign.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/17/the-science-is-very-clear-schools-should-reopen-in-fall/

Progressives like to brag that they prize science over politics. Indeed, it’s a major talking point in their effort to “transform” America from the greatest nation on Earth to, well, something else. But one look at the debate over reopening schools this fall shows just how absurd that assertion really is.

Los Angeles, home to the nation’s second-largest school district, is a case in point. The city has long been governed by far-left Democrats, to its detriment. But the local teachers’ union really takes the cake when it comes to extremist positions on COVID-19 and school closures.

The 35,000-strong union put out a staff “research paper” — it was in fact merely regurgitated leftist talking points and propaganda — telling local politicians they would refuse opening unless, among other things, there was a “moratorium” on charter schools and the police were defunded.

Among the “other things” in the union demands were a national Medicare-for-All program, new taxes on the wealthy, and, of course, a federally funded infusion of cash for the near-bankrupt Los Angeles school district.

The proposal would place so many restrictions on students and their interaction with teachers that it would make the educational experience nearly meaningless. But the document went way beyond just talking about education. Here’s a taste:

The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States underscores the deep equity and justice challenges arising from our profoundly racist, intensely unequal society. Unlike other countries that recognize protecting lives is the key to protecting livelihoods, the United States has chosen to prioritize profits over people. The Trump administration’s attempt to force people to return to work on a large scale depends on restarting physical schools so parents have child care.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bias-and-bigotry-on-the-syracuse-university-campus/

The message for Jewish students is clear: Shed your identity or get canceled. Justine Murray

What appeared to be a noble effort to discuss bias at Syracuse University ironically turned into a vicious exercise in bias and bigotry as the conversations turned into an anti-Semitic witch hunt. A few students recently created multiple Instagram pages, inviting fellow students and faculty to post stories about incidents of bias on campus. Those who share their stories are permitted to remain anonymous, but the students and professors accused of perpetrating bias are freely and fully identified—and targeted.

One of the pages has warned their viewers to look out for “openly Zionist” professors on campus, naming one professor in particular and attacking students who support the faculty member.

Miriam F. Elman, who teaches about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, isn’t the only Jewish professor who works at Syracuse, but she is openly Zionist and isn’t afraid to say so. Despite being on leave for the past year, she is being singled out by a malicious and libelous smear campaign on one Instagram page that is demanding that she be fired because of her Zionism and former service in the Israeli Defense Forces.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/07/15/despicable-behavior-of-todays-academic-intellectuals/

The Michigan State University administration pressured professor Stephen Hsu to resign from his position as vice president of research and innovation because he touted research that found police are not more likely to shoot black Americans.

The study found: “The race of a police officer did not predict the race of the citizen shot. In other words, black officers were just as likely to shoot black citizens as white officers were.”

For political reasons, the authors of the study sought its retraction.

The U.S. Department of Education warned UCLA that it may impose fines for improperly and abusively targeting white professor Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris for disciplinary action over his use of the n-word while reading to his class the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that contained the expressions “when your first name becomes ‘n—-r,’ your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are).”

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

Referring to white civil rights activists, King wrote, “They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as ‘dirty n—-r-lovers.’”

Boston University is considering changing the name of its mascot Rhett because of his link to “Gone with the Wind.”

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.