RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/med-school-needs-an-overhaul-11586818394?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

As the number of Covid-19 infections rises and the death toll mounts, the media is doing a good job of focusing on the safety of the health-care workforce and the capacity of hospitals to deal with a surge of desperately ill patients. What has received less attention is that many doctors haven’t been adequately trained in medical school to deal with a situation like this.

Most medical schools don’t require students to do coursework on pandemic response or practical preparation for a widespread and sustained emergency. American medical training as a whole doesn’t include a strong grounding in public-health issues or disaster preparedness. Instead, two of the nine specific curricular requirements decreed by the body that accredits medical schools are focused on social issues in medicine, including “the diagnosis of common societal problems and the impacts of disparities in health care on medically underserved populations,” particularly “in a multidimensional and diverse society.” None mention public health or epidemics. 

Physicians are highly educated, but that doesn’t mean they know everything—even things broadly related to the practice of medicine. When doctors speak on topics they don’t understand, they can confuse the public and other physicians. While medical schools require students to study statistics, these courses are generally superficial. They wouldn’t equip most physicians to grapple with epidemic models like the ones on which Deborah Birx has been briefing the White House press.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/12/are-american-universities-becoming-multinational-institutions/

American universities should always serve American interests—not serve as a machine to employ compradors and promote acquiescent collaborators to foreign strip-mining of America.

Iconoclast historian Henry Kamen argued in Empire that there wasn’t really a Spanish empire. Spain was a convenient vessel for Italian bankers, Portuguese shipwrights, and German soldiers. Christopher Columbus was Genoese; Hernán Cortés served the interests of his Tlaxcalan allies as he conquered Aztec Mexico.

Higher education administrators are turning “American higher education” into a vessel for foreign study and foreign economic reward.

New York University now has a campus in Abu Dhabi and Texas A&M University a campus in Qatar. Saint Louis University has a campus in Madrid and SUNY a campus in South Korea. Lakeland College has a campus in Tokyo and Duke University a campus in Kunshan, in partnership with Wuhan University.

American universities are becoming multinationals. New York University wants to become a global franchise: it possesses two degree-granting institutions in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, and 10 more academic centers abroad, from Berlin to Buenos Aires, all of which are the seeds of future degree-granting campuses.

American graduate schools within the nation’s borders, especially in engineering and the sciences, are also becoming multinational enterprises. A majority of graduate students in a great many fields of study come from abroad; in disciplines such as petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science, the proportion is closer to 80 percent.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/11/covid-19s-next-victim-higher-education/

In higher education, April is when college and university administrations prepare for their freshman incoming classes in September. In a normal year, an institution could predict, with a high level of certainty, how many students would show up after Labor Day (based on the number of deposits from accepted would-be students).

But this isn’t a normal year. Health risks are a new factor in how students and parents view higher education. We should expect institutions to be impacted the most are those in the New York City area and small, private, but unexceptional liberal arts institutions.

The New York City factor: let’s say Jane Smith has been accepted to two Ivy League schools, Columbia (located in New York City) and Dartmouth (located in rural New Hampshire). For their peace of mind, Jane’s parents urge her to choose Dartmouth, and she does.

Does this mean Columbia University will be scrambling for freshmen? No, but Columbia may discover there are a larger number of foreign students or wait-listed students (with lower SAT scores) filling their freshman seats, compared with previous years.

Now let’s consider Jane’s choice between New York University (again, located in the city) and Cornell (located in rural upstate New York). All other things being equal (e.g., scholarships), which university seems safer to Jane’s parents?

https://www.city-journal.org/higher-ed-diversity-bureaucracy

As American unemployment mounted by the millions in March and April, the dance of the college diversity deans kept up its usual brisk pace. On April 1, Harvard University announced that its acting associate dean for inclusion and belonging was moving on to Denison University. But the Harvard associate deanship will not be vacant for long. On May 1, the current head of diversity, equity, and inclusion at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus will step into the Harvard position, to direct the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion team within the Dean of Students Office; the Office of BGLTQ Student Life; the Office of Diversity Education and Support; the College’s Title IX Office; the Women’s Center; and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

Elsewhere, campus diversocrats enjoyed similarly enviable mobility while the rest of the country was shutting down. The vice president for inclusion and diversity at George Mason University will become chief diversity officer at the University of South Carolina at Columbia on June 15. The former occupant of the South Carolina position decamped to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on March 15 to serve as its community and equity officer. On March 1, a former associate vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Iowa became associate vice president for inclusive excellence at Georgia Southern University. The first diversity, equity, and inclusion librarian at the University of Florida assumed her position in February.

Many college presidents are terrified that the coronavirus pandemic will devastate their schools’ finances and enrollment. Anyone who cares about a revival of serious learning can only hope that they are right.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/teacher-offers-covid-patients-money-cough-sara-dogan/

A Rhode Island teacher is under investigation after tweeting out a message offering payment to COVID-19 patients to deliberately cough on President Trump and infect him with the deadly virus.

The female teacher identified herself in a later tweet as a sixth-grade teacher at Villa Nova Middle School which is located in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

“Somebody with Covid-19, I will pay you to cough on #Trump,” read the original tweet. The account used by the teacher has now been deleted, but was created under the name “Proud Teacher.”

The teacher has not been identified by the school district, but other media sources have reported that her name is Amy Bednarz, and that she works as an English Language Learner teacher at Villa Nova Middle School.

School Committee Chairman Paul Bourget called the threatening tweet “a serious matter” and promised a full investigation to get “concrete evidence and a concrete determination.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/08/oh-say-can-uc/

The University of California, now with 10 campuses, long has been hailed as one of the world’s greatest research universities. Students, parents, and in particular distinguished UC alumni, might check out what is going now, as UC bosses “relax” admission requirements for fall 2020 “and future years as applicable,” as the office of the UC President recently announced.

“The COVID-19 outbreak is a disaster of historic proportions disrupting every aspect of our lives, including education for high school students, among others,” said University of California President Janet Napolitano.” Quick to copy was UC Board of Regents Chairman John Pérez.

“We want to help alleviate the tremendous disruption and anxiety that is already overwhelming prospective students due to COVID-19,” said Pérez. “By removing artificial barriers and decreasing stressors—including suspending the use of the SAT—for this unprecedented moment in time, we hope there will be less worry for our future students.”

The University of California serves the top tier of California’s high-school graduates. Many who scored well on the SAT, achieved a high GPA, and went on to professional careers might wonder how the SAT suddenly became an “artificial barrier.” To issue a proclamation like that, aspiring scholars might think, this regent chairman must be incredibly wise and highly qualified.

Notables from former U.S. labor secretary Hilda Solis and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to California Governor Gray Davis have hailed Pérez. He is, after all, a graduate of UC Berkeley, the most coveted campus in the UC system.

Except that turns out to be false.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/06/rethinking-university-dependence-on-foreign-students/

Once the coronavirus pandemic subsides, might it not be better if we tried to attract American students and their tuition dollars by competing to provide a rigorous, remunerative education?

Were all of the foreign students returning to America’s campuses in January vectors of infection for coronavirus? Especially the students from China? There’s no evidence yet to prove the point, although the odds are that at least some coronavirus infection came to the United States from foreign students.

If we’ve been spared a campus plague, it’s owing to the grace of God, and not to any actions by our colleges and universities.

To my knowledge, before the decision was taken out of their hands by the general lockdowns, no American college or university barred foreign students from returning to campus. No academic administration even suggested that foreign students should self-quarantine for two weeks before interacting with other students or professors.

The most active were institutions such as Princeton, which followed “a recommendation by the New Jersey Department of Health that students and faculty at K-12 schools and colleges who have recently returned from China ‘self-quarantine’ for two weeks if they’re at moderate or high risk of potentially contracting the illness.” Colleges and universities did nothing better than grudgingly acquiesce to ineffective directives from state health departments.

https://babylonbee.com/news/teachers-warn-parents-arent-properly-equipped-to-indoctrinate-children

U.S.—Teachers at government schools have raised their concerns that the recent closure of their institutions will have a damaging effect on students. In particular, the nation’s educators are worried that the longer the schools are closed, the more likely it is that students will begin thinking for themselves, learn life skills away from the government school system, and realize how much more they learn at home.

“We must reopen as soon as possible — before they regain their ability to have independent thoughts,” said New York 4th-grade teacher Ms. Jenny Mudd. “This is an urgent crisis. We realize we have to do our part to prevent the spread of the virus, but we must also prevent the spread of unapproved ideas. There’s a balance there.”

“Reopen the schools before it is too late.”

Sure enough, studies have already shown a strong correlation between everyone being homeschooled and a concerning spike in independent thought. Students who have been away from the government school system for even a week stop feeling depressed and anxious all the time and even show a shocking increase in the ability to form thoughts and ideas not approved by the government.

Teachers have further pointed out that parents aren’t properly equipped to indoctrinate their children with government propaganda. “I went to school for eight years to be able to do this,” said Portland kindergarten teacher Ms. Pinkerton. “Parents just don’t have the experience of stuffing kids’ heads full of a statist worldview seven hours a day like I do.”