RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/four-pillars-educating-america/?utm_campaign=imprimis&utm_source=housefile&utm_medium=

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on December 6, 2019, during a Christmas Open House at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C.

This Fall at Hillsdale College, we did something strange, stranger than if we had found a unicorn and built a zoo to show it off. We celebrated, with a whole heart, the founding of our College 175 years ago. Yes, most of our founders were white. Yes, most of them were male. All of them are now dead. What can we be thinking, to celebrate people like that in this day and age?

There are two reasons, one particular and one general.

The particular one has to do with these founders themselves. They were human, sure enough, but they were very good humans. The earliest of them were classically educated New England preachers. They thought liberal education was the road to good living, good citizenship, and good statesmanship. They thought to get this liberal education it is better to read the classic books in the classic languages, Greek and Latin, and those were prerequisites for admission to the College.

These founders were patriots. The first line of the College’s Articles of Association of 1844 commits the College to perpetuating the “inestimable blessings” of “civil and religious liberty and intelligent piety.” We obscure the fact these days that the Americans who founded our country were mostly Christians, and they were devoted to both civil and religious liberty with the same intensity that they held their faith. They thought that the Christian religion, the first universal religion not to provide government to the faithful, would therefore have to be practiced in many countries—and that those countries should provide for the right to do so, or else be wrong. Claiming that right for themselves, they also respected it for others. “Do as you would be done by.”

These founders thought that liberal education should cultivate the practice of the moral alongside the intellectual virtues. College is about thinking, and the refinement and informing of the intellect is its first purpose.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/zinn-education-project-lying-about-history-lying-mary-grabar/

On “Giving Tuesday,” the Zinn Education Project, a non-profit that provides free downloadable K-12 lessons adapted from the late communist historian Howard Zinn’s bestselling history, A People’s History of the United States, solicited donations. Proudly announcing that the 100,000 mark of teachers registered at the site had been reached, the email declared, “We depend solely on individuals like you for support” and “the Zinn Education Project receives no corporate donations. We depend on individual donations and family foundations.” It reminded potential donors, “Your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate $5 or $500,” and—giving the game away—“Many of the students in high school today will be voting in 2020.”

The lessons encourage classroom use of Zinn’s “history,” a book first published in 1980 and riddled with deceptive quotations, leading questions, critical omissions, logical fallacies, plagiarism, and blatant falsehoods. The Zinn empire continues to grow, thanks in no small part to its escalating use in classrooms, aided by the revision of the Advanced Placement U.S. History course guidelines to the far-left during the Obama administration. The entire Portland, Oregon, school district has adopted A Young People’s History of the United States for eighth grade.

The 100,000 registrants have grown from the 84,000 figure I had when I put the final changes into my book, Debunking Howard Zinn, in the spring. To counteract the force feeding of this blackened history on young teenagers, the Oregon Association of Scholars is hosting a drive to put my book in Portland schools and libraries (details on making tax-deductible contributions here).

https://pjmedia.com/trending/victory-mizzou-pays-hillsdale-4-7m-to-teach-free-market-economics/

This week, the University of Missouri agreed to pay $4.7 million to support the teaching of free-market Austrian economics at Hillsdale College, in order to honor the donor intent of the late Sherlock Hibbs. A Mizzou grad, Hibbs gave $5 million to his alma mater specifically to establish professorships on Austrian economics.

“The Hibbs case will have a resounding impact on higher education and giving,” Peter Herzog, lead trial counsel for Hillsdale College and partner at Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell, said in a statement. “Donors might reconsider or reevaluate institutions that are not like-minded in their missions and commitments. Colleges and universities will do what they want with your money unless you make sure they can’t.”

Hibbs, a 1926 University of Missouri graduate, made the bequest in his will before he died in 2002. He gave the money in order to establish three chairs, funded at $1.1 million each, and another three distinguished professorships, with two funded at $567,000 and another at $566,000. In each case, the professor must be a “dedicated and articulate disciple” of Austrian economics. Mizzou accepted the gift, yet more than a decade after his death, the express wishes of the bequest were not carried out, former Gov. Jay Nixon (D-Mo.) told PJ Media in July.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oath-11576799749?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Seventy years ago the University of California introduced a loyalty oath, requiring employees to swear they were “not a member of the Communist Party.” After a contentious period in which 31 faculty were fired for refusing to sign, the requirement was reconsidered. An eventual consequence was the current Standing Order of the Regents 101.1(d): “No political test shall ever be considered in the appointment and promotion of any faculty member or employee.” This is a statement of principle. No one will be denied a position at the University of California based on political beliefs. No communist, no conservative, no progressive, no liberal.

Now the university appears to be abandoning this principle. In the past few years “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” statements, in which applicants for faculty positions profess their commitment to these social goals, have become required on eight UC campuses and at colleges across the country. These requirements are promoted as fulfilling worthy goals: to help redress the historic exclusion of underrepresented groups, to ensure that candidates from all backgrounds apply for and are given fair consideration for faculty jobs, and to make sure faculty respect and support all students in their teaching and mentoring.

There are many constructive ways to pursue these admirable aims. For example, professors can reach out to underrepresented communities at every level. We can enact family-friendly policies that help young faculty balance family life with jobs. We can encourage students from all backgrounds to explore and succeed in academic careers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15286/academia-radical

It apparently did not occur to any of the academics that the FBI’s surveillance is also geared towards protecting the Muslim community from terrorists in its midst.

Notably, the suggestion that Muslims are not a homogeneous group, but rather individuals who do not all share the same political or religious ideology, elicited a harsh response on the part of the panelists, who silenced the discussion.

One of the [NCA] executives, Trevor Parry-Giles, joined the attack, berating Tsukerman for her “racist” writing and “suspicious” political views. This was after Tsukerman had presented a research paper explaining that Islamists, in cooperation with their Western allies, especially the media, are distorting the image of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a progressive modernist.

Tsukerman and another professor in attendance were then expelled from the conference.

A recent gathering in Baltimore, Maryland sheds light on the way in which left-wing ideology has come to dominate American academia. Ironically, this particular event – a conference titled “Communication for Survival” — was an example of stifling free speech, rather than conveying ideas other than those accepted as “politically correct” by the professors and graduate students in attendance.

Perhaps this was to be expected, given the topics under discussion at the 105th annual convention of the National Communication Association (NCA). These topics included:

“Race Relations in Charm City: Communicating Social Justice.”
“Communication and Surviving in the Anthropocene: Keywords,” which focused on “what the discipline of Communication may offer to consider how we entered this era of consequential anthropogenic climate change, the barriers we face to transform our culture, and which voices might help us bring about a more just and sustainable future.”
“Communication, Disability Justice, and Surviving Ableism,” which examined the “centrality of communication practices to the pursuit of disability justice through anti-abelist scholarship and activism.”
“Communicating Survival in Violent Times: A Dialogue on the Intersections of Violence in Gendered, Sexual, Racial/Ethnic, and Class Contexts.”
“Communication and Surviving Environmental Racism.”
“Communication and #_______ing While Black or Brown,” which addressed “experiences of hashtag activism but focuses specifically on the role of communication and that of our discipline as a means of constructing narratives around #____ing while black or brown.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-1619-project-gets-schooled-11576540494?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

‘So wrong in so many ways” is how Gordon Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution, characterized the New York Times’s “1619 Project.” James McPherson, dean of Civil War historians and another Pulitzer winner, said the Times presented an “unbalanced, one-sided account” that “left most of the history out.” Even more surprising than the criticism from these generally liberal historians was where the interviews appeared: on the World Socialist Web Site, run by the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party.

The “1619 Project” was launched in August with a 100-page spread in the Times’s Sunday magazine. It intends to “reframe the country’s history” by crossing out 1776 as America’s founding date and substituting 1619, the year 20 or so African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Va. The project has been celebrated up and down the liberal establishment, praised by Sen. Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

A September essay for the World Socialist Web Site called the project a “racialist falsification” of history. That didn’t get much attention, but in November the interviews with the historians went viral. “I wish my books would have this kind of reaction,” Mr. Wood says in an email. “It still strikes me as amazing why the NY Times would put its authority behind a project that has such weak scholarly support.” He adds that fellow historians have privately expressed their agreement. Mr. McPherson coolly describes the project’s “implicit position that there have never been any good white people, thereby ignoring white radicals and even liberals who have supported racial equality.”

The project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is proud that it “decenters whiteness” and disdains its critics as “old, white male historians.” She tweeted of Mr. McPherson: “Who considers him preeminent? I don’t.” Her own qualifications are an undergraduate degree in history and African-American studies and a master’s in journalism. She says the project goes beyond Mr. McPherson’s expertise, the Civil War. “For the most part,” she writes in its lead essay, “black Americans fought back alone” against racism. No wonder she’d rather not talk about the Civil War.

To the Trotskyists, Ms. Hannah-Jones writes: “You all have truly revealed yourselves for the anti-black folks you really are.” She calls them “white men claiming to be socialists.” Perhaps they’re guilty of being white men, but they’re definitely socialists. Their faction, called the Workers League until 1995, was “one of the most strident and rigid Marxist groups in America” during the Cold War, says Harvey Klehr, a leading historian of American communism. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/15/the-inclusion-delusion/

California’s public universities already apply variable standards to their undergraduate admissions programs to fulfill de facto racial quotas. Now they’re requiring their faculty applicants to submit “diversity statements.”

Both of these practices distract from more important questions: Are student applicants academically competitive? Are faculty applicants experts in their fields? In reality, California’s public universities have moved far away from these fundamentals. And as goes California, so goes the nation.

Prioritizing race and gender diversity over academic excellence has consequences, not the least of which is how those who object to these priorities are intimidated. Abigail Thompson, professor and chairwoman of the Department of Mathematics at UC Davis, is one of the most recent victims.

In a letter published by the American Mathematical Society, Thompson objected to the “diversity statements” that are now required of all faculty applicants, and which she claims have become “central to the hiring process.” Thompson compared these diversity statements to the “loyalty oaths” that were required of University of California faculty members during the 1950s.