RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Best and Worst Schools for Free Speech and Viewpoint Diversity

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2019/10/24/2019_survey_of_campus_speech_experts.html

Controversies over free speech on college campuses are in the news seemingly every week, whether it’s an unpopular guest speaker being shouted down, a voluntary student group being banned from campus, or a professor losing his job over something he said in the classroom. While most Americans consider open inquiry and academic freedom essential to the mission of a university, the debate over what can or cannot be said on campus is far from settled at most schools today.

How serious is the speech problem in higher education? Is the problem widespread or just relegated to a small group of campuses? Which colleges and universities are doing a good job of protecting speech? RealClearEducation conducted a survey of experts on the campus speech climate in order to explore these questions.

About This Survey

This survey is designed to show how schools stack up in the opinions of experts who are concerned about free speech on campus. It’s a small sample of opinions and is not, to be clear, a scientific poll. If you look closely at our survey respondents, it’s evident that conservatives outnumber liberals. We originally invited 70 academics, pundits, and policy experts to participate. About half were recognizably on the left end of the political spectrum. Some of them accepted. Panelists such as Jonathan Haidt, Gregory Lukianoff, and Jeffrey A. Sachs, for instance, are certainly not political conservatives.

Nevertheless, a majority of the 22 invitees who ultimately completed our survey are recognizably on the right side of the political spectrum. This imbalance is itself instructive. A recent Pew Research Center study showed that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to be worried about professors bringing their political and social views into the classroom (79% to 17%). Republicans are also far more likely than Democrats to believe that colleges are too concerned with protecting students from views they might find offensive (75% to 31%). The greater number of conservatives who agreed to participate in our panel reflects the greater concern conservatives have about campus speech. There are several identifiable libertarians on our panel as well.

There is an obvious reason for the special concern about the campus speech climate among conservatives. They are often outnumbered and underrepresented among the faculty and administration, particularly at elite schools. However, political liberals are increasingly raising concerns about censure on campus as well. On the other hand, there are those who say the entire notion of a campus speech crisis is overblown.

To gain more insight into this issue, we asked our panelists for their opinions on which U.S. colleges and universities have the best climate for free speech, viewpoint diversity, and open inquiry. We also asked them to tell us which schools they think have the most room for improvement in these areas. Finally, we asked panelists to share their thoughts on how free speech, viewpoint diversity, and open inquiry relate to the proper mission of a university. (Click here to download a full report on the survey in PDF format.)

Best Schools for Campus Speech

We conducted the survey in September 2019. Panelists were asked to name up to five schools that serve as positive role models in the areas of free speech, viewpoint diversity, and open inquiry.

University of Chicago – Best school with respect to campus speech climate according to RealClear’s 2019 survey of campus speech experts. (RealClearEducation)

• The University of Chicago was the clear winner for best speech climate, according to our survey. With its famous “Chicago Statement” guaranteeing students and faculty broad latitude for speech and strong protection of academic freedom, the vast majority of our panelists chose the University of Chicago as one of their top five picks.

• Next were Purdue University, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, Arizona State University, and Claremont McKenna College. These schools stood out to our panelists as positive role models with respect to campus speech climate.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/mathematics_a_tool_of_racial_oppression_seattle_public_schools_committee_says.html

Something called the “K–12 Math Ethnic Studies Framework,” created by a Seattle Public Schools “Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee,” is intended to instruct students that math is intimately connected to racial oppression.  Students will be taught “how technology and/or science have been and continues [sic] to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color.”  The framework, the final draft of which is scheduled to be completed by September 2020, will also attempt to “explain how math dictates economic oppression.”  That’s correct: math.

Tracy Castro-Gill, the ethnic studies program manager at Seattle Public Schools, noted that the framework is intended to redress the fact that the district has not been properly serving minority students.  Castro-Gill said, “The goal is to disrupt the status quo and do something different.”  Disrupting the status quo is the goal — and sacred quest — of all progressives.  She added, “It’s important to break down barriers while valuing our differences.”  Those of her ilk love breaking down barriers.  And fences.  And standards.

The framework curriculum will consist of four themes: Origins, Identity, and Agency; Power and Oppression; History of Resistance and Liberation; and Reflection and Action.  Riddle me this: how is telling minorities that mathematical concepts have historically enslaved them providing them with a great service?  Resist those integers!  Free yourselves from the bonds of multiplication!

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nyu-newspaper-pulls-ad-for-lowrys-nationalism-book-out-of-concern-it-might-marginalize-people-of-color/

The editor of New York University’s independent student-run newspaper, Washington Square News, pulled an advertisement for National Review editor Rich Lowry’s upcoming book from the paper because exposure to the ad may have “marginalized people of color,” according to a statement released Thursday.

Lowry purchased the ad in order to promote a talk he will deliver Thursday night at NYU on his new book, The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, And Free, which will be released on November 5th.

The paper’s business team accepted the ad and charged Lowry for its placement last week. He found out that it would not appear in the paper’s Monday edition only when he saw that his payment had been refunded.

When no explanation was forthcoming, Lowry wrote a post informing National Review readers that his ad, which “invited people to learn why their pre-conceptions about nationalism are incorrect,” had been pulled without justification.

In response, the Washington Square News editor explained that she had unilaterally decided to pull the ad in order to shield “people of color on campus” from exposure to the phrase “Nationalism is a good thing,” which, in keeping with the book’s topic, was placed prominently at the top of the page.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/harvards-student-newspaper-chooses-ethical-journalism-over-pc-mobs-demands/ 

The Crimson had the audacity to present balanced coverage of an anti-ICE protest.

Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, was accused of “cultural insensitivity” and “blatantly endangering undocumented students” last month — all because it had adhered to journalistic ethics.

It’s true: According to an article in the Washington Post, all that the newspaper had done to deserve this was ask U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement representatives for comment on a story about an “Abolish ICE” protest. In other words? The paper’s reporters were attacked because they demonstrated basic journalism skills. It is, after all, not only not controversial to ask both sides for their views in a straight-news piece; it would actually be controversial not to.

Despite this, the Post reports that “hundreds” of students signed a petition calling on the newspaper to stop talking to ICE completely. Their cause was quite obviously absurd, and it depresses me that hundreds of our nation’s (supposedly) best and brightest could actually be ignorant enough to sign something like that.

The good news? Rather than back down from the pressure, the newspaper stood its ground. Earlier this week, Crimson editors Angela N. Fu and Kristine E. Guillaume published a defense of the paper’s work.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/universities-breed-anger-ignorance-ingratitude/

In turning out woke and broke graduates, they have a lot to answer for.

What do widely diverse crises such as declining demography, increasing indebtedness, Generation Z’s indifference to religion and patriotism, static rates of home ownership, and a national epidemic of ignorance about American history and traditions all have in common?

In a word, 21st-century higher education.

A pernicious cycle begins even before a student enrolls. A typical college-admission application is loaded with questions to the high-school applicant about gender, equality, and bias rather than about math, language, or science achievements. How have you suffered rather than what you know and wish to learn seems more important for admission. The therapeutic mindset preps the student to consider himself a victim of cosmic forces, past and present, despite belonging to the richest, most leisured, and most technologically advanced generation in history. Without a shred of gratitude, the young student learns to blame his ancestors for what he is told is wrong in his life, without noticing how the dead made sure that almost everything around him would be an improvement over 2,500 years of Western history.

Once admitted, students take classes from faculty who, polls reveal, are roughly 90 percent liberal. According to one recent survey, Democrat professors on average outnumber Republican faculty by a 12-to-1 ratio on the nation’s supposedly diverse campuses. But such political asymmetries are magnified by a certain progressive messianic self-righteousness that turns the lectern into the pulpit, the captive class into a congregation. The rare conservative professor is more resigned to the tragedy of the universe and, in live-and-let-live fashion, vacates the campus arena to the left-wing gladiators who wish to slay any perceived heterodoxy.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/fat_black_professor_of_gender_studies_blames_trump_for_black_female_obesity.html

No, this is not from the Babylon Bee.

It actually comes from the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a segment featuring Professor Britney Cooper, who sports a PhD from Emory University and who currently is an associate professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. With that sort of background, perhaps it isn’t surprising to eternalize blame for obesity on racism and seem to indict President Trump for it. In fairness, she only mentions Trump before launching her indictment of racism as the cause of black female obesity.

Here are few screen grabs of her subtitled rant, followed by the entire segment embedded in a tweet, in case you want to hear her, the moderator, and the audience all enthusiastically accept the theory that white people in general and President Trump in particular are what make a disproportionate number of black women obese.

While this is all funny, it is also tragic. Obesity is unhealthy and unhappy to endure. Blaming others doesn’t ever lead to change in a positive direction.

https://www.wsj.com/video/bard-prison-initiative-debate-team-meets-harvard/E610B789-4D24-471A-98DC-E200B5F7B051.html?mod=trending_now_video_5

Bard Prison Initiative Debate Team Meets Harvard The debate team at the Bard Prison Initiative, which offers free college in New York prisons, made international news when it beat Harvard four years ago. Here is a first glimpse of the competition, from a new PBS documentary, “College Behind Bars.” Photo: PBS