RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/elite-universities-ignore-merit-advance-progressive-agenda/

Higher-ed institutions have long ignored merit and squelched freedom, all while failing to educate.

A number of liberal bastions are daily being hammered — especially the elite university and Silicon Valley.

A Yale and a Stanford, or Facebook and Google, assume — for the most part rightly — that each is so loudly progressive that the public, federal and state regulators, and politicians would of course turn a blind eye to anything questionable that these social-justice institutions did.

And they have done a lot of quite questionable things — cynically (and in medieval fashion) using their progressive veneer to exempt themselves from the consequences of their actions, so that they may do what otherwise would earn scrutiny and worse for most other American institutions.

Our nation’s marquee universities, such as Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown — with dozens more no doubt to be named — recently got caught selling admittances. Or rather a few of their employees somehow freelanced under administration noses and sold entrances for cash. That is apparently our modern version of crooked 14th-century clerics putting out to bid penances to thieves and fornicators who wished to buy their way into heaven.

At some of our “best” universities, renegade coaches in minor sports took bribes in exchange for lies claiming that otherwise likely unqualified students were actually “athletes” and thereby could be greased into their colleges by middlemen who helped doctor résumés and test scores.

The irony is rich. The offenders were not the children in Dayton or Great Falls of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and “irredeemables,” or of the late John McCain’s “crazies,” or of Barack Obama’s “clingers” — it was not they who were using their “white privilege” to break the law as they virtue-signaled their racialist disdain of the working classes (who were without white privilege). What a strange psychological mechanism: Wealthy white liberals apparently squared the circle of their own private and insider privilege by fobbing “white privilege” off on those who don’t have it — as they used their privilege cynically for their own children.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/triggered-by-weinsteins-harvard-lawyer-11552950103

Harvard has opened an investigation into law professor Ronald Sullivan, who earlier this year joined Harvey Weinstein’s criminal-defense team. Some undergraduates complained that Mr. Sullivan’s decision to represent Mr. Weinstein, who is charged with rape in New York, puts them at risk. By taking the complaint seriously, Harvard puts its commitment to identity politics above the core tenets of due process.

Student backlash was immediate when the New York Post reported in late January that Mr. Sullivan would be representing Mr. Weinstein. A visual and environmental studies major started an online petition to remove Mr. Sullivan from his position as faculty dean of Winthrop House, one of Harvard’s 12 undergraduate residential houses. Mr. Sullivan’s choice of client was “deeply trauma-inducing,” and shows that Mr. Sullivan doesn’t “value the safety of students,” the petition announced. Would Winthrop residents “really want to one day accept [a] Diploma,” the petition asked, from someone who “believes it is okay to defend” Mr. Weinstein?

Six Harvard dorms held “listening sessions” attended by emissaries from the university’s Office for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, whose website urged traumatized students to seek mental-health services and other help from Harvard’s massive Title IX bureaucracy. Harvard’s dean of students and its lead Title IX coordinator attended a student protest outside the main administration building, where the ubiquitous Office for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response doled out hot chocolate.

Still-unidentified vandals spray-painted #MeToo slogans such as “your silence is violence” on Winthrop House. The record reveals no condemnation from Harvard officials and requests for comment were not returned at press time. The Association of Black Harvard Women complained that Mr. Sullivan (who is black) had “failed” female African-Americans at Harvard and had compromised his ability to support “survivors . . . as they deal with their trauma.”

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/19/houston-library-features-convicted-child-molester-reading-trans-books-children/

This article contains information and images not fit for children.

The Houston Public Library has apologized for featuring a convicted child molester last fall during its “Drag Queen Storytime” series. It has not, however, announced it will end the program that featured the male sex offender dressed up as a woman reading LGBT books to children as young as babies.

“A media spokesperson for the library confirmed one of the program’s drag queens, Tatiana Mala Nina, is Alberto Garza, a 32-year-old child sex offender,” reports local TV station KHOU. “In 2008, he was convicted of assaulting an 8-year-old boy.”

State records say the 200-pound, 5-foot-11 man was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child, is at a “moderate” risk for reoffending, and must report his whereabouts to police annually for the rest of his life. Garza’s YouTube channel showed he was in the process of transgendering himself, according to Rod Dreher (videos since removed; screenshot of Garza in drag captured here).

Drag Queen Storytime is spreading to libraries across the country, mostly but not exclusively in deeply Democratic locales. It even has a national PR webpage featuring an image of a scared toddler staring at a man dressed up in drag while the child’s mother encourages the child to get over the apprehension.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/18/va-public-school-indoctrinates-5-year-olds-transgenderism-without-telling-parents/

In Arlington County, Virginia, not even kindergarteners are exempt from pro-transgender messaging. So reports The Washington Post, which, earlier this month, featured an article about Ashlawn Elementary School, which honored National “Read Across America Day” by hosting a transgender spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The spokesperson read a story about a transgender child for a room full of kindergarten children.

Prominent media outlets claimed parents were notified beforehand and allowed opt their children out of the event. But those outlets got the story wrong. The letter, written solely in English despite the school’s sizable non-English-fluent population, nowhere mentions “opting out.”
Media, District Lie About Pro-Transgender Event

“Dozens of kindergarten students” sat cross-legged in openly homosexual teacher Jaim Foster’s classroom at Ashlawn Elementary School on February 28 while HRC representative and ‘“transgender rights advocate” Sarah McBride read them a picture book about a transgender girl. The book was “I Am Jazz” by Jazz Jennings, who talked about being a transgender teen on a TLC show.

Also in attendance was Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association (NEA), an organization that welcomed LGBT groups to serve as official sponsors of this year’s national reading event.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2019/03/18/college_admissions_how_to_jump_to_the_head_of_the_line_469259.html

To understand how this whole college admissions scam worked, I asked a friend who knew about it first-hand. Here is what Dee Seaver told me:

Sure, I wanted to go to Southern Cal. But would USC be impressed by climbing Mount Everest barefooted or herding unicorns with Peruvian peasants? Those items on my application might not be enough. That’s why Dad turned to Rick Singer as a “college adviser.” What a guy! He suggested I highlight my summer charity work building carbon-neutral air conditioning for every Nigerian. Dad’s friends in the hedge fund industry also put in the good word for me. Even better, they donated funds for the school’s new Pilates Studio and Sauna. I got in!

I knew there was zero chance of flunking out. That’s a secret most folks don’t know about elite colleges. All I had to do was pick the right major, regurgitate the teacher’s crazed ideology, and avoid any courses in math and science. My plan: stick to writing papers about gender fluidity in Jane Austen. If you show up occasionally for class and take the exams, then B-minus is the closest you’ll come to a failing grade. Just don’t major in astrophysics, my friend, and you’ll sail through.

With this sweet setup, I can focus on my primary interests: social inequality and the evils of capitalism. Fortunately, there is still plenty of time for drinking, partying, and getting horizontal. People who say “College is just not worth it” are completely clueless. I f*#kin’ love it.

http://www.sarahlawrencephoenix.com/campus/2019/3/11/demands-westlands-sit-in-50-years-of-shame

“@JonHaidt (https://twitter.com/JonHaidt If you want to dispute the narrative that students are overprotected at elite liberal arts colleges such as Sarah Lawrence, you probably should not put a demand for unlimited free fabric softener in your 3rd demand (out of more than 90) to the president.”

On the morning of Mon. Mar. 11, the Diaspora Coalition entered Westlands for a 24-hour occupation:

The following is a full re-print of their demands.

““Sarah Lawrence is and must be a community that welcomes and nurtures people of all races. The college rejects all forms of racism.” — Memo, dated March 1, signed by the administration.

We students of color do not believe this statement to be true… the college community has failed to meet the liberal principles it professes. If we students of color are truly part of this community, if healing is ever to take place, there must be action. – Concerned Students of Color, 1989

We, the Diaspora Coalition, are a group of students who can speak to the injustices imposed on people of color by this institution on a daily basis. The Diaspora Coalition was established this fall in order to address the pain of marginalized students as well as to advise the administration on how to best address this pain. Each of us has seen this administration repeatedly diminish the hard work of student activists who merely want a quality education and the personalized curriculum that SLC promises. We extend solidarity to all people of color in the Sarah Lawrence Community, including international students, graduate students, faculty, and staff.

In spring of 2018, Inaugural President Cristle Collins Judd held a meeting with students of color in Common Ground where we implored she respond to the demands of #BlackoutSLC2015. Our inquiries were evaded and our time wasted. This school year, we are losing our Chief Diversity Officer, Director of Diversity and Campus Engagement, and Assistant Director of Diversity and Campus Engagement. We blame the administration’s lack of tangible commitment to diversity for these losses. There has been no word from the administration on restoring the department.

On March 11, 2019, the Diaspora Coalition, along with our allied peers, will occupy Westlands, make calls to the board, and present demands that describe not only our ideal vision for the school but also what we see as the only acceptable terms by which Sarah Lawrence can remain for the students and against hate. If the College does not accept these demands, it will no longer be hailed as a progressive institution but instead remembered for its inability to truly embody its self-proclaimed progressive ideology and support all students against an international rising tide of white supremacy and fascism. Sarah Lawrence was not founded on racial or economic equality and has not implemented sufficient strategies to dismantle systematic oppression to be sustainable or safe for marginalized people in an increasingly dangerous political climate. Low-income students should not have to question if they belong at this institution. We have worked tirelessly to make our voices heard and demands met because we believe in a Sarah Lawrence that can be for the people, by the people.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-admissions-scandal-and-racial-preferences/

Peter N. Kirsanow is an attorney and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

The recent revelation concerning college admissions is disconcerting, but not any more than racial preferences in admissions.As Roger Clegg notes below, the Left, never letting a scandal go to waste, immediately leapt on the admissions scandal as a justification for racial preferences. The disingenuousness of their argument is matched only by its incoherence.

Ever since Grutter v. Michigan, the lie about racial preferences is that a college applicant’s race is only considered as a flexible “plus” factor, a mere “feather on the scale,” in the admissions process. The truth, however, is that in nearly every case race is not a feather on the scale, but an anvil. At some universities race renders a black or Hispanic applicant not 10 percent more likely to be admitted over a similarly situated white or Asian comparative; not even 15 percent more likely to be admitted. Rather, at some selective schools the racial preference makes black and Hispanic applicants up to 500 times more likely to be admitted than similarly situated white and Asian applicants.

As Stuart Taylor notes, during the discovery process in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard  (the pending complaint brought by Asian students alleging racial discrimination in Harvard’s admissions program) documents produced by Harvard showed that the average combined SAT scores of Asian students admitted between 2010 — 2015 were 218 points higher than those of black admittees.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/college-admissions-scandal-bankrupt-elite/

These people aren’t interested in the common good. They are interested in themselves.

Every element of the college admissions scandal, a.k.a “Operation Varsity Blues,” is fascinating.

There are the players: the Yale dad who, implicated in a securities-fraud case, tipped the feds off to the caper; a shady high-school counselor turned admissions consultant; the 36-year-old Harvard grad who sold his talents for standardized testing to the highest bidder; the comely actresses from Full House and Desperate Housewives; the fashion designer; the casino magnate. Who would have thought that one of the major headlines of 2019 would be “Lori Loughlin released on bond”?

There are the children: the social media influencer (yes this is a thing) who was told of her parents’ arrest while vacationing on the yacht of a USC trustee; the mom who submitted doctored photographs to USC to portray her son as a championship pole-vaulter; the place kicker for a high school with no football team; and the rap artist from the Upper East Side who defended his mom and dad to the press while smoking a blunt.

There are the means: paying tens of thousands of dollars to Rick Singer, Trinity ‘86, who bribed athletic directors and coaches, doctored student résumés, and arranged for clients to take college-admittance exams alongside a “proctor” who answered the questions for them. The icing on the cake: Some payments were made to a charitable foundation so the parents could get the tax write-off. What a country.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/thomas-jefferson-john-adams-friendship-liberal-education/

The Founders’ friendship can save our paltry civics education.

Citizenship in America is in a troubling state. In 2015, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni conducted a survey of college graduates which found that only 28.4 percent could name James Madison as the father of the Constitution. Thirty-nine percent did not know that Congress had the war power, and roughly 45 percent did not know the length of congressional terms. In 2017, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 37 percent of Americans could not name any of the rights in the First Amendment, and that only 26 percent could name all three branches of government. Gallup poll results from 2018 reveal that young Americans’ views of capitalism and socialism have switched since 2010, with only 45 percent of respondents now professing a positive view of the capitalist system. A November 2018 YouGov poll revealed that Americans’ patriotism and knowledge of civics was troublingly low. More recently, in January 2019, Gallup released survey results which showed that 30 percent of younger Americans, a record high, would like to permanently leave the U.S. Unfortunately, these results are not shocking. Each new poll extends the long line of depressing findings.

The answer to this crisis of civics and citizenship is a renewal of America’s commitment to liberal education. A consensus is growing among many on the left and right that a reinvigorated system of liberal education is necessary if we want a society of active, engaged, and informed citizens. As an article published in the Association of American Colleges & Universities’ journal Liberal Education noted, liberal education “is the best means to the desired end of having a citizenry with the knowledge, skills, and wisdom necessary to participate in democratic governance.”

https://www.city-journal.org/college-admissions-cheating-scandal

The celebrity college-admissions cheating scandal has two clear takeaways: an elite college degree has taken on wildly inflated importance in American society, and the sports-industrial complex enjoys wildly inflated power within universities. Thirty-three moguls and TV stars allegedly paid admissions fixer William Singer a total of $25 million from 2011 to 2018 to doctor their children’s high school resumes—sending students to private SAT and ACT testing sites through false disability claims, for example, where bought-off proctors would raise the students’ scores. Singer forged athletic records, complete with altered photos showing the student playing sports in which he or she had little experience or competence. Corrupt sports directors would then recommend the student for admission, all the while knowing that they had no intention of playing on the school’s team.

None of this could have happened if higher education had not itself become a corrupt institution, featuring low classroom demands, no core knowledge acquisition, low grading standards, fashionable (but society-destroying) left-wing activism, luxury-hotel amenities, endless partying, and huge expense. Students often learn virtually nothing during their college years, as University of California, Irvine, education school dean Richard Arum writes in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. They may even lose that pittance of knowledge with which they entered college. Seniors at Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley scored lower in an undemanding test of American history than they did as freshmen, according to a 2007 study commissioned by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. College is only desultorily about knowledge acquisition, at least outside of the STEM fields (and even those fields are under assault from identity politics).