RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.thefp.com/p/carole-hooven-why-i-left-harvard

Since early December, the end of my 20-year career teaching at Harvard has been the subject of articles, op-eds, tweets from a billionaire, and even a congressional hearing. I have become a poster child for how the growing campus DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—bureaucracies strangle free speech. My ordeal has been used to illustrate the hypocrisy of the assertions by Harvard’s leaders that they honor the robust exchange of challenging ideas. 

What happened to me, and others, strongly suggests that these assertions aren’t true—at least, if those ideas oppose campus orthodoxy. 

To be a central example of what has gone wrong in higher education feels surreal. If there is any silver lining to losing the career that I found so fulfilling, perhaps it’s that my story will help explain the fear that stalks campuses, a fear that spreads every time someone is punished for their speech.

The December 5, 2023, congressional hearing on the rise of antisemitism at colleges did not go well for the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. They were accused of failing to condemn the public antisemitic statements made on their campuses. Their defense, as asserted by then-Harvard president Claudine Gay, was that their administrations were “deeply committed to free expression.” 

That’s where I came in. 

As Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said at the hearing, “Carole Hooven, an evolutionary biologist, was forced to resign, because she stated that a person’s sex is biological and binary. . . . and so, President Gay, in what world is a call for violence against Jews protected speech, but a belief that sex is biological and binary isn’t?”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20303/equity-grade-inflation

Diversity equity and inclusion require that groups – rather than individuals – be treated “equitably”, and that preferred groups be advantaged in hiring, admissions and other benefits.

This is all part of the DEI attack on meritocracy. DEI demands that individuals be judged by the color of their skin and their identity rather than the content of their character — or their grades.

DEI now demands that schools begin with the goal of achieving equity grading by any means, including non-blind grading, grade inflation or grade abolition. Anything to undercut the equality of meritocratic blind grading that didn’t achieve the goals of DEI.

The negative impact of equity grading is incalculable. It stifles learning, hard work and creativity. It fails to prepare students for the competitive world they will inevitably face after they finish being coddled by universities. It will destroy the competitive advantages American universities used to have.

A recent study showed that grade inflation has become rampant at American universities. What used to be C+ has now become an A-, as more than 3/4 of students in elite universities get grades of A or A-.

This grade inflation is a direct result of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies and their twin concept of intersectionality. DEI requires that groups – rather than individuals – be treated “equitably”, and that preferred groups be advantaged in hiring, admissions and other benefits.

https://thejewishvoice.com/2024/01/examining-the-incessant-flow-of-qatari-money-into-american-academia-unintended-consequences-on-campus/

Until recently, the issue of foreign donations influencing American academia remained unnoticed. However, a study published in 2022 by the National Association of Academics in the United States sheds light on a significant flow of Qatari money to universities in the country, particularly in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. According to an in depth report that appeared on the Calcalistech.com web site in October 2023,the study reveals that between 2001 and 2021, Qatar donated a staggering $4.7 billion to American universities, making it the largest foreign donor during this period. What initially seemed like harmless financial support has sparked a series of events, raising concerns about the influence on academic institutions.

The study highlights that a considerable portion of the funds received by American universities from Qatar went unreported, violating legal requirements, according to the Calcalisteceh.com report.  This revelation adds a layer of complexity to the already controversial issue. The Qatari financial support, ostensibly meant to foster academic growth, has now come under scrutiny for potential undisclosed motives.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/11/a-fail-of-two-cities/

In this “Fail of Two Cities,” it has been only the “worst of times” for government-run schools.

When it comes to education, Chicago, America’s “Second City,” is nowhere near second. The kids aren’t learning despite piles of money being spent, and families are abandoning the system.

According to the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), just 15% of Chicago’s 8th-grade students are proficient in math, and 21% are proficient in reading.

Money is certainly not the problem, as Chicago Public Schools spend about $29,000 per student. So, a class of 20 students costs the taxpayer almost $600,000 per year. Additionally, Chi-town teachers aren’t suffering; a rookie teacher makes $64,000 a year and eventually can earn up to $122,000 per year—not including pension and healthcare perks.

A great deal of the reason for the poor education system in the Windy City can be laid at the feet of the Chicago Teachers Union. As with most teachers’ unions, especially those in big cities, its primary goal is to advance a left-wing political agenda. In fact, the Illinois Policy Institute reports that the union spent nearly three times more on politics in 2023 than the year before, and just 17% of its spending was on representing teachers

As former Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted in 2021, CTU would “like to take over not only Chicago Public Schools, but take over running the city government.”

In fact, that actually happened. The recent recipient of the union’s largess, Brandon Johnson, a former CTU “legislative coordinator,” became Chicago mayor in May 2023.

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/the-exquisite-irony-of-claudine-gays?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=259044&post

Defenders of recently ousted Harvard University President Claudine Gay charge that outcries over the plagiarism in her dissertation and scholarly publications are merely a cover. Gay’s critics, the argument goes, actually objected to her support for DEI, her bumbling response to questions about antisemitism at Harvard, and her very race. Had she been white, more artful in addressing antisemitism, and more moderate in her views about DEI, she would still have her job today.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume all of that is correct, and Gay was ousted over matters of identity rather than academic integrity. That still does not explain why she plagiarized in the first place, nor does it excuse the offense. Whether or not one agrees with the motivations of Gay’s opponents, there is no excuse for a professional scholar to do what she did. None of the possible explanations—underhandedness, sloppiness, a belief that small acts of plagiarism don’t matter—could exonerate Gay, because they all betray a similarly cavalier attitude toward the integrity of the scholarly endeavor. Safeguarding that endeavor and ensuring Harvard’s continuing preeminence was a major part of Gay’s job, and she was not up to the task. Anyone who looked at her paper-thin CV could have guessed as much, and now the evidence is in.

It’s no small irony that a DEI ideologue who likely views “merit” as a suspect concept was brought down by her own demonstrable lack of same. Claudine Gay is the victim of her own debased principles. Harvard’s faculty and students deserve a leader who reflects the ideals of the institution, not a functionary with people skills. I don’t know who will be next in line for the job, but if they’re more of the same—another mediocre scholar with the “correct” politics—I’d advise them to rent a place in Cambridge rather than buying.

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2024/01/08/the_root_cause_of_academic_groupthink_1003644.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The shroud is coming off elite academia and America is not pleased with what it’s seeing. Its leaders have told us that genocidal antisemitism is too complex to recognize and that plagiarism is a problem for students, perhaps for junior faculty, but not for the president of Harvard. DEI policies elevated demographic considerations far above merit at our most prestigious institutions.

How did this happen? What can be done to fix it?

Those are tough questions. Major institutions don’t become corrupt overnight. The process is long, slow, and methodical. The solutions go far beyond the removal of a few high-profile officials. In academia, the egregious examples that gain sudden visibility are merely manifestations of a corrupt core.

That corrupt core stems from the inherent difficulty of assessing the quality of knowledge work. Suppose that there are multiple competing theories to explain some phenomenon—freakish weather, persistent crime, disparate outcomes, reactions to a vaccine, the variance of election results from poll predictions, etc. How can anyone know which theory to believe?

Most people turn to one of two heuristics. The first is personal, and few people like to admit it openly: They accept whichever theory comes closest to what they’d like to believe. The second is societal, and most people who advocate it do so with pride: They ask the experts.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/rashid-khalidis-happy-dhimmi-jews/

“The idea that Jews in the Arab countries have always been subject to persecution culminating in their being forced to flee from the Arab countries is fundamentally false,” stated Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi in a December 14 webinar. Thus, this Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) propagandist whitewashed historic Islamic antisemitic doctrines that continue to threaten Jews to this day.

Khalidi spoke to the anti-Israel website Jadaliyya’s as part of its “Gaza in Context: Collaborative Teach-In Series” in an episode on “Colonial Narratives (Part 2).” Jadaliyya’s moderator was Bassam Haddad, director of George Mason University’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program.

Khalidi propagated the well-worn trope, discredited as the “Happy Dhimmi” myth, that Jews, a subjugated non-Muslim minority, “lived in relative security and with relative prosperity” in Muslim countries across the centuries. Rather, “Europe was the source of antisemitism. Christian doctrine was the source of antisemitism,” he simplistically stated. Jews with backgrounds in the Mizrachi (Hebrew: Eastern) diaspora in the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) vigorously refute such one-sided assertions.

Nonetheless, Khalidi superficially claimed that the “situation of Jews in Europe was infinitely worse than in any other part of the world.” Therefore, Jews after 1492 “took refuge as a result when they were expelled in particular from Spain and Portugal in Morocco, in North Africa, in other parts of the Ottoman Empire,” he stated. Sultan Bayezid II’s supposed response to this influx of enterprising Jews into his empire prompted by Spanish royal intolerance has become historic. “Can such a king be called wise and intelligent—one who impoverishes his country and enriches my kingdom?” Bayezid II is recorded as saying.