RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/sessions-on-campus-speech-rules-time-to-put-a-stake-in-its-heart/

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a Justice Department forum on higher education today that limiting free speech deemed offensive on college campuses “has gone too far” and “it’s time to stand up to the bullies on campus, bullies in our culture.”

“As Americans, we know that it’s far better to have a messy and contentious debate than to suppress the voices of dissenters, even though on occasion we might forget these values,” Sessions said. “…Defending the Constitution, defending civil rights, doing justice compels this Department of Justice to defend the right of speech, expression, religion, press, petition and assembly, and defend these rights we will. And the most important time to defend a valued right is when it is being attacked or eroded.”

Sessions cited a survey that found 40 percent of colleges and universities “maintain speech codes that substantially infringe on constitutionally protected rights.”

“Of the public colleges surveyed, which are legally bound by the First Amendment, fully one-third had written policies banning disfavored speech,” he added.

He lashed out at small “free speech zones” on campuses and rules against activities that could “disturb the comfort of persons” attending school there.

“If disturbing someone’s comfort is the standard for banning speech, then anybody can stop anyone else from speaking their mind by acting offended. This is nowhere close to a legitimate First Amendment standard,” he said, citing in his examples of DOJ involvement a statement of interest filed in May in a lawsuit against the University of Michigan. “The university sought to forbid harassment and bullying and actions motivated by bias. They also forbade speech that is interpreted to be demeaning, bothersome or hurtful. But the rules did not give clear definition about what any of these terms mean.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271354/new-academic-year-americas-colleges-jack-kerwick

A new academic year is upon us and, already, the world of Higher Education is being true to form.

For example, the University of Maryland-College Park created a new “diversity” group intended to carve out a “safe space” for those white students who are interested in sharing their reflections on their encounters with “racial and ethnic minorities.”

The school assigned to the group quite the catchy label: “White Awake.”

According to Campus Reform, a watchdog site, this “support group” will assist white students who “sometimes feel uncomfortable and confused before, during, or after interactions with racial and ethnic minorities.”

According to the description: “This group offers a safe space for White students to explore their experiences, questions, reactions, and feelings. Members will support and share feedback with each other as they learn more about themselves and how they can fit into a diverse world.”

After Campus Reform published its article on “White Awake,” the University of Maryland decided to change the name of its most recently created “diversity group.” “White Awake” is no more. In its place is the “Anti-Racism and Ally Building Group.” The description reads: “Do you want to improve your ability to relate to and connect with people different from yourself? Do you want to become a better ally? Members will support and share feedback with each other as they learn more about themselves and how they can fit into a diverse world.”

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, SJ Miller, a “faculty associate” who, in spite of being a teacher, is not recognized as a “professor,” wants to “liberate gender identity.” Self-identifying as “agender,” Miller expressed desire for this objective in a paper—“Reframing Schooling to Liberate Gender Identity”—that he had published in a journal known as Multicultural Perspectives.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/americans-dont-like-racial-preferences-education/

This is not news, being quite in line with many earlier polls, but the time and place are rather propitious, with the Harvard affirmative-action case going to trial in a month. A new survey, by Boston’s public-radio station no less, asked this question: “The Supreme Court has decided colleges can use race as one factor in deciding which applicants to admit. Do you agree or disagree with this ruling?” And 72 percent of those surveyed said they disagreed with the Court’s ruling, with only 24 percent agreeing. (Indeed, the only group that the station identified as having more supporters than critics of the Court’s decision was those with a graduate education, and among them by only 49 to 45 percent. This proves, by the way, that the more time you spend on today’s campuses, the worse your judgment becomes.)

A few days ago, I happened upon a letter of August 17 in the Chronicle of Higher Education calling upon Professor Judith Butler to step down as president-elect of the Modern Language Association. I was pleased to suppose that at least some professors of literature were expressing shock, outrage, and indignation at the news that a fanatical Israel-hater, Israel-boycotter, Israel-slanderer, and would-be destroyer would soon accede to the presidency of America’s largest professional organization of college teachers of literature and language. I had in fact expected that droves of MLA members, especially Jewish ones, would react by heading for the exits.

(True, MLA has in the past elected some very unfit presidents. In the late sixties Louis Kampf (MIT) was the first to be elected to represent “leftist” professors. He would express, for teachers who never liked literature much in the first place, a rationale for their hostility: literary studies were both a result and an instrument of oppression. In later years, when “Palestine” became the leftists’ “revolution du jour,” Edward Said, a member of the PLO executive committee, was elected president. But Said was virtually a Zionist compared with the Jewish Butler; also, unlike her, he could write English prose. In 1997 Butler, a stupefyingly opaque writer, won the annual Bad Writing Contest conducted by the journal Philosophy and Literature.)

But I was wrong. The Chronicle letter calling for Butler to step down was written by an Illinois associate professor of “Israeli Literature and Culture” named Rachel Harris. Yet it expressed not the slightest concern about how an organization presided over by someone whose febrile imagination depicts Israel as the devil’s own experiment and aligns herself with Hamas might interfere with (or even impede) her own scholarly work and impose an MLA boycott of the country on whose existence Harris’ writing depends.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/study-warns-against-saying-boys-will-be-boys/

A new University of Michigan study urges preschool teachers to avoid saying “they’re just boys being boys” or to remind girls to have “good manners,” lest those teachers accidentally “contribute to gender inequality in early childhood.”

Heidi Gansen — who previously was awarded by the American Sociological Association for her research on “heteronormativity” in preschools — published her latest study in the new issue of the journal Sex Roles.

For her new study, “Push-Ups Versus Clean Up: Preschool Teachers Gendered Beliefs,” Gansen spent 400 hours in Michigan preschools from July 2015 to April 2016. During that time, UM awarded Gansen more than $23,000 in research grants, according to her CV.

Gansen begins by setting the stage: teachers have a strong influence on children.

Preschools are just one way “through which an unequal gender system is reproduced because interactions between teachers and students organize and define boys and girls differently,” explains Gansen, who taught at UM before she graduated this spring.

Gansen sought to answer two questions.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/faking_your_way_to_racial_equality.html

Since the mid-1960s, billions have been spent to close race-related gaps in educational achievement. While these gaps have been somewhat narrowed, they have remained substantial and seem impervious to nearly all nostrums – everything from early intervention programs such as Head Start to hard-headed businesslike remedies such as firing incompetent teachers. Now, given decades of disappointment, what’s next?

Let me suggest that “a solution” is emerging, but it is not what gap-obsessed egalitarians have in mind. This “solution” is deception – if genuine equally of outcome is unreachable, instead, provide the illusion of success. Remarkably, this deceit is often welcomed as if it were the real thing, with little outrage when fraudsters are exposed.

The National Center for Fair and Open Testing argues that teachers illicitly boosting student test scores is endemic. Such deception is particularly alluring at schools with large populations of underperforming minority students, where the dismal numbers can bring school closings or mass firings. Such cheating has been documented in Atlanta; Baltimore; and Washington, D.C. as well as in schools in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and elsewhere. They are, according to the center, just “the tip of the iceberg.

Cheating may simply entail erasing the wrong answers and replacing them with the correct ones. Less blatant tactics include strongly hinting at the correct answer during the test under the guise of “helping” the puzzled test-taker, using similar test questions in classroom lessons, or just teaching the test and little else.

One teacher has even written a guide for potential cheaters that includes tips to minimize getting caught – for instance, allowing unauthorized extra time by putting a “do not enter” sign on the classroom door. The Washington Post likewise offers multiple ingenious cheating tactics such as smartphones to forward pictures of exam questions. Especially effective is to exclude the low performers (notably, students with disabilities and those with limited English) from taking the test. Another ploy is to prevent expelled or suspended students from taking the test or encouraging the weakest students to drop out or enroll in GED programs prior to the test.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/study-diversity-officers-contribute-nothing-positive-to-a-university/

A new Baylor University study has discovered that Chief Diversity Officers — who are typically paid upwards of $180,000 — are ineffective at one of their major job responsibilities: increasing diversity among faculty and administrators.

The study, “The Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Faculty Hiring” was published in September by four Baylor University professors, including Steven Bradley, a professor of entrepreneurship at the school.

“Three years ago, there was a campus-wide discussion of whether to hire a CDO,” Bradley told PJ Media on Thursday. Supporters of the CDO position claimed it would help increase faculty diversity, in turn helping minority students feel safe on campus.

The summary of a 2016 campus survey put it more bluntly.

“The lack of [minority] representation among faculty sends a message for women and minorities to not bother applying to Baylor, [and that] the work environment is not safe or welcoming,” the report said.

Since then, Baylor officials appear to have punted. The prospect of hiring a diversity officer was too concerning for some school officials, who feared it would detract from the school’s Christian identity, according to the Waco-Tribune Herald.

(At Baylor, the possibility of hiring a CDO was so contentious — and ultimately abandoned — that it led to at least one resignation.)

FROM https://spectator.org By Scott McKay
Last week, Fox Business had an article about the increasing trend whereby major companies are no longer demanding college degrees for jobs which used to require them.

No diploma? No problem.

More and more companies are scrapping college degree requirements for jobs. They’re not saying you shouldn’t seek higher education, but not having a degree won’t be a barrier for you to work in certain jobs at their companies.

Some of the 15 big companies saying “no bachelor’s degree is fine” include Google, Nordstrom, Bank of America, Ernst & Young, IBM and Apple.

The changes are coming as job seekers, as well as high school graduates, consider whether college is worth the skyrocketing cost.

You’re going to hear more and more about this. It’s partially explained by the fact we’re in a serious labor shortage now, but not completely.

A significant piece to this trend is that colleges simply don’t prepare kids for employment the way they did 20 or 30 years ago. Talk to business owners, and they will pull their hair out over how often their straight-out-of-college new hires are completely lost when it comes to the culture of the workplace — the demands they make, the things they can’t handle, the inability to just shut up and do what they’re assigned, and so forth.

So more and more companies are going to attack that problem by identifying bright kids out of high school they can train, and then molding them to be the employees they want while paying them much less in initial salary than they’re currently paying to college graduates.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271311/cair-classroom-cinnamon-stillwell

Reprinted from Algemeiner.com.

In 1993, Ibrahim Hooper, director of strategic communications for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said that, “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.” Twenty-five years later, CAIR could be making headway on that goal, through its relationships with US public school districts in at least three states.

CAIR — an Islamist group and United Arab Emirates-designated terrorist organizationthat bills itself as a defender of civil rights — has achieved special concessions for Muslim students and launched the inappropriate insertion of religion into publicly-funded education. Meanwhile, pushback from parents and outside organizations is building.

Seattle Public Schools’ partnership with CAIR’s Washington chapter is the latest incident to cause controversy, but the relationship dates back to at least 2011, when CAIR-WA sent the district a letter proposing accommodations for Muslim students and classroom lessons on Islam. Then as now, CAIR-WA claimed to be fighting “anti-Muslim bullying.” To that end, in 2012 and 2013 the organization contacted the school district to complain about “Islamophobia” among teachers.

That approach eventually paid off. In a Ramadan crowd-funding campaign in May of this year, the CAIR-WA chapter outlined its plan “to provide educational training for teachers and staff on things like Ramadan, Eid, and how educators can support Muslim students in the classroom.” Accordingly, that same month, CAIR-WA ran a “professional development session” in a Seattle high school that “addressed providing identity-safe spaces in schools for Muslim families” and “how to support students during Ramadan.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271321/trump-administration-reopens-rutgers-anti-semitism-joseph-klein

The Trump administration has decided to reopen a case brought by a Zionist group against Rutgers University, previously closed by the Obama administration in 2014, alleging that the university had allowed Jewish students to be subjected to a hostile environment in violation of Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act. The issue, ignored by the Obama administration, was whether the students were discriminated against based on their actual or perceived Jewish ancestry or ethnicity. Kenneth L. Marcus, the new assistant secretary of education for civil rights, decided that the case deserved another look. As the New York Times reported, Mr. Marcus’s decision “put the weight of the federal government behind a definition of anti-Semitism that targets opponents of Zionism, and it explicitly defines Judaism as not only a religion but also an ethnic origin.” The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will be examining not only the past case it has reopened. It will also examine whether a hostile environment for Jewish students continues to exist at Rutgers.

According to the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which filed the original complaint on July 20, 2011, the allegations included claims of physical threats and anti-Semitic comments posted on Facebook against at least one Jewish student, and discrimination against Jewish and pro-Israel students. The discrimination charge involved an anti-Israel event entitled “Never Again for Anyone,” sponsored by an anti-Israel student group called “Belief Awareness Knowledge and Action (BAKA),” where an admission fee was allegedly imposed and selectively enforced against Jewish and pro-Israel students.

In reopening the case, Assistant Secretary Marcus focused on the anti-Israel event held on January 29, 2011. He concluded that the Obama administration had erred in dismissing the case because it disregarded evidence that the admission fee allegedly imposed on Jewish students seeking to attend the event was discriminatory, based on ethnicity. The Obama administration also disregarded evidence that Rutgers had failed to respond appropriately to student complaints regarding the pricing policy. The evidence of discrimination, as reported by Algemeiner, included an e-mail purportedly from a BAKA student volunteer at the anti-Israel event stating that there was a need to start charging an admission fee because “150 Zionists just showed up,” although “if someone looks like a supporter, they can get in for free.” Assistant Secretary Marcus noted that singling out “150 Zionists” for an admission fee “could have been based at least partially on a visual assessment, as opposed to individually polling all 150 such unexpected arrivals as to their views on the policies of the state of Israel.” The selection of whom to charge, he said, “could have been rooted in a perception of Jewish ancestry or ethnic characteristics common to the group.” He added that it is “important to determine whether the conduct related to Israel was motivated by anti-Semitism” and to “determine whether terms such as ‘Zionist’ are actually code for ‘Jewish.’”