RUTHFULLY YOURS

This past weekend, at the college at which I teach philosophy, I had the honor of presenting a student of mine—I’ll refer to him by his first name, Mike—with an award in academic excellence.

In the nearly 20 years that I’ve been teaching in my discipline, I’ve taught at a diverse array of colleges and universities: institutions that are small and large, public and private, religious and secular, research-oriented and teaching-oriented, and which span from Texas to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Over this time, I’ve taught literally thousands and thousands of students, several of whom were especially bright, committed, and capable.

Yet it is the student upon whom, on behalf of our department, I bestowed this prestigious award that enjoys the distinction of being the best philosophy student that I have ever taught.

In my prefatory remarks, I of course made mention of those of his many virtues that distinguish him in this regard. However, I noted as well that by way of these very same intellectual and character excellences, Mike exemplified as much as any student of my acquaintance ever has the kind of person for whom a classical liberal arts education was intended and that it was meant to produce.

The liberal arts have fallen on hard times, I declared from the stage of the auditorium in which the awards ceremony was held. Thankfully, though, my student Mike has resurrected my hope that all is not lost.

This was on Saturday morning. My hope remains. But when, a mere 24 yours later, I turned to The College Fix, an excellent student-run campus watchdog publication, it was tested once more.

Usually I regret whenever I’m flipping through channels of the car radio and come across NPR’s pretty consistent litany of liberal and leftist commentators. So, I was amazed when I stumbled upon this show just now on my local NPR station. I heard the words University of Nebraska and hesitated to move on because a good friend graduated from there, so I was curious.An hour radio show traced in detail the gross attacks by a faculty member upon a conservative student and the outcome: the faculty member was banned from teaching, the attempted coverup emails by the admin at U of Nebraska was exposed, and the state legislature may pass a free speech bill over the protests of the usual opponents of free speech for anyone but themselves. Yes, this triumph for free speech and students’ rights on campus is out of the ordinary on campuses and in states and media dominated by the liberal left, but it can be a portent if enough determined conservatives and others of good conscience act. The lengthy article upon which the NPR story is based appeared in, again of all places, the liberal Chrinicle of Higher Education. It is a MUST read. Here it is: “How a tiny protest at the U of Nebraska turned into a proxy war for the future of campus politics: State Of Conflict”BRUCE KESLER

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/state-of-conflict

The first month of the fall semester had not gone as Hank M. Bounds, president of the University of Nebraska, had hoped. It was shaping up to be a tough budget year, for the school and the state, and he had hoped to press the case for how valuable the university was to the state.

Instead, the president was sitting across from a Lincoln-area radio host as he delivered a monologue on what it means to call someone “Becky.” The host seemed to be paraphrasing entries pulled from the website UrbanDictionary.com: It was slang for a white woman. Some definitions mentioned sex acts.

“Some say that goes beyond intimidation,” said the radio host gravely, “that that even borders on hate speech.”

In late August, there had been an incident. A graduate student and members of the English department had confronted a 19-year-old undergraduate over politics. Words were exchanged, including the one the radio host was now trying to define. The whole thing had lasted about 20 minutes and had made barely a ripple on campus. But thanks to a cellphone video, a web-savvy political organization, and a group of suggestible lawmakers, it soon sent shock waves across Nebraska. People were talking about how the changing landscape of American politics posed a threat to them, to their state, and to their children.
This story is part of a collaboration with This American Life.
It was reported with producer Dana Chivvis. An audio version of this story will air early in May. It will be available for download on the This American Life website and as a podcast.

The most underappreciated political story of our time is the changing content of K-12 textbooks in history, civics, social studies, and related subjects. Yes, I said political story. Why are Millennials so receptive to socialism? Why are today’s Democrats dominated by identity politics? Why have movements on the political right shifted from a constitutional conservatism symbolized by the Boston Tea Party to a populist nationalism? All these changes, and more, are connected to what today’s history textbooks are, and are not, teaching. Yet we’ve barely noticed the link.

Almost any Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. history textbook has more influence on American politics than 90 percent of the books reviewed in our leading newspapers and political magazines. Yet when was the last time you read a review of a high school history textbook? Never, I’ll bet. That’s partly because these thousand-page monstrosities are tough to read, and even tougher to judge for anyone but professional historians. And with growing academic specialization, even historians find it difficult to assess an entire text.

Liberals needn’t bother keeping track of history textbooks because they’re the ones who write them. But conservatives have dropped the ball on this issue so essential to their survival. Conservative politicians, institutions, and donors focus far more on short-term electoral politics and policy than culture. History textbooks don’t even register. Over the long haul, that’s a recipe for political exile and social ostracism.

Conservatives saw the tip of the enormous textbook iceberg earlier this April when a radio host tweeted out pictures a Minnesota student had sent her of an AP U.S. history (APUSH) textbook. The student had photographed pages of the not yet formally released update of James W. Fraser’s By the People, an APUSH textbook published by the international education giant Pearson. Those pages covered the 2016 election and the Black Lives Matter movement. Their blatantly partisan bias set off a conservative media firestorm. (I commented here, and Joy Pullman’s important take is here.)

Essentially, Fraser’s updated text portrayed conservatives as bigots, Trump as mentally unstable, and the Black Lives Matter movement as a reasonable response to a police force acting like an “occupying army” in a “mostly African-American town.”

It was hit job as history.

On April 22, 2018, Miki Cammarata, the Vice President for Student Development at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, released an email. Cammarata condemned a social media video featuring a William Paterson student, Jasmine Barkley. Cammarata called Barkley’s comments “abhorrent and racially charged.” “We are disgusted,” Cammarata wrote. Barkley’s statement “does not reflect our values.” “University staff are investigating.”

In the video, Jasmine Barkley asks, “Is it appropriate for me to say the word n—–, if it is in the lyrics of a song and I’m singing the lyrics, or is it not appropriate for me to say n—–? Let me know.” Barkley’s video is eleven seconds long.

A Twitter user who self-identifies as “Seun the Activist, Son of the Most High,” aka Seun Babalola, tweeted the video at 8:57 a.m. on April 22. Cammarata’s response appeared three hours later. Also on April 22, Nicole DeFeo, International Executive Director of Delta Phi Epsilon, Barkley’s sorority, promised “swift, decisive action.” In 1984-style language, Barkley was “disaffiliated immediately.”

On Monday, April 23, the Beacon, the William Paterson school newspaper, posted an open letter from Barkley. “I am not a racist. I believe in equality … I posed a controversial question.” Barkley quoted TV personality Lenard McKelvey, aka Charlamagne Tha God.

McKelvey, in a 2013 interview, said, “Until we stop using the word n—–, we can’t get mad at nobody else for using the word … If something’s bad, it’s bad, period. It can’t be good when I do it and bad when you do it … If you really want to make a stand against the n-word, stop using it. Teach people how to treat you. People are going to treat you how you treat yourself.” Protesting when whites use the n-word is hypocritical, he said. If Malcolm X or Martin Luther King returned, they would not be shocked at whites using the n-word; they’d be shocked at blacks using the n-word. “Is this what we died and marched for? Is this what we got beat with sticks and had dogs sicced and got sprayed with hoses for y’all to be walking around and carrying yourselves like this?”

“Freaky Friday,” the song Barkley’s friend was singing along to, does indeed contain the n-word, repeated eleven times. “Freaky Friday,” as do many popular rap and hip hop songs, refers to women as “bitch,” including the singer’s mother, and “hos,” or whores. It also refers to “pussies.” In the video, nearly naked white women advertise the black singer’s worth by writhing against him. “Freaky Friday” includes graphic references to male anatomy, for example, “his dick staying perched up on his balls.” The f-word is repeated ten times.

If you’ve ever taken a statistics class, you’ve probably read Darrell Huff’s “How to Lie with Statistics.” Teachers unions appear to have drawn some lessons from the 1954 book. They’re using misleading statistics to rally public support for teacher walkouts in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona and Colorado. Here are some of their distortions.

• They conflate school funding and state education spending. In Oklahoma, unions proclaimed that per pupil school spending fell by 28.2% over the past decade. That refers to the inflation-adjusted state’s general funding formula. But total per pupil outlays increased by 16% in nominal terms between 2006 and 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent public education finance report. Adjusting for inflation, that’s a decline of only about 2%.

On average across the country, state funds make up only 47% of total school spending. Most of the rest comes from local property taxes. Since property tax hikes are politically unpopular, unions put pressure on state lawmakers to increase education spending from general funds. That has the benefit of diffusing accountability for local spending.

• They use elevated spending baselines. Teachers unions nearly always compare school spending and teacher salaries today with peak levels before the great recession, which were inflated like housing prices. Between 2000 and 2009, average per pupil spending across the country increased 52%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. After flat-lining for a few years, per pupil spending ticked up by 7.5% between 2012 and 2015. School spending growth might have slowed over the past several years, but it still increased faster than the consumer price index.

Per pupil funding in Oklahoma shot up 46% between 2000 and 2009. During this period, average teacher salaries rose 52%. While average salaries have since fallen by 5%, even on an inflation-adjusted basis they remain higher today ($45,245) than in 2000 ($44,861) or 1990 ($44,088).

• They don’t account for other forms of compensation. Since 2000, per pupil spending on employee benefits has doubled. Benefits make up about 29 cents of every dollar of staff compensation, compared with 21 cents in 2000. In Arizona, about 24% of staff compensation goes to employee benefits, up from 18% in 2000. Teachers don’t see this in their paychecks, but pensions and health benefits are the fastest-growing expenses for many school districts, and most of the money goes to retired teachers.

• They elide data that don’t fit their argument. According to the National Education Association’s annual survey, the biggest average pay bumps in 2016 were in California (4.3%), Colorado (3.9%) and Wisconsin (3.5%). Wisconsin’s 2011 collective-bargaining reforms limit annual base salary increases to 2% while letting districts negotiate pay with individual teachers based on criteria other than job and education level. CONTINUE AT SITE

What do college presidents mean by “academic rigor”? Good “judgment” in the classroom? Making the campus “inclusive”? Recent developments on the campus of Hamilton College after the visit of Paul Gottfried, Horace Raffensberger Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Elizabethtown College, provide clues.

Gottfried was invited to speak to two classes by Robert Paquette, Executive Director of the nearby Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. As I described at the AHI’s website, Gottfried on October 25, 2017, discussed conservatism in the United States in “Modern Conservative Politics” in the Government Department, and then gave a lecture based on his recent book, Fascism: The Career of a Concept, in a history course, “Nazi Germany.” Although he was greeted by students holding signs accusing him of racism, Gottfried gave two informed performances and responded to questions, including hostile ones, with intelligence and courtesy.

Nevertheless, his visit inspired campus-wide denunciations in a letter from the Government Department, editorials in the student newspaper, and a letter from the college president.

Two days after the visit, students, faculty, and administrators received the following proclamation:

We the undersigned full-time members of the Government Department would like to speak out regarding Paul Gottfried’s visit to one of our courses. We are still learning about what transpired on Wednesday. . . . However, we have already heard multiple complaints from students about racist remarks allegedly made by Gottfried. We unequivocally condemn any and all such racist remarks. . . .

Similarly, the student newspaper vaguely claimed that Gottfried was “espousing hateful opinions” and therefore should not have been allowed on campus. It took until December 4 for President David Wippman to reply, which enraged student Katherine Barnes who wrote “Too little, too late, too tolerant: President Wippman fails to condemn Gottfried.”

Penn State’s Outing Club controversy is about keeping students in a state of childhood.

Penn State University’s Outing Club can no longer organize student-led hiking and camping trips, which the club has done for 98 years. This decision is not about the inherent risk of hiking. It is about letting students be independent adults.

At first, the university explained that the outing, scuba, and caving clubs are “losing recognition due to an unacceptable amount of risk to student members that is associated with their activities,” as a university spokesperson put it.

International mockery helped the Outing Club regain recognition as a student organization, but it will not be allowed to organize trips. It can bring speakers to campus and hold meetings, but going hiking together on club-organized outings is no longer acceptable.

A university spokesperson suggested to the Centre Daily Times that alcohol use was a factor in the decision, though Outing Club says there is no alcohol use on its trips. The real reason was surely contained the sentence before the mention of alcohol use:

In addition to the inherent risks found in many of these student activities that occur without fully trained guides or leaders, the behaviors of some students on unsupervised trips have become a concern. These concerns have, at times, included the misuse of alcohol in the context of already risky activities. This mix is obviously dangerous.

Conservative students at the University of California, Berkeley will be allowed to move forward with their lawsuit alleging the school discriminated against conservative speakers.

U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney ruled Wednesday that the lawsuit levied by two student groups can continue, shooting down the school’s request to dismiss it.

The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation accused the school of efforts to “restrict and stifle the speech of conservative students whose voices fall beyond the campus political orthodoxy,” after two speakers they invited to campus had their events cancelled.

Conservative author Ann Coulter was bumped from a planned appearance at the school in April 2017 after angry protests by left-leaning students caused security concerns. After a national backlash, the school allowed Coulter to speak in early May during a “dead week” when many students were off campus.

Another conservative writer, David Horowitz, had a speech canceled the same month after difficulties with campus security and accommodations, and the previous February, a Milo Yiannopoulos event was also shut down over safety concerns.