RUTHFULLY YOURS

Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, has been lobbying in Washington against a Republican proposal to tax large university endowments and make other tax and spending changes that might adversely affect universities. Faust says the endowment tax would be a “blow at the strength of American higher education” and that the suite of proposals lacks “policy logic.” Perhaps so, but they have a political logic. We hope that Harvard and other elite universities will reflect on their part in these developments.

The proposed tax and spending policies aimed at universities are surely related to the sharp recent drop in support by conservatives for colleges and universities. According to a recent Pew Research Center report, 58 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country, a figure that has grown significantly in the past two years. This development likely reflects four related trends.

First is the obvious progressive tilt in universities, especially elite universities. At Harvard, for example, undergraduate students overwhelmingly identify as progressive or liberal and the faculty overwhelmingly gives to the Democratic Party. Even Harvard Law School, which has a handful of conservative scholars and a new conservative dean, is on the left end of law school faculties, which are themselves more progressive than the legal profession.

Second, the distinctive progressive ideology of elite universities is relentlessly critical of, to the point of being intolerant of, traditions and moral values widely seen as legitimate in the outside world. As a result, elite universities have narrowed the range of acceptable views within their walls.

Third is the rise of anti-conservative “mobs,” “shout-downs” and “illiberal behavior” on campus, as New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes it. [ See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=301&v=8PuxuGamWUM ] Conservative speakers of various stripes are being harassed and excluded with increasing frequency. “Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas,” noted former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg at a Harvard address a few years ago. Harvard is actually somewhat better on these issues than many universities — it hasn’t had anti-conservative mobs, and it has been relatively respectful of conservative speakers. But even at Harvard, the pervasive progressive orthodoxy chills conservatives’ speech in the classroom and hallways.

Frank Antenori shot the head off a rattlesnake at his back door last summer — a deadeye pistol blast from 20 feet. No college professor taught him that. The U.S. Army trained him, as a marksman and a medic, on the “two-way rifle range” of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Useful skills. Smart return on taxpayers’ investment. Not like the waste he sees at too many colleges and universities, where he says liberal professors teach “ridiculous” classes and indoctrinate students “who hang out and protest all day long and cry on our dime.”

“Why does a kid go to a major university these days?” said Antenori, 51, a former Green Beret who served in the Arizona state legislature. “A lot of Republicans would say they go there to get brainwashed and learn how to become activists and basically go out in the world and cause trouble.”

Antenori is part of an increasingly vocal campaign to transform higher education in America. Though U.S. universities are envied around the world, he and other conservatives want to reduce the flow of government cash to what they see as elitist, politically correct institutions that often fail to provide practical skills for the job market.

To the alarm of many educators, nearly every state has cut funding to public colleges and universities since the 2008 financial crisis. Adjusted for inflation, states spent $5.7 billion less on public higher education last year than in 2008, even though they were educating more than 800,000 additional students, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

In Arizona, which has had a Republican governor and legislature since 2009, lawmakers have cut spending for higher education by 54 percent since 2008; the state now spends $3,500 less per year on every student, according to the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Tuition has soared, forcing students to shoulder more of the cost of their degrees.

Meanwhile, public schools in Arizona and across the nation are welcoming private donors, including the conservative Koch brothers. In nearly every state, the Charles Koch Foundation funds generally conservative-leaning scholars and programs in politics, economics, law and other subjects. John Hardin, the foundation’s director of university relations, said its giving has tripled from about $14 million in 2011 to $44 million in 2015 as the foundation aims to “diversify the conversation” on campus.

People across the ideological spectrum are worried about the cost of college, skyrocketing debt from student loans and rising inequality in access to quality degrees. Educators fear the drop in government spending is making schools harder to afford for low- and middle-income students.

State lawmakers blame the cuts on falling tax revenue during the recession; rising costs of other obligations, especially Medicaid and prisons; and the need to balance their budgets. But even as prosperity has returned to many states, there is a growing partisan divide over how much to spend on higher education. Education advocates worry that conservative disdain threatens to undermine universities.

In July, a Pew Research Center study found that 58 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents believe colleges and universities have a negative effect “on the way things are going in the country,” up from 37 percent two years ago. Among Democrats, by contrast, 72 percent said they have a positive impact.

A Gallup poll in August found that a third of Republicans had confidence in universities, which they viewed as too liberal or political. Other studies show that overwhelming numbers of white working-class men do not believe a college degree is worth the cost.

Brian Butcher, a history teacher at Ballou High School, sat in the bleachers of the school’s brand-new football field last June watching 164 seniors receive diplomas. It was a clear, warm night and he was surrounded by screaming family and friends snapping photos and cheering.

It was a triumphant moment for the students: For the first time, every graduate had applied and been accepted to college. The school is located in one of Washington, D.C.’s poorest neighborhoods and has struggled academically for years with a low graduation rate. For months, the school received national media attention, including from NPR, celebrating the achievement.

But all the excitement and accomplishment couldn’t shake one question from Butcher’s mind:

How did all these students graduate from high school?

“You saw kids walking across the stage, who, they’re nice young people, but they don’t deserve to be walking across the stage,” Butcher says.
About This Investigation

This project is a collaboration between NPR’s Ed Team and WAMU’s Kate McGee, an education reporter covering education in our nation’s capital. Six months ago, we reported that for the first time, 100 percent of seniors who graduated from Ballou High School had applied and were accepted to college. We spoke with 11 current and recent Ballou teachers and four recent Ballou graduates, and we reviewed hundreds of attendance documents, class rosters and emails that show many students graduated despite chronic absenteeism. Records show half the graduates missed more than three months of school, or 60 days.

An investigation by WAMU and NPR has found that Ballou High School’s administration graduated dozens of students despite high rates of unexcused absences. We reviewed hundreds of pages of Ballou’s attendance records, class rosters and emails after a district employee shared the private documents. Half of the graduates missed more than three months of school last year, unexcused. One in five students was absent more than present — missing more than 90 days of school.

According to district policy, if a student misses a class 30 times, he should fail that course. Research shows that missing 10 percent of school, about two days per month, can negatively affect test scores, reduce academic growth and increase the chances a student will drop out.

Teachers say when many of these students did attend school, they struggled academically, often needing intense remediation.

“I’ve never seen kids in the 12th grade that couldn’t read and write,” says Butcher about his two decades teaching in low-performing schools from New York City to Florida. But he saw this at Ballou, and it wasn’t just one or two students.

Denzel Washington made some remarks the other day that bear highlighting if only because sensible social commentary from Hollywood celebrities is so rare.

At a New York screening of Mr. Washington’s latest film, “ Roman J. Israel, Esq. ,” the actor was asked by a reporter: “For black people in particular, do you think that we can truly make change as things are right now?”

Mr. Washington, who is 62, gave a pointed response. “Well, it starts in the home. If the father is not in the home, the boy will find a father in the streets. I saw it in my generation and every generation before me and every one since.” He added, “If the streets raise you, then the judge becomes your mother and prison becomes your home.”

In the film, Mr. Washington portrays a defense attorney, and reporters at the screening pressed him to weigh in on current debates about race and the U.S. criminal justice system. Instead, the actor doubled down on his message of strong families and personal responsibility. “It starts with how you raise your children,” he said. “If a young man doesn’t have a father figure, he’ll go find a father figure. So you can’t blame the system. It’s unfortunate that we make such easy work for them.”

What is remarkable is not that the Oscar-winning actor, who has been the national spokesman for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America since 1992, expressed these sentiments. Such talk is commonplace in black churches and beauty salons and barbershops and community centers. What’s remarkable is that Mr. Washington opted to say what he did within earshot of so many whites. Black political leaders and activist organizations, in an effort to raise money and stay relevant, much prefer to focus on racial prejudice when publicly discussing black-white disparities. Mr. Washington broke with that protocol. In private, those on the black left might acknowledge that black children watch too much television and read too few books. In public, however, they blame the achievement gap on biased standardized tests and racist school administrators.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told reporters Monday that the administration is “looking closely” at reversing the Obama administration’s controversial approach to school discipline, which urged schools to take race into account when deciding whether to suspend a disruptive student. “It would be premature to say anything about that right now, but we want to make sure that all students have an opportunity to learn in an environment that’s safe,” she added. A 2014 guidance letter sent by Mrs. DeVos’s predecessor warned school districts that any racial imbalance in suspension and expulsion rates could trigger a federal civil-rights investigation. Given that black and Hispanic students are more likely to attend violent schools and thus more likely to become the targets of bullies, policies that go easy on misbehaving students inevitably hurt low-income minorities the most.

From Trades to Riches: Profiting from Past Mistakes

Spray painting walls and hotwiring cars are not experiences most business leaders look for in job candidates. But a new focus at Boys Town is not only teaching at-risk kids how to overcome past mistakes but also to learn – and profit – from them.

Of course, helping at-risk youth conquer daunting obstacles is nothing new. This December, Boys Town celebrates 100 years of providing love and support to neglected children.

Many students come to our community because they have lived in a world without parental affection, without structure or boundaries. Many act out because they are bored and simply seeking attention; others have faced unthinkable abuse and neglect.

And while our overall mission of helping kids build happy, healthy and successful futures has stayed the same over these 100 years, the means by which we do that have changed with society.

Nowadays, a lot of kids are told their whole lives that they need to go to college and are made to feel inadequate when they don’t have a shot. At Boys Town, many of the students grew up in environments where they never even had a voice telling them about college.

That’s why classes teaching trades – like automotive, welding and electrician skills – are the perfect tools to capture the attention of otherwise distracted students while conveying some of life’s most important responsibilities. Kids who used to spray paint in the streets can use their talents in a productive environment. As a more extreme example, I’ve seen kids who used to hotwire cars learn to fix an engine. We take their real-life experience and apply it toward a positive end.

New research has found that a college degree no longer guarantees a higher income. Trade school is seen as an increasingly viable option to fix the country’s income gap, as well as an answer to the competitive challenges found in a world driven by artificial intelligence.

Many pundits describe the Ivy League as “a hedge fund with classes.”

They are right, and Congress seems to agree. House and Senate Republicans are proposing a new 1.4 percent tax on endowment income for America’s richest private colleges – including the eight Ivy League schools.

Harvard President Drew Faust fiercely opposed the tax, claiming the school’s endowment is “at work in the world” not “locked away in some chest.” But Faust isn’t complaining about the largesse the Ivies receive from the federal government even though the Ivies have amassed an enormous endowment.During the spring, we released our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report: Ivy League, Inc. that showed how $42 billion in U.S. taxpayer subsidies, special tax-breaks, and Federal payments (contracts and grants) went into the eight Ivy League colleges during the past six years. In our comparison of federal contracting and grant payments, the Ivy League outranked sixteen state governments as a recipient of funds – despite amassing a $120 billion endowment.

Here are 10 reasons why tax reform should include the Ivy League:

Ivy League payments, subsidies and special tax treatment cost taxpayers $41.59 billion over a six-year period (FY2010-FY2015). This is equivalent to $120,000 in taxpayer-backed perks per undergraduate student, or $6.93 billion per year.
The Ivy League was the recipient of $25.73 billion worth of federal payments during this period: contracts ($1.37 billion), grants ($23.9 billion) and direct payments – student assistance ($460 million).
In monetary terms, the Ivy League’s “government contracting” business ($25.27 billion – federal contracts and grants) exceeded their educational mission ($22 billion in student tuition) FY2010-FY2015.
The eight colleges of the Ivy League received more money ($4.31 billion) on average annually from the federal government (contracts and grants alone) than sixteen states:see report.
The Ivy League endowment funds (2015) exceeded $119 billion, which is equivalent to nearly $2 million per undergraduate student. At current gift and investment growth rates, the Ivies are pacing for a collective $1 trillion endowment over the next twenty years.
As a non-profit, educational institution, the Ivy League pays no tax on investment gains. Between FY2011-FY2015, the Ivy League schools received a $9.6 billion tax break on the $27.3 billion growth of their endowment funds. In FY2014, the tax-free subsidy on endowment gains amounted to $3.4 billion, or nearly $60,000 per student.
With continued gifts at present rates, the $119 billion endowment fund is equivalent to free tuition to the entire student body in perpetuity. Without new gifts, the endowment is equivalent to a full-ride scholarship for all Ivy League undergraduate students for 51-years, or until 2068.
In FY2014, the balance sheet for all Ivy League colleges showed $194,332,115,120 in accumulated gross assets. This is equivalent to $3.35 million per undergraduate student.
The Ivy League employs 127 professors, administrators or executives who each earned more than $400,000 annually; 47 employees made more than $1 million a year; and four executives made more than $20 million each over the past five years.
In a five-year period (2010-2014) the Ivy League spent $17.8 million on lobbying, which included issues mostly related to their endowment, federal contracting, and immigration and student aid.

Gather ’round children! The Canadian Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario has some super interesting new information for you! First, we’re going to learn a new acronym. Can you say, “LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP?” Let’s try it to the tune of “Old MacDonald!” Everyone sing along! Next, we’ll learn what these letters mean. Are you ready?

L — Lesbian (everyone knows what this is, right?)

G — Gay (and I’m sure I don’t need to explain this to you smarties!)

G — Genderqueer Now this one is new. So let’s make sure we all understand what this means. “Genderqueer; denoting or relating to a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both, or a combination of male and female genders.” That’s easy, isn’t it, kids? Basically, this is a person who has no idea who or what xey are, okay?

B — Bisexual (That’s self-explanatory, isn’t it?)

D — Demisexual Oh boy! Another new one! Let’s get out the ever-expanding queer dictionary to figure it out! “A demisexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone.” This used to be known as monogamous love. But now we throw the word “sexual” on it to make it attractive to the kids. Got it?

T — Transgender (You all know all about this one! These are boys or girls who dress up like the opposite sex and want everyone to pretend not to notice!)

T — Transexual (You are familiar with these people too! Same as above, only they’ve gone through irreversible surgery to remove healthy body parts because feelings. Let them in your bathroom. Everything is fine.)

T — Two-Spirit Oh my goodness! How exciting! It’s another category no one on earth has ever heard of! This one is complicated, dear ones. For sure you have to be a Native American. And smoking a lot of peyotes could only help to understand what the heck a two-spirit is. It appears to be a third gender not yet discovered by science and only found in the Native American community by gender studies majors who take adventure vacations and hang out in sweat lodges.

I — Intersex (This is that very rare condition that we used to call hermaphrodite, where a child is born with both sex organs of male and female. It is very rare, as in, hardly ever happens. It is a birth defect.)

We are just motoring through all these new terms and if you need a snack to recharge, choose something high protein! We are going to need those brains functioning at peak capacity for this one!

Q — Queer Just when you thought you couldn’t use the word “queer” because it’s an insult, think again! It’s back! Queer is an umbrella term designed to describe all people who aren’t normies. I think. It’s hard to tell. These things do change on an almost daily basis.

Q — Questioning is a term used for people who are still deciding where they are going to fall on this list. It seems contradictory to the “born that way” theory—to have a bunch of people still questioning their sexuality—but the LGBTQWTF brigade says it’s fine, so rest assured, there’s nothing to question about questioning.

A — Asexual people have no interest in sex. This also used to be known as people who are married with kids. See the classic TV show “Married with Children” for an example.

On June 6, 1944, American soldiers risked their lives to storm the beaches of Normandy in what is known as D-Day. Fast-forward 74 years later, and you will find ungrateful students confused about their genders hiding in their safe spaces on the politically correct grounds of a college campus.

Yes, the cult-based schools in which you were once encouraged to express new ideas has now become a place to go and get brainwashed into conforming to leftist beliefs, all while leaving in crippling debt. Students and faculty can now prevent conservative speakers from appearing on the campuses by violently protesting without permits, and they are encouraged to do so. If any of the students hears something he does not like, he declares himself triggered and runs to a safe space.

This booming wave of crybabies are known as the Millennials, “a generation raised not to believe in freedom of speech, but rather that they should have freedom from speech.” According to FIRE, 54% of public and 59% of private universities impose politically correct speech codes. An example of the anti-First Amendment speech codes happened at a university in California on Constitution Day (September 17), 2013. A student was told he could not protest NSA surveillance outside the free speech zone, which made up only approximately 1.37% of the campus. My roommate had a personal story up at University of Minnesota, Duluth where his boss told him he must not refer to females as wo-men when designing school posters, as the inconvenient root may offend feminist activists on the campus. So there you have it: college campuses in today’s society are breeding grounds for fascism, while the students shroud themselves under the veil known as the safe space.

So how can we stop this nonsense? First, we eliminate safe spaces and promote the expression of new ideas instead of filtering out ones you do not like by aggressively coloring your anger out in a room filled with puppies (yes, these places do exist). Second, we allow students to assemble peacefully on campuses to express their ideas and beliefs without being shut down by protesting students who think they are right because they talk louder than their opposition. Third, we stop implementing political correctness in school handouts, posters, and newsletters. Fourth, we hire professors fit for the job, regardless of their ideological beliefs. They are there to teach, not to use their appeal to authority fallacy to push their biased political agendas. Lastly, we eliminate useless majors and subjects and departments that just waste money and are there only to persuade students into adopting their political agendas. There are too many students enrolling in majors that do not prepare them for a real job, and there are too many departments that segregate everyone on the basis of identity politics.

We need more students to rise up and start fighting back. We are stronger in number, and there are plenty of students from both sides of the political spectrum who agree that the political correctness and safe space culture on campuses is a violation of the First Amendment.

Two Stanford administrators present — Nanci Howe, associate dean and director of student affairs, and Snehal Naik, assistant dean and associate director of student affairs — not only nodded approvingly at the walk-out, but actively aided it, first by denying entry to many students who actually wanted to attend the event, and then by not allowing them to enter after the walkout, despite the fact that the auditorium was largely empty. They also forbade the hosts from live-streaming the talk on the Internet.

The reason for having to smear Robert Spencer was clear. Portraying him as someone who has led to the killing of Muslims was the way to try to have him banned from the campus, without abandoning the principle of free speech. Yet no student or faculty member produced a shred of evidence linking Spencer to violence against Muslims at Stanford or anywhere else. All they were able to produce as “proof” of Spencer’s incitement was the same libelous blurb on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.

What De Leon, Najaer, Beckman and Fine failed to mention was that a mere few months earlier, at the end of May, the Stanford student senate voted to fund an on-campus speech by the son of Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for orchestrating three deadly attacks.

It is no surprise that students at Stanford University disrupted best-selling author Robert Spencer’s lecture on November 14. Given the lead-up to his talk — “Jihad and the Dangers of Radical Islam: An Honest Discussion” — the scenario was scripted in advance, with the encouragement and support of the school’s administration.

As soon as the Stanford College Republicans invited Spencer, founder of the website Jihad Watch, to speak on campus — as part of the Fred. R. Allen Freedom Lecture Series, sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation — a concerted campaign was launched to prevent him from being allowed to set foot on the premises. Stanford students, faculty members and administrators published a steady stream of articles in the student publications the Stanford Daily and Stanford Review, claiming not only that Spencer was unqualified to speak to them — despite frequently addressing FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, military, and other government groups for years — but also pronounced that his presence threatened Muslim students on campus; that he enabled anti-Semitism; that his message deprived Muslims of “personhood;” and that he was endangering students by replying to their attacks on his website.

When that effort failed, they employed other means to intimidate Spencer and the students who wished to hear what he had to say. Not only did hundreds of protesters cause a disturbance outside the venue, but another 150 entered the auditorium, played Arabic music loudly to drown out what Spencer was saying, and then staged a mass walk-out minutes after the event began.

Two Stanford administrators present — Nanci Howe, associate dean and director of student affairs, and Snehal Naik, assistant dean and associate director of student affairs — not only nodded approvingly at the walk-out, but actively aided it, first by denying entry to many students who actually wanted to attend the event, and then by not allowing them to enter after the walkout, despite the fact that the auditorium was largely empty. They also forbade the hosts from live-streaming the talk on the Internet.