RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/01/why-universities-should-get-rid-of-dei-statements/                                                                                                        

Many U.S. universities, including MIT, our alma mater, now require Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) statements in applications for tenure-track professorships, and even for graduate students.  In many cases it is the first filter for applicants, so you may be the new Einstein but if your DEI statement says something like, “I treat all people equally regardless of race or gender,” you will be out of luck.  As discussed below, that isn’t what is meant by DEI, which demands fealty to equity – that is, equal outcomes – not equal opportunity free of discrimination.

Mandatory political pronouncements such as the anti-Communist oaths of the 1950s and 1960s were long ago ruled unconstitutional by U.S. courts. And given the recent Supreme Court decisions regarding affirmative action and freedom of speech, mandatory DEI statements should also be eliminated.

What is DEI, and why might there be objections, legal and ethical, to it?

Let’s start with the words themselves. Here is what Google (via Oxford Languages) says for Diversity: “the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.”  

Note what is not there: anything about a range of different ideas or viewpoints. But it is new ideas that will define future progress, not superficial differences such as skin color, ethnicity, or gender. And how does this comport with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s invocation to judge men not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? Have we abandoned that?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-education-establishments-radical-new-ploys/

The results of a Gallup poll released earlier this month show that just 28% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in K-12 public schools. The number for Republicans is particularly damning: Just 14% of GOPers view education in a positive light.

Confidence in higher education has also taken a hit, with just 36% of those polled saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, down from 48% in 2018 and 57% in 2015.

Additionally, there is little hope on the horizon that things will change for the better. This month, NWEA, a student assessment organization, released a new report which reveals that students progressed more slowly in reading and math during the 2022–23 school year than in pre-pandemic years. In other words, during the past school year, most students fell further behind.

Mushrooming Spending

The money-grubbing educrats and unionistas can’t blame lack of funding as an excuse. The feds have poured $190 billion into education to make amends for the Covid-related school shutdowns. But a 10-month examination by The 74 reveals that, while some school districts have used the monies properly, some haven’t used the money yet, while others have “pumped millions of dollars into classroom additions, upgrading athletic fields and other expenditures unrelated to the pandemic.”

Some districts invested funds in silly things like “fidget cubes” and aromatherapy supplies. Worse, many districts involved themselves in shady business deals. In San Joaquin County, CA, a state district attorney launched a criminal probe into the Stockton Unified School District for spending “roughly $7 million on ultraviolet air purifiers from a company linked to a former mayor with a history of legal trouble. A state audit pointed to the board’s decision to approve the contract even though district staff gave the proposal a low rating. Less than half of the 2,200 filters purchased were installed, and the rest are stored in a warehouse.”

And the situation is about to get worse. As Linda Jacobson reports in The 74, the funds are going to run out in about a year when the drunken sailor-type spending ends. Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, explains, “Deficits will creep up quickly and really destabilize a district. In the end, the students will suffer if districts wait too long to rein in their spending.”

https://thespectator.com/topic/william-shakespeare-black-white-race/

Sarah Karim-Cooper first came to public attention at the cosmetics counter. Her book on makeup in Renaissance theater, Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama, was published in 2006. Its enduring popularity is not so much a testament to her scholarly insights on powdered hogs’ bones mixed with poppy oil — the old stage recipe for pale skin — or Shakespeare’s sardonic references to the kind of beauty “purchased by the weight” in The Merchant of Venice, as to Karim-Cooper’s celebrity: for more than a decade she’s been one of the leading racializers of Shakespeare’s work.

Perhaps the key moment in her rise to fame was her 2018 curation of the Globe Theatre’s first “Shakespeare and Race Festival,” now held annually. Those who are scratching their heads trying to think where, besides Othello, or perhaps Shylock, you can find “race” in Shakespeare, should hie them to the postmodern cosmetic counter. Race is not where we find it — it is where we put it. And Karim-Cooper puts it everywhere.

In 2018 the hype explained: “This festival will highlight the importance of race to the consideration of Shakespeare not only in his time, but more urgently, in our own.” The festival included a lecture by Kimberlé Crenshaw, better known on this side of the Atlantic as an inventor of “Critical Race Theory” and the concept of “intersectionality” — the notion that people who fall into more than one stigmatized category suffer more than the sum of their grievances.

You may be sure that Karim-Cooper is on top of this. She has been effacing Shakespeare professionally for some seventeen years at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, where she is currently co-director of education and research. She is also professor of Shakespeare studies at King’s College, London, and has written prolifically on the bard and Jacobean theater. This month, Penguin Random House will release her newest book, The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/transgender-secrecy-policies-at-public-schools

More than 10 million American children attend public school in districts that require employees to hide students’ gender transitions from their parents. The revelation of how widespread secrecy polices are comes thanks to a list compiled by the parental-rights advocacy organization Parents Defending Education. While the prevalence of these policies is alarming in itself, the philosophy underlying them is what parents should be most concerned about.

Districts are using legal theories pushed by activist groups like the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Among the most important are that children have a federally guaranteed right to privacy from their parents in school, that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes children’s right to transition without the consent or knowledge of their parents, and that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects transgender students from the “harassment” of school districts “outing” them to non-compliant parents. The Title IX theory, the most chilling, is supported by the radically progressive notion that parents represent a danger to the welfare of transgender children until they prove otherwise by providing “affirmation.”

School districts that buy into these theories are not merely embracing the idea that hiding children’s gender transitions from their parents is legal, but that divulging the information without the child’s consent is illegal and possibly perilous to the student’s safety. In Dover, Pennsylvania, for example, a mother of a middle school student castigated a local school board after discovering that school staff had been addressing her 12-year-old daughter with male pronouns for a year. School officials even sent the child to a hospital for an evaluation without informing the parents. When the mother confronted the school board, she was told that there was a law against informing her. School boards in Chico, California, New Castle, Maine, and beyond have said the same.

No such law exists, however—and the legal theories pushed by activist groups to legitimize secrecy policies are baseless.

The law that districts most commonly cite is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). That’s likely due to boilerplate policy language promulgated by GLSEN that claims FERPA establishes a child’s right to privacy from their parents. This interpretation of the law is also pushed by public education groups like the Pennsylvania School Counselors Association, which told a local media outlet that “Transgender and nonbinary students have a FERPA-protected right to privacy.”

Teresa R. Manning is Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars, Vice-President of the Virginia Association of Scholars, and a former law professor at Scalia Law School, George Mason University. 

Last month, two conservative groups made court filings to oppose Florida’s anti-woke law: The Academic Freedom Alliance (“AFA”) joined the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”) challenging the statute’s constitutionality.

The Florida law bans promotion of divisive concepts, based on race or sex, in the educational setting. Its language is similar to President Trump’s Executive Order 13950 which applied to the federal workforce but was withdrawn when Biden took office.

Challengers claim that the Florida law chills the free speech rights of professors and therefore violates both the First Amendment and what is called “academic freedom,” a term that is variously defined but here refers to the right of professors to teach as they see fit.

The law is actually a laudable and constitutionally sound measure to rein in the political radicalism and race-baiting that are so rampant in American schools and especially in universities. Most have heard of anti-American teaching materials such as the New York Times 1619 Project, which says that America is inherently racist, or the concepts of “white privilege,” which teach that Americans of European descent (“whites”) are “oppressors,” and even “race shaming” where teachers separate students by race, calling some groups “permanent oppressors” and others “permanently oppressed,” recently exposed and denounced by Moms in Duvall County, Florida.

The legal arguments against Florida’s law are misguided and lack merit. In fact, those committed to Martin Luther King Jr.’s principle – that we be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character – should be thanking Florida officials for this legislation, not suing them.

One irony here is that the law actually forbids attempts at thought control, notwithstanding press reports to the contrary. Obviously, fighting thought control is a good thing. The law therefore secures greater freedom of inquiry and expression, not less.

For example, the law’s first provision reads in relevant part:

Subjecting any individual …. to required activity that … compels such individual to believe any of the following [racist] concepts constitutes discrimination based on race ….

The law therefore forbids compelling individuals to believe or parrot something. What’s objectionable here?

The law then gives examples of bigoted, divisive concepts that cannot be imposed. The list includes: 1) that one race is superior to another; 2) that individuals of one race, by virtue of that race, suffer from “unconscious bias;” 3) that one’s moral character is determined by race; and 4) that individuals can be held responsible, or punished, for actions committed in the past by other members of their race.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/07/english-a-discipline-in-search-of-a-purpose/

Only in the world of English teaching could you leave an industry conference feeling more confused about the purpose of your discipline than when you arrived. This conference was held in February by VATE (the Victorian Association of Teaching English) bringing secondary English teachers and department leaders from across Victoria to Deakin University. The dark cloud hanging over the industry, in the form of a national teacher shortage, did not dissuade the typical good-natured banter and cheerful complaining between the mutually fatigued.

Teachers became students as the day was divided into several sessions broken by recess and lunch. Those from the independent schools made comparisons between who had done a better job of gaming their median study score the previous year through tactical enrolments and expulsions, while those from state schools looked over in envy before turning to each other with tall tales of wrangling delinquents and plucking gems from the great unwashed masses. Scattered throughout the room were a few fearful whispers of ChatGPT. As a teacher two years into his career, I was here to learn how to better teach English—but what is teaching English?

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/19/the-latest-in-teacher-union-ugly/

Earlier this month, the National Education Association held its yearly “Representative Assembly” in Orlando, Florida. A visitor from another planet might think that a gathering of teachers would find them concentrating on the tragic learning loss caused by the devastating COVID-related shutdowns, the shockingly high rates of violence against teachers or ways to improve the profession.

Hardly. This year’s theme centered around the “freedom to learn.” No, not learn the ABCs, but rather the debauched material that has become all the rage in public schools in recent years. And, of course, Florida and its feisty governor, Ron DeSantis, were the focal points of much of the unionistas’ scorn and outrage.

According to the NEA, the mood at the convention was “sober, but also defiant.” But at least one person was not at all sober. “You look magnificent!” shrieked NEA President Becky Pringle at a rally of teachers waving signs and rainbow flags. “Florida is our ground zero for shameful, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic rhetoric and dangerous actions. You are showing what it means to fight against out-of-touch politicians like Ron DeSantis.”

As shown by this year’s New Business Items (messages of concern from the hoi-polloi to the NEA aristocracy), the union faithful were certainly in sync with Pringle. For instance, NBI 4 asserts, “The NEA will inform states and locals of the following sample language that may be put in contracts and policies that is LGBTQIA+ inclusive. The language will be as follows: ‘Parental leave’ instead of ‘maternity leave,’ ‘parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father,’ ‘birthing parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father,’ and ‘non-birthing parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father.’”

NBI 88 wants the NEA to declare a national educator day of action whose purpose is to rally – among other things – to “protect LGBTQIA+ students and educators including the right to gender-affirming care…and stop book bans.”

And speaking of “banned” books, the union’s “Great Summer Reads for Educators” includes kiddie porn like Gender Queer, which graphically depicts young people indulging in various kinds of sex. (It’s interesting that this “banned book” is on a reading list for teachers and is available on Amazon and in local public libraries. The union’s snit is over the fact that Florida does not want the book in school libraries – just as Playboy and Penthouse do not grace their shelves).

Another book on the NEA’s suggested reading list is Ready Player One, which explicitly describes blow-up sex dolls, online brothels and masturbation.

While sex is featured in many of the selections, other over-the-edge books are on the list. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism is suggested reading.

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2023/07/18/nyu-law-exposed-courses-teach-human-reproduction-is-oppression-n1711744

This is part seven of PJ Media’s jaunt through the courses taught at the nation’s top ten law schools: “Do They Teach Law Anymore?”

Hans von Spakovsky and I are marching through the top ten ranked law schools by U.S. News and World Report and sharing with you what is being taught inside. The militancy and uselessness of the curriculum may astound many of you.

I already exposed the top-ranked law school,Yale, then Chicago and Harvard. Hans covered number two, Stanford, and also Columbia and Penn.

We have arrived at #7 — New York University School of Law, a school so obsessed with its image that it publishes a “branding guide” if you want to write about it.

We’ve shown that the radicalized course offerings at the previous six schools demonstrate that these elite law schools have become training academies not so much for effective and competent lawyers, but instead for militant and transformational radicals with a law degree.

It affects the nation as well as your lives. These graduates from elite law schools have outsized influence in government, on the courts, and in academia and corporate America.  They have enjoyed an elevated brand, free from scrutiny from mainstream Americans.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/college-racism/

The Left is angry because the Supreme Court ruled race-based affirmative action unconstitutional. President Joe Biden says he “strongly disagrees.”

But Chief Justice John Roberts was right to say, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

It’s a victory for Students for Fair Admissions, the group that sued, thereby forcing Harvard to admit that Asians had to score 22 points higher on the SAT than whites, 63 points higher than Blacks.

How did Harvard justify that? They said Americans of Asian descent score lower in personal attributes, like “likability.”

“Asian Americans are boring little grade grubbers,” complains the Asian American Legal Foundation’s Lee Cheng, in my video on race-based admissions. “That’s bulls–t,” he adds.

Economist Harry Holzer, who defended Harvard, says the school did the right thing.

“Asians are not interesting?” I ask. “They don’t have interesting qualities?”

“Personal ratings reflect a wide range of characteristics,” Holzer responds. “It’s possible that some of that is anti-Asian bias, but you certainly can’t prove that. … When you have a long history of discrimination based on race, you have to take race into account.”

“There are many, many, different ways to achieve diversity without discriminating against Asian Americans,” Cheng responds. “Race-focused affirmative action helps rich people. Seventy percent of the students of every ethnic group at Harvard come from the top 20 percent of family income.”

But Asians already do well in America, earning more money, on average, than other ethnic groups. Blacks have faced more discrimination. “Isn’t it Harvard’s job to try to make up for some of that?” I ask Cheng.

“The right path out of the history of discrimination based on race is not more discrimination,” he replies.

Cheng is right. Affirmative action is racist, and therefore wrong.

I once tried to make that point by holding a racist bake sale. I called it an “affirmative action bake sale.” I sold cupcakes at a mall. My sign read:

Asians — $1.50

Whites — $1.00

Blacks/Latinos — 50 cents

https://www.city-journal.org/article/vanishing-families-shrinking-schools

Public school districts in large cities, many facing budget squeezes from plunging enrollments driven by parental discontent over Covid-19 policies, are unlikely to find relief anytime soon. The latest census data show that families with the preschool-age children who would form the next generation of students are abandoning cities, especially big ones, at unprecedented levels. The combination of outmigration and a slowdown in births is thus accelerating a trend that emerged even before Covid: cities with fewer and fewer children as a percentage of the overall population. Though the trend is most pronounced in states where population growth has lagged, like New York and Illinois, it’s also happening in growing places like Texas, suggesting a broad retrenchment by families with young children, especially to so-called “exurban” areas beyond cities and suburbs. Struggling school districts from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles have seen “massive” hemorrhaging of students, in the words of New York City mayor Eric Adams.

The population of young children, from newborns to age four, has been declining nationally because of a shrinking birth rate, but the losses are most pronounced in big cities, according to a new study by the Economic Innovation Group. Since the pandemic began, the under-five population of large urban areas has shrunk at about 6.1 percent, nearly twice the national rate. Declines in suburban counties are much smaller—about 1.6 percent since April 2020. And in the exurbs, the youthful population has grown modestly since the pandemic began.