RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/04/a-is-for-activist-indoctrination-in-the-classroom/

If, through omission or commission, I have inadvertently displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, I apologize … —James Finn Garner

James Finn Garner’s 1994 satirical children’s book Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times has aged very well, albeit ironically. What was once a farcical parody of the trend towards political correctness and an incisive comment on the censorship of children’s literature could now be mistaken for one of the many earnest attempts to “clean up” the canon. The depiction of the woodsmen in “Little Red Riding Hood” as “sexist’, “species-ist” bigots and Garner’s reimagination of Cinderella’s fairy godmother as a male “Fairy Godperson” is now perversely de rigueur. Indeed, it would have Helen Adam of Edith Cowan University—one of the most recent Australian academics to call for traditional children’s books to be cancelled—very pleased indeed. Adam has highlighted ten classic children’s books that fail to showcase “diverse characters” and “perpetuate gender stereotypes” and she wants them scrapped.

Apparently, “children need to experience affirmation of their identities and respect and understanding for those who may be different to themselves”. That sounds quite reasonable until we delve further into Adam’s article and discover that it is built on the philosophies of critical theory and identity politics: the idea that power shapes all social relationships. She writes that educators’ “unconscious attitudes, practices and expectations” of children in class may “negatively impact self-confidence” and “reinforce gender stereotypes”. Further, these unconscious attitudes are so deeply ingrained they impact teachers’ selection of children’s books, causing further potential harm. Her solution? Read her instructional woke pamphlet (“Gender Equity in Early Childhood Picture Books”, Australian Educational Researcher) and follow! It even has references to the United Nations so it must be right.

What the terribly serious Adam and her ilk fail to recognise is that while unconscious attitudes undoubtedly exist, and may cause harm, like anything else, her iconoclastic position is a conscious, and very loud, assault on individual identity itself. Identity politics reduces individuals to mere mouthpieces of the collective that defines them, and so dialogues between individuals are reduced to power struggles between groups they belong to. You don’t engage with your opponents because there is no “you”—only your group exercising power in the interest of the group’s identity. By this logic it follows that the woodsmen in “Little Red Riding Hood” cannot be read as individual men, and certainly not heroic ones, but must be read as “sexist” and “species-ist” products of a human-centric patriarchal society that must be overthrown. The result? Silence instead of discussion: the bones of cancel culture.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/15/parental-choice-is-proliferating-nationwide/

Just 100 days into the year, educational freedom seems to be unstoppable.

Wresting total control of America’s schoolchildren from the government-union educational complex is moving apace. 2021 was declared “The Year of Education Choice,” when 19 states enacted 32 new or expanded educational choice policies, and West Virginia became the first state in the country to establish universal school choice in the form of an education savings account (ESA). This type of choice allows parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted but multiple uses. Those funds can cover private school tuition and fees, online learning programs, private tutoring, community college costs, and other higher education expenses.

While many choice programs existed prior to the Mountain State’s Hope Scholarship, they all came with restrictions—typically limited to special ed students or children whose families were near the poverty line.

Last year, Arizona became the second state to jump aboard the “school choice for all” train. And in the first 100 or so days into 2023, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, and Florida have followed suit. 

But wait, there is so much more!

Oklahoma, Ohio, Wyoming, Texas, Nebraska, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kansas, and Pennsylvania are working on school choice bills. In Georgia, Republicans in the state House recently helped defeat a choice bill, but it may come back for consideration next year.

Why is this happening at such breakneck speed now? Clearly the teacher union-led COVID-related shutdown mandates which closed schools all over the country is a major reason. But as Heritage Foundation scholars Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick explain, there is another factor. While they acknowledge that traditionally, school choice has been successful in red states, that is changing. Now, more and more families in suburban and rural areas are concerned about the kinds of values their children are being taught in public schools. “Radical academic content and school practices are not confined to large urban school districts on the coasts. Even in small towns across America’s heartland, public-school staffs have become emboldened to impose values on students that are strongly at odds with those preferred by parents.”

American Enterprise Institute fellow Robert Pondiscio sums it up succinctly, “School Choice Winning Streak? It’s Culture War, Stupid.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/ny-court-vindicates-parental-authority-in-education

Late last month, the ongoing battle between the New York State Education Department (NYSED) and a small group of Orthodox Jewish schools took a surprising turn. For the better part of a decade, the NYSED has been battling these schools over the quality of the education they provide, arguing that they fail to meet the basic educational standards required by New York law. For that reason, this past fall, the NYSED enacted new regulations setting out a process to assess the instruction provided in nonpublic schools and, when a school fails to meet state standards, ensuring its closure. Not surprisingly, a number of Jewish organizations and schools filed suit against the new regulations. But instead of deciding the case based on big-ticket constitutional questions, a New York court invalidated the regulations on grounds that put the obligation to meet educational standards on parents, not on schools. In so doing, the court severely undermined the NYSED’s ability to regulate nonpublic schools.

New York education law requires that, when minors receive “instruction” outside a public school, the instruction “shall be at least substantially equivalent to the instruction given to minors of like age and attainments at the public schools of the city or district where the minor resides.” This “substantially equivalent” standard has been on the books in New York since the late nineteenth century.

Recent controversies have stemmed from complaints that a small group of Orthodox Jewish schools—primarily Hasidic schools—are failing to meet state standards. After some false starts, the NYSED enacted rules this past fall establishing a process for reviewing whether nonpublic schools were meeting the “substantially equivalent” requirement. If a school receives a final determination that it has failed to meet state standards, the penalties are severe. Under such circumstances, “the nonpublic school shall no longer be deemed a school,” in compliance with the state’s compulsory education law, and parents with children in that school are required “to enroll their children in a different, appropriate educational setting.” In sum, the school must close.

Various Jewish institutions and schools filed suit against the new regulations. According to their complaint, the regulations both exceeded the legal authority of the NYSED and, more dramatically, violated their constitutional rights, including their religious liberty, free speech, due process, and equal protection rights. Indeed, the lawsuit seemed destined to be fought out on the terrain of the Fourteenth Amendment, which ensures parents’ rights to control the upbringing of their children. This right, to be sure, is balanced against the government’s obligation to ensure that children receive an education that enables them to be economically self-sufficient and civically engaged. Figuring out where to draw the line between parental and government authority appeared to be the crux of the legal challenge.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/13/fraudulent-studies-withdrawn-as-professor-is-caught-faking-the-racism-narrative-n1686852

Remember how during Trump’s presidency, the media went to great lengths to push the narrative that Trump inspired an increase in racism and hate crimes?

And then it felt like many of the hate crimes reported in the media were actually hoaxes?

It didn’t stop the mainstream media from perpetuating the false narrative that Trump was to blame for a rise in hate crimes. Why? Because it appealed to the left’s ideology. The left wants to believe that America is a bigoted, racist country, and blaming Trump for it was the icing on the cake — and they made sure they had their slice and ate it, too. Even though it blew up in their faces over and over again.

And it’s about to again.

It turns out that years of racism studies by Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart have been determined to be fraudulent, forcing him to leave his cushy $190,000-per-year job.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-council-on-academic-freedom-professors-free-speech-steven-pinker-bertha-madras-6ac96bc4?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Conservatives are so few at American universities that the battle to restore respect for free and open debate will have to be led by what used to be known as traditional liberals. Well, maybe there’s hope. On Wednesday Harvard University said it’s forming a new faculty-led Council on Academic Freedom dedicated to the free exchange of ideas as a cornerstone of “reason and rational discourse.”

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Harvard professors Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras write that “an academic establishment that stifles debate betrays the privileges that the nation grants it.” Free speech, they write, is also essential to human progress. Intellectual orthodoxy “is bound to provide erroneous guidance on vital issues like pandemics, violence, gender, and inequality.”

The professors note that although they are comfortable with expressing controversial or unorthodox views, others on campus are not. Tenure no doubt helps. But the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy is powerful at Harvard and the school ranks 170 out of 203 in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s free speech list. Mr. Pinker and Ms. Madras acknowledge the school has had “cases of disinvitation, sanctioning, harassment, public shaming, and threats of firing and boycotts for the expression of disfavored opinions.”

The academic freedom group includes former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former dean of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine Jeffrey Flier, law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, economist Gregory Mankiw, social ethics professor Mahzarin R. Banaji and Islamic intellectual history professor Khaled El-Rouayheb, among others across the ideological spectrum.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/higher-ed-must-choose-merit-over-identity

Editor’s note: The following is adapted from the author’s remarks at a debate arguing the resolution, “Resolved, that academic DEI programs should be abolished,” co-hosted by the MIT chapter of the Adam Smith Society and the MIT Free Speech Alliance on April 4.

I start from the following proposition: being female is not an accomplishment. My being female should play no role in my being hired for a job. Of course, my sex undoubtedly has made me the target of sex preferences on numerous occasions, thus casting doubt on any actual qualifications I might presume to possess.

My being female should be particularly irrelevant in a university. Until recently, universities were dedicated to the Enlightenment ideal of universal knowledge. A male Chinese engineer and a female Nigerian engineer may have no spoken language in common, but they can communicate through the universal languages of mathematics and physics. Whether the buildings they erect stand or fall depends not on their nationality or sex but on their mastery of engineering principles.

I will go further. Being black, gay, or gender-fluid are also not accomplishments, and should have nothing to do with faculty hiring or student admissions. The only thing that should matter when, say, a medical school hires a researcher in pancreatic cancer is whether that oncologist is the best in his field.

The diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy is the nemesis of the Enlightenment ideal of knowledge. It puts relentless pressure on every academic department to hire on the basis of race and sex, not on the basis of intellectual achievement. Every faculty search today is a desperate effort to find even remotely qualified minority or female candidates. Being female or a non-Asian minority confers an enormous advantage in the hiring and tenure process.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/09/trans-ideology-is-destroying-the-university/

Academia is now hostile to free thought – especially when it comes to the trans debate. Few cases demonstrate this as clearly as that of London-based sociologist Dr Laura Favaro.

Last week, Favaro started a crowdfunding campaign to help her take her employer – City, University of London – to an employment tribunal. Favaro claims she was ostracised and ultimately dismissed by her university after writing about some of her research findings, which showed that gender-critical academics are terrified of openly expressing their views.

In 2020, Favaro joined City as a postdoctoral research fellow, where her main topic of study was the debate surrounding sex and gender. As part of her research, Favaro conducted interviews with 50 gender-studies academics on both sides of the trans debate, across multiple disciplines and universities. The gender-critical feminists she interviewed told her they face unrelenting harassment and intimidation. Some even claimed that their career progression had been blocked because of their views. Last year, Favaro wrote up some of these findings in Times Higher Education. Her research left her ‘in no doubt that a culture of discrimination, silencing and fear has taken hold across universities in England and many countries beyond’.

Favaro was warned by her interviewees that her research could get her into serious trouble. It was not uncommon, Favaro said, for participants to tell her that ‘everybody is going to hate you’ for talking openly about the culture of silence around sex and gender in universities. After her THE piece was published, those warnings quickly came true.

Favaro claims on her crowdfunding page that City was bombarded with vexatious complaints, which branded her research ‘unethical’. An investigation by City found these claims to be baseless. Nevertheless, she says she was ostracised and frozen out by her department. She claims she faced bullying and harassment from a senior colleague. She also alleges there were attempts to persuade her to destroy interview transcripts. Eventually, she was dismissed, despite being on a fixed-term contract. City is then alleged to have prevented her from accessing the data she collected, and to have locked the email account she had used to communicate with participants in her study. In short, Favaro allegedly faced exactly the kind of hostile treatment that her research was trying to draw attention to.

There is now a long line of academics who have been attacked and censored for speaking out against trans orthodoxy. Philosophy professor Kathleen Stock, author of Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism, was infamously hounded out of her role at the University of Sussex in 2021, after students waged a relentless campaign against her. In 2018, Rosa Freedman at the University of Reading found her door covered in urine after she spoke out against gender self-identification. Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at Oxford University, revealed in 2020 that she needs bodyguards to accompany her to lectures. The list goes on.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/09/stanford-and-yale-are-elite-no-more/

Once among the West’s most prestigious institutions, Stanford and Yale are now beset with addicts of ideology who bring them to shame. Recent crises there are vivid episodes in the decline of Western institutions, which now face a choice: Will they, like libertine scions, insist every hungover morning that their namesakes hide their spreading notoriety? Or will they sober up?

At Stanford Law School last month, Judge Kyle Duncan of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit came to speak on the rather academic topic of inter-court dialectic. A federal judge of any stripe used to be welcomed on a law-school campus like a legal celebrity. Federal judges have reached the pinnacle of their careers, and learning how they think should be the keen interest of would-be lawyers everywhere because persuading federal judges is how top lawyers get paid top dollar.

But at Stanford, supposedly a top training ground for future lawyers, Judge Duncan was greeted like a nun in a crack house by the school’s Woke cartel.

Students heckled him. “We hope your daughters get raped,” one shouted. Another screamed, “you scumbag!” One stood up and said, “I f— men. I can find the prostate. Why can’t you find the cl–?” Judge Duncan was unable even to begin his remarks before federal marshals had to whisk him off campus.

Before a few years ago, law students almost never acted this way. If they did, they regretted it. At the University of Chicago Law School, one student led the heckling of a speaking event, and he got expelled. But now, at law schools that are supposed to be our nation’s best, heckling is common—while consequences are scarce.

At Yale Law School last year, hundreds of students heckled a panel of Supreme Court lawyers. They raised their middle fingers. They stomped their feet and banged on the walls. One even screamed “b–ch!” None faced discipline.

These are students who have hit rock bottom, and the mark of their rock bottom is the mark of any addict’s, whether of substance or of ideology. It’s angry self-abasement. Their public vulgarity is their point because it’s a revenge they exact at the expense of their own dignity. By covering themselves in muck, they can say to their targets, “welcome to the pig sty: this is where you belong.”

https://nypost.com/2023/04/06/cornell-stanford-stand-up-to-woke-mobs-for-free-speech/

On March 31, I reported that Cornell’s student assembly unanimously voted to require trigger warnings for “traumatic” classroom lessons.

The resolution would have required the university’s professors to warn students about materials or lectures with topics “including but not limited to” sexual assault, domestic violence, self-harm, suicide, child abuse, racial hate crimes, transphobic violence, homophobic harassment and xenophobia.

While trigger warnings might be well-intentioned attempts to protect sensitive students, many researchers are finding they aren’t all that effective.

They also run the risk of chilling speech and causing professors — who can’t possibly anticipate what might trigger each student — to self-censor.

As I asked, “Is the implication that college students are too weak and feeble to hear the truth?”

But there’s some good news.

On Monday, Cornell president Martha Pollack and provost Michael Kotlikoff responded to the student assembly with a resounding “No!”

In an email to the student assembly, the pair said the trigger warning policy “violates our faculty’s fundamental right to determine what and how to teach” and could even tarnish the “academic distinction of a Cornell degree.”

They affirmed the policy “would unacceptably limit our students’ ability to speak, questio, and explore, lest a classroom conversation veer into an area determined ‘off-limits.’”