RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.newsweek.com/chinas-trojan-horse-confucius-institutes-persist-campuses-opinion-1725085

Would any sane nation permit its enemies to freely propagandize at its educational institutions; intimidate faculty into silence, self-censorship, and complicity in enemy information operations; and hold funds over said institutions’ heads as leverage?

If the answer is a resounding “No,” as it should be, then it is hard to see the American academy as anything other than insane—and dangerously so—when it comes to China and its Confucius Institutes, as a bombshell report from the National Association of Scholars (NAS) makes clear.

The report demonstrates that news of Confucius Institutes’ death in America has been greatly exaggerated. The story of Confucius Institutes in America is a cautionary tale illustrating the ability of China to weather efforts to combat its malign machinations, and the corruption of the very institutions that ought to be standing as bulwarks against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The CCP’s modus operandi in its long march towards global hegemony has been to encourage “open,” seemingly non-hostile relations with foreign nations to penetrate, exploit, and influence them. The West has for decades, both out of greed and naiveté, been all too willing to comply. Confucius Institutes, which began appearing in the U.S. in 2005, and came under heightened scrutiny during the Donald Trump presidency, were but one aspect of China’s game.

Evidence emerged that of the more than 100 institutes on college campuses at their peak, these purported centers of U.S.-Chinese cultural exchange, which sometimes offered for-credit classes, were funded, guided, and staffed by and in accordance with the CCP, serving as Trojan horses for the regime that enabled it to project soft power.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/resegregating-american-education/

The Biden administration and progressives are encouraging schools to separate students along racial lines — an unforgivable step backwards.

It took 86 years from the ratification of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection to the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and therefore unconstitutional. With support from the Biden administration and the complicity of the Department of Justice, it has taken less than 70 years for radical leftists to reimpose separate educational facilities under the guise of promoting equity.

More than a year after its Freedom of Information Act request, Judicial Watch this month received records from District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) that show D.C. officials are providing segregated “affinity spaces” for its teachers and other staff on the basis of race and sexual identity. A September 2021 DCPS presentation explains, “Affinity spaces are gathering opportunities for people who share a common identity. This space will be organized based on the racial identities represented in Central Office as we aim to lean into the Courageous Conversation condition of isolating race.”

A form included in the presentation asks respondents to submit their pronouns and to select the racial affinity group(s) they intend to join. The choices are: Asian American/Pacific Islander, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Indigenous/Native American, Multi-Racial, and White. The form also asks if respondents are interested in new LGBTQIA+ affinity spaces. Those spaces are divided into BIPOC (Black/Indigenous/People of Color) LGBTQIA+ and White LGBTQIA+.

A June 2021 email setting the agenda for a meeting at Marie Reed Elementary School explains that the “goal of these affinity groups is to create a safe space among colleagues to process the impacts of racism and white supremacy within our school community and identify collective actions to take as individuals and as groups.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/how-universities-weaponize-freshman-orientation/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=second

Instead of simply informing students about the resources on campus, orientation can amount to an ideological hazing.

I arrived at Princeton University in September 2019. I had looked at Princeton online and thought, “one day . . .” Suddenly, I was experiencing day one. My eager arrival on campus was emotionally amplified by bright smiles, copious pamphlets, and dormitory supervisors dancing in tiger suits. Orientation innocently began with introductions of names and hometowns — then descended into divisive lectures and panels. The intention of these programs was not to assimilate us into our new (and intimidating) surroundings, but rather to coerce students into accepting and affirming a resident orthodoxy.

We often hear about how college students are indoctrinated in the classroom. But the brainwashing begins on move-in day.

Ideally, freshman orientation should be a procedural, social assimilation to familiarize students with the resources the university offers and how to access them. However, Princeton University undertook a mission to present incoming students with sexual, moral, and political guidance, wholly omitting widely held perspectives and effectively insulating progressive views from intellectual trial. Moreover, attendance at these events was compulsory, thus constituting an ideological hazing.

The mandatory “Safer Sexpo” event series within orientation provides condoms, lube, and other sexual products; in 2020, the university provided unspecified “sex toys” to students and emphasized “solo sex.” Each year, freshmen are given a “You’re So Sexy When You Aren’t Transmitting STI’s” comic book with crude pornographic drawings, complete with a condom attached to the back; the author’s website clarifies that “the ideal target audience for this book is college campuses and sex positive organizations that are involved with young people and adults.” Students are informed where they can obtain contraception, abortifacients, and abortions, but there’s no mention of local pregnancy centers. There is a mandatory LGBTQ+ panel, which provides flyers of “The Genderbread Person” diagram. The Gender + Sexuality Resource Center Peer Ed Training Terminology handouts include a “primer on trans inclusive feminism” which explains that “trans women are women” and “there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it.” The Way You Move play includes characters hooking up without regret; meanwhile, an abstinent character is nonexistent.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/13/the-search-for-a-new-mit-president-the-key-considerations/

The incumbent president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. L. Rafael Reif, will step down at the end of 2022, and a search committee has been formed to name his replacement. What qualities should his successor have, we wondered?

To answer that, we must first ask: What is MIT’s history, and what should it be now? We, two alumni who graduated decades ago, remember MIT as a mecca of cutting-edge science and technology. Two of the professors who taught us were Nobel laureates; and others boasted achievements like being the pioneer of strobe photography; another was the “father of molecular medicine,” for having discovered the mutation that causes sickle-cell anemia; and several had worked on the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bombs that ended World War II. Students could often work for these professors, in addition to getting a rigorous world-class technical education. (And we do mean rigorous.) Perhaps most critical of all, we learned problem-solving, an integral part of our coursework from day one, and of our lives post-graduation.

MIT should also be a place where intellectual ferment routinely takes place, where new and different ideas are welcomed and debated openly, and where every person is treated equally based on his or her abilities, achievements, and effort. Unfortunately, MIT has drifted away from this ethic. It is imperative that the new president address this.

What are the symptoms of this drift? The most obvious is an internal poll of MIT faculty taken in fall of 2021. In that poll, well over 50% of faculty answered yes to the question, “Do you feel on an everyday basis that your voice, or the voices of your colleagues are constrained at MIT?”

The responses to another question were even more chilling: “Are you worried given the current atmosphere in society that your voice or your colleagues’ voices are increasingly in jeopardy?“  More than 77% answered “Yes.” If even 10% of your faculty answers either of these questions affirmatively, you have a problem. The fact that over half did so indicates an emergency. And yet the current administration sputters on as if nothing is wrong and, in fact, doubles down on demanding and enforcing “wokeness” and political correctness.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/social-justice-factory-and-bidens-title-ix-richard-l-cravatts/

In June, the Biden administration’s Department of Education rolled out new Title IX guidelines related to how schools must address sexual discrimination and widening the areas of personal interaction and who would be protected under the new rules.

The new language goes beyond sexual interaction and harassment germane to existing Title IX statutes and has broadened the types of incidents and various individuals who would now be protected.

In fact, the 701-page Biden Title IX regulations “Clarify the Department’s view of the scope of Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination, including related to a hostile environment under the recipient’s education program or activity, as well as discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity [emphasis added].”

The real question is not whether or not individuals who identify as belonging to the opposite gender from which they were born are correct in identifying as such. That is certainly their right. The problem for universities—and the students and faculty who are part of those communities—is whether one person’s gender dysphoria, sexual preference, or attitudes about gender and sexuality in general can, or should, compel others to not only agree with a biologically impossible reality, but to treat the transgender person with special deference or be punished for not admitting belief in something that is counterfactual, against religious beliefs, or transparently false.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/determining_objective_information_versus_indoctrination.html

Critical thinking is paramount in determining the validity of documents.  But how does one identify indoctrination when it is couched in alleged compassion for people?  What is the veracity test?  What questions need to be posed?  What research is required?

Recently, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an independent non-profit organization, created a document titled “Confronting and Preventing Hate in Canadian Schools.”  On the surface, this sounds laudable.

In the introduction, a reader is introduced to the Western States Center.

Western States Center [WSC] is one of the United States’ leading organizations working to combat white nationalism, strengthen inclusive democracy, and assist civil society to effectively respond to social movements that exploit bigotry and intolerance. Based in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, WSC serves as a national hub for building movements, developing leaders, shifting culture, and defending democracy to help build a world where everyone can live, love, worship and work free from bigotry and fear.

My antennae start to wiggle when I read the words “white nationalism,” so I research further and discover that another group called the Social Justice Fund considers the Western States Center its “sister organization established to help strengthen and further develop the progressive movement in the West.”  So my instincts were correct.  But still I am intrigued by the messaging.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-mum-education-unions-proposal-change-mother-birthing-parent-defends-first-lady-vp

The White House refused to comment on the National Education Association’s proposal this week to replace the word “mother” with “birthing parent,” while defending First Lady Jill Biden as a “proud” member of the labor union and Vice President Kamala Harris for attending the union’s annual meeting, where the policy change was introduced. 

When asked for comment on the proposal, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “So, we’re not the NEA and I would refer you to their team about that particular.”

First Lady Jill Biden, a teacher, is a member of the NEA. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the National Education Association 2022 Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly at the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago on Tuesday.

“The first lady is a proud member of the NEA,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that she was “not going to speak about an organization’s policy or change of policy.”

“I am not their spokesperson — not something that I am going to do,” she said. “Yes, the vice president was there on Tuesday. She spoke at the NEA and when they did, when they did regular order, when they did their regular business, she left.” 

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-purposeful-degradation-of-americas-schools/

Radical ideologues fueled by billions of woke foundation dollars are destroying public education.

In the wake of school shutdowns, distance learning, and widely publicized school board battles, two trends have become increasingly difficult to conceal. The first is the failure of many of America’s primary and secondary schools to educate children competently—a failure marked by distressingly low levels of student proficiency and widening achievement gaps in core subjects like math and reading. The second is the growing prominence of radical ideology in the nation’s K-12 classrooms.

Equally disturbing is evidence that these trends are largely correlated and that an iron triangle of self-interested actors is contributing to their acceleration in school districts across the country—even those esteemed for high achievement.

Over the past decade, local school districts have proved easy targets for radical ideologues seeking to acquire cultural power. Though prolonged distance learning and draconian mandates have shaken the pre-pandemic confidence that many parents had in edu-crats to put the well-being of their children first, local districts and school boards have historically enjoyed a high level of public trust. Until recently, little attention was paid to union politics, school board decision making, classroom curriculum, or teacher training.  As a result, activists and special interest groups bankrolled by far-left foundations have inundated primary and secondary education with radical race, gender, and queer theory, usually under the guise of innocuous sounding phrases like equity-based education, culturally responsive teaching, and social and emotional learning. While children are increasingly being taught that western institutions are systemically and irredeemably racist, sexist, etc., they are not adequately learning to read or do math. The districts most vested in radical ideology often have the worst results in terms of academic achievement and racial disparities. Seattle has embraced left-wing initiatives for decades and has one of the worst black-white achievement gaps in the nation.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/floridas-new-history-curriculum-is-pretty-great/

Ron DeSantis’s state of Florida drew controversy over the Fourth of July weekend after the Miami Herald released copies of slides that the government used in civics training sessions for K–12 public-school teachers, which it partnered with Hillsdale College to create.

The slides cover reasons for the American Revolution and the philosophical underpinnings of the Constitution, while sometimes wading into contemporary debates about American government. The material is mainstream, historically accurate, and not unlike other curricula. Personally, I learned a lot of it a few years ago in high school when I took Advanced Placement U.S. History and Government & Politics. 

Overall, Florida’s syllabus is a good road map for teaching history. Most of the material is simply stating facts, and when it wades into controversy, it backs up its assertions solidly, for the most part. Nevertheless, some educators have complained that the instructional prescription was too Christian and conservative.

One of the central complaints centers on one of the presentations calling the idea that “the Founders desired strict separation of church and state and the Founders only wanted to protect freedom of worship” a misconception.

The state’s claim is certainly controversial, but it is true, nonetheless. While the Founding conception of separation of church and state protected freedom of worship, it was chiefly focused against creating an established church. The Framers did not view all public support of religion as illicit. After all, Congress held church services in the House chamber from when it first moved to Washington, D.C., until after the Civil War, with the speaker’s podium serving as the pulpit. That does not seem like an action of people who wanted religion and government in totally separate spheres.

For those who argue the contrary, the chief piece of evidence, which the Florida curriculum acknowledges, is Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 Letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he wrote that the First Amendment creates “a wall of separation between church and state.” It is important to note the context of the letter. He was responding to a group of people who were fearful that the government would interfere with their free exercise of religion, and he was attempting to allay their concerns. In no way was he calling for the government to totally distance itself from religion. After all, he would often attend the services in the Capitol.