RUTHFULLY YOURS

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

I am not a professional academic but for many years I have been a member of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), a politically conservative academic professional group that has always opposed the Marxist socialist, collectivist invasion of educational and other institutions of Western democracies.

On June 13, 2022, Peter Wood (PhD Anthropology, U of Rochester) President of NAS, released a position paper opposing leftist invasions of American education and culture that are broadly referred to as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) in a long and thorough (more than 4000 words) critique and call to arms and opposition: Regime Change: Repelling the DEI Assault on Higher Education .    

I provide some pertinent excerpts from the monograph and some comments.

Dr. Wood Introduces the Position Paper:|

Criticism of American society for its inequitable treatment of blacks and other minority groups has become a focal point of American education at every level of instruction. Sometimes this criticism is historically well-grounded and tempered by recognition of social, political, and economic complexity. But more often this criticism veers into simplistic claims and fictions presented as fact. . . .  “anti-racist” agenda in post-secondary education have not drawn nearly as much attention as they have in K-12 schools. In this essay I intend to address the critique of America on racial grounds mainly at the college and university level, but problems in K-12 schools will necessarily come into the picture

With courses such as ‘Queer Dance’ and events featuring the drag queen ‘LaWhore Vagistan,’ campus life today is steeped in gender and sexuality.

Until very recently, most people were unaware that asserting that only women can menstruate and become pregnant could be controversial, or that pronouns could be incendiary. Yet today, gender ideology dominates the news cycle. Netflix employees protested Dave Chappelle’s comedy special with “transphobic” jokes. Avid Harry Potter fans boycotted J. K. Rowling’s work because of her supposedly “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” views. It’s not merely a culture war. The State Department recognized International Pronouns Day. Recently, President Biden signed an executive order to “advance LGBTQI+ equality,” which in part promotes “expanded access to gender-affirming care,” even for minors.

How did such radical social change happen so quickly? As incubators of gender fundamentalists, universities are equipping students with ever-expanding terminology for sexual orientation and encouraging activism without cultivating a sense of intellectual humility. Graduates become the directors of corporations, editors of newspapers, and staffers to politicians, thus occupying powerful positions that shape American culture. To help readers understand the college-campus dynamics, National Review compiled academic coursework, extracurricular programming, and institutional resources related to gender and sexual ethics at the eight Ivy League institutions, which serve as exemplars of higher education and train the country’s future elites.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18697/confucius-institutes

A new, detailed, and thorough report by the National Association of Scholars confirms that not a single one of these [Confucius] “institutes” disappeared; they were just re-branded under a “sister university” arrangement with universities in China, given a different name, or moved to a different sponsor school. And the money continues to flow.

Jamie P. Horsley, senior fellow of the Tsai Center and its former executive director, defends the purpose of Confucius Institutes on American campuses. He argues that they are needed to teach students Mandarin, a language increasingly necessary for business success. She has also written articles minimizing the effects of China’s social credit system and supporting its Belt And Road Initiative.

This is exactly what many Americans fear about placing Chinese government funded institutes, whatever they are called, on American campuses. It is what led the US State Department to classify them as diplomatic missions.

Peterson asked the Chinese director [of a Confucius Institute at an American university] how she would respond if a student asked her about Tiananmen Square. The director answered that she “would show a photograph [of it] and point out the beautiful architecture. That’s the most important thing about that square.”

In the book Red Handed, we meet a remarkable young man named Nathan Law, the Chinese-born, Hong Kong-raised leader of a pro-democracy effort called the “Umbrella Movement,” which protested Beijing’s crackdowns on freedom in Hong Kong. His efforts were brutally crushed by the Chinese government and Nathan Law went to prison for eight months. TIME Magazine named him one of “the 100 Most Influential People of 2020.”

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.