RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.aier.org/article/rescuing-virtue-and-talents-amidst-the-war-on-tests/

On March 28, 2022, Stuart Schmill, Dean of Admissions and Student Financial Services at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced the school’s plan to restore the consideration of standardized tests to its undergraduate admissions process. A heavyweight bucks against the self-destructive path of attacking merit and standards. Will more follow suit? Or, is MIT’s rebellion too little and too late?

In his 1813 letter to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson laid out his vision for American meritocracy— “a natural aristocracy among men,” grounds of which “are virtue and talents.” This republic of merit separated the newly independent nation from the old world where artificial aristocracies “founded on wealth and birth” hindered the common good. Jefferson stipulated what it meant to have a merit-based education system that diffuses learning democratically and efficiently:

to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects to be completed at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.

The Test-Free Movement in a Historical Context

Forces within, from slavery to school segregations under Jim Crow laws to race-based admissions, have tried to corrupt the grand proposal of equality and merit. Like previous illiberal bargains to categorize students by race, the central focus of test-free admissions is also preoccupied with immutable features of the individual, under the fashionable banner of social identities, rather than observable academic performance. But unlike historical race-based practices that were rooted in bigotry and racism, arbiters of “equitable” college admissions in the modern era claim they are waging battles against the evil spirits of white supremacy, systemic inequities, and structural racism.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/reversing-dei/

MIT, caught in a bind, reintroduces standardized testing.

We wrote last November that MIT, our alma mater, “has caved repeatedly to the demands of ‘wokeness’, treating its students unfairly, compromising the quality of its staff, and damaging the institution and academic freedom at large.”  As has happened across academia, total commitment to DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—has become an article of faith, with an aggressive program of minority admissions part of the canon. MIT’s most recent initiative involves new hiring and programs devoted to:

understanding MIT’s Indigenous history and Native issues more broadly. Leadership in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (SHASS) and the History Section also helped us realize that it is past time for MIT to feature cutting-edge scholarship and educate our students in this rapidly expanding discipline.

Why MIT— long renowned for its math, science, and engineering education and research, and currently ranked #2 among all U.S. colleges and universities—needs to expand its focus to the “rapidly expanding discipline” of Native American studies is unclear. Among other things, MIT gave us the Mark 14 gunsight used by U.S. Navy ships during WWII, prominent participants in the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs, strobe photography, and the elucidation of the genetic basis of sickle-cell anemia, so one would think that it could allow other institutions to become leaders in championing politically correct social goals. However, MIT’s soon-to-depart president, L. Rafael Reif, has become DEI-obsessed. A search of the MIT website reveals at least 70 professors and staff directly related to promoting DEI, including six new Assistant Deans for DEI who were hired in a single day.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/another_sad_spectacle_at_duke_university.html

University commencement speakers took the stage this past weekend to advise students of the Class of 2022 now ready to join the real world.  I observed the commencement ceremony at Duke University, as my niece graduated magna cum laude.  As a Duke alumna myself, I was proud of her: half of her college experience was marred by extreme COVID lockdown policies, yet she remained focused, worked hard, and earned her accomplishments.  My extended family — which included several Duke grads and employees — settled atop Wallace Wade stadium, bracing unseasonably cold weather, awaiting the commencement speakers’ advice to the next generation. 

The featured Duke commencement speaker was General Motors CEO Mary Barra.  She spoke of five lessons from the kitchen table.  I appreciated her speech and humble advice, especially grateful that she did not receive the memo that the words “diversity” and “equity” are crucial features of modern-day academic discourse.  Unfortunately, her grounded advice will be overshadowed by the student commencement speech preceding it.

Prior to Ms. Barra’s speech, the chosen Duke undergraduate student speaker spoke of a “Duke Nation.”  The Duke senior described the idea that if a moat existed around Duke, “[Duke] could be its own tiny island nation like Cuba or Sri Lanka.”  “Cuba?” I thought at the time.  “Well, that probably isn’t a terrible comparison when you really think about the communist collectivism on campuses.”  The remaining speech contained citizenship metaphors, passport allusions, and a “world of experiences.”

This senior had an impressive résumé, including an impending Bachelor of Science degrees in statistical science and economics with a religion minor.  She had been an editor with the Duke student newspaper and a Young Trustee Finalist, had studied at the Ecologic Institute in Germany for a summer, and was a Duke Student Government senator, among other accomplishments, and she “is passionate about empowering women of color in STEM,” according to the commencement program biography.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-parents-say-no-to-anti-semitic-ethnic-studies-public-school-children-classroom-israel-anti-semitic-11652389663?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

A group of Jewish public-school parents and teachers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday challenging the adoption of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist curricular materials in Los Angeles public schools.

Last year California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law requiring public-school students in the state to complete a course in ethnic studies to graduate from high school. He said it was needed because “students deserve to see themselves in their studies, and they must understand our nation’s full history if we expect them to one day build a more just society.” But the ethnic-studies movement has never been about representation or justice. A creature of 1960s radical left-wing activism, ethnic studies was from the start about attacking the U.S., capitalism and Zionism.

Advocates—including teachers union officials, public-school teachers and other ideologues—have formed the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, through which they hope to influence the teaching of ethnic studies in the state. The consortium, which disseminates teaching materials lifted directly from radical anti-Israel websites, rejects the idea that all cultures should be studied. It asserts that ethnic studies is about only four groups: Native Americans, black Americans, Chicanos/Latinos, and Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders. That last group includes Arabs from the Middle East—but not Jews, who’ve lived in that same region for millennia.

The consortium’s materials—many of which have been taken offline in recent months—are filled with attacks on Jews and the Jewish state. They deny that Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and teach that Israel is a “colonialist” and “settler state” founded through “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid.” They falsely define Judaism, teaching that “Zionism is distinct from Judaism” and that Zionism isn’t a Jewish religious belief but an invention of the “late 19th century.”

Tell that to the millions of Jews who end their Passover Seders with “next year in Jerusalem,” or end every Jewish wedding by breaking a glass to mourn Jerusalem’s destruction, or pray each day facing Jerusalem—or whose bible, prayer book and calendar have for thousands of years been filled with the yearning for a return of the people of Israel to sovereignty in the land of Israel.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/a_peek_into_how_educrats_indoctrinate_our_children.html

As a lifelong conservative and a retired teacher, I welcome all efforts to wrest control over education from the leftist educrats. I long for a day when we can send our kids to public schools and know they are being educated, not indoctrinated. But indoctrinated they are and one of the main vehicles is the seemingly innocuous “Advisory” module.

As parents, we send our children to public schools to learn English, math, science, history, and other subjects deemed desirable by our society. Our schools also teach propaganda aimed at transforming America into something like the America that President Obama longed for when he said he wanted to transform America during his administration.

Recently, conservative groups critical of Obama’s vision have challenged those school boards and politicians suspected of trying to help Obama transform America. The defeat of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and opposition to Critical Race Theory show that parents and taxpayers are wising up to the leftward march of American Public Education.

As I said, I support wresting control of American Public Education from the leftist educrats. Even as we celebrate the victory of Governor Youngkin and the attention on CRT that is making the news on a regular basis, however, we must not underestimate the educrats’ power. They will not go away quietly. They are true believers and they expect that conservatives will lose interest in this fight.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/harvards-jew-hate-ronn-torossian/

Last month, Harvard Law School deemed Israel in a report to the United Nations as “an apartheid regime.” They issued a 22 page report claiming that Israel systematically discriminates against Palestinians and suppresses their civil and political rights.” Harvard’s report “finds that Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank are in breach of the prohibition of apartheid and amount to the crime of apartheid under international law.”

Now, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard University, has  endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. They also expressed support for Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, a student group that annually hosts an “Israel Apartheid Week” on campus. The editorial says, “We are proud to finally lend our support to both Palestinian liberation and BDS — and we call on everyone to do the same.”

One wonders if those behind said editorial of boycotting the Jewish state are concerned for their job prospects as they would be, say if they endorsed the KKK or any other form of racism. This is pure and unmitigated hatred and antisemitism. And its politically acceptable at Harvard apparently. 

At Harvard Law School there is a spring 2022 class on “Law, Human Rights, and Social Justice in Israel and Palestine” taught by Ms. Salma Waheedi, who has signed a letter to “express solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom and self-determination. Israeli state violence has devastated Palestinian life through a combination of warfare, territorial theft, and violent displacement. Unwavering US financial, military, and political support has fueled an apartheid system that institutionalizes the domination and repression of Palestinians.”