RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/national/harvard-president-defiant-in-admissions-fight/91981/

Harvard is holding firm in its fight to use race in its admissions process, the university’s president announced in an email delivered yesterday to students, alumni, and faculty on Tuesday. The missive from Lawrence Bacow came just one day after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to that very policy.

Mr. Bacow wrote that he wished the Supreme Court “would have decided differently,” but his note makes clear that Harvard will do nothing differently absent a high court order.

The future of how America’s oldest university chooses its students will be decided not in faculty lounges in Cambridge, but in judicial chambers in Washington, D.C. As the Sun has reported, the high court looks set to decide the future of college and university admissions after elevating cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Mr. Bacow struck a defiant note in response to the dramatic legal development, maintaining: “Our admissions process, in which race is considered as one factor among many, makes us stronger.” He promised to “defend with vigor” that approach against “narrowly drawn measures of academic distinction.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/26/virginia-governor-youngkin-opens-tip-line-for-parents-to-report-teachers-who-teach-critical-race-theory/

On Monday, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) announced that his office would be opening up an anonymous tip line for Virginia parents to report teachers and schools that they believed to be teaching curriculum that includes Critical Race Theory (CRT).

As reported by The Daily Caller, Youngkin made the announcement during an interview on the John Fredericks Show, with Youngkin saying that parents “can send us an email at helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov.”

“We’re asking for folks to send us reports and observations that will help us be aware of things like privileged bingo, be aware of their child being denied their rights that parents have in Virginia and we’re going to make sure that we catalogue it all,” Youngkin continued. “It gives us great insight into what’s happening at the school level and that gives us further ability to make sure that we’re rooting it out.”

Youngkin was referring to a recent incident where Fairfax County Public Schools assigned students to play a game called “privilege bingo,” where students were told that they had inherent “privilege” if they were White, male, Christian, cisgender, or the child of a member of the military, among other factors.

Since his inauguration on January 15th, Youngkin has taken numerous actions to eliminate CRT from Virginia’s schools, which was one of his signature promises on the campaign trail last year. His first executive order after taking office called for the end of “the use of inherently divisive concepts – including Critical Race Theory – in public education.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/forbidden-campus-speech-richard-l-cravatts/

As difficult as it is to believe that someone on a contemporary university campus could be so socially tone-deaf that they would publicly utter an ethnic slur, professors do regularly find themselves the target of indignant parties they have “harmed” with their careless, often inappropriate speech.

Consider, for instance, the case of Jackie Buell, an assistant professor in Ohio State University’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, who made an outrageous anti-Semitic slur when she referred to “Jewing down” people in an October 18th online lecture.

“Anybody been to Mexico?” Buell said in a video leaked by a student.

“You know, I mean, Jewing down is a way of the world down there, right? You want to buy a blanket and (it) has $5 on it, and you say, ‘I’ll give you $2 for it.’ They say, ‘No.’ You just start walking away. They say ‘Three dollar,’ right? They just want to get what they can out of it. But now they come to this country. We get people that come in the market all the time that want to Jew us down on the vegetables, right?” [Emphasis added.]

This may well be an example of irresponsible, unconscious anti-Semitism, especially given the fact that professor Buell offered up a lame, almost unbelievable excuse for her utterances when she weakly apologized by saying that she had not intended “to be offensive to any particular group,” presumably meaning Jews in particular, and that, she stupefyingly contended, “I have never associated the word ‘Jew’ with any particular person or group.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/what-will-it-take-convince-democrats-school-choice-larry-sand/

During the 2020–21 school year, approximately 608,000 students used a voucher, tax-credit scholarship, or education savings account (ESA) to educate their children, according to policy experts Jason Bedrick and Ed Tarnowski. They wrote in August that as a result of the legislation enacted so far in 2021, at least 3.6 million additional students are eligible to participate in the new educational choice programs in seven states, and an additional 878,300 additional students will be eligible in 14 other states. In all, 22 states expanded or created school choice initiatives in 2021.

While this is certainly good news for the still small percentage of lucky families, there is a disturbing, though not exactly surprising reality. As detailed in a study released in the fall by researchers Jay Greene, James Paul, and Lindsey Burke, very few Democratic state legislators vote for school-choice proposals, “and the few that do almost never make a difference in whether those bills receive support of at least 50% of the legislators.” The researchers conclude, that the “empirical evidence is clear that the historical practice of courting Democratic policymakers has not been effective. Indeed, it has likely been counter-productive. Proponents of school choice should make a values-based appeal for choice that could attract more families, and elevate choice as a solution to some of the most pressing education policy fights of the day.”

It is no secret that the teachers unions are Choice Enemy #1, and are a big part of the problem in blue states. With only a handful of organized private schools nationwide, the unions are willing to spend big to advance their self-serving agenda, no matter how family-unfriendly it may be. And that outlay goes almost exclusively in one direction, of course. In 2020, the National Education Association contributed almost $15 million to candidates across the country, handing over 96% of it to Democrats. The American Federation of Teachers spent over $20 million, 99.6% of it going to Dems.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/25/virginia-shuts-down-plans-for-race-based-math-curriculum/

On Monday, the Virginia Department of Education (DOE) canceled plans to roll out a new form of math curriculum that would focus heavily on race relations.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the DOE website no longer has a page for the planned Virginia Math Pathways Initiative (VMPI), which was previously set up by the administration of Governor Ralph Northam (D-Va.). All that remains on the page now is a message saying that “The Virginia Department of Education has ended the Virginia Math Pathways Initiative (VMPI) project. Please see the Mathematics Instruction page, if your browser does not refresh.”

The move was applauded by parents’ rights groups in the state of Virginia, including the watchdog group Parents Defending Education (PDE), which released a statement explaining how “ideologues of critical race theory, including Ibram X. Kendi, target advanced education, including math and advanced diploma programs, as emblematic of ‘systemic racism,’ and thus they are being targeted by activists around the country for elimination.”

“For the last year, local school boards and the media have insisted that critical race theory is not in our schools, dumbing our kids down,” said PDE’s Asra Nomani. “But it is in our schools, putting us in a race to the bottom, especially with math and sciences.”

“Thankfully, the Youngkin administration with Superintendent Jillian Balow and Assistant Superintendent Elizabeth Schultz have eliminated the Virginia Math Pathways Initiative, which was going to deny students advanced math in middle school,” Nomani continued. “This war on merit must end.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/money-indoctrination-john-stossel/

Glenn Youngkin recently was elected Virginia’s governor partly because he promised to ban teaching of CRT.

CRT stands for critical race theory, which argues that every American institution upholds white supremacy.

Before Youngkin’s surprise victory, the media mocked him for complaining about CRT.

NBC’s Nicolle Wallace said it isn’t even taught in public schools. “That is like us banning the ghosts!” she laughed.

She is wrong.

In my new video, journalist Asra Nomani reveals some rather creepy CRT lessons that are taught in many schools.

Nomani filed Freedom of Information Act requests that forced school districts to reveal how they pay consultants to spread critical race theory.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/youngkin-taps-anti-crt-leader-as-virginia-diversity-officer/

Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin tapped prominent anti-critical race theory activist Angela Sailor as the state’s new director of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“The people of Virginia elected the most diverse leadership in the Commonwealth’s history. Virginia is big enough for the hopes and dreams of a diverse people. Angela Sailor’s experience in government, nonprofits and the private sector will guide us as we ensure that the government is working for all Virginians across our diverse Commonwealth, especially when it comes to economic opportunity for all Virginians,” Youngkin said.

In appointing her to the position, Youngkin also issued an executive order that will reorient the office away from realizing racialized equality-of-outcome objectives. Instead, the office will focus on creating economic opportunity for disadvantaged Virginians, enforcing “free speech and civil discourse” in academia, and ensuring that students receive an “honest, objective, and complete” civic education,” Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

The governor also announced that he would introduce legislation to change the word “equity” in the office’s name to “opportunity.”

Without specifying racial background, the executive order reads: “…too many of our citizens have not received the equal opportunity they deserve, and we recognize that diversity when genuinely embraced strengthens our Commonwealth.”

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-why-i-am-no-longer-a-tenured-professor-at-the-university-of-toronto

The appalling ideology of diversity, inclusion and equity is demolishing education and business.

“And it’s not just the universities. And the professional colleges. And Hollywood. And the corporate world. Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity — that radical leftist Trinity — is destroying us. Wondering about the divisiveness that is currently besetting us? Look no farther than DIE. Wondering — more specifically — about the attractiveness of Trump? Look no farther than DIE. When does the left go too far? When they worship at the altar of DIE, and insist that the rest of us, who mostly want to be left alone, do so as well. Enough already. Enough. Enough.”

I recently resigned from my position as full tenured professor at the University of Toronto. I am now professor emeritus, and before I turned sixty. Emeritus is generally a designation reserved for superannuated faculty, albeit those who had served their term with some distinction. I had envisioned teaching and researching at the U of T, full time, until they had to haul my skeleton out of my office. I loved my job. And my students, undergraduates and graduates alike, were positively predisposed toward me. But that career path was not meant to be. There were many reasons, including the fact that I can now teach many more people and with less interference online. But here’s a few more:

First, my qualified and supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students (and I’ve had many others, by the way) face a negligible chance of being offered university research positions, despite stellar scientific dossiers. This is partly because of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity mandates (my preferred acronym: DIE). These have been imposed universally in academia, despite the fact that university hiring committees had already done everything reasonable for all the years of my career, and then some, to ensure that no qualified “minority” candidates were ever overlooked. My students are also partly unacceptable precisely because they are my students. I am academic persona non grata, because of my unacceptable philosophical positions. And this isn’t just some inconvenience. These facts rendered my job morally untenable. How can I accept prospective researchers and train them in good conscience knowing their employment prospects to be minimal?