The Great Feminization of the American University A response to Heather Mac Donald’s provocative new essay on the “mass nervous breakdown on campus.” Christopher F. Rufo

My Manhattan Institute colleague Heather Mac Donald has published a provocative new essay in City Journal, titled “The Great Feminization of the American University.” Mac Donald begins by pointing out that women now constitute the ruling majority on campus: 75 percent of Ivy League presidents, 66 percent of college administrators, and 58 percent of recent graduates are now female.

And the consequences, Mac Donald argues, are troubling. “Female students and administrators often exist in a co-dependent relationship, united by the concepts of victim identity and of trauma,” she writes. “For university females, there is not, apparently, strength in numbers. The more females’ ranks increase, the more we hear about a mass nervous breakdown on campus.”

In my new video essay, I analyze this cultural shift and explain how the modern university has become a “therapeutic institution,” which, according to my recent reporting on university DEI programming, is characterized by the following trends:

In Loco Masculi The feminization of the American university is all but complete. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/the-great-feminization-of-the-american-university

Sometimes a single incident efficiently summarizes a larger trend. So it is with New York University’s selection of its new president, Linda Mills, a licensed clinical social worker and an NYU social work professor. She researches trauma and bias, as well as race and gender in the legal academy. She is a documentary filmmaker and teaches advocacy filmmaking. She serves as an NYU vice chancellor and as a senior vice provost for Global Programs and University Life. In all these roles, Mills is the very embodiment of the contemporary academy. The most significant part of her identity, however, and the one that ties the rest of her curriculum vitae together, is that she is female, and thus overdetermined as NYU’s next president.

Mills is part of the Great Feminization of the American university, an epochal change whose consequences have yet to be recognized. Seventy-five percent of Ivy League presidents are now female. Nearly half of the 20 universities ranked highest by Forbes will have a female president this fall, including MIT, Harvard, and Columbia. Of course, feminist bean-counters in the media and advocacy world are not impressed, noting that “only” 5 percent of the 130 top U.S. research universities are headed by a black female and “only” 22 percent of those federal grant-magnets have a non-intersectional (i.e., white) female head.

These female leaders emerge from an ever more female campus bureaucracy, whose size is reaching parity with the faculty. Females made up 66 percent of college administrators in 2021; those administrators constitute an essential force in campus diversity ideology, whether they have “diversity” in their job titles or not. Among the official diversity bureaucrats installed in their posts since July 2022, females predominate: the vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion at the University of California, San Diego; the vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion at UCLA; the vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Maryville University in Missouri; the chief diversity officer and vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the School of Education at the College of Charleston in South Carolina; the vice president for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at Kansas State University; the associate dean of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at the University of Kansas School of Law; the vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of California, Santa Cruz; the vice president for inclusion and community impact at Herzing University in Wisconsin; the associate provost for faculty and diversity initiatives at Muhlenberg College (this associate provost also became Muhlenberg’s first chief diversity officer); the first chief officer of culture, belonging, and community building at Delta College in Michigan; the vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh; the vice provost for faculty diversity, equity, and inclusivity at the University of Texas, Austin (a lateral move from the position of managing director of diversity in UT’s office of the executive vice president and provost); the vice president for equity, culture, and talent at Prince George’s Community College—all are female.

Is Ron DeSantis ready to face Donald Trump? The Florida governor offers a sober return to Republican sanity. Does the party want that?

https://thespectator.com/topic/ron-desantis-ready-face-donald-trump-2024/?utm_source=

When Donald Trump ran for the presidency in 2016, he took on a very well-funded politician who had been a successful governor of Florida. And he destroyed him. Trump humiliated “low-energy” Jeb Bush, son of one president and brother of another, and trashed his family’s legacy so comprehensively that the Bush-era Republican party is now widely regarded as a disaster.

Jeb messed up again last week. Speaking to Fox News, he semi-endorsed Ron DeSantis, the current Florida governor and Trump’s strongest challenger for the 2024 Republican nomination. “I think we’re on the verge of a generational change, kind of hope so,” said Jeb. “Who better to do it than someone who’s been outside of Washington, who’s governed effectively, who I think has shown that Florida can be a model for the future of our country?”

Talk about the kiss of death. Jeb soon clarified that he was “praising, not endorsing” DeSantis — too late. Trump’s fanatical army had the line they wanted: the old rotten establishment want Trump out and DeSantis in. “Generational change” actually means the elite taking the party back to the pre-Trump era of politics-as-normal. No chance.

How will DeSantis cope with the barrage of abuse he’s about to receive? He may be punchier than “please clap” Jeb, but he appears to suffer from a similar inability to exude charisma. He is just under six foot and has been mocked for wearing cowboy heels to make himself appear taller. “Tiny D” is reportedly one of the nicknames Trump has been “workshopping” — whatever that means — along with “Ron DisHonest” and “Ron DeEstablishment.” He tried “Ron DeSanctimonious,” but keen students of Trump’s nominative determinism considered that diss sub-par. Still, you get the gist. Don makes people laugh; Ron, not so much. Some sources suggest he has a touch of Asperger’s.

“DeSantis is an introvert in an extrovert’s world” is how Roger Stone, the Trump ally who knows Floridian politics inside out, puts it. “He gets irritated whenever faced with a difficult question or situation.” “He’s good company,” adds Nigel Farage, another Trump confidant. “But you know when Donald Trump walks into a room. I’m not sure the same could be said of DeSantis.”

Book Review by Mark Durie: The Critical Qur’an: Explained from Key Islamic Commentaries and Contemporary Historical Research

https://markdurie.substack.com/p/book-review-by-mark-durie-the-critical?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The Qur’an is not an easy read, even in translation: its chapters are out of order, and its contents often obscure; verses do not follow logically one upon another, and some contradict each other. Additionally, while Muhammad’s biography provides the context for understanding particular passages, the Qur’an does not provide that information. Many English translations use antiquated King-James-style language, and translators typically translate what commentators think the text means, not what the text actually says.

For English readers, things improved in 2013 with the publication of Arthur J. Droge’s The Qur’an: A New Annotated Translation.[1] There is also a scholarly 2020 English commentary by Gordon D. Nickel, which uses Droge’s text.[2] To these resources has now been added Spencer’s The Critical Qur’an, “critical” in the sense that it exposes the reader to the opinions of Muslim commentators, medieval and modern.

Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, does not spare the reader problematic passages, as his discussion of the wife-beating verse, Sura 4:34, exemplifies. Spencer also draws readers’ attention to internal contradictions in the text and to manuscript variants.

The Critical Qur’an has some limitations. Page headers do not provide sura (verse) numbers. The index is patchy: for example, “idolater” and “associate” are not to be found. A glossary would help. The lack of paragraphs in the Qur’anic text makes it hard to follow. Some scholarship, such as relying on Richard Bell’s idiosyncratic work from the 1930s,[3] is not up to date.

China’s War Warnings by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19475/china-war-warnings

The world needs to look at what the Chinese leadership is in fact doing. Xi Jinping appointed what is now known as his “war cabinet” in October, at the Communist Party’s 20th National Congress; he is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War; he has been trying to sanctions-proof his regime; and he is mobilizing the civilian population for war. Communist Party cadres, for example, are taking over privately owned factories and converting them from civilian to military production.

In the latest move, China’s regime is establishing National Defense Mobilization Offices across the country. The Reservists Law went into effect the first of this month.

Whatever China intends, its intended victims need to match its preparations. There has never been a time when it has been more important to deter the People’s Republic of China.

Even if all this is the biggest bluff in history, the Chinese military is provoking incidents that could lead to war, especially in the tense climate Xi Jinping has created. In December… a Chinese fighter jet dangerously intercepted a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the South China Sea.

Moreover, beginning January 28, China’s large spy balloon intruded into American airspace, then proceeded to surveil nuclear weapons sites, including Malmstrom, F. E. Warren, and Minot Air Force Bases, which house all of America’s Minutemen III intercontinental ballistic missiles….. This path suggests China is gathering intelligence for a nuclear strike on America’s strategic weapons — and shows Beijing’s utter disrespect for the United States.

Whatever China’s intentions… this cannot end well. The problem is complacency. Xi Jinping and Qin Gang, whatever they are doing, are establishing a justification to strike America — and they are making preparations to do so.

“If the U.S. doesn’t hit the brakes and continues to barrel down the wrong track,” China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang said on March 7, “no amount of guardrails can prevent the carriage from derailing and crashing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation.” He also spoke of “catastrophic consequences.”

Biden State Department giving funds to anti-government protests in Israel

https://www.israel365news.com/368136/biden-state-department-giving-funds-to-anti-government-protests-in-israel/?

Police clashed with anti-government protesters who attempted to shut down the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv on Thursday. As some recent reports have highlighted, some of the funding for the protests and the organizations behind them comes from foreign sources, including the US State Department. 

One of the major organizations behind the protests is the Movement for Quality Government (MQG). The organization, which  has received over $38,000 in funding from the US State Department, public Israeli records show.

The group describes itself as “an independent, non-partisan, grassroots, non-profit organization that has been defending Israeli democracy since 1990.” The group however, has brought numerous court cases against Prime Minister Netanyahu, including a petition to the Supreme Court that called for declaring him unfit to hold public office. In addition, MQG is primarily funded by the New Israel Fund, a US NGO that funds many anti-Israel organizations that promote a narrative portraying Israel as an apartheid state.

“The State Department should never fund foreign partisan organizations in allied democracies,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Washingoton Free Beacon, which published a report on the issue. “If the shoe was on the other foot, the Biden administration would accuse Israel of interfering in our elections. Congress should absolutely review the State Department’s potential funding of partisan politics in Israel.”

While acknowledging to the Free Beacon that they had provided the funding, the State Department refused to comment on what the funding was used for. 

“The State Department has provided small grants to the Movement for Quality Government, including a grant signed in 2020 during the previous administration and continued under the Biden administration that focused on teaching civic education and supporting good governance,” a State Department official said.

Grant information shows that MQG received grants of around $10,000 to $15,000 dollars in 2020, 2021, and 2022. In each of those years, the State Department under President Biden was listed as the group’s sole foreign donor. The grant information does not show State Department funding before 2020.

The last tranche of funding was awarded in September 2022. The money was meant to be used for democracy training programs in the Israeli school system.

The Triumph and Tragedy of Abba Eban Eban’s meteoric rise and dramatic fall was a classic tragedy—and one that extended beyond his personal political career. It holds a lesson for today. By Rick Richman

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/10/the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-abba-eban/

This essay is adapted from And None Shall Make Them Afraid: Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel, by Rick Richman (Encounter, 388 pages, $33.99.)

Abba Eban was a key member of Israel’s government for more than a quarter century—from 1948 to 1974. In Israel’s first decade, he served for nine years as its U.S. ambassador in Washington and simultaneously as its U.N. ambassador in New York. Then he was education minister for three years; after that, deputy prime minister for three years; and finally, foreign minister for eight years. In 2002, his obituary in the New York Times ran 2,800 words, saying that he: 

[sent] his supremely cultured voice using the King’s English into forensic combat. His orations, fierce in their defense of his country, were also marked by rich appeals to history, soaring visions of a peaceful Middle East and withering scorn for Israel’s enemies.

Eban’s speeches were a record of eloquence unequaled by any diplomat during that period. Conor Cruise O’Brien, representing Ireland in the U.N. (sitting next to Eban in the General Assembly), called him “the most brilliant diplomatist of the second half of the 20th century.” 

In 1974, however, Yitzhak Rabin left Eban out of his new Israeli government, and Eban never again held a ministerial job. By 1988, he was so low on the Labor Party electoral slate that he was not reelected to the Knesset. Humiliated, he retired from political life, relocated to New York, and spent the rest of his life teaching, writing, and speaking.

Eban’s meteoric rise and dramatic fall was a classic tragedy—and one that extended beyond his personal political career. It holds a lesson for today.

Liz Peek: Unrepentant US health agencies issue more bizarre directives

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3893118-unrepentant-us-health-agencies-issue-more-bizarre-directives/

You might think U.S. health authorities would be embarrassed. After all, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other agencies oversaw policies that produced more COVID-19 deaths per capita than nearly any other developed country.

More humiliating, they earned that distinction while dictating draconian shutdowns and school closures that profoundly damaged our economy and our children’s educations. And even though Americans had early access to the world’s best vaccines.

You would be wrong. Instead of adopting a humbler or more cautious approach to managing the waning virus, the CDC and the Biden administration are more truculent – and incomprehensible – than ever.

Most recently, the Biden White House has doubled down on not allowing Novak Djokovic into our country because the world’s top tennis player is not vaccinated. The tennis star was similarly prevented from coming to the U.S. last year, causing him to miss out on playing in the prestigious U.S. Open and for a brief period leading to his losing his number one status.

At the same time, the White House is set to announce that people coming to the U.S. from China will no longer need a negative COVID test to gain entry. Neither policy makes sense.

The Djokovic decision seems bizarre, especially given what we know about the vaccines and their impact over time. The vaccines’ efficacy declines rapidly, meaning that booster shots are needed to revive its protections and to address today’s most prevalent variants.

One study of veterans showed that the protection derived from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (admittedly, the worst) dropped from 86 percent in March 2021 to 13 percent in September, just six months later.

American suppression of fossil fuels courts a national security disaster By Ronald Stein

https://www.cfact.org/2023/03/08/american-suppression-of-fossil-fuels-courts-a-national-security-disaster/

The capacity of a modern economy to produce food and products for its citizens, and weapons and fuels for its military to project power, are the undeniable twin pillars of global power. Both depend on reasonably priced and readily available products made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. In other words, American literally runs and fights on products from fossil fuels.

The renewables of wind and solar only generate occasional electricity, but manufacture nothing for society.

Take for example the medical industry that did not exist just a few hundred years ago, that is now maintaining the health and well-being of the 8 billion now on this planet. Today, as an exercise in energy literacy, try to identify something, anything, in your doctor’s office, or the hospital, or the pharmacy, which was not made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

President Biden has been campaigning for years for the elimination of fossil fuels. But ridding the world of oil, without a replacement in mind, would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths. Shortages of fossil fuel products would necessitate lifestyles being mandated back to the horse and buggy days of the 1800’s, and could be the greatest threat to the planet’s eight billion residents.

The ruling class in wealthy countries are not cognizant that the planet populated from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years, and that population explosion began right after the discovery of oil. That growth in the population was not just based on crude oil by itself, as crude oil is useless until it can be manufactured into something useable. Today, through human ingenuity, we have more than 6,000 products  currently benefiting society and fuels for the 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs.

America’s Crisis is the Universities Crime, treason, riots, open borders and our other threats are coming out of campuses. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/americas-crisis-is-the-universities/

“The source of our current ills – the  lawlessness in our streets, the destruction of our borders, the racist ‘equity’ policies of the Democrat Party, the “woke” derelictions of our military leaders, can all be traced to the indoctrination of our educated classes in hatreds spawned by cultural Marxism.”
–David Horowitz, ‘De-Fund the Universities!’

The Duke of Wellington reportedly stated that the battle of Waterloo was won on the fields of Eton College. George Orwell countered that, “Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.”

America’s battles against foreign and domestic enemies have been lost in our ‘Etons’, our schools and universities which have turned their graduates against the country and its values.

The source of our social and political crises is the destruction of our educational institutions through a successful fifty-year effort by radical activists to purge conservatives and patriots from American academic faculties. This was followed by a massive reconstruction of the academic curriculum and the transformation of universities into one-party indoctrination and recruitment centers for the anti-American left.

We at the David Horowitz Freedom Center were among the first to confront the problem and take the battle to campuses across the country, but as the last conservative faculty are purged and conservative students are silenced, the old remedies of adversarial dialogue and debate are no longer available. Conservative speakers are violently assaulted on campuses and events are shut down. College administrators are finding ways to force out even tenured conservative faculty while mandatory anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-Asian and anti-patriotic “diversity” measures keep the doors firmly closed to conservatives and patriots.

It’s time to recognize that this is an existential threat to America and to take action against it. That’s why we’re calling for the defunding of universities.

A Survey of the Problem

Universities have become efficient indoctrination centers that couldn’t be any more destructive if they were being run by China and Russia.