RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/09/21/as_colleges_moved_online_to_combat_the_pandemic_a_plague_of_self-censorship_raged_on_110636.html

If a tree falls in the wilderness and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? That could be the start of an interesting philosophical conversation. On the other hand, if there’s an interesting philosophical conversation to be had—does it stand much of a chance of actually happening in today’s college classroom? As the newly released 2021 College Free Speech Rankings reveal, the answer depends on which college you’re attending.

The past year in higher education has been defined by COVID-19. The pandemic has altered students’ lives and forced many to adapt to online learning. But the quality of the education students receive is being impacted by a different sort of contagion—an epidemic of fearful silence.

More than 80% of American college students in our latest survey say that they self-censor in the classroom, on campus, and online.

The 2021 College Free Speech Rankings represent the largest survey of free speech on campus ever conducted. This year we surveyed more than 37,000 students at more than 150 U.S. colleges and universities. RealClearEducation produced the 2021 College Free Speech Rankings in collaboration with the research firm College Pulse and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The rankings are presented via an easy-to-use, interactive website, where parents and students can compare schools side by side and see how their favorites compare in the area of free speech.

This year, Claremont McKenna College—a small liberal arts college in Southern California—received the No. 1 ranking. Rounding out the top five are the University of Chicago, the University of New Hampshire, Emory University, and Florida State University.

It’s worth noting that 17 of the top 25 are public colleges or universities. On the flip side, 20 of the bottom 25 are private institutions. So, if you’re looking for a better environment for free speech, your local State U might be the best place to start your search.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/noem-must-fix-south-dakota-standards-fiasco/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=4

Hard-left activists have taken over the writing of K-12 history and civics standards in ruby-red South Dakota. Governor Kristi Noem’s administration has belatedly attempted to set things right, but the troubled standards are nowhere near fixed. While public attention has been drawn to the controversy, the press has done little to explain what is actually in the new social-studies standards or how the process ran off the rails. The resignation of two “workgroup” members from the committee drafting the new standards shortly before the release of the final report has also spurred public interest. The picture that emerges from an examination of public documents, as well as conversations with committee members, is disturbing.

While Noem deserves credit for an important move to curb politicization of South Dakota classrooms (more on that below), she bears significant responsibility for the current mess. Noem has positioned herself nationally as a tough-minded conservative, yet she’s handed control of South Dakota’s Department of Education to squishy establishment types only too happy to allow leftist professors, bureaucrats, and their hand-selected teachers to run the show. That said, the real bad actors in this story are at the South Dakota Department of Education, which has blatantly defied the governor’s wishes.

Here’s the bottom line. Unless Noem throws out the current, hopelessly compromised draft social-studies standards, replaces the state education bureaucrats responsible for this fiasco, and puts thoughtful conservatives in charge of the standards revision process, South Dakota’s schools are poised to become playthings of the Left.

https://quillette.com/2021/09/17/how-social-justice-extremists-spawned-a-generation-of-progressive-antisemites/

In 2019, the Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) division of Stanford University’s Student Affairs department launched a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training program with a mandate to instruct students about institutional racism. Instead, the program provided a case study of how radicalized forms of social-justice indoctrination can fuel antisemitism.

Earlier this year, Dr Ron Albucher, a Stanford psychiatrist and a former CAPS director, along with his colleague Sheila Levin, an eating-disorder specialist in the same department, filed complaints with federal and state civil-rights agencies regarding what they alleged to be “severe and persistent anti-Jewish harassment.” “Unfortunately, what we found was that the very program meant to help build an inclusive environment for all members of the Stanford community was, in fact, perpetrating the invidious discrimination it sought to eliminate,” wrote the complainants in an open letter published by the Stanford Daily last month.

The dialog-based seminars organized by CAPS were primarily aimed at addressing racial injustice suffered by individuals classified under broad categories, including black, indigenous, and people of color. The organizers used these categories to break participants up into racially segregated “affinity groups.” Albucher and Levin were assigned to the group designated under the label “whiteness accountability.” In the sessions, the pair alleges, seminar committee members “maligned and marginalized Jews by castigating them as powerful and privileged perpetrators who contribute to systemic racism.” Meanwhile, seminar moderators “intentionally overlooked antisemitic incidents” happening on campus.

On one occasion, the DEI group came together for a special session to discuss the “Zoom Bombing” of a Stanford University-wide virtual town hall meeting, which was marred by participants posting racist and antisemitic messages, invoking the N-word and images of swastikas. According to Albucher and Levin:

In the discussion of this event … DEI committee leaders decided to omit the swastikas, stating that they did not want antisemitism to dominate the discussion since Jews are wealthy business owners. When more swastikas were discovered in [Stanford] Memorial Church, DEI facilitators said we would discuss this incident only if time permitted. Yet, there was no further mention of this blatant expression of antisemitism. Failing to even acknowledge the very images used to promote Jewish genocide, especially during a DEI training, is deeply concerning.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/09/17/universities-are-turning-into-ideology-mills/

Peter Boghossian was assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University until he felt forced to resign last week. His resignation letter went viral – it was a righteous blast against the growing intolerance on his campus.

Much of the trouble began in 2018, when Boghossian, with fellow academics James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, revealed they had successfully published scores of fake academic papers to highlight the degradation of scholarship in the woke era. This led to disciplinary measures from his superiors. And once he became known as a critic of wokeness, he was harassed by students, too. Eventually, after 10 years at Portland State, Boghossian had finally had enough.

spiked caught up with him to find out what he thinks is going wrong on campuses across the West.

spiked: Why did you resign from Portland State University?

Peter Boghossian: I resigned because the university prevented me from doing what it had hired me to do: to teach philosophy.

Over time, the university became less of a symposium and more of a church. It became less of a place where people went to engage with ideas, to think through issues and to try to figure out what was true. And it became more of a place where the catechism reigned. More of a place where there were right answers to moral questions. People at the university felt that they knew the answers and they tested you on them. I just couldn’t maintain my integrity there any longer.

spiked: In your resignation letter, you spoke about being harassed by students. How did you become a target?

Boghossian: I started asking questions. Ideologues don’t like questions. I didn’t receive answers, or when I did they were flippant or dismissive. People looked at me as if I had some kind of moral problem, as opposed to just not having the right information. It was very bizarre. They thought that I had to be a bad person, because I was asking questions.

If you read the Platonic dialogues, Socrates doesn’t paint his critics as bad people. In fact, he says explicitly that people act the way they do because they don’t have perfect information. So it was very unusual to see people run out of my class screaming and freaking out.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/death_to_america_tweets_kansas_university_student_body_president.html

“Death to America.”

Shout the Iranian mullahs? No, so says the University of Kansas student body President, Niya McAdoo. And she has no plans to apologize.

Both the @KUPresident and the student senate Twitter account retweeted a September 3rd post reading, “Happy Friday everybody. Death to America.” Replete with a laughing emoji. Because there’s nothing funnier than that.

Ms. McAdoo sent out a follow-up tweet saying, “The more you read American history, the more the whole ‘Death to America’ line sounds less like a terrifying, chaotic sentiment, and more like a perfectly rational, if anything remarkably reserved, statement.”

Yes, death to unborn babies, the unvaccinated, infidels, and America. Who could disagree? (Outside of maybe unborn babies, the unvaccinated, infidels, and Trump-loving troglodytes.) 

Although I do wonder what she’d say if conservatives and patriots pledged, “Death to pro-abortionists, the vaccinated, those who disagree with us, and America-haters?”

Incredibly, the university has no plans to investigate McAdoo for her comments. Nor will Twitter ban her. Its moronic—and vile — thought arbiters are too busy banning folks who still believe in freedom and personal autonomy, i.e. “hate speech.” (Like, for example, me. I’ve been banned for months now. And for a post I didn’t even make and know nothing about.) Threaten to stand up to leftist thugs and Twitter will ban you, possibly for life. Vowing “Death to America,” however, is perfectly okay.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-students-dont-need-protection-from-the-truth-11631825498?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

The collapsing justification for one university fad brings hope that others may follow. Even within the academic establishment, it seems that no one can mount a fact-based defense for the trendy notion that students need to be protected from potentially disturbing ideas. This week’s encouraging news also presents an interesting test case of whether academic institutions can still perform the basic functions for which they were created.

Carleton College professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder write in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

When debates about trigger warnings first erupted, there was little-to-no research on their effectiveness. Today we have an emerging body of peer-reviewed research to consult.
The consensus, based on 17 studies using a range of media, including literature passages, photographs, and film clips: Trigger warnings do not alleviate emotional distress. They do not significantly reduce negative affect or minimize intrusive thoughts, two hallmarks of PTSD. Notably, these findings hold for individuals with and without a history of trauma. (For a review of the relevant research, see the 2020 Clinical Psychological Science article “Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories” by Payton J. Jones, Benjamin W. Bellet, and Richard J. McNally.)
We are not aware of a single experimental study that has found significant benefits of using trigger warnings. Looking specifically at trauma survivors, including those with a diagnosis of PTSD, the Jones et al. study found that trigger warnings “were not helpful even when they warned about content that closely matched survivors’ traumas.”
What’s more, they found that trigger warnings actually increased the anxiety of individuals with the most severe PTSD, prompting them to “view trauma as more central to their life narrative.” “Trigger warnings,” they concluded, “may be most harmful to the very individuals they were designed to protect.”

In theory, universities exist to separate truth from superstition, fact from fiction and thereby create knowledge, which they are then supposed to share with the world.

Now that the relevant academic literature says that a highly influential academic theory is wrong, what are college administrators going to do about it? Will they abolish trigger warnings, or will they bitterly cling to a faith-based conviction that free inquiry must come with a warning label?