RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/29/princeton-students-beg-university-to-buck-the-mob-and-defend-free-speech/

Eva Duffy is an intern at The Federalist and a junior at the University of Chicago where she studies American history.

After the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs published a list of demands for “anti-racist” policies, the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, a bipartisan student group dedicated to the “robust protection of important values such as free speech, free thought, and bold and fearless truth-seeking” issued a rebuttal letter. 

The School of Public and International Affairs’ demands included purging the university of any references to President Woodrow Wilson, hiring more black faculty, requiring antiracist training once per semester for all faculty, staff, preceptors, and administrators, and divesting from the “prison-industrial complex.”

Princeton University has already capitulated to one of the demands, purging Wilson’s name from its public policy school, saying it was “an inappropriate name sake.”

In a Fox News interview with Akhil Rajasekar, a member of the Open Campus Coalition, Rajasekar expressed deep concern for the name removal, explaining that Wilson transformed Princeton into a world-class university. He suggested that the university honor Wilson’s good deeds. He explained that in 2016, Princeton trustees voted to keep Wilson’s name on the school, but in 2020, Princeton has “buckled under the pressure.”   

The Open Campus Coalition letter to Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber states: “[T]he vast majority of claims and demands made by these students amounts to a concerted siege of free thought at Princeton, which they seek to effect by hijacking the University bureaucracy to create a monopoly for their beliefs on deeply controversial and contentious issues.” 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/29/three_ideas_to_end_the_rot_on_college_campuses_143564.htm

In the early 1950s, at the nadir of McCarthyism, the Cincinnati Reds baseball team was so fearful of anti-communist crusaders that it actually changed the team’s name. Overnight, they reverted to their original name, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, and then for several years became the Redlegs. The anti-communism was justified; the mob mentality was not. Today, we are all Redlegs. This time, the repression is coming from the left.

It’s not just that a careless word can cost your job, it’s that people tremble in fear that they might say the wrong word. Today, as in the past, the loudest, most extreme voices claim the right to control speech and judge whether it is worthy of being heard at all. The giants of technology and media have either bowed to these demands or embraced them enthusiastically. The result, as in the early 1950s, is a shriveled, impoverished public square. Genuine debate is suppressed, even in classrooms, which should nurture informed discussion with multiple viewpoints. All too often they have become pipelines for indoctrination.

What’s wrong with this rigid groupthink? First, it takes real problems, such as police misconduct or Confederate statues, and inflates them for political purposes. It vastly exaggerates their extent and gravity, mistakenly generalizes them (Ulysses Grant is not Stonewall Jackson), ignores significant progress in correcting old errors, calls any disagreement “racist,” and relies on intimidation and sometimes violence, not democratic procedures, to get their way. The loudest voices say America and its history are fundamentally evil, that its institutions need to be smashed so they can be reestablished on “socially just” foundations. The mob and their fellow travelers will determine what is just. Who gives them that right? This arrogation of power and attack on public order will not end well.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/insults-black-history-walter-williams/

“Government should do its job of protecting constitutional rights. After that, black people should be simply left alone as opposed to being smothered by the paternalism inspired by white guilt. On that note, I just cannot resist the temptation to refer readers to my “Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon,” which grants Americans of European ancestry amnesty and pardon for their own grievances and those of their forebears against my people so that they stop feeling guilty and stop acting like fools in their relationship with Americans of African ancestry.”

Many whites are ashamed, saddened and feel guilty about our history of slavery, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. Many black people remain angry over the injustices of the past and what they see as injustices of the present. Both blacks and whites can benefit from a better appreciation of black history.

Often overlooked or ignored is the fact that, as a group, black Americans have made the greatest gains, over some of the highest hurdles, and in a shorter span of time than any other racial group in history.

For example, if one totaled up the earnings and spending of black Americans and considered us as a separate nation with our own gross domestic product, we would rank well within the top 20 richest nations. A black American, Gen. Colin Powell, once headed the world’s mightiest military. Black Americans are among the world’s most famous personalities, and a few black Americans are among the world’s richest people such as investor Robert F. Smith, IT service provider David Steward, Oprah Winfrey, and basketball star Michael Jordan. Plus, there was a black U.S. president.

The significance of these achievements cannot be overstated. When the Civil War ended, neither a slave nor a slave owner would have believed such progress would be possible in less than a century and a half — if ever. As such, it speaks to the intestinal fortitude of a people. Just as important, it speaks to the greatness of a nation in which such gains were possible. Nowhere else on earth could such progress have been achieved except in the United States of America.

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

We are a polyglot nation, a people of all races, ethnicities and religions. We come from the four corners of the globe. But we are who we are. None of us chose to be born where we were. We did not choose the color of our skin. We did not choose our sex, height, or the color of our hair and eyes. We did not choose our physical prowess or our intellectual aptitude. Those are factors we are born with and cannot change; though we can, and we should, enhance them to our advantage. But we can also improve our lives through education. We can read, train and practice. And we can be taught that tolerance and civility are critical to survival as a society, community and nation.

Education has been called the civil rights issue of our time by George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. There are, however, disagreements as to how it is achieved. Democrats believe in the power of money, that more should be spent in poor districts and on inner city schools. Republicans favor choice. Money is important, but dollars expended do not always guaranty a positive result. New York City spends more than twice what the average school district in the United States spends per pupil ($25,199 versus $12,201 in 2017). Yet less than half of New York City students in grades three through eight passed State exams, according to the New York Times. Democrats are influenced by their dependence on the two major teachers’ unions, the National Educational Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Ninety-five percent of the $30 million they spent on elections in 2018 went to Democrats.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/22/canceling-yale/

By all means, cancel Yale. Remove the horrid name from clothing and other merchandise. But replace it with a more honorable name: Dummer. Dummer University. The Dummer School of Law. The Dummer School of Art. A Dummer degree. The name, as Gwendolen Fairfax said in a different context, produces agreeable vibrations. 

I see that #CancelYale is trending on Twitter and elsewhere in social media. It’s a development I’d like to encourage—not, to be frank, because I think that canceling things is a good idea. Quite the opposite. But if the Left is going to pursue its dream of destroying every reminder of our past it doesn’t like, and if woke institutions like Yale, bloated with too much money and far too much self-regard, are going to betray their raison d’être and join in the effort to control the present by destroying the past, then I think an example should be made of corrupt institutions like Yale and craven leaders like Peter Salovey, the university’s president.

Besides, if the Left can deface or destroy statues of George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and countless others, shouldn’t we insist that they live up to their own ideals and cancel racially tainted liberal institutions like Yale? 

https://www.nysun.com/national/if-fear-can-strike-at-university-of-chicago/91171/

In a 2017 New York Times column headlined “America’s Best University President,” Bret Stephens praised Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago as a defender of free speech.

The column quoted speeches and letters from Zimmer and other University of Chicago administrators and professors, including a committee that issued a 2015 report finding that, as Mr. Stephens quoted it, “Concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.”

So it was surprising to see a blog post from John Cochrane, who until recently was a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Mr. Cochrane wrote on June 15, “I spent much of my last few years of teaching afraid that I would say something that could be misunderstood and thus be offensive to someone. Many of my colleagues report the same worries.”

If that level of fear accurately describes the situation at the University of Chicago, where the university administration has deservedly won national attention for coming down clearly, decisively, and publicly on the “open debate” side of the campus speech wars, imagine just how bad things are in the rest of academia.

In a moment when black Americans fear being killed by police, the concern that tenured professors might be inconvenienced might seem trivial. The worry at Chicago, as described by Mr. Cochrane, was less that university administrators would, on their own initiative, rule speech out of bounds.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/why_are_university_students_so_stupidityfriendly.html

The contemporary political landscape is mired in a tsunami of bad ideas. Who would have ever anticipated that defunding police departments, emptying out prisons, eliminating cash bail, free health care, free college, looting as a legitimate form of social protest politics, among other screwball ideas would go mainstream?  Socialism? How did views resting on blatant falsehoods jump from the academy’s ideological wet markets to the New York Times?

A full explanation must wait until passions cool, but in the meantime let me offer a personal account based on decades of university teaching where this nonsense initially metastasized from a few quirky campus ideas to a conquering idiocy.  

I began teaching government at an ivy league school in 1969. Yes, the students were exceptionally bright, but the faculty were unafraid of pushing them hard and an occasional Marine drill sergeant mentality was necessary. Stupidities were immediately confronted, often sarcastically and grading was tough. Some colleagues especially relished slicing and dicing fools, and students years later, would praise these martinets for “making me think and work hard.” Survivors could boast of a world-class, rigorous education.    

Matters began shifting in the ’70s as some faculty conflated easier grading (which facilitated student draft deferments) with opposing the War in Vietnam. Affirmative action admission now appeared and while these admittees lagged far behind regular students, most faculty anticipated no long-term harm, believing that blacks would eventually catch up. In any case, faculty still confidently dominated, students were still considered ignorant, and periodically informed of their failings. 

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

Did you go to college? If so, then it is overwhelmingly likely that you have been the recipient of a nauseating communication like this one from ‘Maud’ (that would be Maud S. Mandel, President of Williams College) explaining how Williams will ‘confront and fight racial and social injustice.’

I hope that you are impressed by both Maud’s bravery and her virtue. In an earlier communication, just as the wave of violent hooliganism began rolling over the country at the end of May, she let us know that she is ‘disgusted, saddened and angered by ongoing racism in all forms and places’ (every last one!). What a paragon she is! Maud then went on to ‘state unequivocally’ (unequivocally!) ‘that Williams condemns racism, violence, and injustice and will continue using its resources’ (almost $3 billion) ‘to help students — and society writ large — better understand these forces so we can continue to fight them.’

There are a few things to note about all such communications. One is how similar they are to one another. It’s as if all those college presidents and CEOs of woke companies are working from the same list of bullet points distributed some semi-literate affiliate of antifa or Black Lives Matter. You’ll see the same clichéd phrases dusted off and crammed together in drearily conformist globules of thought-free emotive sentimentality. Claudius disingenuously said that Denmark was contracted in ‘one brow of woe’ because of the elder Hamlet’s death. Something similar can be said about the incontinent displays of pseudo-anguish by our elites.

A second, and related, thing to notice about such communications is how inexpensively purchased is their distress. ‘Disgusted, saddened, and angered,’ indeed. Do you believe it? Or do you think the outrage is 99 percent manufactured, off-the-rack posturing?

I cannot vouch for authenticity but it is a good scolding….rsk

This letter is a response from Oxford to Black Students attending as Rhodes Scholars to remove the statue of Oxford Benefactor, Cecil Rhodes.

“Dear Scrotty Students,

Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations of Oxford students – a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you.

This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the
case – then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”

Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th century. We’ve played a major part in the invention of Western civilisation, from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment  and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison,
Cardinal Newman, Julie Cocks. We’re a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and revere her accordingly.

And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure we’ll concede you the short lived Southern African civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. But let’s be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as
near as damn it to zilch.