RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-progressive-assault-on-selective-high-schools-11606349353?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has fired the latest salvo in America’s assault on meritocracy: a 61-page opinion holding that the suburban Loudoun County school system discriminated against black and Hispanic youngsters because its selective-admission high school, the Academies of Loudon, hadn’t admitted enough of them. Never mind that—as Mr. Herring acknowledged—the school’s test-based admissions process is open to all and fairly managed. Because its results have a “disparate impact,” the school system must scrap it.

Nationwide, selective-admission public schools, also known as “exam schools,” are under attack because the demographics of their student populations don’t match those of their communities. Much like elite universities, critics allege, these schools have been admitting far too many whites and Asians and not nearly enough blacks and Latinos.

The ruckus began in New York, where admission to nine of the city’s hundreds of high schools is governed by the eighth-grader’ scores on a specialized admission test. Topping the list are Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, and there’s no denying that they’re full of Asian and white kids, many from low-income and middle-class families. This has raised hackles for decades, but Mayor Bill de Blasio and his schools chancellor have recently pushed to make the admissions process more “equitable.” They want to reserve places for black and Latino children, abolish the entry exam, and instead admit top students from every middle school in the city.

But is every middle school churning out eighth-graders with the requisite skills and knowledge to succeed at Bronx Science? Are all children who make good grades eager, motivated learners ready to make the most of what these high-powered schools have to offer?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/if-you-worked-trump-administration-youre-not-richard-l-cravatts/

With the intellectually arrogant but now regular behavior common on university campuses, Harvard students last week circulated an open letter to President Lawrence Bacow and Harvard University deans and leadership proposing that Harvard take proactive measures to prevent Trump administration officials from securing appointments, fellowships, or speaking opportunities on campus.

Clearly indignant at the prospect of someone who worked for an administration they have loathed since inauguration day in 2017, the tendentious students expressed their grave concern “about the impact of the actions of this administration on fundamental democratic institutions.”

Even though these students obviously have found nothing of redeeming value in anything positive the Trump administration may have accomplished, their primary justification for calling for preventing “Harvard [becoming] a temporary home for officials from the outgoing administration” is Trump’s current legal challenge to the November 3rd election and the campaign’s claims that voter fraud and irregularities in many states should be challenged in court. That process, of course, is perfectly legal and is the constitutionally-permitted right of a candidate to launch, especially in an election like this one—with razor thin margins, new voting practices, mail-in balloting as a result of the pandemic, and evidence of blatant fraud and voting irregularities, just as it was in 2000 when the Gore campaign challenged the voting results for 36 days after election day.

Nevertheless, the Harvard students have no time to wait for an audit and full accounting of the November 3rd election, claiming that Trump’s failure to have already conceded eradicates completely his entire record as president, including all of those individuals who made up his administration.

“Most notably, in actively undermining faith in the electoral process and in refusing to concede the 2020 election,” the student’s letter reads, “the Trump administration has trampled norms of free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power that have defined our republic for over two centuries. These norms are crucial to the global well-being of democratic institutions.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/leftist_academics_compulsively_indoctrinate_their_students.html

A Cambridge University professor can’t resist telling students that he thinks a brain parasite is why people voted for Trump.

Leftist college professors leak hatred out of their pores. No matter the subject, they return obsessively to bashing Trump specifically and conservatives generally. Dr. Robert Asher, a Zoology Professor at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (England), and a Huffington Post contributor, is a perfect example. In introducing students to his course, he can’t resist throwing in his belief that a highly-damaging brain parasite is why people vote for Brexit or Trump.

To appreciate what Asher said, you need to know about the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, long recognized for affecting cats. A few years ago, though, researchers realized that it affected humans as well. Even people without cats can get it from contaminated food and water, contaminated utensils, contaminated (unwashed) fruits and vegetables, and infected organ transplants and blood transfusions.

In healthy people, toxoplasmosis feels like a bad flue. In people with weakened immune systems, it can cause seizures and lung problems. Pregnant women can also transfer it to the fetus, which often leads to stillbirths or miscarriages. If the fetuses survive, they can have serious, lifelong health problems such as seizures or liver and spleen damage.

What distinguishes Toxoplasmosis from other parasites is that it can cause severe mental disorders and behavioral problems:

Infection by the parasite Toxoplasma, which affects about 33% of world population, is associated with an increased risk of several mental health disorders, the most strongly with schizophrenia. [snip] The typical symptom associated with toxoplasmosis was anxiety, and the typical toxoplasmosis-associated disorders were autism (OR = 4.78), schizophrenia (OR = 3.33), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (OR = 2.50), obsessive compulsive disorder (OR = 1.86), antisocial personality disorder (OR = 1.63), learning disabilities (OR = 1.59), and anxiety disorder (OR = 1.48). Toxoplasmosis could play a substantial role in the etiopathogenesis of mental health disorders and its association with schizophrenia is the second strongest association, after autism.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/20/elite-schools-are-the-most-problematic-on-speech/

Northwestern University is in the midst of significant protests and violence surrounding the “NU Community Not Cops” movement, which intends to march every day until the school abolishes its university police. University president Morton Schapiro has condemned the violent student activity, which has disrupted businesses and local neighborhoods, defaced property, and violated laws and university standards. Students have “moved well past legitimate forms of free speech,” Schapiro says, rightly.

This is no isolated incident, however. Disruptions and violent incidents often appear to be more common at elite schools – not just Northwestern but others such as USC, UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, and Claremont McKenna College, to name a few.

Thanks to the new 2020 College Free Speech Rankings from RealClearEducation, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and research firm College Pulse, empirical evidence confirms this suspicion. The rankings are based on the largest study of student attitudes about speech to date, sampling some 20,000 students. It turns out that students enrolled in the country’s most elite schools are appreciably more willing to shut down speech and expression with which they disagree than the overwhelming majority of college students at non-elite schools.

These tendencies appear to have some correlation with general political views. Almost three-quarters (71%) of those students in the most prestigious universities (the top ten schools, based on U.S. News rankings) identify as liberal, with only 15% calling themselves conservative. The numbers look notably different as school ranking levels decline.

At schools ranked between 50 and 99 on the U.S. News scale, 51% of students are liberal, compared to 26% conservative. Conservative students are much harder to find at Harvard, in other words, than at the University of Minnesota. Forcomparison, 28% of Americans in general presently identify as conservative.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/students-call-on-harvard-to-ban-trump-officials-from-speaking-holding-positions-on-campus/

Harvard University students are calling on the university to ban Trump officials from giving talks or holding positions on campus over concern “about the impact of the actions of this administration on fundamental democratic institutions.”

In an open letter circulating online for signatures, students write to President Lawrence Bacow and Harvard University deans and leadership that they are hoping to get ahead of the tradition of “Harvard [becoming] a temporary home for officials from the outgoing administration.”

“We write to you now, in advance of the conclusion of the Trump administration, extremely concerned about the impact of the actions of this administration on fundamental democratic institutions,” the letter reads. “Most notably, in actively undermining faith in the electoral process and in refusing to concede the 2020 election, the Trump administration has trampled norms of free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power that have defined our republic for over two centuries. These norms are crucial to the global well-being of democratic institutions.”

It continues: “A complete disregard for the truth is a defining feature of many decisions made by this administration. That alone should be enough to draw a line.”