RUTHFULLY YOURS

Surprisingly, their survey of psychology students revealed that white students at “predominantly white institutions” had “greater awareness of racial oppression” than those who attended “racially balanced” schools.

Mary Ann Priester and Ronald Pitner, both of whom teach in the College of Social Work at USC, advanced that claim in a July 19 research article examining the prevalence of color-blind attitudes among psychology students.

“Deficits in awareness are not only unethical, but can also perpetuate White norms within the professions.” Tweet This

Defining color-blindness as “denial or lack of awareness of race-based privilege, institutional racism, and/or racial discrimination,” they argue that “this lack of awareness has been identified as a barrier to developing therapeutic rapport with racially diverse populations.”

“Color-blind racial attitudes may prevent White individuals from developing a deeper level of awareness of racial oppression,” the professors assert, later adding that “deficits in awareness are not only unethical, but can also perpetuate White norms within the professions.”

Because of the harm allegedly caused when white people subscribe to color-blind racial attitudes, the professors surveyed 409 college students to determine the prevalence of “color-blind racial attitudes” among students with varying levels of “diversity exposure.”

Students were considered to be color-blind if they agreed with meritocratic statements such as “Everyone who works hard, no matter what race they are, has an equal chance to become rich” and “Race plays a major role in the type of social services that people receive in the United States.”

The professors determined that “being White was associated with higher scores on the color-blindness measure, indicating a greater lack of awareness of White privilege and racial discrimination among White students,” and speculate that this might be due to the fact that “race is often not as central” to the identity of white individuals.

Curiously, they also found that “students who attended predominantly White undergraduate institutions had greater awareness of racial oppression than students who attended institutions that were racially balanced,” a result that runs contrary to conventional wisdom.

Citing “greater levels of exclusion and racial microaggressions at predominantly White institutions,” they suggest that “White students may become more sensitized to racism when they witness differential treatment of racial/ethnic minority students on campus.”

Reiterating their assertion that color-blindness presents a barrier to establishing “therapeutic rapport with clients,” the professors conclude that “understanding how diversity exposure influences color-blind racial attitudes…can better inform multicultural training curriculum and strategies.”

Neither Priester nor Pitner responded to requests for comment from Campus Reform.https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9502

The University of Michigan is looking to hire a new “Bias Incident Prevention and Response Coordinator” to clamp down on “students of concern” and “enact cultural appropriation prevention initiatives.”
The full-time job, which pays between $46,000 and $57,000, oversees handling of “bias incidents” reported on campus, as well as various “social justice initiatives.”
The role also has crisis-management components, such as providing “a safe listening space in which to offer compassion, support, and guidance to students” after especially severe “bias incidents.”

The University of Michigan is looking for someone to clamp down on “students of concern” and “enact cultural appropriation prevention initiatives.”

A job posting on the school’s website seeks candidates to fill the role of “Bias Incident Prevention and Response Coordinator,” a full-time position within the Dean of Students Office that comes with a starting salary range of $46,000 – $57,000.

“Provides a safe listening space in which to offer compassion, support, and guidance to students.” Tweet This

UMich estimates that about 40 percent of the job will involve coordinating “bias incident response efforts,” which entails coordinating “appropriate and effective intervention and communication between multiple campus offices…and the provision of support to individuals and groups targeted by bias behaviors.”

Over the last century America has gone from a nation that prized self-reliance to one where millions seem unbothered by dependency. For a political leader just to hint at curtailing entitlements or adding a work requirement certifies him as evil. This is hardly surprising is that Washington itself promotes dependency and this training for irresponsibility begins early in life. Long before a youngster can vote, he or she learns, regardless of what economist say, that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.

A recent Wall Street Journal article (July 19, 2017, A3) highlighted how this sorrowful condition is encouraged. The Journal article concerns government financed school meals (lunches but increasingly larger numbers of breakfasts). This generosity, in addition to providing daily vitamins and minerals also supplies a daily message that government, not parents, put food on the table. To be specific, in 2016, 73.3% of all school children availing themselves of school lunches ate either free or reduced priced lunches; this compares to 15.1% in 1969.

More is involved than just instructing youngsters in the statist Lord’s Prayer where the Department of Agriculture (USDA), not the Lord, gives us our daily bread. This “instruction” also applies to the millions of other youngsters whose families do not financially qualify for subsidized meals and must therefore pay something toward their daily bread. At least they, unlike those on the subsidized meal plan, ought to see the connection between the sweat of somebody’s brow and their daily bread.

No such luck. Though the Department of Agriculture that administers school food programs explicitly requires schools to notify parents when junior is a deadbeat, inaction regarding no-pays is commonplace. Yes, some school districts are cracking down, for example, banning freeloaders from attending graduation or even withholding meals until the bill is paid (legally permissible), but many other school districts permit junior (and his parents) to stiff Uncle Sam. For example, the Los Angeles Unified School District recently absorbed $629,000 in debt for these unpaid meals; the Yonkers New York School District had an even more forgiving policy and thus wound up with a deficit of $800,000.

This tolerance for freeloading is predictable. Public schools are not like McDonald’s and few educators seem alarmed over burgeoning education costs. In fact, some educators resist any effort to get deadbeats to pay up for their meals and if a school instead supplies a bag lunch to lunchroom deadbeats, the school is condemned for “lunch shaming” (nearly half of all schools engage in some form of shaming). Though shaming is permitted by USDA rules, Texas and New Mexico currently prohibited it and other states are now considering anti-shaming measures. A proposed federal law — the Anti-Lunch Shaming Act of 2017 — has even been introduced in Congress. And needless to say, a no money, no food policy is unthinkable in today’s educational hyper-compassionate environment.

You’d think someone who advocated for a “white genocide” on Twitter might feel an inkling of responsibility for the backlash he has faced. Unfortunately for George Ciccariello-Maher, a professor at Drexel, he clearly hasn’t.

After being blasted over his earlier comments, Ciccariello-Maher now claims sites like Campus Reform and The College Fix are part of a coordinated effort to unfairly attack left-leaning professors:

From Campus Reform:

George Ciccariello-Maher, an assistant professor of political science, told The Triangle that it is vital to note that conservative outlets are “targeting professors and looking for anything.”

“The bigger question we need to understand is the actual machinery behind what’s going on right now,” he told the publication.

“We’re living in a moment in which organized and coordinated groups are attacking professors. And I was sort of, maybe, on the early end of this in this year. There are cases in the past, many cases. But we’ve since had more than a dozen cases of groups like Campus Reform, Turning Point USA, The Campus Fix [sic] and all these websites — Breitbart — and then up into Fox News targeting professors and looking for anything,” he added.

Ciccariello-Maher also defended Trinity College professor Johnny Eric Williams who was put on leave after appearing to endorse the notion that first responders to June’s congressional baseball shooting should have let the GOP lawmakers “f***ing die.”

Talk about not getting the point.

As someone who spends a good bit of time on this topic, I can say that Ciccariello-Maher is giving us way too much credit. We’re not that coordinated.

What happens is a leftist professor says something that makes you scratch your head. Maybe it’s stupid, maybe it’s evil, but it’s always something that causes alarm among people with an interest in the education of young adults. Then sites like Campus Reform and The College Fix get wind of it and write about it. CONTINUE AT SITE

A dominant narrative about the Trump Administration is that Donald Trump’s election ushered in a new wave of anti-Semitism. It’s an absurd claim, given that among Trump’s top advisors, eleven are Jews, including his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

That’s not to say anti-Semitism isn’t a problem. In fact, it is on the rise. But if you want to find where anti-Semitism is running rampant, don’t look to the Oval Office. Look instead to the place where you’re least likely to find a Trump supporter, the college quad.

I know this because at the recent Christians United For Israel Washington Summit, I spent time with student activists from CUFI On Campus. I listened to their harrowing stories of harassment and intimidation that Jewish (and Christian) students face from left-wing professors and Palestinian student groups whenever they speak up in support of Israel or resist misguided boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) schemes that single out the Jewish state for punishment.

While many in the media portray anti-Semitism as a phenomenon of the right, it is among young liberals that it is growing the most. Several recent studies demonstrate just how pervasive anti-Semitism has become on college campuses. An April report by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry found that there has been a 45 percent rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents on American college campuses between 2015 and 2016.

A study by the Anti-Defamation League found that such incidents rose by a third in 2016 from 2015 and increased 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017. Several other studies put the share of Jewish college students who experience anti-Semitism on campus at anywhere from half to three quarters.

The problem isn’t confined to students making threats against or hurling anti-Semitic slurs at Jewish students. A recent lawsuit suggests school administrators are partly responsible for creating an environment that’s unsafe for Jewish students.

In June, a group of current and former students sued San Francisco State University alleging that the university fostered a climate of anti-Semitism “marked by violent threats to the safety of Jewish students on campus.” The students complain that they were intimidated and prevented from holding events. The environment became so hostile that the students say they became afraid to do anything to indicate that they are Jewish, such as wearing Star of David necklaces.

It’s 2017. And this sort of thing should not be happening anymore.

Millions from the National Science Foundation are being funneled into left-wing social justice work. It’s a criminal waste of money and resources. All this from the folks who claim to love science.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) gave out more than three million dollars to fight “implicit bias,” “microaggressions,” and “lack of diversity” in STEM fields this July.

Texas A&M, meanwhile, received $1,999,000 to fund efforts to “dramatically improve the diversity, inclusion, and quality” of students and faculty in the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

Because that’s what we need in the field. Not talent. Not merit. Diversity.

The NSF also gave out another social-justice themed grant on July 5, this time awarding the University of New Hampshire $999,752 to explore strategies for preventing “bias incidents” perpetrated against minorities in science, building upon prior research funded by the NSF, which found that “bias incidents in the academic workplace create a negative climate for STEM women faculty and for other faculty with minority status.”

Over the next five years, with the support of the NSF grant, UNH will collaborate with researchers from Ohio State University, the University of Virginia, and the University of New Hampshire to create a comprehensive “bias awareness guide and intervention tool.”

So almost a million dollars in taxpayer money will be funneled into campus intimidation.

According to the NSF website…

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…” NSF is vital because we support basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future.

As we can see above.

The director and all Board members serve six year terms. Each of them, as well as the NSF deputy director, is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. At present, NSF has a total workforce of about 2,100 at its Arlington, VA, headquarters, including approximately 1,400 career employees, 200 scientists from research institutions on temporary duty, 450 contract workers and the staff of the NSB office and the Office of the Inspector General.

How many of those 1,400 career employees are remotely needed for what the NSF does?

Carl Sandburg College in Illinois may put students through “disciplinary proceedings” for using “offensive language” or “disparaging comments” — a policy that some argue exposes the college to First Amendment lawsuits.

According to an article in Campus Reform, the college’s Student Code of Conduct allows administrators to “initiate disciplinary proceedings against” any student who “is verbally abusive; threatens; uses offensive language; intimidates; engages in bullying, cyber bullying, or hazing; [or] uses hate speech, disparaging comments, epithets, or slurs which create a hostile environment.”

Sam Harris, vice president of policy research at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), told Campus Reform that the school’s status “as a public institution” would make it “highly vulnerable to a First Amendment lawsuit” over a policy like this.

“A public school certainly cannot punish students for any and all ‘offensive language’ or ‘disparaging comments,’ nor is ‘hate speech’ a legally cognizable category of speech unprotected by the First Amendment,” Harris told Campus Reform. He added that “while some speech that is offensive or hateful may also constitute threats, harassment, etc., and for that reason be unprotected, most offensive [or] hateful speech is wholly protected by the First Amendment.”

College spokesman Aaron Frey, however, defended the policy to Campus Reform, insisting that officials at the college fully realize that “being open to differing perspectives and opinions is an integral part of the educational experience and growth of students.” But the administration simply “also find[s] it important that those ideas are exchanged in a manner that is respectful and free of speech that may be deemed abusive or hateful in order to maintain a welcoming environment for our students.”

Sorry, Frey — but I’m not buying it. After all, the school’s own policy goes beyond “abusive or hateful” speech; it includes speech that is merely “offensive” — which is, by the way, an entirely subjective descriptor. The thing is, that whole “differing perspectives” ideal that Frey claims that the school values so much means that the exact same statement might be considered “offensive” to people from one perspective but acceptable — or perhaps even “virtuous” — to people from another perspective. And it’s completely inappropriate to give school administrators the authority to dole out punishments to students based on their own interpretations of something that is so subjective. Oh, and for the record: Hate speech, although disgusting, is constitutionally protected, too.

Here’s the bottom line: This policy pretty clearly isn’t just about punishing harassment, because there are already laws against that. This is about something more. It’s about giving administrators broader power to control the speech of students — perhaps to ensure that it stays within certain ideological limits. This policy is not only potentially unconstitutional, but it’s also pretty clearly absurd on a logistical level. Think about it: A ban on “disparaging comments”? Honestly, I’d challenge any person in the world to think of a day that went by in his or her life without a making single “disparaging comment.”

Imagine if radical campus activists had to face the consequences of their actions. Imagine if they could no longer suppress and shut down speakers with impunity. Imagine if a college administrator grew a backbone and defended his institution from the barbarians at the gates.

We’re not there yet. But Claremont McKenna College, a prominent liberal-arts school in Southern California, is at least taking action. The school has suspended five students who led attempts to shut down a college-sponsored lecture by Heather Mac Donald, the pro-police conservative commentator, in April. Three will be suspended for a full year, while two will be suspended for a semester. Two more will be placed on conduct probation.

The students, along with many others from the Claremont colleges and outside the university, blockaded the lecture hall where Mac Donald was set to speak, forcing the event to be moved and livestreamed from a secret location. In a statement, Claremont McKenna explained that “the blockade breached institutional values of freedom of expression and assembly” and “deprived many of the opportunity to gather, hear the speaker, and engage with questions and comments.”

Claremont McKenna should be applauded, first for inviting Mac Donald to speak, and second for taking a stand in defense of the idea of the university. It could have taken the easy way out, slapping all the protest leaders on the wrists with a mandatory course or probation to put an end to the story. That’s what Middlebury College did when its students shut down an event featuring Charles Murray, the libertarian social scientist, and in the process assaulted Professor Allison Stranger, who ended up with a concussion.

In fact, nobody ever seems to get punished for preventing the free exchange of ideas on a college campus. Unwilling to anger student radicals and their defenders in the media, college administrators routinely back down. They appease the crocodile, hoping that he will be grateful for the school’s leniency and perhaps eat it last.

But appeasement has not worked. All across the country, student activists have become emboldened, trusting that they can do whatever they want, so long as they claim the moral high ground. After all, they only have to label a conservative as a “white supremacist” and they are free to take over campus and suppress her views. Their schools are too weak and fearful to stop them.

This is a sick state of affairs that should not continue. Claremont McKenna has shown that it is possible to take a stand. There is no reason why schools cannot suspend students who shut down campus speeches. Repeat offenders should be expelled. Anyone who participates in a violent protest should also be expelled. All schools should join Claremont McKenna in endorsing the University of Chicago’s Principles of Free Expression, which declare that the “University has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.”

If, after that, a few radicals still seek to break the rules, let them suffer the consequences of satisfying their confused consciences. The rest of the student body — the ones who don’t want to spend the year back home with their parents — will get the message: You can speak and protest all you want, but you cannot prevent someone else from speaking.