RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://rufo.substack.com/p/the-great-university-reform-debate?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Earlier this month, I participated in a friendly debate hosted by Stanford University’s Classical Liberalism Initiative, on the topic of “Academic Freedom and Higher Education Reform.”

I made the case that the modern university has lost its sense of purpose and requires significant institutional reform, even political recapture, to restore the principles of classical liberal education, while my interlocutor, Princeton professor Keith Whittington, argued for a more cautious approach, emphasizing the values of academic freedom, faculty governance, and institutional autonomy.

My belief is that the old right-libertarian solutions, which rely on procedural values, are doomed to fail. In fact, they are responsible, in large part, for the current mess. Rather than continue to pursue this dead end, I believe that we must revive the democratic governance of our public universities and shape them according to the principles and priorities of voters, who elect legislators to govern state institutions in the interest of the common good.

The following are some highlights from this debate.

On the Question of “Who Decides”

Christopher Rufo: These are all political decisions. And I think, in opposition to many of my libertarian friends, that the universities are not overly politicized. The universities are overly ideologized and insufficiently politicized. We should politicize the universities and understand that education is, at heart, a political question. Aristotle presents his theory of education in Book VIII of the Politics. The point of education, he says, is to train citizens for participation in the polis, in political life. And so, libertarian conservatives who would want to retreat are actually abdicating an enormous responsibility. These are public universities funded by taxpayers. This is not a free marketplace of ideas; this is a state-run monopoly on education institutions. And we have a duty and responsibility to use political power to shape them towards serving the citizens, towards serving the public good.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-bar-exam-puts-dei-over-competence-ncbe-family-law-schools-9c0dd4e8?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

The bar exam is about to get a nationwide overhaul. The National Conference of Bar Examiners, or NCBE, which creates and administers the uniform bar exam, plans to roll out a revamped version of the bar exam, which it calls the “NextGen” exam, in 2026. After attending the NCBE’s annual meeting this month, I have serious concerns about how this test will affect law students, law schools and the legal profession.

The proposed NextGen exam will be shorter than the current two-day evaluation, test fewer areas of law, and probe each subject less deeply. Certain topics won’t be tested at all. The exam will also feature new client-interaction exercises, though it’s unclear what this feature will look like and how the NCBE will ensure it is graded objectively.

Some of these changes may prove salutary. Working with clients, for example, is an essential feature of any law practice. But the new exam also seems far less rigorous and could hamper the ability of states to determine who should be admitted to practice law. The results could be ruinous. States can’t maintain functional court systems unless clients and judges can trust the basic competency and integrity of attorneys admitted to the bar.

The proposed exam will also eliminate family law and trusts and estates as tested subjects. Tens of millions of Americans live in rural areas and small towns, where legal needs typically revolve around family law (marriage, divorce, custody and adoption) and probate matters (estate administration, guardianships and conservatorships). In many rural areas, residents’ access to justice depends on the ability of only a handful of practicing attorneys. These residents need to know that new lawyers have the foundational knowledge to serve their needs or at least the threshold understanding necessary to refer them elsewhere. If these areas of legal practice are eliminated from the exam, it will be difficult to replenish the requisite knowledge in our lawyer ranks.

But perhaps the biggest concern is the NCBE’s use of the NextGen exam to advance its “diversity, fairness and inclusion” agenda. Two of the organization’s stated aims are to “work toward greater equity” by “eliminat[ing] any aspects of our exams that could contribute to performance disparities” and to “promote greater diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.” The NCBE reinforces this message by touting its “organization-wide efforts to ensure that diversity, fairness, and inclusion pervade its test products and services.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/have-you-looked-inside-any-of-these-books

President Joe Biden and the Democrats think that they’ve found a potent campaign issue in “book banning.” Indeed, a recent piece in Politico asserts that the Biden campaign has “made the issue of book banning a surprisingly central element of his campaign’s opening salvos.” Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been the most prominent Republican leader supporting the removal of inappropriate books from schools. I live in Florida, and I checked out five of these “banned” books to see why they were removed from school libraries.

All five books were easy to find at my local library. They are categorized as “young adult,” i.e., titles intended for children ages 12 to 18, according to the American Library Association. After reviewing them, I’m convinced that the overwhelming majority of the public wouldn’t find their removal controversial, if they knew what was contained in these provocative, and in some cases pornographic, titles.

Politico quotes a Democratic pollster who claimed that “book banning tests off the charts,” with Americans overwhelmingly opposing it. “They associate it with really authoritarian regimes, Nazi Germany,” said Celinda Lake. This is likely because the media and Democrats have misled the public in several ways. First, in using the word “ban,” they’ve created the impression that books removed from schools are also being removed from public libraries and bookstores. They’re not.

Second, prominent figures on the left have not told the truth about the content of the “banned” books and which ones have been removed from schools. For example, many progressives promoted a false claim that Duval County, Florida banned books about Robert Clemente, Hank Aaron, and Rosa Parks. Duval County schools wrote a post on February 17 correcting the misinformation, but that didn’t stop Alexandria Ocasio Cortez from blaming the GOP for allegedly prohibiting a book about Parks in Duval County more than a month later in a speech on the floor of Congress. “The Life of Rosa Parks— this apparently is too woke for the Republican Party,” she said.

The first book I looked at, This Book is Gay, written by transgender author Juno Dawson, is marketed as a “bestselling exploration of sexuality and gender for young adults.” Dawson writes in one chapter that “perhaps the most important skill you will master as a gay or bi man is the timeless classic, the handjob.” She continues, “Something they don’t teach you in school, is that in order to be able to cum at all, you or your partner may need to finish off with a handy.” The book also offers graphic descriptions of oral and anal sex, among other adult topics. “Being on bottom makes a dude no less manly than his top partner,” Dawson writes of anal sex. “He is literally taking it like a man.”

https://www.jns.org/new-york-mayor-eric-adams-praises-yeshivah-learning/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%2005-17-2023&utm_medium=email

(May 17, 2023 / JNS) New York City Mayor Eric Adams called for public schools in the five boroughs to learn from the success of some of their non-public counterparts.

Adams said at the annual 2023 Teach NYS dinner on May 10 that “instead of us focusing on how we can duplicate the success of improving our children, we attack the yeshivahs that are providing a quality education that is embracing our children.” Teach NYS is partnered with the Orthodox Union.

The mayor also noted that yeshivahs “have turned around the question mark of ‘how are our children.’ You are making an exclamation point that’s saying, ‘Our children are fine.’ ”

Referencing the recent criticisms and investigations into New York’s Jewish schools, Adams said that “people are asking questions … about what is happening in our yeshivahs across the city and state, while at the same time, 65% of black and brown children never reach proficiency in the public-school system, but we’re asking, ‘What are you doing in your schools?’ ”

He urged: “Let’s reach across our ethnic, cultural and religious philosophies … and appreciate the religious philosophies that are part of the educational opportunity.”

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/12/everything-new-under-the-sun/

Surfing the web, I came across a clever name for an Ohio secondhand resale shop: It’s New to Me. Makes sense. After all, if a person was unaware of something, upon discovery, it would be new to them. Because schools have failed to provide adequate instruction, “It’s new to me” is what a growing number of tomorrow’s American adults will say when encountering history and civics.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) quadrennial release of the “Nation’s Report Card” shows a precipitous decline in eighth graders’ proficiency in history and civics; and, consequently, a prospective boon for further leftist indoctrination.

With a hat tip to American Greatness’ writer Eric Lendrum, the state-subsidized NPR bears the bad news to America’s parents and citizens: 

[The 2022] history scores are the lowest recorded since the assessment began in 1994, and the new data mark the first-ever drop in civics . . . continuing a downward trend that began in 2014. Only 14% of students reached at or above ‘proficient’ mark in history, and in civics only 22% of students met the same benchmark.

These declines followed previous declines in fourth- and eighth-graders’ reading and math proficiency. This constitutes a significant problem, as Kerry Sautner, the chief learning officer at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, noted: “How are we going to mitigate this when we have significant drops in everything?”

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a significant reason for the students’ declining proficiency. Of course, he eschewed allotting any blame to those who ignored the science and demanded the prolonged closure of schools. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/evanston-township-high-school-equity-calculus-brown-v-board-of-education-progressives-chicago-education-c0650a21?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

“If there’s any “systemic” racism in American education today, it is refusing to fix or close the failure factories that are too many K-12 schools. Who would have thought that, nearly 70 years after Brown v. Board, progressives would endorse “separate but equal” to cover for educational failure?”

Twenty years ago George W. Bush struck a political chord by arguing that settling for low achievement in schools was “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Today our educators are defining expectations down and lowering standards in the bargain.

School districts in California this year have cut honors classes because they didn’t enroll enough minority students. Colleges are dropping standardized tests for admissions. Now comes an Illinois high school that will offer Advanced Placement calculus classes specifically for black and “Latinx” students.

In its 2023-2024 course catalog, Evanston Township High School (ETHS) offered two AP calculus classes for racial affinity groups. The first was “restricted to students who identify as Latinx.” The second was open only to “students who identify as black.” When the race-exclusionary classes made headlines, the school tweaked the descriptions to say that “while open to all students, this optional section of the course is intended to support students who identify as Black.”

The tweaked language is intended to avoid a civil-rights lawsuit since the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that a “separate but equal” education policy based on race is unconstitutional. We’ll see if that works as a legal dodge, but the clear and depressing message is that black and Hispanic students can’t achieve at the same level as white or Asian students. Will the standards for the calculus classes also be different based on race?

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/10/mandatory-dei-statements-at-universities-theyre-distasteful-but-are-they-legal/

“So, we say to all university presidents, starting with our own, MIT President Sally Kornbluth: Tear down this wall of hypocrisy and immorality. Disavow the use of mandatory DEI statements in any aspect of hiring, promotion, or admissions.”

Many U.S. universities now require Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements in applications for tenure-track professorships and even for graduate students. Often, rather than demonstrated excellence or promise, it is the first filter for applicants. You may be a latter-day Einstein, but if your DEI statement says something like, “I abhor discrimination and treat all people equally, regardless of race or gender,” you will be out of luck because you’re out of step with contemporary DEI virtue signaling.

What is DEI, and what are its shortcomings as a filter? Let us start with the words themselves. Here is what Google (via Oxford Languages) says for diversity: “The practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.”  Note that the New Age definition omits any mention of a range of different ideas or viewpoints. But it is precisely new ideas that will spur progress in the arts, science, and technology, not a mix of superficial differences such as skin color and gender.

But worse than this (pseudo) Diversity is Equity. Many people mistakenly conflate equity with equality, but there is a world of difference. For example, here are the definitions used by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Mechanical Engineering Department:

The goal of equity is to ensure fair treatment. It differs from the principle of equality in that equality affords everyone the same treatment, while the principle of equity acknowledges existing inequalities and adjusts and tailors resources to afford everyone equal opportunity. … Finally, we measure equity based on outcome rather than intent. If a policy, program, activity, building or other physical structure contributes to inequities, then it is unjust and must be modified to ensure all members of the community can thrive. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, if members of a certain group perform poorly on tests, it is the fault of the test (and those who constructed it), so it must be modified by eliminating it, lowering the bar for a passing grade, or inflating the grades of the underperformers.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/we-should-not-live-by-lies-heather-mac-donald-warns-america-to-wake-up/

The constant mantra that racism defines America and is deeply embedded in all of the nation’s institutions is leading to policies and practices that are slowly destroying the country from within, writes Heather Mac Donald in her new book “When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.”

Mac Donald recently joined College Fix editor Jennifer Kabbany to discuss how America is committing civilizational suicide and what can be done to reverse the trend.

One big step that must take place across American society: “We should not live by lies,” Mac Donald said.

Watch the full interview here:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dei-brings-kafka-to-my-law-school-ohio-tenure-collegiality-viewpoint-discipline-102d62b8?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested, prosecuted and killed by an inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. I’m Josef K.

Around 1 p.m. on Friday, April 14, Ohio Northern University campus security officers entered my classroom with my students present and escorted me to the dean’s office. Armed town police followed me down the hall. My students appeared shocked and frightened. I know I was. I was immediately barred from teaching, banished from campus, and told that if I didn’t sign a separation agreement and release of claims by April 21, ONU would commence dismissal proceedings against me. The grounds: “Collegiality.” The specifics: None.

Josef K. never learns what he’s alleged to have done wrong. The offenses I’ve allegedly committed haven’t been revealed to me, either. But I have an educated guess.