RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/12/its-time-to-decolonize-anti-semitic-jewish-stu

When I was an undergraduate at Northwestern, I took a class in Jewish Studies primarily because I thought it would be easier for me since I had gone to Jewish Day School. In addition, my other classes had reputations for being tough that quarter. I also thought it might be interesting. It was neither. The class, in part, dissected the Bible according to its many supposed authors and their political proclivities. It was mostly based on the hypotheses of German Protestant scholars. The fact that the Bible has long been read by Jews and Christians as a source of wisdom, and by social leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a source of inspiration over millennia, was apparently irrelevant.  

Ironically, this example shows how Jewish Studies Departments have been colonized. Jewish Studies have always examined Jewish culture and history through the prism of Western thought (using whatever narrative had come to dominate academia at a given time), though it obscures this bias and its antisemitic effect. Most other “studies” departments tend to extoll the identity of their subjects. In contrast, American taxpayers and Jewish donors unwittingly continue to pay for degrading and even demonizing—Jews. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/princeton-walks-away-from-chicago/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

In 2015, Princeton University adopted the “University of Chicago principles” on free speech. Edward Yingling and Stuart Taylor Jr. have an article lamenting the way the university has been betraying those principles lately, and in an underhanded way. It has been punishing a professor for expressing his conservative views and then reinterpreting its rules to allow those actions.

For more, see this letter decrying the university’s behavior from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Dear Member of the Board:

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, now in its 26th year, has
unwaveringly advocated for robust academic freedom and strong
protection of campus freedom of expression. It is for this reason that we
once more bring to your attention and to the attention of the public the
way in which the Princeton administration has violated its own stated
commitment to free speech in the matter of Cotsen Professor in the
Humanities Joshua Katz. At stake is whether Princeton University will
maintain the principles of freedom of expression that it has publicly
announced and celebrated.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/florida_parental_rights_in_education_bill_given_the_old_democrat_histrionics_treatment.html

It’s getting to be a pattern with Democrats. A statehouse passes an extremely popular common-sense bill with voters, and Democrats immediately brand it with extremist distortions and say it’s something it’s not. We saw this with voter rights bills, dubbed “Jim Crow 2.0” by the left. We saw it with measures opposing mask and vaccine mandates, dubbed ‘people will die’ laws on the left. We see it with anti-illegal immigration bills, dubbed racist, and with the branding of parents protesting objectionable policies and failure to protect vulnerable students from sexual predators by school boards, as “terrorists.” The histrionics of the left are getting pretty baroque now, but they’re also entirely predictable.

Case in point: Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, expected to be signed by Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, states this:

The two bills in the state legislature, HB 1557 and SB 1834, state that a school district “may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” 

Democrats have branded it with the catchy slogan “don’t say gay,” which is found nowhere in the bill. The bill clearly permits age-appropriate discussion for students if there’s a need to use the word ‘gay’ or explain it, but that’s unimportant to the hysterical opponents on the left.

The left is on a tear:

“This would erase LGBTQ+ history and culture from lesson plans and it sends a chilling message to LGBTQ+ young people and communities,” said Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the executive director of the national LGBTQ youth advocacy group GLSEN.

Apparently, this activist believes that if five-year-olds or seven-year-olds still learning their ABCs aren’t studying and thinking about the Stonewall Riots or the life of Harvey Milk at that tender age, they’ll be scarred for life. 

There’s also the health angle to the hysteria:

“We have to create a learning environment where they feel safe and healthy, or it’s not an effective learning environment,” said Heather Wilkie of the Zebra Coalition, a Central Florida LGBTQ advocacy group.

“When you have laws like this, that directly attack our kids for who they are, it prevents them from learning,” she said. “It prevents them from being able to be healthy.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/silencing-disfavored-speech-richard-l-cravatts/

As further evidence that the campus woke persist in trying to determine what may, and may not, be said on university campuses, activist students at UC Hastings School of Law shut down the appearance of conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro at a March 1st event organized by the Federalist Society.

Shapiro, incoming Executive Director of Georgetown’s Center for the Constitution, it will be remembered, experienced the collective wrath and opprobrium of his own school when he tweeted comments criticizing Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate a black woman as the new Supreme Court justice. In a now-deleted January 26th tweet Shapiro remarked that, in his view, “Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?” 

The reference to a “lesser black woman” proved to be a most unfortunate choice of words, which Shapiro later admitted, and was interpreted by many on the Georgetown campus as being particularly egregious, racist, and indicative of the type of white supremacist ideology which assumes the inferiority of black people and questions both affirmative action and campaigns for equity and inclusion. For his tweets, Shapiro was denounced by the law school’s dean, fellow faculty, and students, including members of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) to call for Shapiro’s firing.

So, in March, when Shapiro arrived to speak with liberal Hastings faculty member, Rory Little, at the event entitled “The Breyer Vacancy: The Rise of Contentious All or Nothing Battles for Supreme Court Nominations,” activist students associated with Hastings’ BLSA had already planned to express their dissatisfaction with Shapiro’s views by shutting down the event and utilizing the “heckler’s veto” to silence him for his ideological transgressions.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bill-to-federalize-crt-must-be-stopped/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

You might think the national parents’ rebellion against critical race theory (CRT), along with the resounding gubernatorial victory of CRT opponent Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, would be enough to protect us from federal legislation designed to impose CRT on America’s schools. You would be wrong. It looks like a federal CRT bill is around the corner.

A plan to introduce a revised version of the Civics Secures Democracy Act (CSDA), a bill that would turn CRT and “action civics” (leftist protests for course credit) into Common Core 2.0, is well underway. The coalition of leftist “civics” groups behind the new CSDA is desperate to rake in the $6 billion windfall the bill would hand them. This is their last chance to tap into the federal gravy train before the Democrats likely lose control of Congress. If passed this year, the revised CSDA would also set these pro-CRT leftists up as the arbiters of a de facto national curriculum, regardless of what happens in the midterms.

The revised version of CSDA only seems to eliminate its radical political elements. Once you understand the latest educational lingo, it’s obvious that this bill will allow the Biden administration to nationalize CRT. The danger is that naïve Republicans, unfamiliar with leftist education theories and eager to associate themselves with anything labeled “civics,” will be duped into cosponsoring this disastrous bill.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/the-woke-weapon-on-campus-danger/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

The cause of sparing anybody discomfort over anything is making college life miserable — for everybody.

C ollege students face “danger” everywhere they turn. A comment that makes you uncomfortable, an unsavory name on a building, a mask that fell under the nose, a nonprogressive comment in class.

Danger to college students (the woke ones in particular) is subjective — danger to me is danger to all.

The most recent and obvious such danger on college campuses is Covid. Even as the less-virulent Omicron wanes, hospitalization rates plummet, and state and municipal mask advisories are lifted, college students continue to face intolerable levels of Covid precautions.

One Harvard student and former classmate, Julie Hartman, decided to bravely question Harvard’s overzealous Covid policing. On Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, she wrote about pandemic-related changes to Housing Day, a Harvard tradition put on hold for the past two years:

Sophomores, juniors and seniors storm freshman dormitories to tell first-year students which of the 12 “houses,” essentially big dorms for upperclassmen, they will live in for their remaining time on campus. Having lost two of these days during the 17 months that Harvard sent us home, I was excited to participate in one more traditional Housing Day my senior year. Instead, the student government said it would likely be a modified outdoor event.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/28/ii-tipp-poll-americans-want-merit-not-woke-politics-to-decide-college-admissions/

America’s colleges and universities increasingly use non-academic criteria, including gender, family income and race, to decide who gets admitted and who doesn’t. It’s a trend most Americans seem to deeply dislike, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Parents want their kids to face a merit-based admissions policy, over one that is for the lack of a better word, woke.

Indeed, if parents’ preferences mattered to institutions of higher education, schools would be making their admission decisions on such merit-based standards as academic achievements and aptitude, not woke criteria such as race and income or whether an applicant has famous parents.

I&I/TIPP asked American adults a simple question: “To what extent do you support or oppose colleges and universities using the following factors to make admission decisions?”

They then provided the following nine possible college admission criteria: “Race or ethnicity,” “Gender,” “Whether a parent went to the school,” “High school grades,” “Extracurricular activities,” “Athletic ability,” “Household income,” “The applicant is the child of a famous person,” “SAT/ACT scores.”

Possible answers included “Support strongly,” “Support somewhat,” “Oppose somewhat,” “Oppose strongly” and “Not sure.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/critical-thinking-must-replace-critical-race-michael-cutler/

It is becoming all-too apparent that proponents of Critical Race Theory seek the demise of our great Republic. They are using the age-old “divide and conquer” strategy to turn Americans against one another, seeking to instigate conflict and violence to undermine our peaceful society.

There are no winners with this strategy in place — only victims.

Racism is defined as:

Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized — the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

Racism is racism, and no matter who bears the brunt of it, is wrong-headed and dangerous. It is inherently and supremely unfair and leads all people, of all races, down a dangerous path of resentment and hostility that likely will ultimately result in violence. Critical Race Theory, or CRT, actually promotes racism.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-school-shutdowns-and-lost-literacy-covid-pandemic-amplify-education-reading-11645653340?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Governments made many mistakes in the pandemic, and shutting down schools was arguably the worst. We’re now discovering the damage as studies calculate the learning loss.

Amplify, the curriculum and assessment provider, examined its test data for some 400,000 elementary school students across 37 states. It found a spike in students not reading at grade level, with the literacy losses “disproportionately concentrated in the early elementary grades (K-2).”

Before the pandemic, 55% of kindergartners were on track in reading skills. That fell to 37% in 2020–2021 and 47% this school year. The year before the pandemic, only 29% of kindergartners were deemed “far behind” in early literacy skills. That rose to 47% and 37% the first and second year of the pandemic.

Amplify sees some progress this year in reading as the classrooms have reopened. But the troubles persist for this year’s second graders, whose schooling has been dominated by shutdowns and disruptions. Among this Covid cohort, Amplify finds that “the number of students at greatest risk of not learning to read is slightly higher than it was a year ago.” Some 35% of second graders are in literacy crisis this year, up from 26% before the shutdowns.

Like other recent studies, Amplify reports that minority children suffered disproportionate learning loss. During the last normal school year, only 34% of black and 29% of Hispanic second graders needed intensive intervention to help catch up. This school year 47% of black and 39% of Hispanic second graders have fallen this far behind on literacy, compared to 26% of white peers.