RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/24/stanfords-naughty-and-nice-list/

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. 

It’s not clear what the origin is of that admonitory observation, though one plausible source is Sophocles’ Antigone, in which the chorus observes that the gods muddle the minds of those to whom evil seems good. 

We usually think of this stricture applying mostly to individuals. But as I look around our culture today, I wonder whether it might apply equally to institutions. 

Investigating that possibility with anything like thoroughness would take many pages. But let me offer what Kierkegaard described as a “preliminary expectoration” by noting what prompted the thought that this connection between madness and destruction might have an institutional as well as an individual application. 

For anyone attuned to the cultural static of our times, it will come as no surprise to learn that the bulletin came from that pullulating golden midden, the university, and from the highest reaches thereof. Elsewhere I have written about Harvard’s decision to go full blackface by appointing Claudine Gay, an activist intellectual nonentity, to be its next president. 

As the commentator Francis Menton noted in an excellent piece on Gay’s appointment, she has long been “the enforcer-in-chief of [wokeist] orthodoxy at Harvard.” She helped destroy the career of the brilliant economist Roland Fryer because he came to the “wrong” conclusions about whether the police displayed racial bias in their use of force (they don’t), while overlooking alleged data fabrication by Ryan Enos, another Harvard professor, because his studies had come to the right (i.e., left-progressive) conclusion about race and public housing. 

Gay’s appointment was just another example of how the obsession with race is destroying the academy in this country. Would she have been appointed had she not been black? Of course not. But no sooner had I filed that piece than Stanford University beclowned itself even more dramatically. As the Wall Street Journal reported, administrators at this gilded elite bastion of politically correct attitudinizing (endowment as of June: $40.1 billion) recently published guidelines for its “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative,” “a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford.”

It gets worse, much worse, but for now all you need to know is that the “EHLI” is “one of the actions prioritized in the Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action, which was published by the Stanford CIO Council (CIOC) and People of Color in Technology (POC-IT).” If you have some Dramamine or an air sickness bag handy, check out the emetic verbiage at the links. 

It’s all part and parcel of our culture’s process of inversion, reversal, or—to give it a more familiar name—suicide. The EHLI website is . . . special. Early on, prospective readers are warned: 

CONTENT WARNING: THIS WEBSITE CONTAINS LANGUAGE THAT IS OFFENSIVE OR HARMFUL. PLEASE ENGAGE WITH THIS WEBSITE AT YOUR OWN PACE. 

https://www.city-journal.org/war-on-merit-takes-bizarre-turn

For years, two administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) have been withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s families, most of them Asian, thus denying students the right to use those awards to boost their college-admission prospects and earn scholarships. This episode has emerged amid the school district’s new strategy of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.” School administrators, for instance, have implemented an “equitable grading” policy that eliminates zeros, gives students a grade of 50 percent just for showing up, and assigns a cryptic code of “NTI” for assignments not turned in. It’s a race to the bottom.

An intrepid Thomas Jefferson parent, Shawna Yashar, a lawyer, uncovered the withholding of National Merit awards. Since starting as a freshman at the school in September 2019, her son, who is part Arab American, studied statistical analysis, literature reviews, and college-level science late into the night. This workload was necessary to keep him up to speed with the advanced studies at TJ, which U.S. News & World Report ranks as America’s top school.

Last fall, along with about 1.5 million U.S. high school juniors, the Yashar teen took the PSAT, which determines whether a student qualifies as a prestigious National Merit scholar. When it came time to submit his college applications this fall, he didn’t have a National Merit honor to report—but it wasn’t because he hadn’t earned the award. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation, a nonprofit based in Evanston, Illinois, had recognized him as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide—one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction. Principals usually celebrate National Merit scholars with special breakfasts, award ceremonies, YouTube videos, press releases, and social media announcements.

But not at TJ. School officials had decided to withhold announcement of the award. Indeed, it turns out that the principal, Ann Bonitatibus, and the director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, have been withholding this information from families and the public for years, affecting the lives of at least 1,200 students over the principal’s tenure of five years. Recognition by National Merit opens the door to millions of dollars in college scholarships and 800 Special Scholarships from corporate sponsors.