RUTHFULLY YOURS

Amid the icy Nor’easter that hit the east coast Tuesday, a clear ray of intellectual sunshine emerged: Professors Robert George of Princeton University and Cornel West of Harvard University posted online, for national signatures, a petition in defense of freedom of speech. You may find it at http://jmp.princeton.edu/statement.

Their statement—“Truth Seeking, Democracy, and Freedom of Thought and Expression”—follows on the heels of last week’s remarkable free-speech statement by professors at Middlebury College, which now has more than 100 signatures at that small Vermont institution.

Both efforts come in the aftermath of a protest at Middlebury against scholar Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute. That protest turned into a mob action, including an assault on Middlebury professor Allison Stanger, who had questioned Mr. Murray on stage.

For years, Professors George and West, the former a conservative and the latter a socialist, together taught a class at Princeton on how to listen to contrary points of view. Middlebury’s violence drove home what many in academia have come to see more clearly now—that the most basic tenets of free inquiry and exchange are under unprecedented pressure in the U.S., not least at universities.

The George-West statement stands as a forceful rebuttal to the all-too-frequent attempt to stigmatize opponents into silence. We hope it gains the national support it deserves.

In a letter to the editor posted in last Sunday’s NYTimes magazine, the writer had this to say:

“Thank you Nikole Hannah-Jones for making plain how antiblackness and the effort to subjugate black and brown people and those deemed “other” are enduring subtexts to all our fights around education. There is a direct line from efforts to eradicate the language and culture of native people to the substandard education offered to the formerly enslaved and our ‘no excuses” or test-obsessed charters today….The underlying theory is that schools sort students into winners and losers, that parents want to seek competitive advantage so their children are on top and the means for gaining advantage as well as the results are highly racialized to maintain white supremacy.” (Beth Glenn, Director , Education Justice Network, ( NYT 3/12/17)

Ms. Glenn is obviously unaware that as of 2014, it is Asian “other” students who constituted 73% of the enrollment at Stuyvesant, 62% at Bronx Science and 61% at Brooklyn Tech. So much for white supremacy at those public schools in New York where performance is judged by merit, not by race. Asian parents traditionally resist putting their children into English as a Second Language class where students often languish unsuccessfully for years. They do not consider that their native language is “eradicated” when their children learn the native language of the country where they live. They properly understand that language is a vital necessity in the path to educational and professional success. No black or Latino children today are formerly enslaved but that desire for victim status is a giveaway to Ms Glenn’s mode of thinking and her inability to grasp that “no excuses” is another reality and a character building tool for gaining a foothold in a competitive society

Sadly, black and Hispanic enrollment at these special schools is in single digit percents and surprisingly, the minority with the highest poverty rate among New York’s races is also Asian. Rather than complain about disadvantage, they seem determined to instill the values of hard work, perseverance, willingness to do what is necessary without feeling aggrieved or looking for cop-outs. Unfortunately, too many who determine policy at the Board of Education seem to be more n line with Ms. Glenn’s unproductive attitudes. Standards constantly get lowered so that students who are deficient in English and Math get pushed ahead anyway, though too many drop out and only 65% graduate from high school on time. Currently, students can appeal the grade on their Regents exam if they have taken the test twice, passed the course and scored between 62 – 64; the new proposal is to further lower that to 60. Compare this with the graduation rate of 85% for Asians and 82% for whites. New York has just eliminated a required literacy test for its teachers, further dumbing down the standards for working in the field of education along with the possibility of acquiring one.

In the last few weeks, there has been a spate of columns by writers on the left condemning the left-wing college students who riot, take over university buildings, and shout down speakers they differ with.

These condemnations, coming about 50 years too late, should not be taken seriously.

Take New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. His latest column is filled with dismay over the way Middlebury College students attacked Charles Murray and the liberal female professor who invited him to Middlebury (she was injured by the rioters).

I have no doubt that Bruni is sincere. Sincerity, however, is completely unrelated to wisdom or insight.

Here’s the problem: It is the Left that transformed universities into the moral and intellectual wastelands most now are.

It is the Left that created the moral monsters known as left-wing students who do not believe in free speech, let alone tolerance.

It is the Left that has taught generations of young Americans that America is essentially a despicable society, racist and xenophobic to its core.

It is the Left that came up with the lie that the university has been overrun by a “culture of rape.”

It is the Left that taught generations of Americans that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, and bigoted.

It is the Left that is anti-intellectual, teaching students to substitute feelings for reason.

It is the Left that removed the portrait of Shakespeare hanging at the English department of the University of Pennsylvania because Shakespeare is a white male — thereby teaching college students that art is not measured by excellence or by the pursuit of truth but by race, gender, and class.

It is the Left that has transformed the Founders of the United States from great men creating the freest and most affluent society in human society into rich, white, racist males who created a racist, colonialist, imperialist, women-hating, foreigner-hating, non-white-hating society.