RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2025/01/07/keeping-bds-out-of-academia-a-canadian-case-study-2/

A Canadian professor once complained to me that academia is nowhere near as radically leftist as conservative culture critics tend to imagine. Yes, there’s plenty of “wokeness” on display. But almost all of these woke controversies, he argued, originate with a tiny minority of dedicated extremists. Most of his colleagues—well over 90 percent, by his estimation—would prefer to stay out of the public eye, avoid political fights, and focus on their areas of specialised research.

He may well be right. But as numerous examples reported by Quillette have shown, even small groups of highly motivated ideologues can exert an outsized influence on the intellectual climate at their schools—especially if they succeed in co-opting ostensibly neutral bodies such as hiring committees, DEI oversight teams, and academic unions.

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A recent case study concerns the Brock University Faculty Association (BUFA), the labour union that represents about 600 full-time faculty members and professional librarians at Brock, a large public research university located about two hours west of Toronto. At BUFA’s general meetings, quorum requirements may be satisfied by just 5 percent of the membership—or about 30 people.

According to one Brock professor who monitors BUFA’s activities closely, most meetings attract just a few dozen people. Few workaday profs can even spare the time required to scrutinize the agendas, which are sent out five days before each meeting.

And so it apparently wasn’t difficult for an assistant professor of sociology named Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz to get his “Motion on Scholasticide in Palestine” onto the agenda of BUFA’s December 16, 2024 meet-up—where it was duly seconded by his old master’s-degree supervisor, Nancy Cook (an expert on, among other things, “critical mobilities studies, and feminist, postcolonial and poststructural theory”).

Consistent with other campaigns inspired by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, Tanyildiz accuses the Jewish state of not only “scholasticide,” but also apartheid, genocide, and war crimes. He calls for Brock’s administration (and its pension planners) to execute a “complete divestment” from any organization that’s even indirectly “complicit” in this regard—including multinational corporations and Israeli universities—and demands that Brock enact a long laundry list of pro-Palestinian policies.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/08/new-years-jeers/

Now that the holiday season hoopla is behind us, a look at the latest doings in education is in order. To begin with, the sex cultists are still alive and well. In fact, according to The Heritage Foundation, 16 states force transgender lessons on children.

Heritage’s “Gender Ideology as State Education Policy” report highlights the education standards and frameworks of states that encourage gender ideology, which is defined as “the subordination or displacement of factual, ideologically neutral lessons about biological sex with tell-tale notions such as ‘gender identity,’ ‘sex assigned at birth,’ and ‘cisgender.’”

Not surprisingly, only one of the states—Wyoming—is of the red persuasion. In deep blue Oregon, the state’s health standards include “heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, asexual, two-spirit, and pansexual.” in their definitions of sexual and romantic orientations.

In a similar vein, New Jersey’s learning standards state, “Gender assigned at birth means the gender that someone was thought to be at birth, typically recorded on their (sic) original birth certificate. The gender someone was assigned at birth may or may not match their (sic) gender identity.”

Hence, with the onslaught of misinformation and proselytizing, it becomes understandable that 5.1% of adults younger than 30 claim to be transgender or nonbinary, per a Pew Research poll, and this social contagion is being used as a political cudgel by many with a perverse agenda.

In reality, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute, an LGBTQ advocacy group, a staggering 99.4% of the population does not have the physical traits that cause someone to become transgender.

Also, Brown University physician and researcher Lisa Littman released a study in 2018 that showed “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” in young people may be driven by “social and peer contagion.” She stresses that nearly 70% of the teenagers were involved with a peer group in which at least one friend had identified as transgender.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/31/brazen-taxation/

hen I think about government-run schools, I am reminded of Margaret Thatcher’s famous quote, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

While taxes are not necessarily socialist, they can be overbearing, nowhere more so than in education. In fact, the government excels at spending other people’s money on schooling. The U.S. (i.e., taxpayers) spent $1.2 trillion on K-16 in 2022.

Of that astronomical amount, spending on higher education amounted to $226 billion, which often goes to schools that don’t need it. Researcher Jay Greene examined payments to Ivy League schools and found that the federal government provides enormous subsidies to these elite institutions, which are the wealthiest universities in the country. “The eight universities in the Ivy League receive $1.8 billion each year from taxpayers, despite the fact that these universities are sitting on $192 billion in endowment funds. If they need money for buildings and electricity, donors have already given them plenty. There is no need for taxpayers to give the richest universities $1.8 billion each year to cover the costs of buildings that their donors have already enabled them to maintain and update.”

There are about 4,000 for-profit colleges in the U.S., and they receive the great majority of federal tax dollars for higher education, with just 22 colleges in the country refusing any public funds.

But the swindle doesn’t stop there. The American Enterprise Institute’s Nat Malkus runs the think tank’s Student Debt Forgiveness Tracker, which identifies all student loan revenue from the U.S. Treasury that has been “forgone or forgiven during the Trump and Biden presidencies.” The tracker’s total now sits at about $415 billion.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/civic-education-is-making-a-much-needed-comeback/

Over 300 JMC-supported programs enrich the academic lives of students, providing guest speakers, fellowships, courses, and a chance to interact with dedicated faculty who are outside of the stale progressive academic mainstream.

The Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University is an example of this transformational work. Begun in 2007 with JMC’s assistance, it has grown to be a major force on campus. Co-directed by professors Elizabeth and Nathan Busch, it has a full-time faculty of six who mentor many undergraduate students. The center has brought to campus distinguished scholars and public officials, including the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, Jonathan Turley, John Yoo, and William J. Perry, for presentations to the university community.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) works alongside JMC to promote the formation of new independent institutes. ACTA has redoubled its efforts to ensure that all undergraduates pass a required course that covers core American founding principles.

For 30 years, ACTA has warned of the cost of higher education’s malfeasance. In 2000, its extensive survey of students at the 50 most elite colleges and universities revealed a shocking level of historical and civic ignorance. ACTA’s survey report, “Losing America’s Memory,” led to a joint, unanimous resolution passed by Congress that called for improving the civic knowledge of college students.

ACTA’s 2024 survey that polled 3,000 college students shows that we must redouble our efforts.

Our work so far has helped South Carolina adopt the REACH Act. Since 2021, all of the state’s public universities require a course in which students study the key documents and moments in our nation’s story.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/university-of-michigans-student-government-removes-two-anti-israel-activists-from-leadership/

The student government at the University of Michigan has removed its top two leaders, who vowed to block funding for campus groups unless the university agreed to divest from companies accused of profiting from the Israel–Hamas war.

The student assembly’s president and vice president, Alifa Chowdhury and Elias Atkinson, were officially ousted late on Monday after they were impeached last month, the New York Times reported. Each received a guilty count of dereliction of duty for either missing council meetings or failing to organize them.

Chowdhury and Atkinson were elected last spring after running under the Shut It Down party. Given its name, the candidates’ intentions were apparent.

The two student leaders withheld $1.3 million in annual funding designated for 400 campus groups until their demand for total divestment could be met. The university was unwilling to agree to this demand and instead opted to lend money to the groups itself.

On October 8, the student government voted to reinstate the funding during a fraught meeting attended by anti-Israel protesters. Chowdhury and Atkinson reportedly encouraged protesters to shout at the assembly speaker, spit on an intern, and follow assembly members to their cars and insult them, according to the Michigan Review. They were accused of doing nothing to stop the unrest.

https://tomklingenstein.com/how-to-get-wokeness-out-of-schools/

When Glenn Youngkin cast his vision for education by saying, “We need to be teaching students how to think, not what to think,” he expressed a common conservative understanding. But this is not quite right. Although conservatives must ensure schools teach students how to think, and it’s quite impossible to teach students what to think or to conclude, they must use their authority unashamedly to establish whatstudents in America’s public schools think about. 

Curriculum — what students learn — lies at the heart of education. It’s why schools exist. But for many American schools today, curriculum is full of critical race theory, historical revisionism, and graphic, sexualized content.

The thirty-odd states with conservative governors, state superintendents, or state boards of education and the 9,000 school boards in Trump-voting districts across the country should be working immediately to fix that, providing an education that is woke-free, academically effective, and pro-America. 

Can conservatives actually change what students learn about in America’s schools? Yes, but it’s not easy. Conservatives must understand how Leftist ideology gets into schools in the first place before they can create the plan for getting it out.

How Woke Ideology Gets into Schools

https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-win-for-merit-in-new-york-citys-schools

After 11 p.m. on December 18, the New York City Department of Education’s Panel for Education Policy (PEP) voted to approve the contract for administering the specialized high schools admissions test (SHSAT): the final tally was 14 for, two against, with four abstentions. By then, many SHSAT supporters, especially the children, who had arrived before the 6 p.m. meeting began, had left and missed the roll-call vote. All are grateful to PEP for retaining the test.

A public comment period preceded the vote. The real issues of debate concerned not the contract’s cost—$17 million over five years, a mere speck of the city Department of Education’s $200 billion five-year budget—but questions of race and merit.

Many of the SHSAT supporters in attendance were immigrants of Chinese origin. In thick accents, they told their stories of hard work, sacrifice, and achieving the American dream. There was also a Bangladeshi (a member of one of Stuyvesant High School’s fastest-growing groups) and several people with Russian accents. But tribalism was not the point—this was about merit. From these specialized schools have come 15 Nobel Prizes in the sciences, awarded for inventions and discoveries with broad applications that have benefited humanity.

The SHSAT’s supporters spoke for all future students of any hue. The opposition responded with thinly veiled racism against the Asians in attendance: they’re protecting a system that favors them, they only show up for their own causes. 

In fact, Asians are not looking for special favors or preferential treatment. In the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York’s lawsuit against changes to the specialized high schools’ admissions policy, the plaintiffs did not seek preferential treatment, such as racial set-asides or the implementation of Asian studies curricula. Instead, they sought a colorblind admissions process: equal rights for all.