RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/10/yokel-wokeism/

On April 8, a Hillsdale College professor named David Azerrad gave a spirited lecture at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, advancing arguments conservatives have heard many times before. In his talk, Azerrad attacked practices such as affirmative action, disparate-impact law, and other privileges that have been accorded to non-white Americans as supposed recompense for past racist injustices.

Azerrad used some provocative rhetoric, including the phrase “black privilege” (a play on the ubiquitous “white privilege”), a reference to America’s “semi-official racial hierarchy,” and observed that Vice President Kamala Harris’ skin color was one reason she was chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate. He ended with an exhortation that no American should find controversial: “We either develop the stomach for color-blindness, treating everybody equally under the law, not discriminating . . . or we decide to tear down our civilization in this mad quest to achieve equal racial outcomes.”

The talk was part of a conference at St. Vincent’s Center for Political and Economic Thought, a conservative institute for research and education that has hosted many contentious speakers and debates in decades past. It was slotted as the 2022 installment of CPET’s Culture and Policy series, titled “Politics, Policy, and Panic: Governing in Times of Crisis.” The conference featured a number of high-profile speakers, including health-policy expert Scott Atlas and Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey Tucker, who attacked politicians’ use of the COVID-19 pandemic to unjustly seize and centralize power. As a Latrobe resident and adjunct professor at St. Vincent, I attended the conference and had lunch with Azerrad just before he spoke.

The aftermath of the talk was far more momentous than the talk itself, which generated a heated question-and-answer session but not the usual chants, disruptive behavior, or physical violence that are now commonplace on American campuses. Graduating senior Joseph LaForest informed me, “Many more St. Vincent students supported Dr. Azerrad’s talk than the media has reported. Groupthink is not something that characterizes me or my peers.” Azerrad confirmed this as well: he stayed at St. Vincent for a couple days after his talk and numerous students and faculty came up to greet and thank him.

The university administration, on the other hand, lost its mind.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/higher-ed-new-woke-loyalty-oaths-dei

In 2021, the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) School of Medicine—ranked fourth in the country for primary care—released a 24-page “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Strategic Action Plan,” listing dozens of “tactics” for advancing “diversity and racial equity” over the ensuing half-decade. One of those tactics reads: “Include a section in promotion packages where faculty members report on the ways they are contributing to improving DEI, anti-racism and social justice.” The plan promises to “reinforce the importance of these efforts by establishing clear consequences and influences on promotion packages.”

OHSU’s policy represents the latest stage in the institutional entrenchment of DEI programming. Universities have long required diversity statements for faculty hiring—short essays outlining one’s contributions to DEI and future plans for advancing DEI. Since it began almost a decade ago, the policy has been criticized as a thinly veiled ideological litmus test. Whether you see it as one largely depends on whether you think DEI is simply a set of corporate “best practices” like any other, or constitutes a rigid set of political and social views. In any event, the diversity statements and criteria have only expanded, and are now commonly required for promotion, tenure, and faculty evaluation.

A quick search for academic jobs inevitably yields dozens or hundreds of positions that require diversity statements. In November 2021, the American Enterprise Institute conducted a survey of faculty jobs and found that 19% required them, a number that is likely to grow. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, applicants seeking positions in chemical and biomolecular engineering must submit a one-page “Statement describing candidate’s approach to and experience with diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education.” At the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, despite a new law that prohibits requiring job applicants “to endorse a specific ideology or political viewpoint,” applicants for a job in political science must submit a “statement concerning experience with and plans for contributing to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Meanwhile, every open faculty position listed by Ohio State University’s College of Arts and Sciences, including roles in econometrics, freshwater biology, and astronomy, requires some variation of a statement “articulating the applicant’s demonstrated commitments and capacities to contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion through research, teaching, mentoring, and/or outreach and engagement.”

https://spectatorworld.com/life/trinity-school-gets-anti-woke-comeuppance-veritas/?utm_source=Spectator+

The Trinity School in New York City was founded in 1709 by William Huddleston to instruct the children of poor parishioners of Trinity Church, located at the top of Wall Street. The school ceased its affiliation with the Episcopal Church 1968, though it still has an Episcopal priest, salaried by the Church, to conduct its weekly chapel services. Trinity is the fifth oldest school in the United States and the oldest in New York in terms of continuous operation.

I myself was enrolled at Trinity in all twelve grades. I received a top-flight education at Trinity in the 1950s and ’60s from a superb faculty most of whom I recall with respect and in many cases real affection, as I do the school itself. Yet I have also disapproved of every change it has made since my departure decades ago, beginning with the trustees’ decision to take the place co-ed in 1971. The very strict and rigorous curriculum — five, six, and seven hours of homework nightly — gave me more than enough to occupy my mind without having the female element to contend with.

Several days ago, a man with whom I entered the first grade forwarded me a letter addressed to the “Dear Members of the Trinity School Community.” The letter below the salutation began, “Regrettably…” I have learned from long experience that the word is one that heads of institutions such as John Allman’s have frequent occasion to employ. And indeed, on this particular one, Mr. Allman had a very great deal to regret.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/bidens_new_title_ix_proposals_will_codify_the_gender_derangement_of_the_left.html

If there is anything that has advanced American society, you can be sure that ‘woke’ leftists will destroy it. So it is with Title IX – a one-sentence statute of the Education Amendments of 1972 that ended sex-based discrimination in educational institutions, opened the doors for women aspiring to become doctors, engineers, or experts in any field of choice, brought parity to college sports, and launched the battle against sexual harassment. In this fiftieth year of that landmark law, the Biden administration wants to rewrite it to suit the radical leftist ideology of gender identity and fluidity.

This is dangerous because it codifies the spreading gender derangement of the left. Worse, it will immerse young minds in learning environments that condition them to believe, without critical thinking, that the biological idea of sex is false. It will unleash other complications as well.

Already, Americans are suffering the tyranny of ‘woke’ ideology. We have reached the abyss in which some people can’t (or won’t) define what a man or a woman is. Girls are forced to share private spaces with biological males. Teachers are cancelled or fired for using the wrong pronouns. Schools are hiding their curricula from the public and parents, who they think might object. Sadly, the insanity extends to parents losing custody of their children for opposing capriciously imposed (and dangerous) gender transitions. The codification of ‘woke’ gender will only cause the unending stream of such cases to proliferate.

Even scientists are succumbing to such ideology. Recently, the Scientific American mocked binary sex roles in Western science, taking us into the theater of the absurd. The once respected magazine quoted medical anthropologist (gasp!) Katrina Karkazis saying, “Our bodies are far more variable than our categories. Part of what has happened is people become slotted into this binary framework.” Can she possibly mean that a scientifically and religiously accepted fact – that there are two sexes, male and female – is categorically wrong?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/trillion-dollar-bailout-idiot-machine-daniel-greenfield/

Government institutions are in the business of making things worse in order to collect more money to make them better. We declared war on poverty and impoverished ourselves. After promising to fix homelessness, the streets are covered in needles and human waste.

Nowhere is this truer than in education.

Education results are inversely proportional to the amount of money spent on them. New York has the highest per pupil spending at $25,645 and the second lowest literacy rate in the country. Utah has the lowest per pupil spending in the nation and a 90% literacy rate.

Good thing the education market is set to hit almost $2 trillion by 2025. At 10% of GDP, we will spend far more than China (4% of GDP) with much worse outcomes to show for it. But Educrats will claim that if we only spent 25% of our GDP, Johnny would finally be able to read. All that’s  holding him back is that Chicago public school teachers with an MA only make $89,083.

The American Federation of Teachers put out a study claiming that funding levels should cause New York school districts to “perform well above average on national fourth and eighth grade math and reading exams.” They did not. And no matter how much money is wasted, they never will. You can’t buy literacy with subsidies for a broken education system. At any level.

Ever since Bill Clinton told working class people that manufacturing jobs weren’t coming back, so they all better go to college and learn to write lesbian feminist poetry, the number of college enrollees and graduates has shot up. So have their illiteracy rates.

https://pjmedia.com/culture/lincolnbrown/2022/08/30/diversity-over-careers-at-duke-n1625216

The Career Center at Duke University was slated to get some new digs. This is a good thing since its function is to help shepherd students into actual careers, which is ostensibly why people go to college in the first place. The career center’s page states:

“The Career Center, working in partnership with faculty and colleagues, provides career advising to all Duke undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni. Recognizing the unique talents and needs of each individual, the Career Center encourages students to make the most of their Duke experience by accessing relevant campus resources, developing career interests and values, and establishing and maintaining important human relationships with their peers as well as Duke faculty, staff, and alumni. The Career Center works to build and maintain relationships with alumni and employers who can provide internships and learning opportunities, entry-level positions, and opportunities for experienced professionals.”

Presumably, accessing the Career Center can help you get a job so you can make money, eat, rent an apartment, buy a home, contribute to society, and allegedly pay your student loans. Okay, go ahead and laugh.

According to the Duke Chronicle, the Career Center was supposed to take over the space on the first floor of the Bryan Center that had been previously occupied by the Office of Student Affairs. That did not sit well with the student body, which claimed the space had been promised to student groups that had been demanding a place to gather for decades.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pay-up-for-the-damage-youve-caused-oberlin/

Back in 2016, a case began when administrators from Oberlin College aided students in defaming Gibson’s Bakery, unjustly smearing it as racist. Eventually, the jury sided with the plaintiffs, ordering Oberlin to pay a large damage sum — $36 million.

Just as you’d expect, Oberlin fought on and on, hoping to find an appellate court that would overturn the jury. But it now appears that the case is done, since the supreme court of Ohio declined to entertain its last appeal. Legal Insurrection has the details here.

This is good news. College officials across America should be thinking about reining in their own woke zealots before they land in similar situations.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/cancel_culture_infests_cornells_law_school.html

If you’re a prospective law student, do you want to pay $74,000 a year to attend Cornell University’s Law School whose faculty members publish what looks like a false accusation of murder and can’t seem to do better than play “woke pigeon chess” in the court of public opinion, or $25,400 a year for in-state tuition at the State University of New York in Buffalo? SUNY’s web page says, “Our students graduate to work at the same law firms and earn the same starting salaries as those who attend pricey private law schools.” The difference comes to almost $150,000 over three years and, from where I sit, I don’t see what an attorney gets from Cornell for that kind of money.

Law professor William Jacobson reports, “There’s an effort to get me fired at Cornell for criticizing the Black Lives Matter Movement” and, from what I have seen, Jacobson’s criticisms are accurate. Dean Eduardo Peñalver nonetheless used a Cornell web page to say, “In light of this deep and rich tradition of walking the walk of racial justice, in no uncertain terms, recent blog posts of Professor William Jacobson, casting broad and categorical aspersions on the goals of those protesting for justice for Black Americans, do not reflect the values of Cornell Law School as I have articulated them.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/campus-wokeness-harms-america-globally-international-students-tuition-dissent-loan-forgiveness-liberal-education-china-global-elite-11661797706?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

President Biden’s decision to forgive up to $20,000 in student loans for certain classes of borrowers won’t fix the underlying problems of American higher education. An educational system that routinely encourages inexperienced young people to assume excessively burdensome debt is morally broken, and repairing it will take more thought and care than went into the politically motivated student-loan decision. Bureaucracies that demonstrate hypersensitivity on issues ranging from pronoun use and trigger warnings to gender-neutral bathrooms while saddling students with tens of thousands of dollars in unpayable debt are exploiting their students, not helping them.

As Americans discuss the need to address issues such as administrative bloat, attacks on intellectual diversity, controversial admissions practices and spiraling tuition costs, we need to remember that the state of the American academy isn’t merely a domestic question. Since the middle of the 19th century, when American missionaries in China and elsewhere began encouraging promising young people to enroll in U.S. universities, the American academy has been a powerful force shaping global perceptions of the U.S. and its engagement with the world.

Millions of foreign students have attended American colleges and universities. Most return to their home countries as influential professionals or thinkers who will shape their societies’ perceptions of America for years to come. Some remain in the U.S., where their intellectual gifts and entrepreneurial energy propel American progress and renew the American dream. Their tuition dollars subsidize university costs for American students, even as their perceptions and experiences enrich discussions in American classrooms.

Attracting foreign students is more important than ever. American higher ed faces a difficult environment as the number of native-born 18-year-olds declines nationally and rising tuition leads more Americans to rethink the importance of a four-year academic degree. While top-tier American universities have little to fear, ever-rising tuition combined with a continued drift from traditional measures of merit and achievement is likely to reduce the attraction of an American college education for many families abroad even as American colleges grow more dependent on international students who pay full tuition.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/yeshiva-university-fights-for-its-constitutional-rights-first-amendment-free-speech-students-higher-education-religious-schools-values-morals-11661798761?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

In recent years, a spate of lawsuits have asked whether, and to what degree, religious colleges and universities are free to craft policies consistent with their religious values, even when those policies are unpopular with those who don’t share those values. These decisions run the gamut from the mundane—whether to allow tobacco, alcohol, caffeine or meat on campus—to the headline-grabbing—how to structure on-campus housing arrangements or decide which student clubs get official school recognition.

In these lawsuits, student plaintiffs typically ask the court to force the school to abandon a longstanding religious principle in favor of a policy incompatible with the school’s faith. But as judges continue to evaluate the legal merits of these cases, it is important to consider the real danger to the First Amendment, and to the continued viability of religious schools, each time a suit like this succeeds.

For many religious traditions, religious schools help convey beliefs to new generations of faith and community leaders. But they also bring critical diversity to higher education and prepare students to weigh moral considerations of justice, mercy and kindness while in pursuit of stellar educations and professional careers. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this only months ago, noting that “educating young people in their faith, inculcating its teachings, and training them to live their faith are responsibilities that lie at the very core of the mission” of religious schools. Not only is this blend of religious and secular learning the primary goal of a religious school; it is also the reason why hundreds of thousands of students voluntarily attend such institutions each year.