Following-up from earlier, "John Eastman Resigns From Chapman University Law School."
From Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "Colorado Relieves John Eastman of His Duties, Chapman Bars Him From Speaking at Law Review Symposium He Organized; Eastman Speaks at Arizona State Federalist Society Event Despite Opposition From Students and Dean."
Click through to read it all at the link.
Here's the letter, originally published at the American Mind:
It is with mixed feeling that I announce my retirement from Chapman University today. Apart from prominent visitorships at the University of San Diego and the University of Colorado Boulder, my entire academic career has been as a professor and Dean at the Chapman University Fowler School of Law. During my tenure as Dean, the law school achieved the highest national ranking it has achieved to date, moving from 163rd to 93rd in that short three-year period between 2007 and 2010. I wish Dean Parlow much success in regaining and surpassing that high water mark. I have also enjoyed a strong working relationship with the University’s current President, Daniele Struppa, dating to my Deanship when he was serving as the University’s Provost and Chancellor. And I applaud his defense of me in particular and academic freedom more generally in this recent controversy. But I cannot extend such praise to some of my “colleagues” on the campus or to the few members of the Board of Trustees who have published false, defamatory statements about me without even the courtesy of contacting me beforehand to discuss. The political science faculty, for example, made numerous false statements of fact and law in their diatribe against me. They asserted, for example, that I have made “false claims” about the 2020 presidential election which “have no basis in fact or law and seek to harm the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic.” Had they bothered to discuss the matter with me, they could have learned that every statement I have made is backed up with documentary and/or expert evidence, and solidly grounded in law. For example, it is a fact that partisan election officials and even partisan-elected judicial officials in numerous states altered or ignored existing state laws in the conduct of the election, the instances of which are well documented in the petition for writ of certiorari I filed in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the President. And it is clearly established law that Article II of the Constitution assigns to the legislatures of the state, not anyone else, the sole, plenary power to determine the “manner” for choosing presidential electors. And it is a fact that numerous legislators wrote to Vice President Pence indicating that their electoral votes were problematic at best because of these illegalities and urging him to delay the electoral count proceedings long enough to allow the legislatures in the contested states time to review whether their electoral slate was legally certified. By way of example, 21 members of the Pennsylvania Senate, including the powerful President Pro Tem of the Senate, outlined in a January 4 letter the numerous instances of violations of state law by state election officials and even the partisan-elected judiciary in the conduct of Pennsylvania’s election, thereby usurping the sole power that the Legislature has pursuant to Article II of the federal constitution to determine the manner for choosing presidential electors. Because of those illegal actions, the Senators noted “that PA election results should not have been certified,” and asked that the Congress “delay certification of the Electoral College to allow due process as we pursue election integrity in our Commonwealth.” Similar letters were sent from Pennsylvania house members, and from legislators in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Arizona’s included this: “Based upon the clear and convincing nature of the evidence [of illegality and fraud], we respectfully ask that you recognize our desire to reclaim Arizona’s Electoral College Electors and block the use of any Electors from Arizona until such time as the controversy is properly resolved through the pending litigation or a comprehensive forensic audit.” It is also a fact that a forensic analysis of the one voting machine courts have permitted to be inspected demonstrated not only that the machines are capable of switching votes, but they actually did switch votes in Antrim County, Michigan. In other words, it is patently untrue that my statements have “no basis in fact or law.” As for the claim that by raising these issues, I have sought to “harm the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic,” nothing could be further from the truth. As noted above, the Constitution sets out the authority for choosing electors, and that authority was usurped by non-legislative partisans in several states. Legislators in the contested states have quite reasonably asserted that the illegal conduct effected the outcome of the election. If true—and a full forensic audit would confirm whether or not it is true—then the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic were not just harmed but completely subverted by those partisan actors who violated election laws in order to permit the counting of illegal votes. Shining a light on what occurred is the highest defense of the constitutional republic, and such an investigation ought to be welcomed by citizens of all political stripes rather than blocked by those who are acting as though they have something to hide. The letter signed by 169 members of the Chapman faculty and Board of Trustees is even more scurrilous. It claims, falsely, that I “participated in a riot that incited” last week’s violence at the nation’s Capital. I participated in a peaceful rally of nearly ½ million people, two miles away from the violence that occurred at the capital and which began even before the speeches were finished. And unless simply identifying illegal actions by election officials qualifies as “incitement”—under the law and well- established Supreme Court precedent, it clearly does not—then this charge is really an attempt to shut down the exercise of First Amendment rights. Nor did I “spout lies” about secret folders in the machines—the forensic audit discussed above has identified the suspension files in the software. Neither is there anything “conspiratorial” about simply identifying the available evidence. I am grateful that not a single one of my colleagues at the Law School signed such a defamatory letter. To my knowledge, not one of the faculty signers has a law degree, and the three members of the Board of Trustees who are lawyers (and hyper-partisan Democrats) are clearly not well-versed in the constitutional questions at issue—either the Article II role of legislatures, or the definition of the “incitement” exception to the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. Nevertheless, these 169 have created such a hostile environment for me that I no longer wish to be a member of the Chapman faculty, and am therefore retiring from my position, effective immediately. I am currently on leave from Chapman while serving as the Visiting Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy at the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder, so my mid-year retirement will not have any impact on my Chapman students. Once that visitorship is concluded, I plan to devote my full-time efforts to the Claremont Institute and its Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, which I direct.
Still more, "Statement from the Office of the President."
It's Samantha Jones (not her real name, to protect against leftist death threats, apparently), at New Discourses, "A Dissident Women's Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out."
It's the second half of her piece that's most interesting, for example:One of the most urgent needs is the development of a grassroots movement for intellectual diversity on campus, spearheaded by students, alumni, parents, and concerned citizens. I hope that existing conservative, centrist, or libertarian organizations can help to facilitate this movement by providing organizational and logistical support at campuses throughout the country. Everyone should take a close look at their state’s public universities’ Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiatives to see if intellectual diversity is included. If it is not, then the obvious first step is to advocate for the inclusion of intellectual diversity. Concerned taxpayers, students, parents, and alumni, working with the elected officials in those university districts, if necessary, need to ensure that universities have intellectual diversity in humanities and social sciences course offerings. If intellectual diversity is included in the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiative (in my experience, most of these initiatives include at least a brief reference to intellectual diversity), then work can be done to survey students to see if they feel that intellectual diversity is represented, particularly in their humanities and social sciences courses. Heterodox Academy has published relevant survey data on the dearth of intellectual diversity in these fields. If America has any chance of continuing the classical liberal values upon which it was founded, then students who have a commitment to these values have to enter the teaching profession—as doctoral students in education, as administrators, and as public school teachers. Critical pedagogy, and more specifically critical race theory, are the dominant discourses controlling all levels in American schools of education, so students need to tread lightly and assent, at least outwardly, to Critical Social Justice ideology. Once in the classroom, however, teachers should reject all pressures to teach Critical Social Justice, and especially critical race theory, because it is an inherently racist ideology and because it instantiates the problem—racism—that it purports to solve. Critical race theory also needs to be resisted because it, as its own proponents assert, “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction). Teachers should take a stand for fighting racism within liberalism, not by adopting critical race theory. If there is not already a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting non-woke students to enter the teaching profession—again, at all levels, as professors of education, as administrators, and as public school teachers—then one should be organized immediately. This could also be a special project for existing right- or libertarian-leaning organizations. Another important project should be the revival of Western civilization and Great Books courses, at all levels of education, but most critically in the universities. In 1964, 15 of the 50 premier universities in America required students to take a survey of Western civilization. All 50 offered the course, and nearly all of them (41) offered it as a way to satisfy some requirement. (Source: New York Post, by Ashley Thorne “The drive to put Western civ back in the college curriculum,” March 29, 2016). But since 1987, when Jesse Jackson led 500 students around Stanford University protesting the requirement that undergraduates take a course in Western Civilization, which they denounced as Eurocentric, white-male indoctrination, most colleges have eliminated Western civ courses for diversity or multiethnic course requirements. An excellent example of a Western civ curriculum can be found in the James Madison program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, which is dedicated to “exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political thought.” Another avenue is to look into funding institutes for education in Western civilization as a new department at extant colleges and universities. I would love to see crowd-sourced funds used to construct a beautiful classical building adjacent to one of the ugliest college campuses in the country, preferably one composed entirely of postwar Brutalist buildings. I imagine that students whose spirits are continually depressed by attending classes in the midst of such hideous architecture would feel intrigued to enter such a beautiful building. Once inside, they might learn that there is, in fact, such a thing as beauty; that it matters, and that Critical Social Justice ideology can never build anything beautiful; it can never, in fact, build anything at all—it can only destroy. Once inside that building, students might become interested in registering for a course on Western civilization, a course in which all thought is permitted, in which no one is threatened with cancellation: a microcosm of what a university environment used to be. In this way, we might plant and nurture the seed of resistance to the increasing totalitarianism of Critical Social Justice. In the long term, it is going to be necessary to create more universities devoted to classical education, not indoctrination into Critical Social Justice ideology, as well as more K-12 private and charter schools in the classical tradition because university schools of education have been training “social justice” educators for decades now, so Critical Social Justice ideology is now in the K-12 public schools. At a policy level on this problem, we need avenues for teacher certification outside of the existing teacher colleges, which are wholly committed to critical pedagogy and other failed approaches. Forcing every licensed teacher (usually for state jobs) to undergo ideological training to gain licensure is not only a problem but should be illegal. At the personal level, my advice to everyone with kids who can afford to do so is to pull your kids out of the public schools immediately and enroll them in private schools, or home school. Although home schooling has already begun to come under attack, it is still a viable option—at least for now. In the future, homeschooling will come under increased scrutiny and I believe there will be attempts to render it illegal. I realize that not everyone can afford to home school or send their kids to private schools (many of which are not safe from Critical Social Justice, either). I strongly recommend that all parents emphasize the value of vocational training programs for their children as avenues to career paths that pay well and offer a great deal of autonomy. My hope is that new immigrants to America will increasingly speak out against Critical Social Justice ideology as an American instantiation of what is called, in other contexts, tribalism—a form of corruption that has damaged many countries. Far from being a bastion of white supremacy, America’s liberal values are what have attracted people from all countries to undergo great hardship to come here, precisely because this is one of the few places in which ordinary people can exercise their talents to achieve a standard of living that is impossible in most of the world. It is my fervent hope that more American college students—especially the “woke” who rail against their own country as evil—would be required to spend a semester abroad in a developing country in order to gain some much-needed perspective on the struggles people face who were not fortunate enough to be born into such an “oppressive” place as America. Lastly, I have focused mostly on academia and education because this is the sector I know best, but I strongly urge everyone, from all walks of life, to embrace your sense of humor (a quality that is conspicuously absent in woke culture). Wokeness should continue to relentlessly mocked and parodied through meme culture (Andrew Doyle’s Titania McGrath is a great example). Just as important: Be courageous. Stand up for the beliefs that have made America a great country. If you hear people treating others as members of groups, articulate the importance of treating people as individuals. As Jordan Peterson put it, “The smallest minority is the individual.” If you encounter people treating others badly because of their gender or skin color, say that this behavior is morally wrong. If you see people attempting to “cancel” others, articulate why this is a terrible way to treat others. If you witness attacks on freedom of speech and advocacy of censorship, or if you meet people who are in favor of “hate speech” laws, or laws to combat “misinformation” (a code word for non-leftist ideas), articulate why freedom of speech is an absolutely essential and non-negotiable value. If you hear people discussing why they think socialism is great, take a stand for free markets and the prosperity they have produced. If you hear people calling for retributive justice and political violence, push against it and discuss why violence is never acceptable. If you encounter attacks on meritocracy, make a case for why merit is essential to the advancement of individuals and societies. I think a lot of liberals, like me, generally, if not naively, assumed that the liberal values underpinning America would simply continue throughout our lives, but these values are under attack and they need to be vigorously and unapologetically defended. Our civilization is at stake and the hour is late.
RTWT.
At Amazon, Claire Lehmann et al., eds., Panics and Persecutions: 20 Quillette Tales of Excommunication in the Digital Age.
At Reason.
But see this, from L.A.T, a couple of weeks ago, "L.A. Unified will not give Fs this semester and instead give students a second chance to pass."
And this passage especially is killing me, about the push-back against the "no fail" policy:
In April, L.A. Unified prohibited failing grades for the spring semester and also determined that no student’s grade would be lower than it was on March 13, the final day of on-campus instruction. At the time, many teachers and some principals complained that the policy undermined student motivation and some reported a subsequent drop-off in student effort. Stocks surge. Retail rises. Unemployment continues to decline. Post-election markets set record highs while online shopping contributed to recovery. How did this month fare overall? Such concerns resurfaced Monday during a faculty meeting at a high school in the San Fernando Valley, according to an English teacher who did not wish to be identified because she was not authorized to speak. “Yes, it’s COVID time,” the teacher said. “But this soft bigotry of low expectations — including us being banned from demanding students ever comment with their voices or actually show themselves on camera during Zoom — will indeed help our low-income students stay on the bottom of the pile of learning.” A high school principal from a different campus was more supportive. Given the unprecedented crisis, the principal said, students who earn A’s and B’s should get to keep them but that the only other grade handed out should be a pass. This principal — who also was not authorized to comment — requested anonymity...
Astonishing, really.
Notice how everybody speaks off the record, obviously so they won't face the guillotine.
I attended this event. Really great stuff and crucial work they're doing.
At Legal Insurrection, "VIDEO: Critical Race Training is “a series of dated ideas that basic analysis often debunks”."
One hundred French intellectuals have signed a letter backing the recent comments from French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer.
See the Unz Review, "France: Prominent Academics and Macron Administration Attack American Anti-Racist Ideology as "Anti-White":100 prominent French academics signed a letter affirming Blanquer’s statement, and calling for the French people to defeat an “American” ideology that preaches hatred of “whites” (a word that, unlike Trump, they explicitly used) and the indigenous Gallo-Romans of France. While the academics and Blanquer primarily blame Saudi-funded Islamist preachers for the death of Samuel Paty, they also believe US influence on their intellectuals has made it socially acceptable to murder white people.
In an interview with a French journal, Blanquer reiterated this sentiment...
I don’t know who needs to hear it, but Angela Davis is one of the most impactful US intellectuals of the last half century. Watching the intellectual midgets and half-wits yell “communism!” at her, as they did at Du Bois, is beyond cringeworthy.
— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) November 26, 2020
And I wrote: "Dude, you teach history wtf?!! She literally the ran on the Communist Party U.S.A.’s presidential ticket in 1980 and 1984. She’s in fact exactly a “communist”."
The papers of Angela Davis, just acquired by Harvard, trace her transformation from an obscure philosophy professor to an icon of the global left https://t.co/YpAetgW11H
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 13, 2018
Insisting on the prevalence of ‘systemic racism’ is a way of defending a victim-focused racial identity. But blacks today are far more likely to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination, writes Shelby Steele. https://t.co/zg7k3WbJBc
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali (@Ayaan) November 23, 2020
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina gave a remarkable speech at this year’s Republican National Convention. Yes, here was a black man at a GOP event, so there was a whiff of identity politics. When we see color these days, we expect ideology to follow. But Mr. Scott’s charisma that night was simply that he spoke as a person, not a spokesperson for his color. Burgess Owens, Herschel Walker, Daniel Cameron and several others did the same. It was a parade of individuals. And in their speeches the human being stepped out from behind the identity, telling personal stories that reached for human connections with the American people—this rather than the usual posturing for leverage with tales of grievance. So they were all fresh and compelling. Do these Republicans foretell a new racial order in America? Clearly they have pushed their way through an old racial order, as have—it could be argued—many black Trump voters in the recent election. I believe there is in fact a new racial order slowly and tenuously emerging, and that we blacks are swimming through rough seas to reach it. But to better see the new, it is necessary to know the old. The old began in what might be called America’s Great Confession. In passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, America effectively confessed to a long and terrible collusion with the evil of racism. (President Kennedy was the first president to acknowledge that civil rights was a “moral issue.”) This triggered nothing less than a crisis of moral authority that threatened the very legitimacy of American democracy. Even today, almost 60 years beyond the Civil Rights Act, groups like Black Lives Matter, along with a vast grievance industry, use America’s insecure moral authority around race as an opportunity to assert themselves. Doesn’t BLM dwell in a space made for it by America’s racial self-doubt? In the culture, whites and American institutions are effectively mandated by this confession to prove their innocence of racism as a condition of moral legitimacy. Blacks, in turn, are mandated to honor their new freedom by developing into educational and economic parity with whites. If whites achieve racial innocence and blacks develop into parity with whites, then America will have overcome its original sin. Democracy will have become manifest. This was America’s post-confession bargain between the races—innocence on the white hand, development on the black. It defined the old order with which those convention speakers seemed to break. But there is a problem with these mandates: To achieve their ends, they both need blacks to be victims. Whites need blacks they can save to prove their innocence of racism. Blacks must put themselves forward as victims the better to make their case for entitlements. This is a corruption because it makes black suffering into a moral power to be wielded, rather than a condition to be overcome. This is the power that blacks discovered in the ’60s. It gained us a War on Poverty, affirmative action, school busing, public housing and so on. But it also seduced us into turning our identity into a virtual cult of victimization—as if our persecution was our eternal flame, the deepest truth of who we are, a tragic fate we trade on. After all, in an indifferent world, it may feel better to be the victim of a great historical injustice than a person left out of history when that injustice recedes. Yet there is an elephant in the room. It is simply that we blacks aren’t much victimized any more. Today we are free to build a life that won’t be stunted by racial persecution. Today we are far more likely to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination. Moreover, we live in a society that generally shows us goodwill—a society that has isolated racism as its most unforgivable sin. This lack of victimization amounts to an “absence of malice” that profoundly threatens the victim-focused black identity. Who are we without the malice of racism? Can we be black without being victims? The great diminishment (not eradication) of racism since the ’60s means that our victim-focused identity has become an anachronism. Well suited for the past, it strains for relevance in the present. Thus, for many blacks today—especially the young—there is a feeling of inauthenticity, that one is only thinly black because one isn’t racially persecuted. “Systemic racism” is a term that tries to recover authenticity for a less and less convincing black identity. This racism is really more compensatory than systemic. It was invented to make up for the increasing absence of the real thing.Keep reading.
When masked students walk back into his Northern Arizona University lab room at the end of the month, Tad Theimer will face them from behind a Plexiglas face shield while holding an infrared thermometer to their foreheads. As they examine bat skulls under microscopes, the biology professor will open windows and doors, hoping to drive out exhaled aerosols that could spread coronavirus.More.
But as one of hundreds of professors who will be back on campus along with 20,000 students in one of the states hit worst by the pandemic, Theimer is also torn on whether to enter his classroom at all.
“I want to teach and it’s best done in person,” said Theimer, 62, who has been a professor on the Flagstaff campus for two decades. “I want businesses, which need our students, to survive in town. But if I see people not following health protocols at the university, I’m going remote and I’m not seeking any permission. They can fire me if they don’t like it.”
Campuses are taking on a patchwork of safety measures and shifting reopening plans this month as millions of students return to colleges and universities. Some, like Northern Arizona University, have already opened for a trial run of online classes before students show up in person. Others, like Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and Princeton University in New Jersey, have at the last minute nixed plans for reopening to opt for fully online fall semesters. Many California colleges and universities will be online only, with largely empty lecture halls, while the majority of schools in the nation plan to offer a hybrid of the options.
Absent federal guidance, many of the decisions result from growing pressure from professors like Theimer, who recently went public with a letter to his university president demanding that students be disinvited from campus. At several universities, including large public schools in Texas, Florida and North Carolina, teachers have resisted administrations that push to pack the classrooms and dorms that produce tuition and housing revenues. Many have resisted through unions or faculty associations.
Students have joined, too, like the dozens in Atlanta at the University of Georgia who joined faculty to stage a “die-in” in front of the president’s office this week with signs that said “R.I.P. campus safety” and “I can’t teach when I’m dead.” The campus requires first-year students to live in dorms for its Aug. 20 kickoff to the fall semester, which will take place partially on-campus.
It was a similar story at the City Colleges of Chicago, where faculty followed last week’s reopening by threatening to strike if they don’t see safety improvements.
“The whole situation is unprecedented,” said Irene Mulvey, a math professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut and president of the American Assn. of University Professors, a teachers’ union with hundreds of college chapters. “Professors know best what’s happening on the ground and they are in many cases pushing to have a say. And in the case of some university administrations, there seems to be a kind of magical thinking that people will behave perfectly in following every health measure and precaution during openings.”
Colleges have tried to reassure professors and students by staggering dorm move-in dates, painting arrows and social distancing dots in hallways, limiting classroom sizes, enforcing mask mandates and installing hand sanitizing stations across campuses. They’ve designated quarantine housing and some, like UC Berkeley, have the limited number of students living on campus take a coronavirus test within a day of arrival in addition to regularly scheduled tests teach month.
But with the average American campus having more than 6,000 undergraduates, many professors have said the safety precautions will be too hard to enforce, especially at schools where most students live in dorms and off-campus apartments...
Trump at Mount Rushmore: Progressives deride his defense of America’s founding principles. https://t.co/kp0dgTD7wJ via @WSJ
— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) July 6, 2020
Keep reading."At Mt. Rushmore, Trump uses Fourth of July celebration to stoke a culture war."President Trump delivered one of the best speeches of his Presidency Friday evening at Mount Rushmore, and for evidence consider the echo-chamber headlines above. The chorus of independent media voices understands that Mr. Trump is trying to rally the country in defense of traditional American principles that are now under radical and unprecedented assault.
— Los Angeles Times
"Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message."
— New York Times
"Trump pushes racial division, flouts virus rules at Rushmore."
— Associated Press
"At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day."
— Washington Post
Dark? In most respects Mr. Trump’s speech was a familiar Fourth of July ode to liberty and U.S. achievement that any President might have delivered in front of an American landmark. “No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America. And no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation,” he said.
Contrary to the media reporting, the America Mr. Trump described is one of genuine racial equality and diversity. He highlighted the central ideal of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” As he rightly put it, “these immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom” that included the abolition of slavery more than a half century later.
Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. also believed this to be true, and Mr. Trump cited them both, as he did other American notables black and white, historic and more recent. There was not a hint of racial division in his words except for those who want to distort their meaning for their own political purposes. In any other time this paean to American exceptionalism would have been unexceptional.
But this year even Mr. Trump’s speech backdrop, Mount Rushmore with its four presidential faces, is politically charged. Each of those Presidents—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt—is under assault for ancient sins against modern values, as progressives seek to expunge their statues and even their names from American life. Mr. Trump’s great offense against the culturally ascendant progressives was to defend these presidential legacies.
Divisive? Mr. Trump’s speech was certainly direct, in his typical style. But it was only divisive if you haven’t been paying attention to the divisions now being stoked on the political left across American institutions. Mr. Trump had the temerity to point out that the last few weeks have seen an explosion of “cancel culture—driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.”
Describing this statement of fact as “divisive” proves his point. Newspaper editors are being fired over headlines and op-eds after millennial staff revolts. Boeing CEO David Calhoun last week welcomed the resignation of a communications executive for opposing—33 years ago when he was in the military—women in combat. The Washington Post ran an op-ed this weekend urging that the name of America’s first President be struck from Washington and Lee University.
Any one of these events would be remarkable, but together with literally thousands of others around the country they represent precisely what Mr. Trump describes—a left-wing cultural revolution against traditional American values of free speech and political tolerance. And he called for Americans not to cower but to oppose this assault...
Great piece by Wilfred McClay in @FDRLST. It is impossible to see how truly exceptional this country is without learning about the history we rose above.. https://t.co/rJlwzB1pL9
— Emily Domenech (@ehdomenech) July 6, 2020
This weekend was supposed to be one of the busiest of the year for businesses in Blacksburg, Virginia. Instead, the town remains in quiet repose. https://t.co/BjQzHUIg9u— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 17, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has turned vibrant faculty cities throughout the U.S. into vacant ones.Is it just me, or is this piece less well-written than the normal article you'd find at the august WSJ, purportedly the main competitor to NYT?
This weekend was purported to be one the busiest of the 12 months for companies in Blacksburg, Va., as mother and father, grandparents and well-wishers converged in town to have fun the 2020 graduates of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State College.
As an alternative, town of 45,000 stays in quiet repose, pining for its college students to return. It has been a protracted two months for Blacksburg and different communities prefer it, because the pandemic robbed them of their fundamental supply of economic vitality.
What is going on in Blacksburg is enjoying out in cities from Ithaca, N.Y., to Pullman, Wash., the place the pandemic hasn’t solely shut down many businesses but in addition emptied out faculty campuses. The losses are particularly painful in locations which have leaned on universities to lure well-paying jobs and business to communities that may in any other case lack each.
“We’ve all the time had the posh of being insulated from the traditional ebbs and circulate of the economic system,” mentioned Mike Soriano, a Virginia Tech grad who owns 4 Blacksburg eating places, together with Champs Downtown Sports activities Bar & Cafe. The college moved its spring and summer time phrases to on-line lessons. “And with the uncertainty of the autumn, it’s made issues tough to mission,” he added.
Massive schools and universities make use of hundreds, purchase native items and companies and draw tens of hundreds of scholars and guests to their shops, eating places and accommodations. Their presence has shielded native communities from each long-term financial shifts and short-lived recessions. In locations like Blacksburg, enterprise cycles flip predictably with the seasons: It will get busy within the spring, slows in the summertime after which roars to life in September.
Now, Blacksburg enterprise house owners look anxiously towards the autumn, the potential of in-person lessons and the destiny of seven residence soccer video games which have reliably stuffed lodge rooms, bars, eating places and outlets.
“Soccer and commencement is when you can also make cash,” Mr. Soriano mentioned.
Virginia Tech is answerable for greater than half of Blacksburg’s economic system, producing about $1.2 billion in annual earnings, in keeping with an evaluation by researcher Emsi Labor Market Analytics. One among each two jobs is supported by the college, its college students and guests, in keeping with Emsi estimates.
As of January, the college had 9,742 workers, together with full-time and part-time college, employees and wage employees, a college spokesman mentioned.
Median family earnings within the Blacksburg space totaled $50,313 in 2018, in keeping with U.S. Census Bureau knowledge. Whereas that’s under the Virginia median of $72,577, Blacksburg’s earnings has grown sooner than its state general—8.6%, in contrast with 3.6%—since 2010, in keeping with a report by Previous Dominion College.
“As you progress west in Virginia, the inhabitants is much less dense, extra rural,” mentioned Robert McNab, an economist at Previous Dominion, who research the Virginia economic system. The area relies on agriculture, mining and forestry moderately than the manufacturing and data know-how discovered within the state’s city areas.
“Virginia Tech’s location permits it to work as a catalyst for financial growth,” he mentioned. “And it’s in a position to entice analysis funding and investment to part of Virginia that may not in any other case obtain a lot consideration.”
About 39% of Blacksburg’s domestically generated income comes from taxes on meals, lodge stays and different gross sales, mentioned Marc Verniel, Blacksburg’s city supervisor.
Blacksburg Transit has been carrying 300 to 400 riders a day just lately, down from greater than 20,000 a day when the college is in session, Mr. Verniel mentioned. He estimates the house soccer video games carry 400,000-500,000 guests to Blacksburg every fall. And when college students come again in September, they hurry to native shops to furnish flats and dorm rooms.
“We couldn’t have imagined an financial disaster that took the college out,” he mentioned.
There may be extra at stake than one season of retail gross sales. Companies are frightened that some college students received’t be prepared for on-campus lessons this fall, and others would possibly by no means make it to Blacksburg in any respect. Some college students would possibly choose to remain residence. And worldwide college students face journey restrictions and new immigration insurance policies.
This spring, Virginia Tech had almost 35,000 college students, together with 28,000 undergrads. Some 8,250 of the undergrads come from someplace aside from Virginia, and 1,962 of them are worldwide college students, in keeping with the college spokesman.
If the drop in enrollment persists, it could possibly be more durable for Blacksburg and different faculty cities to develop science and tech-oriented companies wanted to broaden their economies...
Coronavirus bursts the US college education bubble https://t.co/JNBcPy1xhc via @financialtimes
— Rana Foroohar (@RanaForoohar) April 26, 2020
Bubbles are bursting everywhere and America’s most prestigious export — higher education — won’t be immune. Universities are like landlocked cruise ships: places with all-you-can-eat buffets and plenty of beer, but almost no way of social distancing.Keep reading.
Many colleges are considering running online classes into the autumn and beyond. But that requires additional resources that most are ill equipped to afford. Even before coronavirus, 30 per cent of colleges tracked by rating agency Moody’s were running deficits, while 15 per cent of public universities had less than 90 days of cash on hand.
Now, with colleges shuttered, revenues reduced, endowment investments plunging, and the added struggle of shifting from physical to virtual education, Moody’s has downgraded the entire sector to negative from stable. The American Council on Education believes revenues in higher education will decline by $23bn over the next academic year. In one survey this week, 57 per cent of university presidents said they planned to lay off staff. Half said they would merge or eliminate some programmes, while 64 per cent said that long-term financial viability was their most pressing issue. It’s very likely we are about to see the hollowing out of America’s university system.
US universities are world class. But the system as a whole is in trouble. Cost is a big part of the problem. I’ve written many times about the US’s dangerous $2tn student debt load. Soaring tuition fees, worthless degrees and dicey investments made by both universities and the government have become a huge headwind to economic growth and social mobility.
If you don’t believe me, take it from the New York Fed, which two years ago called out student debt and the dysfunctions of higher education as problems for the overall US economy. That’s a sad irony, given that a college degree is supposed to increase wealth and productivity. Unfortunately, the US system of higher education — like healthcare, housing, labour markets and so much else in America today — is bifurcated. Those with fancy brand-name degrees from top schools do great. So do many who attend high-quality, low-cost community and state programmes...
Social distancing in a classroom? Newsom suggests major changes when schools reopen https://t.co/PYSfNIzqZs
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 14, 2020
Although campuses are likely to reopen in the fall, the school day may unfold in starkly different ways, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday, suggesting staggered start times, “reconfigured” classrooms that allow for social distancing and some continuance of online learning.My college is also having online summer classes, and faculty are waiting to hear what's going to happen for the fall semester.
The governor said that physical distancing and other precautions against transmission of the coronavirus could remain in place for a lengthy period at schools after stay-at-home orders are lifted and California begins to gradually reopen.
School district leaders will need to begin considering a host of safety measures, he said.
“Can you stagger the times that our students come in so you can appropriate yourself differently within the existing physical environment — by reducing physical contact if possible, reducing the congregate meal, dressing issues related to PE and recess?” Newsom said. “Those are the kinds of things — those are the kind of conversations we’re all going to be having over the course of the next number of weeks and the next number of months.”
“We need to get our kids back to school,” he added. “I need to get my kids back to school. We need to get our kids educated.”
Such precautionary measures would have a profound impact on the experience of school for the state’s 6.1 million students in kindergarten through 12th grade as well as for students attending college. Since early to mid March, virtually all schooling in California has become “distance learning,” typically involving students and teachers interacting online.
The biggest concern has centered on the effect of the altered learning environment for students who lack computers, adequate broadband or suitable study conditions at home. Many school districts are loaning out computers and arranging for internet access. Los Angeles Unified is spending $100 million on computers and broadband hot spots for its students — 80% are members of low-income households.
State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said he’s encouraged by the governor’s optimism, the incremental progress in the fight against COVID-19 and the early thinking on reopening schools. All the same, he said, schools need to “continue working on distance learning,” make the most of the current school year and look at using the summer to address academic issues.
On Monday, L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner announced that campuses in the state’s largest school system would remain closed through summer, with online courses available. District officials also said Monday that no student would receive a failing grade for spring classes...
Damn, this is something https://t.co/TbtbTbw6YI— Milena Rodban (@MilenaRodban) November 23, 2019
On the First Amendment
This message was sent to the Kelley School of Business community Nov. 20, 2019.
Professor Eric Rasmusen has, for many years, used his private social media accounts to disseminate his racist, sexist, and homophobic views. When I label his views in this way, let me note that the labels are not a close call, nor do his posts require careful parsing to reach these conclusions. He has posted, among many other things, the following pernicious and false stereotypes:
*That he believes that women do not belong in the workplace, particularly not in academia, and that he believes most women would prefer to have a boss than be one; he has used slurs in his posts about women;Ordinarily, I would not dignify these bigoted statements with repetition, but we need to confront exactly what we are dealing with in Professor Rasmusen’s posts. His expressed views are stunningly ignorant, more consistent with someone who lived in the 18th century than the 21st. Sometimes Professor Rasmusen explains his views as animated by his Christian faith, although Christ was neither a bigot nor did he use slurs; indeed, he counseled avoiding judgments. Rhetorically speaking, Professor Rasmusen has demonstrated no difficulty in casting the first, or the lethal, stone.
*That gay men should not be permitted in academia either, because he believes they are promiscuous and unable to avoid abusing students;
*That he believes that black students are generally unqualified for attendance at elite institutions, and are generally inferior academically to white students.
His latest posts slurring women were picked up by a person with a heavily followed Twitter account, and various officials at Indiana University have been inundated in the last few days with demands that he be fired. We cannot, nor would we, fire Professor Rasmusen for his posts as a private citizen, as vile and stupid as they are, because the First Amendment of the United States Constitution forbids us to do so. That is not a close call.
Indiana University has a strong nondiscrimination policy, and as an institution adheres to values that are the opposite of Professor Rasmusen’s expressed values. We demand tolerance and respect in the workplace and in the classroom, and if Professor Rasmusen acted upon his expressed views in the workplace to judge his students or colleagues on the basis of their gender, sexual orientation, or race to their detriment, such as in promotion and tenure decisions or in grading, he would be acting both illegally and in violation of our policies and we would investigate and address those allegations according to our processes. Moreover, in my view, students who are women, gay, or of color could reasonably be concerned that someone with Professor Rasmusen’s expressed prejudices and biases would not give them a fair shake in his classes, and that his expressed biases would infect his perceptions of their work. Given the strength and longstanding nature of his views, these concerns are reasonable.
Therefore, the Kelley School is taking a number of steps to ensure that students not add the baggage of bigotry to their learning experience:
* No student will be forced to take a class from Professor Rasmusen. The Kelley School will provide alternatives to Professor Rasmusen’s classes;If other steps are needed to protect our students or colleagues from bigoted actions, Indiana University will take them.
* Professor Rasmusen will use double-blind grading on assignments; if there are components of grading that cannot be subject to a double-blind procedure, the Kelley School will have another faculty member ensure that the grades are not subject to Professor Rasmusen’s prejudices.
The First Amendment is strong medicine, and works both ways. All of us are free to condemn views that we find reprehensible, and to do so as vehemently and publicly as Professor Rasmusen expresses his views. We are free to avoid his classes, and demand that the university ensure that he does not, or has not, acted on those views in ways that violate either the federal and state civil rights laws or IU’s nondiscrimination policies. I condemn, in the strongest terms, Professor Rasmusen’s views on race, gender, and sexuality, and I think others should condemn them. But my strong disagreement with his views—indeed, the fact that I find them loathsome—is not a reason for Indiana University to violate the Constitution of the United States.
This is a lesson, unfortunately, that all of us need to take seriously, even as we support our colleagues and classmates in their perfectly reasonable anger and disgust that someone who is a professor at an elite institution would hold, and publicly proclaim, views that our country, and our university, have long rejected as wrong and immoral.
Lauren Robel
Executive Vice President and Provost
