Massive Financial Aid Scam Hits California Community Colleges

This is nasty scam.

My division dean mentioned it last week and she sent out a long email notice to all department faculty members today.

Nasty --- and a bit unreal, to think about it.

At LAT, "More than 65,000 fake students applied for financial aid in wide community college scam":

California student aid official Patrick Perry was beginning a routine check of federal financial aid records a few weeks ago when he came across a mystifying number: 60,000 more aid applications from a particular group of students this year than last.

They were first-time applicants to California community colleges who were older than 30, earned less than $40,000 annually and were seeking a two-year degree rather than a vocational certificate. They were spread out across the state, applying to 105 of the 116 campuses in the California Community Colleges system — with the top number at Cerritos, Pasadena, Chaffey, Merced and Antelope Valley. And their applications began surging in May through mid-August.

“We were kind of scratching our heads going, ‘Did or didn’t 60,000 extra older adult students really attempt to apply to community colleges here in the last few months?’” Perry, director of policy, research and data for the California Student Aid Commission, said Tuesday.

He alerted California community college officials Thursday. Around the same time, chatter emerged about abnormal enrollment patterns on a research listserv for community colleges, on which faculty were beginning to question whether some of their “students” were actually fake bot accounts.

The colleges and student aid officials put their heads together and uncovered what is believed to be one of the state’s biggest financial aid scam attempts in recent history.

California Community Colleges officials declined to say whether any financial aid was disbursed to fake students and said they did not know of any confirmed Cal Grant fraud, but the investigation is continuing.

Perry said he thinks the attempted fraud was stymied before much, if any, aid was distributed because community college classes are just starting and campuses are now on high alert. “I can’t tell you whether any money has gone out or not, but my guess is probably not,” he said. “I think we’ve caught it.”

It was unclear what financial aid may be involved in the fraud — state-funded Cal Grants, for instance, federal Pell Grants or COVID-19 emergency relief grants. California community colleges have received more than $1.6 billion in emergency COVID-19 relief for low-income students.

In addition, the fake applications are roiling the ability of college officials to determine true student enrollment numbers at a time of declining community college attendance and major efforts to recruit students and offer them financial and emergency pandemic aid to help them continue with higher education goals. Many professors are crestfallen trying to assess whether they have a class of students or bots.

Since last week, Perry said, the number of suspected fake financial aid applications has surpassed 65,000, and the problem appears confined to state community colleges. No irregular patterns were detected with the University of California or California State University.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General confirmed it was investigating but declined to comment further because the inquiry is ongoing.

But the financial aid commission and community colleges have found similar red flags for both admission and financial aid. Applications were missing a phone contact or had the same phone number on multiple applications. Numerous applications used an Outlook.com email address, listed student ages as old as 90 and repeated addresses — most to a vacant house.

“We were looking at the financial aid and they were looking at applications for enrollment and we finally put the two together,” Perry said. “The two just matched up and at that point we went, ‘Yeah, this is fraudulent.’”

The community college system is beefing up internal reporting and security measures after finding that 20% of recent traffic on its main portal for online applications was “malicious and bot-related,” according to a memo issued Monday by Valerie Lundy-Wagner, interim vice chancellor of digital innovation and infrastructure.

Nearly three-quarters of that traffic was caught by new software called Imperva Advanced Bot Detection, which was installed in July, and the matter remained of “grave concern,” Lundy-Wagner said.

“I’m certainly alarmed,” said California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who is on temporary leave working for the Biden administration. “There’s lots of unscrupulous players right now trying to access and exploit benefits, not unlike what’s happened with unemployment insurance and any number of other benefits that have been made available recently because of the pandemic.

“But I’m confident that the colleges have been able to identify the activity and are working to mitigate the risk to campuses,” he said.

Keep reading.

 

Amy Chua at Yale

It's from Elizabeth Bruenig, who is a phenomenal writer.

She used to write at both WaPo and the New York Times. I'll bet she's making bank now, and I'm surprised the Atlantic has such deep pockets. *Shrug.*

At Atlantic Monthly, "The New Moral Code of America’s Elite: Two students went to Amy Chua for advice. That sin would cost them dearly":

Every striver who ever slipped the rank of their birth to ascend to a higher order has shared the capacity to ingratiate themselves with their betters. What the truly exceptional ones have in common is the ability to connect not only with their superiors but also with their peers and inferiors. And only the rarest talents among them can bond authentically—not just transactionally—with the people who will help them be who they want to be in the world. It’s a preternatural, almost Promethean gift if you have it, and Amy Chua does.

Thus begins the scandal dubbed “dinner-party-gate,” the latest in the annals of Amy Chua, Yale Law’s very own Tiger Mom, whose infamous defense of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the “dinner-party-gate” of its day approximately three years ago. Then, as now, Chua’s differences with some denizens of her milieu played out in the press, vituperations, allegations, insinuations, and all.

But whatever Chua had done this time, it was either so terrible that it was unspeakable, or so minuscule that it didn’t warrant mentioning in the pages of The New York Times, New York magazine, or The New Yorker. Even so, each outlet gave the mysterious affair a lengthy report. The New York Times declared the conflagration “murky,” something to do with Chua breaking her 2019 agreement with Yale Law School about socializing with students in off-campus settings; The New Yorker noted that the alleged get-togethers had taken place during the pandemic, and considered the rest “a riddle.” Nobody could produce a complainant or a victim; the only thing anyone seemed able to verify was that, whatever Chua had done last winter, the result was that this coming fall, she would no longer be leading a first-year “small group”—intimate cohorts of first-semester law students who are guided through their first few months by a faculty member who teaches, advises, and, per a 2020 budget memorandum from the Law School, likely lunches and dines with the lawyers-to-be.

The reporting left open a pair of related questions: What, exactly, had happened? And, perhaps more salient, if what took place really was something on the order of a minor violation of an ad hoc agreement between Chua and the Yale Law School dean, Heather Gerken, why had the news spilled into the nation’s most prominent news outlets rather than fading below the fold of a campus daily?

It appears to me that what transpired amounts to a skirmish between a notorious professor and an administration that seemed so eager to relieve itself of her presence that it lunged at an opportunity to weaken her position at the expense of two students who were left to deal with the consequences of the ultimately aborted campaign. Still, the answer to the latter question is more revealing than any single aspect of the whole affair. It has to do with the culture of elite institutions, where putatively righteous ends justify an array of troubling means, and noble public virtues like fairness and safety cloak more prosaic motives—the kind of vulgar envy and resentment that people with the best manners deny.

Everyone is just trying to get ahead, after all; this is no less true, and perhaps even more true, at a place like Yale Law School. It just comes more naturally to some than others. In that case one must take matters into one’s own hands.

The proximate drama begins with a trio of second-year law students, friends and acquaintances for a time. There was a person I’ll call the Guest—all three students asked not to be named, and, believing young people should have a chance at carrying on after having their reputation destroyed or destroying the reputation of others, I agreed—who was born and raised in California. He’d arrived at Yale Law School optimistic and younger than most, having come directly from UCLA. During his first semester, he’d befriended the Visitor, a young woman from a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, who had arrived on campus from Emory. The two made a happy pair: the Guest dreamier and prone to touches of poetry, occasionally drawn to Byzantine history and Christian theology; the Visitor shrewd, practical, and levelheaded, with a keen focus on the concrete facts of policies, problems, current affairs. After working together on a major project that fall, they became and remained close.

And then there was the Archivist, a young man whom the Guest had also befriended early in his time at Yale. The two young men bonded after meeting in their contracts class, after which they would find one another at bars and parties to chat about history, politics, and other shared interests. They met up in New York City for a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Guest eventually gave the Archivist a key to his apartment, where the latter would often stop by to visit or do his laundry. In the second semester of their second year, things seemed placid.

And they may have remained that way, had it not been for a minor snag in the Guest’s academic year that put him on a path that would eventually lead him to Amy Chua’s doorstep.

A natural provocateur, Chua has vexed the Law School for years: First with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a wry ode to the high-pressure parenting tactics of Chinese matriarchs, which didn’t thrill the gently-brought-up sorts who sometimes pass through New England’s finest universities; then with The Triple Package, a book co-authored with her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, on the specific qualities that enable certain cultural groups to succeed in America relative to others—you can imagine how that went over—then with a Wall Street Journal op-ed taking a stand for the embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who, she said, was a “mentor to women,” including her own daughter. All throughout, Chua routinely scandalized the school by making edgy comments (allegedly remarking that Kavanaugh preferred his female clerks on the comely side, for instance, which Chua says is a gross distortion) and, yes, having students over for dinner, serving alcohol, and declining to filter her decidedly piquant inner monologue.

There is another side to Chua. It seems that for every student who emerges from her acquaintance embittered and put off, someone else comes away with nothing but the fondest of feelings for her. Her Twitter feed is peppered with spontaneous congratulations for her accomplished students, and features photos of the professor embracing former protégés in celebration of their success. During this latest contretemps, students advocated in Chua’s favor—quietly, perhaps, but with no less fervor than their anti-Chua counterparts. On April 1, a student emailed a trio of Law School deans: “Professor Chua cares more about her students than any other professor I’ve encountered at YLS. Professor Chua does more to advocate for her students than any other professor I’ve encountered at YLS. Professor Chua does more to mentor her students than any other professor I’ve encountered at YLS,” he insisted. “As you are all likely aware, I am far from the only student who feels this way. Does that not count for anything?” A PDF compilation of student and alumni letters in support of Chua spanned nearly 70 pages of similar sentiments.

Chua’s gift for relationships has also vested her with a great deal of power. Chua does know judges; she does have connections. It’s inconceivable that anyone on staff at Yale doesn’t. But Chua’s roster is either unusually expansive or perceived as such or both, and her status as a legal-career “kingmaker” has cast her in a supercharged penumbra. It’s the sort of mystique that can breed all kinds of resentments, especially in an environment where relationships with people in power are a finite resource.

Then there are Chua’s private, personal relationships—most notably, with her husband, Rubenfeld, a fellow Yale Law professor whose time at the university has been stained of late by allegations of sexual misconduct with students. Per a 23-page brief prepared by Yale Law Women, a respected student advocacy group with a formidable reputation for defending women’s interests on campus, the Rubenfeld saga stretches back to at least 2008, when a poster on the Top Law Schools forum obliquely mentioned rumors of monthly parties at Chua and Rubenfeld’s residence. A decade hence, Dean Gerken hired Jenn Davis, an independent Title IX investigator, to look into a range of allegations concerning Rubenfeld’s behavior with female students, from drunken, unwelcome, off-color remarks to unwanted touching and attempted kissing, on and off school grounds. Rubenfeld has categorically denied the claims. In its report, Yale Law Women said that fear of retaliation by Chua—concern that she would sabotage opportunities for career advancement—discouraged women who resented Rubenfeld’s advances from complaining about them to the administration.

At the conclusion of Davis’s investigation, Rubenfeld was suspended from his duties for two years, a penalty that took effect in 2020. Instead of closing the matter, Rubenfeld’s penalty seemed to strike concerned student groups such as Yale Law Women as a half-measure that would leave the matter to simmer until student turnover and the passage of time permitted another eruption.

Not that the Guest had any reason to contemplate any of this when, early in the spring semester of 2021, he decided to step down as an executive editor at the Yale Law Journal. The Guest, who describes himself as half-Korean, had misgivings about the way the journal’s staff had responded to his questions about the lack of racial diversity in its ranks, and his suggestions for addressing it. Still, even after making his decision, the Guest felt uncertain and unsettled. He confided this to the Visitor, who as a Black student at Yale Law had wrestled with similar questions, and she took it upon herself to bring them up with Chua during a Zoom meeting that served in place of the professor’s usual office hours. At that point, the Visitor recalls, Chua casually offered to talk with the two of them about the Journal affair at her home in New Haven, and the Visitor called the Guest to pass the invitation along.

Unfortunately for the Guest, the Archivist happened to be doing his laundry at his friend’s apartment when the call came, and he overheard the conversation, later documenting it as follows:

Feb. 18. I go over to [the Guest’s] to do my laundry. While at his apartment, I hear him call [the Visitor], who explains to him that Chua has just invited them over for dinner tomorrow. They discuss what to wear and what they should bring (ultimately deciding to bring a bottle of wine). [The Guest] makes zero mention of going over because of any personal crisis. After the phone call, he says that he’s been invited to a dinner party at Chua’s. [The Guest] implores me not to tell anybody so that Chua doesn’t get in trouble.

Despite his gumshoe efforts, the Archivist seemed to come away with a vastly different impression of the meeting than Chua, the Guest, or the Visitor.

The Guest and the Visitor independently told me that the meeting took place sometime in the afternoon, and that Chua offered cheese and crackers, but mentioned that she had dinner plans later on. The Guest recalled that he offered the bottle of wine as a hostess gift, which Chua accepted, though she drank only canned seltzer; the Guest opened the wine, meanwhile, and recalls pouring some for himself.

The Visitor recalled a fairly serious conversation: Chua offered advice about how the Guest should handle the brewing tempest his decision had spawned in their shared teapot. “He was getting press requests,” the Visitor told me. “Should he talk to the press? Professors are like, ‘What happened?’ Should he tell professors? Should he tell anyone? Or should he internalize it? Should he tell judges? Judges are clearly going to know about this, and I’m sure they do. And she wanted to know the full story of what happened. I think a big question was ‘Did I make a mistake?’”

The Guest came away from the conversation feeling reassured. The Archivist, however, was perturbed. Earlier that day, he’d texted two friends that the Guest and the Visitor were “going to dinner” at Chua’s, which, he added, they were “banned by the law school from doing.” One friend replied that this was weird, to which the Archivist replied: “Weird is a nice way to put it!” Chastened, the friend tried again: “So they are still ok with nepotism and complicity as long as it benefits them?” That was the ticket. “Yup!” the Archivist replied. Moments later, the Archivist sent a text that seemed to be more of a press release than a remark: “I think it’s deliberately enabling the secret atmosphere of favoritism, misogyny, and sexual harassment that severely undermines the bravery of the victims of sexual abuse that came forward against Rubenfeld,” he declared. How, why, or whether the Guest or the Visitor actually did any such thing was evidently left to the reader to infer.

Later that night, the Archivist logged a call with the Guest in which, he later said, the Guest sounded “extremely intoxicated”; the Guest denies that he was. By March, the Journal imbroglio was boiling over into the public sphere. Several of the school’s affinity groups had released statements, and the Journal had released information about the racial makeup of its editors—then the conflict came to the attention of conservative media outlets. Once more, the Guest had a series of questions for someone familiar with bad press.

This time, the Guest and the Visitor brought a premade date-and-cheese plate, the sort of appetizer offering, I gather, that you pick up at Wegmans on the way to Bible study. Again the two of them joined Chua at her New Haven manse for what sounds more like a media-strategizing session than the kind of debauched rager that would eventually possess the imaginations of Chua’s campus detractors. Again, the Archivist recorded the get-together in his notes: March 13: [The Guest] texts me again at 9:18 PM that he’s outside, indicating he has once again gone to Chua’s but won’t commit to saying so in writing

At that point, it seems, the Archivist had finally had enough. It was time to tell the administration what they had done.

When I was a little girl growing up in suburban North Texas not so very long ago, my grandmother, a housewife of the ’60s, would turn my cousins and me outside to play in the summer so she could sit at her kitchen table and chain-smoke her way through her library of paperback bodice-rippers. And when one of us would inevitably bolt back inside to complain about being annihilated with a Super Soaker at close range or nailed with a Nerf dart to the eye, she would always eject us with the same dismissal: Don’t be a tattletale. As far as childhood admonishments go, it was an interesting one—she wasn’t telling us not to do something, but rather not to be something...

Keep reading.

 

Anti-Racism at Berkeley and UCLA

The "big lie" of university admissions --- and it's hurting the life chances of black and brown students.

Here's John McWhorter, on Substack:

No more SAT at the University of California? Classic racist antiracism, and it's not going to end well.https://t.co/S5AxQRCV7f

— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) July 25, 2021

A Shocking Number of College Grads Wish They Had Been Taught More Life Skills

 At Pajamas, "According to a poll from SWNS digital, 81% of college grads wished they had been taught more life skills before graduation. Instead, they learned the importance of pronouns and social justice activism. It seems that many students leave a college clueless about budgeting and what to do when you can’t afford DoorDash."

Defining Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

USA Today's got a freakin' glossary on CRT and DEI. 

Here, "Schools keep talking about critical race theory and DEI. What do those terms really mean?"

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Rails Against Opponents of Critical Race Theory

At Fox News, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rails against CRT opposition: Teachers should be 'fluent in how to dismantle racism': 'Why don’t you want our schools to teach anti-racism?'"

Charles W. Mills, From Class to Race

 At Amazon, Charles W. Mills, From Class to Race.

'Critical Race Weary'

From Buck Sexton:

Much of the recent attention on Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) has been a result of the increase in Zoom teaching during the COVID-19 school shutdowns. Parents became aware of the kind of identity-politics indoctrination forced on their kids. Students who hadn’t even reached high-school age were being told that they were part of systematic oppression based on their skin color.

It has been known for a long time that academia is riddled with CRT nonsense, and college campuses have been demanding that students worship at the altar of “Diversity and Inclusion.” But corporate America has also been infiltrated with similar politically correct brainwashing.

The Marxist rot of CRT has spread into the executive suites of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world. Case in point: Raytheon Technologies. It’s the second-largest defense contractor in the world, with around 181,000 employees and revenue over $56 billion in 2020.

It’s not the kind of place one might expect to be nagging employees about “checking their privilege” or “confronting historical oppression.” This is a place that makes missiles that blow people up, among other things.

Yet thanks to an industrious think-tank scholar at the Manhattan Institute named Christopher Rufo, we know that when Raytheon isn’t coming up with new ways to drop bombs on the Third World, its employees sit through some of the most absurd and offensive racial sensitivity training imaginable.

Rufo got his hands on the actual training materials from Raytheon’s version of CRT training. He writes in City Journal about some of the most insane PC training modules, such as when:

“Raytheon asks white employees to deconstruct their identities and identify [their] privilege. The company argues that white, straight, Christian, able-bodied, English-speaking men are at the top of the intersectional hierarchy – and must work on recognizing [their] privilege” and step aside in favor of other identity groups. According to outside diversity consultant Michelle Saahene, whites “have the privilege of individuality,” while minorities “don’t have that privilege.”

Divisive Diversity

Deconstruct their identities? Intersectional hierarchy? These are Leftist absurdities, but they have to be taken seriously in so far as they’re part of a vast and growing “diversity and inclusion” complex. There are frauds who travel around from company to company to preach this nonsense, and they’re shockingly well-compensated and culturally influential.

In fact, there’s real power now behind CRT. As anyone who has been called into human resources at a Fortune 500 company for a “sensitivity” issue will be able to tell you, the HR policies of major companies now reflect the philosophy of CRT. Employees are expected to abide by the ever-changing dictates of these Diversity Czars or face the consequences.

These expectations even extend to the way colleagues are allowed to speak to each other...

Still more.

Yet again, contra Sexton, C.R.T. is not Marxist. See Kimberley Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory.

Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory

This is the key introductory text. It's pitched, really, at the undergraduate level. 

At Amazon, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.

(For the advanced graduate-level, nearly impenetrable text, see Kimbery Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory.)

Ben Carson Slams Critical Race Theory

This is excellent, except for Carson's claim that critical race theory is "Marxist." 

There's plenty of Marxism in the schools, especially in the humanities and social sciences, but this ain't it. 

It's not so, according one of the leading founders of critical race theory, Kimberly Crenshaw, in her foundational anthology, Critical Race Theory.

And Carson's at Fox News, "Dr. Ben Carson: Fighting critical race theory – this is how we stop this blatantly racist ideology: We cannot allow CRT to rob American children of that same hope that was instilled in me."

You Don't Say? Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Has Purchased $1.4 Million Home in Secluded -- All White! -- Topanga Canyon

Woo boy, this story's a doozy, but entirely predictable, sadly. 

From Jonathan Turley, "Twitter Censors Criticism of BLM Founder Buying $1.4 Million Home In Predominantly White Neighborhood":

We have been discussing the expanding censorship on Twitter and social media. The latest example involves the story of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37, and her purchase of a $1.4 million home in a secluded area of Los Angeles whose population is reputedly less than 2% black. The professed Marxist received considerable criticism for the purchase, including from Jason Whitlock, an African-America sports critic who has also been a critic of BLM. When Whitlock called out Khan-Cullors, Twitter promptly censored the tweet — leaving a notice that it was “no longer available.”

Last week, various cites like dirt.com reported, “A secluded mini-compound tucked into L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon was recently sold for a tad more than $1.4 million to a corporate entity that public records show is controlled by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37-year-old social justice visionary and co-founder of the galvanizing and, for some, controversial Black Lives Matter movement.”

It produced a firestorm of critics who noted that Cullors has long insisted that she and her BLM co-founder “are trained Marxists. We are super versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” Critics like Nick Arama of RedState pointed out: “[I]t’s interesting to note that the demographics of the area are only about 1.4% black people there. So not exactly living up to her creed there.”

Jason Whitlock posted a link to a story but was promptly censored by Twitter:

[SCREENSHOT HERE]

The controversy is illustrative of the age of Internet censors. Tweets, and in some cases Twitter accounts, vanish without explanation. Twitter is notorious for not responding to media inquiries over such censorship and even less forthcoming on the decision-making process behind such decisions.

If Whitlock was expressing his contempt for the purchase, it is core political speech.

Even the head of New York City’s Black Lives Matter chapter is calling for an independent investigation into the organization’s finances in the wake of the controversy. This controversy follows an Atlanta-based figure being criminally charged with fraud. According to the Justice Department, Sir Maejor Page, or Tyree Conyers-Page is accused of using a Facebook page called “Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta.”

The New York Post and other publications have reported that Cullors is eyeing expensive properties in other locations, including the Bahamas. However, it is not clear if this money came from BLM which has reportedly raised almost $100 million in donations from corporations and other sources. Indeed, Cullors seems to have ample sources of funds. She is married to Janaya Khan, a leader of BLM in Toronto, and published a best selling memoir of her life and then a follow up book. She also signed a lucrative deal with Warner Bros to develop and produce original programming across all platforms, including broadcast, cable and streaming. She has also been featured in various magazines like her recent collaboration with Jane Fonda.

The issue for me is not the house or claimed hypocrisy. It is the censorship of Twitter of such criticism. Cullors is a public figure who is subject to public scrutiny and commentary. Twitter is rife with a such criticism over the lifestyle choices of figures on the right ranging from Donald Trump Jr. to Rand Paul. That is an unfortunate aspect of being in a high visibility position. I would be equally concerned if criticism of Trump Jr.’s big game hunting exploits or Giuliani’s lavish tastes were censored...

Still more.

And at London's Daily Mail, "BLM founder is branded a 'FRAUD' after buying a $1.4 million home in an upscale mostly white enclave in L.A." 

Personally, I don't care much that this woman bought a ritzy house in "exclusive" Topanga Canyon (good for her!); and the Twitter censorship is par for the course, in any case; and is, perhaps, less interesting to me than it is to Mr. Turley.

It's the hypocrisy and --- the literally satanic --- double-standards. Not only can I not stand "Black Lives Matter," as their movement is, obviously, a sham that's virtually 100 percent responsible for the "B.L.M." riots last summer than burned down darned near every Democrat-run city in the entire country, but this woman, as noted above by Mr. Turley, is a self-declared "Marxist"; that is, she's a real, dyed-in-the-wool communist, and for her to be out there scooping up million dollar properties, not just in L.A., but perhaps in the Caribbean as well, that's a bit rich for me, and I find it absolutely disgusting. (As, for one thing, the wealth-creation derived from such purchases is literally the same anathema that these ideological and partisan ghouls are always yapping about, and, frankly, I often sympathize with these very same "concerns" that they have about "capitalist racist oppression" or "structural racism," or, well, on and on and on, blah blah). 

What is more, as political science professor, at a genuinely "minority-majority" college, a place really filled with the kind of "marginalized" kids that these "B.L.M." hacks and liars constantly say they're "all about," I can't even say how much this pissed me right the f*ck off. But that's life, and honestly, lately I mostly just "get with the program" at my school, because radical leftists already tried to get me fired ("cancelled") 10 years ago, and I have no interest in dealing with any such sort of related campus-based ideological conflicts again, despite the fact that I'm tenured. It's just too much. You become a pariah, and it's even worse, because you become a pariah to a lot of people with whom you'd had perfectly fine and collegial relationships prior to such libelous, illegal, and FUBAR attacks. 

I mean, if you've heard folks online, or in commentary pieces, etc., argue that "it's hard" for conservative faculty members on America's college and university campuses these days, well, you have no idea. And take it from me, because I'm a pretty hardy soul, but also pretty mellow and totally friendly to those with whom I work, but no matter: All that good cheer and outstanding professionalism (and professional relationships) goes out the window should you wind up in the cross-hairs of these truly satanic ideological and partisan monsters. 

While I would never say this to a student of mine, I really don't recommend anyone WHO IS NOT a freakin' Marxist to go into college or university teaching, and that's to say nothing of just recommending graduate training in the humanities or social sciences (or even English literature, etc.) to my students, because as bad as it all is, I'm not one to crush a young person's dreams, and I'll only speak frankly on the cancerous toxicity of "academe" if the student brings it up herself (or himself, or "themselves," or whatever). 

Professor Danielle Allen on 'A More Resilient Union' (VIDEO)

I assigned Ms. Allen's piece in my introduction to American government classes just last week, and it's interesting to see her now interviewed with Judy Woodruff at the PBS News Hour.

Ms Allen's article is here, "A More Resilient Union: How Federalism Can Protect Democracy From Pandemics."

The main thing that struck me about the piece is that she doesn't rag on former President Trump, except to argue that he failed to educate the public on the full nature of the virus, not to mention his failure to better delineate the respective roles of the federal government vis-a-vis the states. 

What I did appreciate is her discussion on the American public's widespread ignorance on how the U.S. governmental system operates. That was a key theme I wanted students to discuss, and she make a pretty shocking case to abolish school football programs, even though she apparently loves football: 

If the country’s constitutional democracy is to have a healthy future, Americans should finish this crisis intending not only to invest in health infrastructure but also to revive civics education. Schools need more time for history, civics, and social studies. What should go to make room? Sports, for one thing. Compared with other countries, the United States invests a disproportionate amount of time and money in sports. Americans appear to prefer football to democracy. It’s time to cut back—and I say this as someone whose first professional ambition in life was to be a running back. The United States has made such sacrifices before. World War II saw the suspension of football and soccer seasons the world over. Sporting events may be the last things Americans get back as they reopen their economy. They should use the extra time to double down on civics education.

This crisis has laid bare just how fragile and unsteady the United States’ constitutional democracy is. Now, the country must get its house in order and prioritize its farthest-reaching hopes and aspirations. Americans had all the tools needed to respond to this crisis, except for the very thing that would have given them reason to use them: a common purpose. Let the search for one begin.

Most students weren't thrilled with the idea, but some thought it not a bad notion. As a professor, I just like Ms. Allen's focus on improving civic education, especially for young people, which, as a professor of political science, and I can attest first hand, is dismal.

Watch:

 

Anti-C.R.T. Activist Christopher Rufo Challenges N.Y.T.'s Michelle Goldberg to Debate

Actually, Rufo's challenging the entire leftist cadre of "woke journalists" and lefty columnists, like Ms. Goldberg, to debate, and that's not a bad idea. 

He writes on Twitter:

Today, the New York Times claimed that I want to ban critical race theory because I am afraid to debate it. This is false. In fact, I will debate any prominent critical race theorist on the floor of the New York Times. I will give them home field advantage—and dismantle them.

I give the New York Times and the professors of critical race theory—including those quotes in the article—five calendar days to accept this challenge. If they do not, we'll know who is afraid to debate, and who uses it as an excuse to shelter their ideas from public criticism.

Actually, though, when it comes to critical race theory (C.R.T.), Ms. Goldberg, may have a point. (And I note this with the full understanding that, Ms. Goldberg, who is Jewish, and perhaps has faced some anti-Semitism in her life, is nevertheless about as "privileged" as anyone could be today, with a "journalistic" perch at the "exalted" New York Times, which ain't nothing to sniff at, considering the sheer power of that institution). 

Here's her column, "The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness."

You can RTWT (besides the screenshot below), but what I've noticed is that Rufo, indeed, is somewhat "totalitarian" in his approach. I've seen him interviewed a least a couple of times on cable news, and he claims to be assembling a "high-powered" network of attorneys not just to challenge C.R.T, but to get it banned altogether from U.S. schools. 

Now, I'm obviously no big defender of C.R.T. --- and especially the "antiracism" corollary --- but if conservatives say they're truly for free speech --- the point Ms. Goldberg hammers --- hers is not an idle critique. I mean, if one is really conservative, the point of greatest impact should be at the local level, empowering, with conservative pro bono lawyers and lawsuits, the parents of kids who're being indoctrinated by such crap. Further, Rufo's approach, ideologically, mimics what so-called "right-wing" critics of leftist education doctrine always say --- that it's all "top down," especially driven by genuinely powerful teachers' unions, particularly the N.E.A. and A.F.T., both loathsome citadels of educational hatred, not to mention despicable indifference to the lives and welfare of the students they're supposed to represent. 

So, while I'm probably overthinking this too much, I'm looking forward to local conservative and traditional parent-activists to take it right to the authoritative bodies that are reaming their kids, and robbing them of the true "critical" thinking that youngins today so obviously need --- their local school boards. 

And to add, I personally favor Professor William Jacobson's approach, with his "Critical Race Training" initiative, which is a place where parents can find facts and be educated about what the situation is, so they can then make choices for themselves. So then, if some of those families indeed pursue litigation, at least it will be from a position of "choice," or in fact of "choice" denied, as many families aren't privileged, like Ms. Goldberg, who attended U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, with Berkeley being generally regarded as the top public university in the country.  

So I guess with that, you be the judge. *Shrug.* A lot of the ideological battles we're having these days are, in fact, dumb. 

Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College (VIDEO)

Following-up from the other day, "Whistleblower Jodi Shaw Out at Smith College (VIDEO)."

It turns out that the New York Times, of all place, has published a long and detailed "investigative"-style report on Smith College, and it's a real humdinger. 

Christina Hoff Sommers reacted on Twitter, "Why I can’t yet give up on @NYTimes. Such excellent reporting by Michael Powell."

And Lee Fung, a former far-left "reporter" at Media Matters, wrote, "This story is a must-read, just incredible. Not unique at all to Smith College, though. This kind of cowardice and character destruction is permeating almost every institution dominated by highly educated liberals."

And Batya Ungar-Sargon, the not-very conservative opinion editor of the (Jewish Daily) Forward, also wrote, "A student at Smith got a janitor put on leave and a security officer tarred as racist, both of whom make less than her $78,000 yearly tuition, because she insisted on eating in a deserted dorm she wasn't meant to be in. Wokeness is a smokescreen for class."

It's a long article (link here), so I'll just copy a little, and hopefully the subscription "wall" won't prevent readers from accessing the whole thing: 

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — In midsummer of 2018, Oumou Kanoute, a Black student at Smith College, recounted a distressing American tale: She was eating lunch in a dorm lounge when a janitor and a campus police officer walked over and asked her what she was doing there.

The officer, who could have been carrying a “lethal weapon,” left her near “meltdown,” Ms. Kanoute wrote on Facebook, saying that this encounter continued a yearlong pattern of harassment at Smith.

“All I did was be Black,” Ms. Kanoute wrote. “It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”

The college’s president, Kathleen McCartney, offered profuse apologies and put the janitor on paid leave. “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias,” the president wrote, “in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives.”

The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN picked up the story of a young female student harassed by white workers. The American Civil Liberties Union, which took the student’s case, said she was profiled for “eating while Black.”

Less attention was paid three months later when a law firm hired by Smith College to investigate the episode found no persuasive evidence of bias. Ms. Kanoute was determined to have eaten in a deserted dorm that had been closed for the summer; the janitor had been encouraged to notify security if he saw unauthorized people there. The officer, like all campus police, was unarmed.

Smith College officials emphasized “reconciliation and healing” after the incident. In the months to come they announced a raft of anti-bias training for all staff, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force and the creation of dormitories — as demanded by Ms. Kanoute and her A.C.L.U. lawyer — set aside for Black students and other students of color.

But they did not offer any public apology or amends to the workers whose lives were gravely disrupted by the student’s accusation.

This is a tale of how race, class and power collided at the elite 145-year-old liberal arts college, where tuition, room and board top $78,000 a year and where the employees who keep the school running often come from working-class enclaves beyond the school’s elegant wrought iron gates. The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.

Those tensions come at a time when few in the Smith community feel comfortable publicly questioning liberal orthodoxy on race and identity, and some professors worry the administration is too deferential to its increasingly emboldened students.

“My perception is that if you’re on the wrong side of issues of identity politics, you’re not just mistaken, you’re evil,” said James Miller, an economics professor at Smith College and a conservative.

In an interview, Ms. McCartney said that Ms. Kanoute’s encounter with the campus staff was part of a spate of cases of “living while Black” harassment across the nation. There was, she noted, great pressure to act. “We always try to show compassion for everyone involved,” she said.

President McCartney, like all the workers Ms. Kanoute interacted with on that day, is white.

Faculty members, however, pointed to a pattern that they say reflects the college’s growing timidity in the face of allegations from students, especially around the issue of race and ethnicity. In 2016, students denounced faculty at Smith’s social work program as racist after some professors questioned whether admissions standards for the program had been lowered and this was affecting the quality of the field work. Dennis Miehls, one of the professors they decried, left the school not long after.

Then in the autumn of 2019, the religious studies department proposed a class on Native American religion and spirituality. A full complement of students registered but well before classes began, a small contingent of Native American students and allies pasted bright red posters on buildings on campus reviling the course as harmful, intrusive and disrespectful and attacking the instructor, who was young, white and not on a tenure track. He had an academic background in this field and had modeled his course on that of his mentor, who was a well-known professor and a member of the Choctaw Nation.

The administration declined to challenge the student protesters and had the instructor submit to sessions of “radical listening” with the protesters. In the end, the religious studies department dropped the class...

Still more.

Not All 'Anti-Racist' Ideas Are Good Ones

You don't say? 

And this is Matthew Yglesias, someone who blocked me on Twitter back in the day. I obviously don't care for the guy, but, as it's happening a lot these days, he's been on the wrong end of leftist "cancel culture." See Fox News's report, "Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias quits, cites 'inherent tension' and desire to be 'independent' voice: Yglesias follows Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, and Andrew Sullivan in exodus of journalists from prominent news outlets."

Yglesias is up at WaPo with an op-ed, here, "Not all ‘anti-racist’ ideas are good ones. The left isn’t being honest about this: On some topics, progressives prefer pointing out right-wing hypocrisy to debating substance":

The same Republicans championing free speech and deploring “cancel culture” are trying to pass laws criminalizing protests, bar classroom discussions of the New York Times’ 1619 Project on slavery and penalize people who advocate boycotts to oppose Israeli settlements. Combine that with the idea that we’ve got more important issues to deal with, from the pandemic to the Jan. 6 insurrection, and many progressives think they don’t have to engage with the argument that the left is too conformist and dogmatic on certain topics involving race. They don’t want to hear about the San Francisco Board of Education stripping Abraham Lincoln’s name from a high school, or Oregon teacher-training materials claiming that asking math students to “show their work” reinforces white supremacy.

“One of America’s major parties has turned against democracy,” Vox’s Zack Beauchamp tweeted Feb. 9, after a Times a reporter who had used the n-word in a discussion with students about racism was compelled to resign, “and we’re talking about . . . the Times’ staffing decisions?”

But it would be a significant mistake for mainstream progressives to duck the substance of these controversies. After all, it is progressives who in recent years have attempted to increase the stigma attached to racist speech while also expanding the scope of what’s “racist.” That double move introduces complications into discussions of racism that should invite more argumentation, not less.

In educated liberal circles these days, everyone knows that racism is not just a question of individual prejudice or hatred. The conversations are about “structural” or “systemic” racism — impersonal properties of systems, embedded in processes. Certainly it’s true that race and racism have shaped many legal, political and social institutions, since America’s earliest days. But when you make the scope of racism so expansive, that necessarily means pushing the conversations into contestable terrain.

The shift from dismantling monuments to the Confederacy to erasing homages to Lincoln, for example, raises important questions about how to balance the praiseworthy and lamentable aspects of political figures. (The school board noted that during Lincoln’s presidency, the military hanged 38 rebellious Native Americans in Minnesota.) But whether to cancel Lincoln is — for most people — a fairly easy case. Consider a more challenging one, involving land use restrictions in American cities. Having studied the issue, I believe that excessively strict regulations embody structural racism in housing: Such rules price low-income people, who are disproportionately Black and Brown, out of many areas. To me, it’s clear that the sensible (and progressive) course of action is to allow denser construction in the most expensive neighborhoods; increasing housing supply will have ripple effects that reduce housing prices for everyone. But I’m also aware that many people sincerely believe that allowing real estate development fuels gentrification and displacement — and that the key to racial justice is even more stringent regulations.

Nothing is gained if the different parties in this debate call each other racists or invoke the specter of “white supremacy” to discredit their opponents. The affordable-housing question requires dispassionate analysis, not the censoriousness and scolding that might be appropriate for combating expressions of traditional prejudice, such as redlining.

Yet many commentators urge a more fiery approach. Ibram Kendi, author of the bestseller “How to Be an Antiracist,” argues for an extremely expansive concept of racism that pushes the boundaries of structural analysis to the limits. According to Kendi, any racial gap simply is racist by definition; any policy that maintains such a gap is a racist policy; and — most debatably — any intellectual explanation of its existence (sociological, cultural, and so on) is also racist. He has famously argued that anything that is not anti-racist is perforce racist.

This reaches its most radical form in Kendi’s conflation of measurements of problems with the problems themselves. In his book — ubiquitous in educational circles — he denounces not the existence of a large Black-White gap in school performance but any discussion of such a gap. Kendi writes that “we degrade Black minds every time we speak of an ‘academic-achievement gap’ ” based on standardized test scores and grades. Instead, he asks: “What if the intellect of a low-testing Black child in a poor Black school is different from — and not inferior to — the intellect of a high-testing White child in a rich White school? What if we measured intelligence by how knowledgeable individuals are about their own environments?”

We certainly could do that. But the fact remains that if African American children continue to be less likely to learn to read and write and do math than White children, and less likely to graduate from high school, then this will contribute to other unequal outcomes down the road. Education is not a cure-all for labor market discrimination, and educational disparities don’t fully account for the Black-White earnings gap. But they partially account for that gap while also leaving people less able to organize politically, protect themselves from financial scams and otherwise navigate the modern world. Stigmatizing the use of test scores and grades to measure learning undermines policymakers’ ability to make the case for reforms to promote equity — from providing air conditioning in schools to combating racially biased low expectations among teachers...

I disagree with most of this piece (Yglesias is much too soft on his fellow leftists), but he's got a point about the toxicity of Ibram X. Kendi, which is something I'm dealing with at my college, and which Tucker Carlson has been hammering in recent segments as "the most destructive ideology" of our lifetimes. 

It's bad. Very bad. And as hard as it is, I sure hope more and more parents yank their kids out of public schools. That will help, but then there's the universities families have to consider. Professor William Jacobson created a new website to track racial indoctrination on campuses all across the country, and with luck, the word will get out, and spread farther, and more and more families will vote with their dollars, and they'll ultimately abandon all the "woke" education B.S., turning instead, one hopes, to decent, family-values oriented educational institutions. 

Again, this is not easy to do, especially for families who're not wealthy, but if enough families indeed choose alternative educational paths for their kids, sooner or later the "woke" totalitarians will get what's coming to them --- ultimate repudiation and banishment from polite society. 

 

For 'Woke' Progressives, Asian-American Achievement is An Embarrassment

It's Bill McGurn, at WSJ, "The Woke ‘Model Minority’ Myth":

The North Thurston Public Schools in Lacey, Wash., made headlines in November when their “equity report” classified Asian-Americans along with whites instead of as “students of color.” Apparently the Asian-Americans were doing too well academically to be students of color. After what the district said was “an overwhelming public response,” it admitted its “category choices” had “racist implications” and dropped the equity report from its website.

To normal Americans, it makes no sense. How are Asian-Americans not “people of color”? But give the North Thurston folks credit for following progressive logic to its conclusion. Modern progressive theory more or less divides the nation between the oppressors, defined as whites, and the oppressed, defined as everyone else. In this framework, achieving success puts you on the side of the oppressors and thus makes you white or “white-adjacent”—even if your family came from China or India.

Calling it progressive to send children of color the message that achievement is white is an irony lost on the woke. Bigoted laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or actions such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II were once thought among the worst stains on American history left by anti-Asian racism. But these days the characterization of Asian-Americans as the “model minority” triggers the woke.

“Asian-Americans are caught in a bind—condemn the system of white supremacy and privilege along with other people of color or be ‘banished’ from the victim group as white-adjacent,” says Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights. “The end goal here is to pit people against each other as if our hyphenated identities are bigger than our common destiny as Americans.”

The principal reason for this is the fact of Asian-American achievement. This is an embarrassment to progressives because it undermines the claim that structural racism dooms nonwhite citizens to the margins of the American dream. So Asian-American achievement must either be dismissed as somehow white or sacrificed at the altar of equity.

Examples abound. A report last year called “The Secret Shame” notes how public schools in America’s most progressive cities have been failing their black and Latino children for decades. How does New York Mayor Bill de Blasio respond? In January America’s self-styled progressive in chief announced that New York will abolish the entrance exam for the city’s gifted-and-talented programs for young students. If you can’t fix the schools that are broken, you cut down to size the schools that are working.

In 2019 Mr. de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group reported that though Asians are only 17% of New York’s kindergarten population, they account for 42% of the gifted-and-talented seats. Plainly the mayor’s “success” requires reducing the number of Asian-Americans no matter how qualified they are. The mayor has also tried to abolish the entrance exam for the city’s high-performing high schools, where Asian-American students again are “overrepresented.” And the progressive war on merit is by no means confined to New York. San Francisco’s renowned Lowell High School abolished its own merit-based admissions this month, again in large part because a student body selected by merit will have too many Asian-Americans and too few students from other minority groups.

The progressive contention is that admitting students on individual merit is really about upholding white dominance...

Seriously.

I teach this in my classes. I mean, the horrendous discrimination Chinese and Japanese Americans have endured in this country goes all the way back to the Gold Rush era in California. Now, of course, times change, but you see it's actually radical leftists now who're harming --- actually obliterating --- the basic civil rights of these groups.

It's disgusting.

Still more, in any case.

 

Whistleblower Jodi Shaw Out at Smith College (VIDEO)

This is a huge story involving a very brave woman.

It turns out that Ms. Jodi Shaw has resigned her position at Smith College, and her video and resignation letter are both bold and courageous, and her super-supportive followers are legion.

Bari Weiss reports, "Whistleblower at Smith College Resigns Over Racism."

And here's Ms. Shaw's latest video, and the full text of her resignation letter below. (And to note, I've had my own battles over evil "antiracism" initiatives at my college, and all the mandatory "woke" training and so forth, going back at least 10 years in my case; so Ms. Shaw is certainly not only correct in taking her strong stand against the progressive hate, but she's providing much-needed leadership, and as you can see at her video here, it's all taking a toll. God bless her.)

Dear President McCartney:

I am writing to notify you that effective today, I am resigning from my position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life at Smith College. This has not been an easy decision, as I now face a deeply uncertain future. As a divorced mother of two, the economic uncertainty brought about by this resignation will impact my children as well. But I have no choice. The racially hostile environment that the college has subjected me to for the past two and a half years has left me physically and mentally debilitated. I can no longer work in this environment, nor can I remain silent about a matter so central to basic human dignity and freedom.

I graduated from Smith College in 1993. Those four years were among the best in my life. Naturally, I was over the moon when, years later, I had the opportunity to join Smith as a staff member. I loved my job and I loved being back at Smith.

But the climate — and my place at the college — changed dramatically when, in July 2018, the culture war arrived at our campus when a student accused a white staff member of calling campus security on her because of racial bias. The student, who is black, shared her account of this incident widely on social media, drawing a lot of attention to the college.

Before even investigating the facts of the incident, the college immediately issued a public apology to the student, placed the employee on leave, and announced its intention to create new initiatives, committees, workshops, trainings, and policies aimed at combating “systemic racism” on campus.

In spite of an independent investigation into the incident that found no evidence of racial bias, the college ramped up its initiatives aimed at dismantling the supposed racism that pervades the campus. This only served to support the now prevailing narrative that the incident had been racially motivated and that Smith staff are racist.

Allowing this narrative to dominate has had a profound impact on the Smith community and on me personally. For example, in August 2018, just days before I was to present a library orientation program into which I had poured a tremendous amount of time and effort, and which had previously been approved by my supervisors, I was told that I could not proceed with the planned program. Because it was going to be done in rap form and “because you are white,” as my supervisor told me, that could be viewed as “cultural appropriation.” My supervisor made clear he did not object to a rap in general, nor to the idea of using music to convey orientation information to students. The problem was my skin color.

I was up for a full-time position in the library at that time, and I was essentially informed that my candidacy for that position was dependent upon my ability, in a matter of days, to reinvent a program to which I had devoted months of time.

Humiliated, and knowing my candidacy for the full-time position was now dead in the water, I moved into my current, lower-paying position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life.

As it turned out, my experience in the library was just the beginning. In my new position, I was told on multiple occasions that discussing my personal thoughts and feelings about my skin color is a requirement of my job. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member violently banged his fist on the table, chanting “Rich, white women! Rich, white women!” in reference to Smith alumnae. I listened to my supervisor openly name preferred racial quotas for job openings in our department. I was given supplemental literature in which the world’s population was reduced to two categories — “dominant group members” and “subordinated group members” — based solely on characteristics like race.

Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.

Although I have spoken to many staff and faculty at the college who are deeply troubled by all of this, they are too terrified to speak out about it. This illustrates the deeply hostile and fearful culture that pervades Smith College.

The last straw came in January 2020, when I attended a mandatory Residence Life staff retreat focused on racial issues. The hired facilitators asked each member of the department to respond to various personal questions about race and racial identity. When it was my turn to respond, I said “I don’t feel comfortable talking about that.” I was the only person in the room to abstain.

Later, the facilitators told everyone present that a white person’s discomfort at discussing their race is a symptom of “white fragility.” They said that the white person may seem like they are in distress, but that it is actually a “power play.” In other words, because I am white, my genuine discomfort was framed as an act of aggression. I was shamed and humiliated in front of all of my colleagues.

I filed an internal complaint about the hostile environment, but throughout that process, over the course of almost six months, I felt like my complaint was taken less seriously because of my race. I was told that the civil rights law protections were not created to help people like me. And after I filed my complaint, I started to experience retaliatory behavior, like having important aspects of my job taken away without explanation.

Under the guise of racial progress, Smith College has created a racially hostile environment in which individual acts of discrimination and hostility flourish. In this environment, people’s worth as human beings, and the degree to which they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, is determined by the color of their skin. It is an environment in which dissenting from the new critical race orthodoxy — or even failing to swear fealty to it like some kind of McCarthy-era loyalty oath — is grounds for public humiliation and professional retaliation.

I can no longer continue to work in an environment where I am constantly subjected to additional scrutiny because of my skin color. I can no longer work in an environment where I am told, publicly, that my personal feelings of discomfort under such scrutiny are not legitimate but instead are a manifestation of white supremacy. Perhaps most importantly, I can no longer work in an environment where I am expected to apply similar race-based stereotypes and assumptions to others, and where I am told — when I complain about having to engage in what I believe to be discriminatory practices — that there are “legitimate reasons for asking employees to consider race” in order to achieve the college’s “social justice objectives.”

What passes for “progressive” today at Smith and at so many other institutions is regressive. It taps into humanity’s worst instincts to break down into warring factions, and I fear this is rapidly leading us to a very twisted place. It terrifies me that others don’t seem to see that racial segregation and demonization are wrong and dangerous no matter what its victims look like. Being told that any disagreement or feelings of discomfort somehow upholds “white supremacy” is not just morally wrong. It is psychologically abusive.

Equally troubling are the many others who understand and know full well how damaging this is, but do not speak out due to fear of professional retaliation, social censure, and loss of their livelihood and reputation. I fear that by the time people see it, or those who see it manage to screw up the moral courage to speak out, it will be too late.

I wanted to change things at Smith. I hoped that by bringing an internal complaint, I could somehow get the administration to see that their capitulation to critical race orthodoxy was causing real, measurable harm. When that failed, I hoped that drawing public attention to these problems at Smith would finally awaken the administration to this reality. I have come to conclude, however, that the college is so deeply committed to this toxic ideology that the only way for me to escape the racially hostile climate is to resign. It is completely unacceptable that we are now living in a culture in which one must choose between remaining in a racially hostile, psychologically abusive environment or giving up their income.

As a proud Smith alum, I know what a critical role this institution has played in shaping my life and the lives of so many women for one hundred and fifty years. I want to see this institution be the force for good I know it can be. I will not give up fighting against the dangerous pall of orthodoxy that has descended over Smith and so many of our educational institutions.

This was an extremely difficult decision for me and comes at a deep personal cost. I make $45,000 a year; less than a year’s tuition for a Smith student. I was offered a settlement in exchange for my silence, but I turned it down. My need to tell the truth — and to be the kind of woman Smith taught me to be — makes it impossible for me to accept financial security at the expense of remaining silent about something I know is wrong. My children’s future, and indeed, our collective future as a free nation, depends on people having the courage to stand up to this dangerous and divisive ideology, no matter the cost.

Sincerely,

Jodi Shaw

Briahna Joy Gray, Former National Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign, Slams Joe Biden's Response to Question on Student Debt Forgiveness (VIDEO)

I watched parts of China Joe's "CNN Town Hall" (love-fest), and I thought his response on the student loan question was a disaster. Now, it's not that he didn't address it; he did. But Biden said he'd only go as high as $10,000, and obviously those idiot young people taking out hundreds of thousands in student loans, and who are clearly expecting a big "pay-off," in the literal sense of the federal government "forgiving" the student loans that no one forced them to take, aren't too pleased about it.

Now, this Briahna Joy Gray lady, a former Bernie spokeswoman, has some thoughts, and they're delivered in that tricky leftist kinda way, in which debt forgiveness is really about "alleviating" poverty. Shoot, we can straight-up alleviate poverty by just sending everybody a check --- and I mean everybody, like my 25-year-old son, who himself is taking out loans for college. So, what to do? Hey, if Biden caves to the progressive's debt-forgiveness crap, is he going to make that forgiveness retroactive? Because I'm still paying down the $70,000 or so I borrowed for my Ph.D. program. And while I'm not "poor," I could sure use the money, just like all those idiots youngsters taking out loans for their worthless "gender studies" degrees.

Watch, at the "Rising," with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti:  

THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES

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.

John Eastman Resigns From Chapman University Law School

 At Instapundit, "Well, if you’re a lefty you can be an unrepentant terror-bomber and get a cushy slot at a top university. But if you peacefully speak at a rally for the right, well, you get this: 'Law Prof John Eastman Retires From Chapman ‘Effective Immediately’ Amidst Uproar Over Speaking At Trump Rally Last Wednesday'."

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."