The Unmaking of American History by the Woke Mob

For the full background, see "Presentism, Race and Trolls," at Inside Higher Ed.

From Dominic Green, at WSJ, "Progressive scholars increasingly abandon the past to focus on present-day politics":

Academic historians are losing their sense of the past. In his August column for the American Historical Association’s journal, Perspectives on History, James H. Sweet warned that academic history has become so “presentist” that it is losing touch with its subject, the world before yesterday. Mr. Sweet, who is the association’s president and teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, observed that the “allure of political relevance” is drawing students away from pre-1800 history and toward “contemporary social justice issues” such as “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism.” When historians become activists, he wrote, the past becomes “an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions.”

Mr. Sweet knows his audience, so he did his best to appease the crocodile of political correctness. He denounced Justice Clarence Thomas for a gun-rights decision that “cherry-picks historical data” and criticized Justice Samuel Alito for taking the word “history” in vain 67 times in his Dobbs abortion opinion. But Mr. Sweet also pointed out that Nikole Hannah-Jones’s “1619 Project” isn’t accurate history, and that “bad history,” however good it makes us feel, yields bad politics. “If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise.”

History’s armies of nonacademic readers will find this obvious and undeniable. Mr. Sweet’s academic peers, however, tore him to pieces on Twitter, accusing him of sexism, racism, gratuitous maleness and excessive whiteness.

“Gaslight. Gatekeep. Goatee,” said Laura Miller of Brandeis University, detecting patriarchal privilege written on Mr. Sweet’s chin. Benjamin Siegel of Boston University, who thinks his politically correct profession is “leveraged towards racist ideologies,” called the essay “malpractice.” Dan Royles of Florida International University accused Mr. Sweet of “logical incoherence,” which is academic-speak for “idiot.” Kathryn Wilson of Georgia State detected an even more heinous error, “misrepresentation of how contemporary social justice concerns inform theory and methodology.”

Other users accused Mr. Sweet of using a rhetorical device called the “white we,” pitching for a guest slot on Tucker Carlson’s show, and writing “MAGA history.” Many called any questioning of the “1619 Project” racist. David Austin Walsh of the University of Virginia advised historians to support the project regardless of whether they thought it good history, because criticism would be “weaponized by the right.”

Mr. Sweet responded with the bravery that defines the modern academic. He apologized on the AHA’s website for the “harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association” that his “ham-fisted attempt at provocation” had caused, especially to his “Black colleagues and friends,” and begged that he be allowed to “redeem” himself.

The AHA, which had done nothing to stem the tide of insults from its members, prevented nonfollowers from commenting on its Twitter feed, because, it said, “trolls” and “bad-faith actors” had joined the debate. One of the bad-faith actors was a racist agitator, Richard Spencer. His contribution, alarmingly, was hardly trolling. Mr. Spencer pointed out that Mr. Sweet was merely repeating the advice of the eminent 19th-century historian Otto von Ranke, who told historians to go into the archives and tell history “as it really happened.” We know a profession is in trouble when it takes the worst kind of amateur to state the obvious.

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child,” Cicero once wrote. “For what is the worth of a human life if it is not woven into the life of our ancestors by the record of history?” Even Ms. Hannah-Jones would agree with that. The AHA’s activist wing, however, disagrees. Like Cicero, who was both a politician and a historian, they see history as a rhetorical resource. Unlike Cicero, they see nothing good in their people’s history and only wickedness in their ancestors.

When the purpose of history changes from knowledge of the past to political power in the present and future, historians become mere propagandists. Academics who succumb to the sugar rush of activism lose their sense of balance. Meanwhile, the AHA’s annual reports show that undergraduates and graduates are voting with their enrollments, with a related decline in job opportunities for holders of new doctorates. In 2016-17 alone, undergraduate enrollment fell by 7.7%. The number of new doctorates fell by about 15% between 2014 and 2019, and the number of job openings has halved since 2008. The latest AHA Jobs Report is a threnody of “program closures, enrollment declines, and faculty layoffs.” Signs of stabilization, it reckons, are a “false floor.” Why study history if all it equips you for is a nasty and crowded climb up the greasy pole of academic preferment? Much easier to pursue activism through the modish triad of sex, race and gender studies.

All of which tends to confirm Mr. Sweet’s observations about the perils of presentism and activism...

 

Student Debt Forgiveness Will Make the Problem Worse (VIDEO)

Here's the beautiful Inez Feltscher Stepman (currently my crush on Twitter), for Prager Univerity:

Student Loan Plan Will Feed Inflation, Hurt Dems Politically

From Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "Student Debt Forgiveness Is Biden’s Bluto Moment":

His plan will feed inflation and hurt him politically.

If political moves received letter grades, Joe Biden’s student loan “forgiveness” mark might rank down there with the Deltas of “Animal House.” Think of it as the president’s Bluto moment.

In case the White House missed it, Democrats had recently been getting it together. After an 18-month food fight over the Biden agenda, the party finally united to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. It suckered spend-happy Republicans into passing a semiconductor bill that vulnerable Democrats could brag about back home. The left has successfully fanned fears on abortion, putting GOP candidates on the back foot. And Donald Trump is in the headlines—right where they want him.

Then along comes Blutarsky, and seven years of college down the drain. It would be hard to fashion a program that carries more political risk for less political reward. In the name of paying off that powerful voting bloc known as “overeducated and underemployed deadbeats,” Mr. Biden is dumping on his own inflation message, dividing his party, and insulting any American who has ever worked, saved or paid a bill.

Inflation remains voters’ biggest worry, and they understand Washington’s role in feeding it. Only recently they watched General Motors and Ford hike the prices of electric vehicles by $6,000 to $8,500—roughly pacing the $7,500 tax credit the Biden “inflation reduction” law bestows. Cause, effect. Millions of American parents read Mr. Biden’s Wednesday loan announcement as news that they will be paying $10,000 more for tuition next year (and the year after that, and after that) as colleges reap the loan windfall.

Inflation remains voters’ biggest worry, and they understand Washington’s role in feeding it. Only recently they watched General Motors and Ford hike the prices of electric vehicles by $6,000 to $8,500—roughly pacing the $7,500 tax credit the Biden “inflation reduction” law bestows. Cause, effect. Millions of American parents read Mr. Biden’s Wednesday loan announcement as news that they will be paying $10,000 more for tuition next year (and the year after that, and after that) as colleges reap the loan windfall.

It won’t stop with college inflation, even Democratic economists warn. Every $20,000 of loan forgiveness is $20,000 the favored college forgiven can blow on urban loft refits or Hawaiian vacations. “Pouring roughly half [a] trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning is reckless,” Jason Furman, the Obama administration’s top economist, tweeted. Americans already doubted Mr. Biden’s new climate and health law would do much to lower prices, but they’ll draw a direct line from the loan bailout to further price hikes. A CNBC poll says nearly 60% of Americans fear this handout will make inflation worse.

The plan rips a new fissure in the Democratic Party, as nonsuicidal members run for cover. Maine Rep. Jared Golden called loan forgiveness “out of touch.” New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas said this is “no way to make policy.” Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet noted that the plan doesn’t address the underlying problem of rising tuition. Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, running for the Senate, said the forgiveness “sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet.”

What unites these Democrats? Each is in a competitive race, and they clearly already see the potential to alienate large cross-sections of the American electorate. Sure, loan forgiveness may benefit up to 40 million people, and energize Gen Zers and some millennials to vote for the Democrats they were going to support anyway. What about the other 220 million voting-age Americans who are being asked to float the upper crust’s seminars on gender identity and social justice?

Democrats desperately need suburban voters this fall. Those would be the same suburban parents who are already furious over school closures and woke education, who scrimped and saved to pay through the nose for college, and who now look like chumps as they prepare to pay more. The CNBC poll finds that 65% of those 35 to 64—prime college-parent age—feel loans should be forgiven for no one or only for those in need (the Biden plan favors top earners). That share is even higher—78%—for those over 65.

Party leaders have fretted for years over how to handle Democrats’ cratering support among the working class. This is the answer? The loan handout is a thumb in the eye to every American who went to trade school, got an apprenticeship, took out private loans to start a small business, or simply went to work—and now must not only grind out a living and keep up with inflation but cover the poor financial decisions of the college elite...

 

Biden, Without Congressional Authority, Announces He's Forgiving Student Loans For His Voters -- And Claiming That the 'Emergency' Powers He Has Due to Covid Allow Him to Act As a Tyrant, Apparently Forever

PREVIOUSLY: "Biden's Student Loan 'Forgiveness' Is an Abuse of Power."

At AoSHQ, "Note that Biden already declared an end to the covid emergency when he canceled Trump's Remain in Mexico policy, and his CDC just announced that we're effectively back to normal. But Biden won't formally say the "emergency" is over -- so he can continue acting as tyrant when he finds it politically useful to do so."

Biden's Student Loan 'Forgiveness' Is an Abuse of Power

PREVIOUSLY: "Outrage! Biden to Cancel $10,000 in Student Debt for Those Making Less Than $125,000 or Less Per Year."

From Dave Harsanyi, at the Federalist, "… not to mention a moral hazard, counterproductive, and fundamentally immoral."

Outrage! Biden to Cancel $10,000 in Student Debt for Those Making Less Than $125,000 or Less Per Year

This is fucking outrageous.

My grad school loans are just now nearly paid off --- 23 years after I finished my Ph.D. at UCSB. Is Old Joe going to make the debt relief retroactive, for the millions upon millions of judicious and hard-working Americans who made good on the debt they took out? 

Completely un-American, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed debt cancellation as "socialist."

At the Los Angeles Times, "Biden will cancel $10,000 of student debt for many borrowers":

Individuals earning less than $125,000 annually would qualify for relief and those who received Pell grants could receive an additional $10,000.

WASHINGTON — President Biden moved Wednesday to cancel $10,000 in student debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 annually while extending a pause on loan repayments for all borrowers through the end of the year, all as part of a broader effort to overhaul the federal system and ease financial burdens for the middle class.

Biden’s action will also make people who received Pell grants to help cover the cost of college eligible for up to $20,000 in loan relief. And a new income-based repayment cap will ensure borrowers pay no more than 5% of their monthly income toward their undergraduate loans as long as they aren’t behind on payments. Some analysts believe that change may prove even more significant than the debt forgiveness.

Lamenting that “an entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt” because the cost of higher education has skyrocketed in recent years, Biden described his action as a matter of economic fairness that will “provide more breathing room for people” and boost America’s competitiveness.

“My plan is responsible and fair. It focuses the benefit on middle-class and working families. It helps both current and future borrowers and it will fix a badly broken system,” Biden said. “It’s about opportunity. It’s about giving people a fair shot.”

The overall package, which Biden said will benefit 43 million Americans, is a win for activists who have pushed for such action as a matter of economic fairness. But the amount of debt Biden has decided to erase is less than many activists had sought, complicating an issue the White House hopes will boost Democrats in the midterm election and drawing criticism from both parties. While progressives had hoped Biden would go even further, Republicans and some moderate Democrats bristled at the price-tag, asserting that spending an estimated $400-600 billion to cover the forgiven loans would exacerbate inflation.

“This announcement is gallingly reckless — with the national debt approaching record levels and inflation surging, it will make both worse,” said Maya McGuinness, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington organization that opposes the student loan forgiveness program.

Biden, who returned from a two-week vacation Wednesday morning, had vowed to act before Aug. 31, when the latest pandemic-driven moratorium on federal student loan payments runs out. He said this extension would be the last one and that payments would resume in January 2023.

“It’s time for the payments to resume,” he said.

President Trump first suspended payments in March 2020, and Biden has granted four extensions. So far, the suspensions have cost the federal government more than $100 billion. More than 40 million Americans owe a collective $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.

A fight over student loans could slow the Democrats’ recent momentum and threaten their coalition’s cohesion. The president and his party have seen their poll numbers rise in recent months, buoyed by a series of events that have altered the political landscape in their favor.

The Supreme Court’s late June decision overturning Roe vs. Wade alienated women across political lines. The high-profile hearings further illuminating Trump’s key role inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection received broad television coverage and hardened perceptions of Republicans as the more extreme party. And Democrats’ passage of three major bills — a climate, prescription drug and tax overhaul, new funding to boost domestic manufacturing of microchips and enhanced healthcare for veterans exposed to toxic chemicals on the battlefield — has shown the public that Biden is far from a do-nothing president.

Before the abortion decision, the Jan. 6 hearings and the flurry of new legislation, some senior Biden aides believed significant student loan debt forgiveness was one of the few measures that could excite the Democratic base and help the party survive a tough election cycle. Despite public and private pressure from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Biden has long questioned whether forgiving as much as $50,000 in debt would be prudent.

Schumer spoke by phone with Biden on Tuesday night “to make a final push to the president to cancel as much student loan debt as he can,” according to a Democrat familiar with the conversation. On Wednesday, Schumer and Warren sought to quell criticism from the left, issuing a joint statement heralding Biden’s final decision as a historic first step.

“With the flick of a pen, President Biden has taken a giant step forward in addressing the student debt crisis by cancelling significant amounts of student debt for millions of borrowers. The positive impacts of this move will be felt by families across the country, particularly in minority communities, and is the single most effective action that the President can take on his own to help working families and the economy,” their statement said. “No president or Congress has done more to relieve the burden of student debt and help millions of Americans make ends meet. Make no mistake, the work — our work — will continue as we pursue every available path to address the student debt crisis, help close the racial wealth gap for borrowers, and keep our economy growing.”

Some activists also cheered the announcement. “Today, with President Biden’s announcement, 12 million American borrowers have had their educational debts erased,” said Melissa Byrne, executive director of We the 45 Million, a group that advocates for student debt forgiveness. “This is a historic first step — establishing the clear authority that the president has to cancel student debt — but this should just be the beginning.”

But key Democratic constituencies, including young voters, Black Americans and civil rights groups like the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, have pushed hard for more forgiveness, and may be disappointed.

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, had blasted Biden in a statement Tuesday, stating that if reports of the president having settled on $10,000 in debt forgiveness are correct, “we’ve got a problem,” likening the decision to past federal policies that have been detrimental to Black people...

I took out zero loans for my Bachelor's degree. I worked, and hard. At Fresno State, where I took my B.A. political science, I worked 35 hours a week pumping gas at the local Chevon station, not far from my dad's house. It was 2:00 to 9:00pm Sundays through Thurdays, and 4:00pm to Midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. I started that job at $4.25 miniumum wage, only getting bumped once with a raise to $4.75. On my days off I'd stay on campus all day, after classes, going to the cafeteria, the library, and the student union to hang out and study. My time was completely taken up and I had little for nightlife. I met my future wife in my last year, and she moved to Santa Barbara with me (before we were married) after I was accepted into the Ph.D. program. 

I paid my dues. 

In graduate school I ended up taking out about $65,000 to $70,000 total. I could have borrowed much, much more, but I was careful. I worked weekends (again at a Chevron station in downtown Santa Barbara) my first year in the program. I could've borrowed more, but my (future) wife and I didn't want to get too deep into debt. We had no idea I'd get a full four-year ride starting in my second year, the U.C. Regents Fellowship, which paid for everything. That was merit based, by the way. I fucking earned that fellowship by kicking ass that first year. I have great memories and wouldn't take back a thing.

I know, though, my story is like so many others, folks who themselves and their families scrimped and saved just for the chance to attend college, much less a Ph.D program. *That's the American way.* If Republicans don't campaigh the hell out of this issue they're bloody stupid. LOTS of folks will be pissed that their working- and middle-class tax dollars are going toward debt bailouts for college graduates who make more than they do, and will make way more in the future. 

It's class warfare. It's a fundamental violation of society's social contract, and bitterly unfair. 

Still more at that top link.

John Agresto, The Death of Learning

At Amazon, John Agresto, The Death of Learning: How American Education Has Failed Our Students and What to Do about It.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Is Tearing Academia Apart

From John Sailer, at UnHerd, "Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in America":

Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in American academia. Already, many universities require faculty job candidates to submit “diversity statements” — 19% of the faculty job listings in one recent survey. Now, similar requirements increasingly apply to sitting faculty members, as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements and criteria have become standard components of the promotion and tenure process.

To give one example: last year, the highly-ranked Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine released its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Strategic Action Plan, listing dozens of “tactics” for advancing social justice. Here is an example:

“Include a section in promotion packages where faculty members report on the ways they are contributing to improving DEI, anti-racism and social justice. Reinforce the importance of these efforts by establishing clear consequences and influences on promotion packages.”

The reference to “consequences” reads like a warning to dissenters, especially given that concepts such as “equity”, “anti-racism”, and “social justice” often simply connote adherence to progressive political views. Thanks to the ubiquity of Ibram X. Kendi’s work, many American professionals are primed to point out that anti-racism, far from merely being “not racist”, entails embracing “race conscious” policies, coupled with the belief that any disparity is by definition racism.

With official DEI requirements for promotion and tenure on the rise, Kendian “anti-racism” has come closer to a formal requirement for many in academia. In its 2022 survey of tenure practices, the American Association of University Professors found that 21.5% of the institutions it surveyed had DEI criteria in their tenure standards. For larger institutions, it was 45.6%.As diversity officers increase, so too will their preferred policies.

Unfortunately, the diversity statements can easily stamp out dissenting viewpoints. At UC Berkeley, for example, job candidates will receive a low scores on their diversity statements for “explicitly state[ing] the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’”, and a high score for “Discuss[ing] diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as core values that every faculty member should actively contribute to.” Institutions from Emory University to the Texas Tech University Department of Biological Sciences have adapted the UC rubric, proudly policing the core values of faculty.

DEI requirements for promotion and tenure often come in the form of evaluation criteria, rather than required statements. The California Community Colleges (CCC) system — the largest system of higher education in America, serving almost two million students — recently mandated that all faculty, staff, and administrator evaluations “include DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] competencies and criteria as a minimum standard for evaluating the performance of all employees.”

The resolution mandating these competencies employs unmistakably ideological language...

Still more. 

Will Bunch, After the Ivory Tower

Out today, from Will Bunch, at Amazon, After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics―and How to Fix It.

Cameras in Public Schools

Darleene's been hammering this point:

This keeps coming up. NO teacher should ever be getting their "affirmation" "validation" jollies from his or her captive audience of minors. Why aren't these people who USE children for their own ends screened out?

Public schools need cameras in the classrooms NOW. https://t.co/4ShfHMvsn4

— Darleen Click ♦ I support #LibsOfTikTok (@darleenclick) August 1, 2022

Yes, Things Are Really As Bad As You've Heard [In Public Education]

Another outstanding inside look at the continuing eradication of standards in the schools, with emphasis here on how so-called "progressive" policies end up hurting most those kids who were targeted for affirmative compensatory policy change in the first place. 

There is a backlash afoot, with the San Francisco school board recall being the prime example. But getting things back to where they were just a decade or so ago (when it was bad enough already) is going to be extremely difficult. Leftists are like venomous poisonous species that will kill regardless of what and how fast medical intervention takes place.

See, "A Leftist Schoolteacher Struggles To Say Aloud the Things He Regularly Witnesses That Are So Outlandish They Sound Made Up By Right-Wing Provocateurs."

Why I'm Giving Up Tenure at UCLA

Very much worth your time.

From UCLA Anthropology Professor Joseph Manson, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "The ideological takeover of my university has ruined academic life for anyone who still believes in freedom of thought'."

WATCH: What Do We Know About Diversity? DEI's Unknown Unknowns (With John McWhorter)

Here's the discussion at Glenn Loury's Substack, "What do we know about the effects of DEI initiatives? In one sense, we know quite a lot."

And at the video, these are great guys:

Kali Fontanilla: 'The Schools Have Changed' (VIDEO)

A lovely and very patriotic lady. We need more like her.

At Prager University:

What Happens on Campus Doesn't Stay on Campus

From Bari Weiss, "Graduation Week With Common Sense:"

There is no more reliable cliché in the news business than “if it bleeds it leads.” But the rule of thumb that was just as dependable, if not quite as catchy, in the years I spent at legacy newspapers is this one: campus craziness sells. It sold to readers of The Wall Street Journal just as reliably as it did to readers of The New York Times. If conservatives and progressives can unite over anything it’s that neither can resist hate-reading a story about Oberlin kids protesting the cultural appropriation of dining hall banh mi.

Until very recently, though, neither group took those kinds of stories very seriously. Neither did most of the editors who commissioned them. They were not unlike the crossword puzzle: a fun distraction. A nice mix for the reader dutifully getting through serious, important coverage about foreign policy and the economy and politics.

Sure, sure, the kids were doing crazy things. And yes, some of it was a little excessive—even most of the progressives could agree on that. But this was college! Remember Berkeley and Columbia and Cornell in the 1960s? Campus was always a radical place. Everyone assumed that the kids would grow out of it. That the politics of the quad would inevitably fade as these young Americans made their way in the world, onto marriage and kids, onto mortgages and life insurance policies, and onto jobs at places like JP Morgan and Bain, Amazon and Random House.

This isn’t at all what happened. Rather than those institutions shaping young people in their image, it’s the young people who are fundamentally reshaping those institutions in their own. As Andrew Sullivan put it: We all live on campus now. It turns out those campus stories were serious in ways many couldn’t—and still refuse to—imagine.

But you already know that. If you’re a Common Sense reader you’ve long noticed that one of our main areas of focus from the start has been education. Our reasoning is simple: We believe that if you want to understand what’s coming for the country and the culture you better pay very close attention to what’s happening on college campuses. Also: our high schools. And increasingly, our elementary schools. Even our kindergartens.

That’s why we’ve done deeply reported stories about the transformation of America’s elite high schools and the radicalization of our medical schools and our law schools.

It’s why we have been ahead of the curve in our reporting on the terrible consequences of Covid lockdowns.

It’s why we’ve run whistleblowing essays, like Paul Rossi’s first-person account of his refusal to indoctrinate his students and Gordon Klein’s essay about suing UCLA.

It’s why we’ve reported on the smearing of parent activists and free-thinking professors—and introduced you to courageous figures like Kathleen Stock, the University of Chicago’s Dorian Abbot, and Peter Boghossian, who resigned his post as a philosophy professor at Portland State University last year with these words: “For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didn’t?”

For every professor who refuses to cave, though, there are so many more who don’t. Indeed, the major theme that has emerged in our reporting is institutional retreat—schools that have abandoned their founding mission, leaders that have decided to follow, and professors paid to think for themselves who seem very scared of doing so. Exhibit A: Suzy Weiss’s story last week on the destruction of David Sabatini, the world-renowned molecular biologist who, until recently, was a star at MIT’s Whitehead Institute. Now he’s unemployed. Sabatini is a symbol of a system and culture that has eaten its own.

But it’s not all bad news—not by a long shot. Just as we have exposed what’s gone so wrong, we have been moved as we watch people, often ordinary Americans, try to make things right.

Those builders include the parents behind the homeschooling boom—which appears to be even bigger than we understood when we reported on it back in September; the fascinating group that has convened around Synthesis; and those who have planted a flag in Texas with the University of Austin, or UATX. Since Pano Kanelos, the university’s inaugural president and former head of St. John’s College, broke the news of the new university in Common Sense half a year ago, UATX reports that they have raised over $100 million in donations, pledges, and land from more than 1,000 donors. Perhaps most amazingly, the school has received some 5,000 inquiries from prospective faculty. This summer, they are offering their first summer school program in Dallas. I’ll be there, along with teachers like Niall Ferguson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rob Henderson, Thomas Chatterton-Williams, Nadine Strossen and Arthur Brooks.

None of these projects lack naysayers. But I’m bullish on the builders...

Keep reading, especially for all the links she's posted.  

School Mask Mandates Are Coming Back

I dread this, as mentioned previously. If my college imposes a mask mandate again this fall I'll be teaching completely online once again. Arghh! 

At Time, "Mask Mandates Are Returning to Schools as COVID-19 Cases Surge":

On April 11, public schools in Providence, R.I, made face masks optional instead of mandatory for students and teachers—celebrating the move as a “positive milestone” brought about by declining COVID-19 cases among students and community support for a more lenient policy.

Just over a month later, Providence is one of several school districts requiring masks again in response to rising COVID-19 cases, part of a nationwide spike attributed to the highly contagious Omicron subvariants.

The Providence school district tracked about 60 COVID-19 cases per day last week among staff and students—a dramatic increase from a low of about 10 cases per day in March and early April, according to district data.

“The additional mitigation layer of masking will help us manage this new COVID surge and keep more students in the classroom where they learn best,” Javier Montañez, superintendent of Providence schools, said in a statement on Monday.

Philadelphia schools also resumed a mask mandate “to help protect everyone’s health and well-being as COVID-19 case counts continue to rise in the Philadelphia area,” superintendent William Hite said in a statement. And Brookline, Mass. reinstated an indoor mask mandate in all town-owned buildings, including public schools. The decision came after public health officials compared COVID-19 cases in Brookline public schools to cases in other Massachusetts school districts that had maintained mask requirements and concluded that “a temporary reinstatement would be an important mitigation measure to limit disease spread and reduce disruptions due to student and staff absenteeism.”

Boston public schools, for example, have maintained a mask requirement. City health officials said they would recommend lifting the school mask mandate once daily COVID-19 cases in the city fall to 10 new cases per 100,000 residents. The positivity rate currently stands at 54.5 new cases per 100,000 residents.

But overall, a small percentage of schools have reinstated mask requirements thus far...

Good. Let's hope it stays that way.

 

California 'Under Rising Pressure' From New Coronavirus Surge

According to this mornings WSJ newsletter, "The latest Covid surge expands beyond the Northeast":

Places from the Midwest to Florida and California are under rising pressure. The most recent weekly update of a CDC metric that uses case and hospitalization data to determine community levels of Covid-19 ranked 137 counties as “high,” up from 79 a week earlier and 14 in mid-April.

Of course this isn't good news, but it's especially troubling in my case because as long as mask mandates continue, I'll still be teaching online --- with my hearing, I need to see a student's face. So, I told my administration that I'm not coming back to teach on campus until all mandates are lifted. That's supposed to be next semester, but if the state, LA. County, or the City of Long Beach maintains indoor masking, I'm toast.

And let's be honest, while the grading for online classes is not just burdensome and heavy, it's even more so a long, monotonous grind. In an "asynchronous" class there's really no direct, face-to-face contact with students, unless on of them requests virtual office hours by Zoom, which is rare.

Well see, in any case. Meanwhile, at the Journal, "Latest Covid-19 Wave Expands to More of U.S.":

Rising cases prompt more calls for precautions but not mandates in hot spots like New York City.

The latest Covid-19 case surge is expanding beyond the Northeast, with places from the Midwest to Florida and California under rising pressure.

Fueled by highly contagious versions of the Omicron variant, the tide is posing a test of how much new infections matter in a changing pandemic. Though built-up immunity in the population has kept more people out of hospitals, federal health officials on Wednesday urged people in hot spots to take precautions, from booster shots to pre-gathering tests and masks, to limit the virus’ spread.

“We’ve got to do what we can to prevent infections,” said Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator. “We’ve got to do what we can to ensure that infections don’t turn into severe illness.”

The seven-day moving average of new Covid-19 cases recently topped 94,000 a day, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show, nearly four times lows reached in late March. The true number of new cases is likely significantly higher, epidemiologists say, because so many people are self-testing at home or not testing at all.

The rise in cases hasn’t translated thus far into major surges in severe illness. The seven-day average of confirmed cases in hospitalized patients reached about 18,550 on Wednesday, up from lows near 10,000 in mid-April, but far below a record peak above 150,000 in January. The numbers include people who test positive on routine screening after getting hospitalized for other reasons. The daily average of reported deaths has slipped under 300 a day, the lowest point since last summer.

But new cases still cause disruptions and carry risks including the possibility of developing long-lasting and sometimes debilitating symptoms, epidemiologists and public-health experts say. The more an outbreak spreads, the more likely it will reach the most vulnerable including elderly people and others with compromised immune systems, the experts say, and the more likely the virus will continue to mutate.

“Vaccines are very effective for reducing severe disease and death but don’t eliminate severe disease and death, and so reducing spread, reducing cases is also important,” said Julia Raifman, an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told the WSJ Future of Everything Festival that scientists have yet to determine whether certain variants of the virus are more likely to lead to long-term symptoms.

The latest upswing in cases began in late March in the Northeast, the early hot spot for the Omicron BA.2 subvariant. Virus experts believe spread was muted at first by a mix of immunity-boosting factors: timing, right after a major winter surge, and a similarity to the version of Omicron behind that surge...

Still more.

I'll keep you posted. I'm scheduled for three classes on campus for fall, but that could change.

'Broad Decline' in Enrollment at Nation's Public Schools

As I was saying at my previous entry, man it's amazing what change the pandemic has wrought.

More at the New York Times, "With Plunging Enrollment, a ‘Seismic Hit’ to Public Schools":

The pandemic has supercharged the decline in the nation’s public school system in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed. ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — In New York City, the nation’s largest school district has lost some 50,000 students over the past two years. In Michigan, enrollment remains more than 50,000 below prepandemic levels from big cities to the rural Upper Peninsula.

In the suburbs of Orange County, Calif., where families have moved for generations to be part of the public school system, enrollment slid for the second consecutive year; statewide, more than a quarter-million public school students have dropped from California’s rolls since 2019.

And since school funding is tied to enrollment, cities that have lost many students — including Denver, Albuquerque and Oakland — are now considering combining classrooms, laying off teachers or shutting down entire schools.

All together, America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, according to a recently published national survey. State enrollment figures show no sign of a rebound to the previous national levels any time soon.

A broad decline was already underway in the nation’s public school system as rates of birth and immigration have fallen, particularly in cities. But the coronavirus crisis supercharged that drop in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed.

No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off. But experts point to two potential causes: Some parents became so fed up with remote instruction or mask mandates that they started home-schooling their children or sending them to private or parochial schools that largely remained open during the pandemic. And other families were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness and school closures that their children simply dropped out.

A broad decline was already underway in the nation’s public school system as rates of birth and immigration have fallen, particularly in cities. But the coronavirus crisis supercharged that drop in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed.

No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off. But experts point to two potential causes: Some parents became so fed up with remote instruction or mask mandates that they started home-schooling their children or sending them to private or parochial schools that largely remained open during the pandemic. And other families were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness and school closures that their children simply dropped out.

Now educators and school officials are confronting a potentially harsh future of lasting setbacks in learning, hardened inequities in education and smaller budgets accompanying smaller student populations.

“This has been a seismic hit to public education,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. “Student outcomes are low. Habits have been broken. School finances are really shaken. We shouldn’t think that this is going to be like a rubber band that bounces back to where it was before.”

There are roughly 50 million students in the United States public school system.

In large urban districts, the drop-off has been particularly acute. The Los Angeles Unified School District’s noncharter schools lost some 43,000 students over the past two school years. Enrollment in the Chicago schools has dropped by about 25,000 in that time frame.

But suburban and rural schools have not been immune.

In the suburbs of Kansas City, the school district of Olathe, Kan., lost more than 1,000 of its 33,000 or so students in 2020, as families relocated and shifted to private schools or home-schooling; only about half of them came back this school year.

In rural Woodbury County, Iowa, south of Sioux City, enrollment in the Westwood Community School District fell by more than 5 percent during the last two years, to 522 students from 552, in spite of a small influx from cities during the pandemic, the superintendent, Jay Lutt, said. Now, in addition to demographic trends that have long eroded the size of rural Iowa’s school populations, diminishing funding, the district is grappling with inflation as the price of fuel for school buses has soared, Mr. Lutt said.

In some states where schools eschewed remote instruction — Florida, for instance — enrollment has not only rebounded, but remains robust...

Ah, Florida. That oughta tell you something about what's going on. Public schools can work, but not so well in teachers' union-led blue states, like California.  

Still more.

Los Angeles Unified School District Bleeding Students Badly

It's amazing what a coronavirus pandemic can do to shake up nearly unchangeable public institutions. It's a big deal.

At the Los Angeles Times, "LAUSD expects enrollment to plummet by ‘alarming’ 30% in the next decade":

Enrollment in Los Angeles public schools is expected to plunge by nearly 30% over the next decade, leading to tough choices ahead about academic programs, campus closures, jobs and employee benefits — and forcing, over that time, a dramatic remake of the nation’s second-largest school system.

The predicted steep drop, which was outlined Tuesday in a presentation to the Board of Education, comes as school officials contemplate the future of Los Angeles Unified School District on several crucial fronts — including contract negotiations with the teachers union, which is seeking a 20% raise over the next two years.

District leaders also are trying to plan for the best use of historically high education funding that some experts warn is likely to be short-lived.

“There are a number of unsustainable trends,” said Supt. Alberto Carvalho, referring to declining enrollment and unstable funding. “The perfect storm is brewing.

“Los Angeles Unified is facing an alarming convergence and acceleration of enrollment decline and the expiration of one-time state and federal dollars, as well as ongoing and increasing financial liabilities.”

Carvalho warned the board that difficult conversations lie ahead and there is “not an easy path toward financial stability.”

Enrollment has been incrementally dropping in L.A. Unified since peaking at about 737,000 students 21 years ago. That long-ago overcrowding detracted from the quality and even quantity of education — as campuses operated year-round with students on staggered schedules that provided 17 fewer days of instruction per year and limited access to advanced classes.

The current enrollment is about 430,000 in kindergarten through 12th grade and is expected to fall about 3.6% a year to an estimated 309,000 nine years from now.

The pace of the decline has accelerated since the pandemic, a phenomenon officials struggle to explain. At the start of the pandemic, many families kept preschoolers and kindergarteners out of remote learning — preferring not to plant their children in front of computers for schooling. Yet the pace of decline has persisted even with the resumption of in-person classes.

Declines also are expected over the next nine years in L.A. County (19%) and the state (9%), according to data presented at Tuesday’s meeting.

Experts have offered no conclusive explanation, but factors include families moving to more affordable areas, the decline in birth rates, a drop in immigration and, until recently, the rapid growth of charter schools.

Problems related to the enrollment drop have already surfaced. A handful of campuses — despite their importance as community anchors — have closed or are projected to close. Or, the campuses have been offered to charter schools — which are not operated by the district and compete for students. Many charters are also facing enrollment challenges and some have shut down.

Having fewer students creates financial strains because state and federal funding is based primarily on enrollment. It’s difficult to reduce fixed costs related to buildings and operations as the funding base shrinks. Moreover, decreased funding makes it more challenging to manage pension costs shared by all school systems as well as separate lifetime retiree health benefits that L.A. Unified has provided to long-term employees.

In the coming years, under the current structure, there could be more L.A. Unified retirees and dependents receiving healthcare benefits than active employees, said Chief Financial Officer David Hart.

“That was never contemplated,” Hart said.

At the same time, the district has struggled this year with a shortage of qualified employees in teaching, nursing, counseling and other areas. To attract and retain such workers, it would help for the district to pay higher salaries — and to continue funding strong health benefits.

Having sufficient money to spend, it would seem, ought to be the least of the district’s challenges, given Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s announcement last week of the largest budget surplus in state history. The surplus is expected to balloon to $97.5-billion by next summer, an estimate that vastly exceeds previous projections and which is folded into a $300.6-billion budget. About 40% of the budget goes by law to grade schools and community colleges.

When including both state and federal sources, California would spend $22,850 per student in the upcoming academic year, an amount that seemed beyond any expectations not long ago...

Official's are "struggling" to explain what's happened. They know. They just can't say so publicly, as obviously more and more parents will see the light and hightail it out of there. 

Keep reading. 

For Harvard Crimson's Editorial Board, Facts Are for Losers

It's Dara Horn, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "It turns out that nobody’s SAT scores can provide immunity to propaganda":

Twenty-five years later, I still remember the theatrics involved with becoming an editor at the Harvard Crimson, the newspaper produced by Harvard undergraduates every day for the past century and a half. The newspaper’s office had a room upstairs called the Sanctum, so named because only those who had jumped through the paper’s prescribed journalistic hoops were allowed to enter—and then only for Sunday night editorial meetings, at which the coming week’s worth of unsigned editorials were debated and approved under strict secrecy. Newly minted editors were welcomed into the room with the question, “What are your politics?” One’s answer determined the side of the room where one would sit for these debates.

Many participants cared deeply about these discussions—though this being the 1990s, many more didn’t, and attended mainly for the fun of it. My peers were largely the children of baby-boomer parents who had morphed from flag-burning hippies to mall-hopping yuppies; Gen Xers like us took people’s self-important opinions with a very large grain of salt. In the Sanctum, I sat on the left by vague default, but didn’t attach much meaning to it. I was far from alone: A good number of editors didn’t even bother to remain on their side of the Sanctum, instead simply choosing the comfiest chairs.

When I later became one of the editors responsible for drafting each week’s worth of unsigned opinions about subjects like university workers’ strikes, affirmative action, and the Clinton impeachment, I learned that the only real sign of success was to say something interesting enough to generate a dissent. The only way to do that, of course, was to marshal the facts and explain why they mattered. When an editorial prompted other editors to write a dissent objecting to it—about, for instance, a campus visit by China’s then-premier—it was the ultimate compliment. You’d actually had something to say.

I hadn’t thought about any of this for ages. My work as a writer for the past 20 years has been almost entirely solitary; none of my books involved convincing a roomful of people of my point of view. But I was reminded of this ancient student ritual last week when my phone blew up with messages from dozens of irate former Crimson editors, including many actual journalists, a group of alumni going back several decades.

The current Crimson editorial board, in a somewhat modified version of the procedures I remembered, had just published an unsigned editorial fully endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, reversing its position from two years earlier. There was no official editorial dissent. Afterward, copies of this editorial were posted publicly in undergraduate dining halls, just in case anyone missed it.

The BDS movement, as it’s known, is old news on college campuses and elsewhere; it’s been around long enough that it no longer bothers to hide its goal of eliminating the world’s only Jewish state. But I had to hand it to The Crimson for timing, given that the editorial followed several weeks of terror attacks in Israel during which 15 people were stabbed, shot and car-rammed to death while engaging in such provocative behaviors as drinking at a bar or walking down the street...

Keep reading. 

The Crimson editorial is outrageous, though not surprising. 

Read it here: "In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanctions and a Free Palestine."

And see, "The Crimson Faces Backlash Over Editorial Endorsing BDS Movement," and "To the Editor: From Six Crimson Alumni In Regard to BDS."