Is their a Leftist Agenda in Academia?
28 Jan 2020, 3:21 pm
This isn't so much leftist agenda as good old fashioned greed, corruption, above-the-law entitlement, and indifference to communist dictatorships.
Harvard Chemistry Chairman Charged on Alleged Undisclosed Ties to China
Charles Lieber is accused of lying to Defense Department, National Institutes of Health about Chinese government funding
The chairman of Harvard University’s chemistry department was arrested Tuesday for allegedly lying about receiving millions in Chinese funding, in an escalation of U.S. efforts to counter what officials say is a plot by Beijing to raid U.S. universities to transform China into a scientific superpower.
A federal criminal complaint alleges that Charles Lieber misled the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health about his participation in China’s Thousand Talents Plan while the U.S. agencies were spending more than $15 million to fund his research group in the U.S.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-c ... 1580228768
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28 Jan 2020, 7:06 pm
Campus leaders couldn't care less about racial progress
Hadn't we already agreed as a nation that racial segregation is morally wrong? Apparently, these schools haven't gotten the memo.
“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!” Those words were thundered by Alabama Gov. George Wallace in his 1963 inauguration speech. But, in fact, the very next year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which brought an end to segregation.
Or did it?
Wallace later repented of this phrase, but in 2020, the 1963 George Wallace seems to be getting some traction. Because all over America — and even in Alabama — universities and schools are promoting and endorsing schemes that divide and label students by race.
The University of Alabama, for example, is endorsing a Goldman Sachs-backed “diversity” program that benefits black, Hispanic, Native American and LGBT students, but excludes other groups. White? Asian? Straight? You’re not welcome.
At the University of Colorado Boulder, a special retreat is available only to students "whose identity community/ies have been minoritized" in science, technology, engineering and math. Nor was it about special problems faced by “minoritized” students.
As Campus Reform reports, “Activities at the event were centered around career development and networking, and not specific to minority experiences. They included creating research and teaching portfolios, coming up with questions to ask during interviews, networking with existing CU faculty, and learning the differences between types of faculty careers.”
Meanwhile, at Portland State University, the Women’s Resource Center holds meetings "solely for people of color.”
At Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, a symposium on science and technology invited only speakers who fit the categories of “African Americans, Alaska Natives, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.”
And the University of Nevada, Las Vegas offers special race-based housing. The University of California, Berkeley, meanwhile, offers four orientations based on race in addition to the main orientation.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 587577002/
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29 Jan 2020, 10:30 am
Somewhere in another world, George Wallace shouts, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"
Minnesota college helps 'white students only' deal with 'the nasty little racist inside them'
--To commemorate MLK Day, a Minnesota college hosted a plethora of events aimed at helping white students confront their alleged "racist tendencies."
--One such event accused white students of harboring “a nasty little racist inside them.”
Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota held an event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day designed exclusively for white students.
The event, titled “How to Embrace Your Inner Racist: A Session for White People” was designed to help attendees “recognize and acknowledge that there is a nasty little racist inside them,” according to a description found on the college's website. The session also aimed to help students learn how “the skills of psychological flexibility can help white people recognize and acknowledge their own racist tendencies.”
“This session is for White people only,” the event description said, adding that "while we won’t stop people of color from attending, they should know that their presence in the room is likely to interfere with the effectiveness of the session.”
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14272
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10 Feb 2020, 10:18 am
Solving the Problem of Racial Healing on Campus - Christine Rosen for Commentary
As Christian Schnieder describes in fascinating detail for the Dispatch, students on campus are being encouraged to report on each other with Stasi-like efficiency via such portals, which “encourages campus community members to report any uncomfortable interaction they encounter on campus.”
The website continues: “Students may file behavior reports anonymously against other students for words uttered in private interactions, or may report professors for words said in front of a classroom.” The University of Wisconsin isn’t alone. Many other schools (232 according to a 2017 estimate by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) also host “Bias Response Teams.”
As Schneider notes, however, the faculty members and campus police on the Advisory board tasked with responding to complaints have a great deal of leeway to determine what are and are not biased words and actions. Recent complaints Schneider obtained thanks to a Freedom of Information Act Request revealed complaints about having seen a student’s roommate watching an online video that mocked people with speech impediments; a photo with students armed raised overhead that the complainant felt gave off a “Nazi/hate group vibe;” and a professor whom a student felt didn’t properly acknowledge Indigenous People’s Day.
It’s not surprising, then, that the existence of Bias Response Teams has also prompted lawsuits, including one brought by free speech rights group Speech First against the University of Michigan. As the Wall Street Journal describes, universities are loath to define the speech they are so eager to monitor: “As for what constitutes bias, that’s vague—unconstitutionally so, argues Speech First. The existence of an offended party can be sufficient to prove ‘bias.’ The team warns potential offenders that bias ‘may be intentional or unintentional.’ Similarly, the student code prohibits ‘harassment,’ which it defines as ‘unwanted negative attention perceived as intimidating, demeaning, or bothersome to an individual.’ Here, subjective perception serves as evidence.”
As well, the administrators who often make up the Bias Response Teams are like the proverbial man with a hammer. Since their jobs “depend on the assumption that bias is widespread,” they have a “bias toward finding bias.”
Conservatives are often criticized for giving college campuses too much attention. They worry about that the fact that an overwhelming majority of university faculty are self-described liberals, and that conservative ideas are often deemed anathema among students and administrators alike. The real snowflakes, this argument goes, are conservatives who are annoyed their ideas aren’t as popular as those of progressives.
It’s true that a handful of people on the right have capitalized on the culture war not to try to present conservative ideas in good faith but to try to make careers for themselves as professional provocateurs. But the infrastructure of identity policing on campus, aided and abetted by the many “equity industry” organizations whose mission it is to reeducate people about their bias, have been at their work for decades. And it appears to be making inroads among the young, who are holding on to their progressive views as they age, unlike previous generations of young liberals.
As the College Fix has noted, workshops like the ones hosted by The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (trademarked motto: We are Undoing Racism), have brought dubious ideas about race to college campuses for year.
Such workshops haven’t had the cleansing effect of creating safe spaces for all students, however. Students at Arizona State University who lean Republican were likely not feeling safe after this video surfaced last week after the impeachment vote to acquit Donald Trump. It showed a man on campus yelling, “Slash Republican throats!” (the university is still trying to determine if the man is a student).
That video went viral and got a moment of the public’s distracted attention. For the most part, though, the corrosion of understanding about race and bias on college campuses has happened gradually and steadily, workshop by workshop, bias report by bias report. As Schneider concludes about the University of Wisconsin’s bias portal, “Encouraging students to report one another may be institutionalizing victimhood and teaching students that the university is responsible for ensuring every utterance they hear is non-confrontational.”
He’s correct that tools such as bias reporting portals are likely to exacerbate racial tensions rather than heal them, especially given the ideologically distorted view of race many professors on campuses are already promoting. The University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is already home to academics like Sami Schalk, a gender and women’s studies professor who describes herself as a “sarcastic fat Black queer femme.” Several years ago she defended black students who had filed a false report of a hate crime at the University at Albany; recently, she got involved in a fight about racism, which prompted her to Tweet, “This is your semi-annual reminder that white people do not get to determine what is & is not racist. If a person of color calls you racist, it’s probably bc you did something racist whether you can recognize it or not.”
Unfortunately, if recognizing racism and discussing its impact on college campuses is left to misguided bias reporting portals and academics like Ms. Schalk, the dialogue so many progressives claim to want to have about race is unlikely ever to occur. The divide will deepen, rather than heal, racial divisions.
Bolding=mine
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23 Feb 2020, 6:36 pm
I don't know if this is quite the same as leftist bias, but professors will constantly rail against Christianity even if it has nothing to do with the course and even say things that are factually false to back up their points. I have a disability studies Prof who keeps trying to push the idea that the Christianity hates people with disabilities and dislikes any attempt by the students to say anything positive (and in spite of a plethora of blind, deaf, or crippled Catholic and Orthodox saints....)
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23 Feb 2020, 7:24 pm
It would probably count among the people looking for evidence of leftist bias, although it would be a stretch to actually insist left-wing views are inherently anti-religious, or that being anti-religious is something that one will only ever encounter among the left.
It's certainly a bias though, and probably one that should be checked since it will contribute to the appearance of a bigger bias. (Basically, they don't need to have an inherently left-wing bias, since simply having a few biases that are common among the left will create that appearance regardless of the motivation.)
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23 Feb 2020, 9:00 pm
I'd imagine it's probably even more common within continental Europe, given that America's biggest concern with religion seems to be freedom of religion, whereas Europe seems more concerned with freedom from religion.
I might be mistaken though, given that the fight for freedom from religion in Europe has been going on for longer. The idea of freedom from religion might at times seem almost revolutionary if the concept hasn't really entered the public consciousness.
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24 Feb 2020, 2:22 am
School history lesson compares Trump to Nazis, communists
A slide used in an Advanced Placement history class at Loch Raven High School in Towson shows a picture of Trump above pictures of a Nazi swastika and a flag of the Soviet Union. Two captions read “wants to round up a group of people and build a giant wall” and “oh, THAT is why it sounds so familiar!”
The Baltimore Sun reports that state Del. Kathy Szeliga arranged for copies of the slide and the school system's response to be sent to her fellow Baltimore County lawmaker. She also posted the image on Facebook.
"It is horrific. It is educational malfeasance,” Szeliga said Friday at a meeting of the county’s delegation.
Baltimore County Councilman Wade Kach called it “a piece of propaganda” that didn’t belong in a classroom.
The school system said the slide was not part of the resources it provides for AP history teachers.
Charles Herndon, a spokesman for Baltimore County schools, said students in advanced high school classes are "discerning, intelligent students who are going to be able to draw their own inferences and draw their own conclusions."
"The topics being discussed in the class included World Wars and the attempts by some leaders throughout history to limit or prevent migration into certain countries. In isolation and out of context with the lesson, the image could be misunderstood," the school district said in a statement.
The school system said the issue had become a personnel matter "which will be appropriately addressed by the school administration and is not subject to further clarification.”
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24 Feb 2020, 6:08 pm
This. I have to agree with this, and there are even many people who claim to be very religious but are also believing in leftist positions. I suppose that doesn't make the rightist Christians any less guilty or wrong, but when it's proclaimed that the Bible is compatible with pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality (Pete Buttigieg and his ilk), it's hard to think they have a leg to stand on.
funeralxempire
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25 Feb 2020, 1:09 pm
This. I have to agree with this, and there are even many people who claim to be very religious but are also believing in leftist positions. I suppose that doesn't make the rightist Christians any less guilty or wrong, but when it's proclaimed that the Bible is compatible with pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality (Pete Buttigieg and his ilk), it's hard to think they have a leg to stand on.
Similarly, you'll encounter anti-religious atheists on the right. The libertarian right and the alt-right both seem to have more non-religious folks than other parts of the right.
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Watching liberals try to solve societal problems without a systemic critique/class consciousness is like watching someone in the dark try to flip on the light switch, but they keep turning on the garbage disposal instead.
戦争ではなく戦争と戦う
25 Feb 2020, 8:36 pm
This. I have to agree with this, and there are even many people who claim to be very religious but are also believing in leftist positions. I suppose that doesn't make the rightist Christians any less guilty or wrong, but when it's proclaimed that the Bible is compatible with pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality (Pete Buttigieg and his ilk), it's hard to think they have a leg to stand on.
Similarly, you'll encounter anti-religious atheists on the right. The libertarian right and the alt-right both seem to have more non-religious folks than other parts of the right.
I would think more people who are anti-religious on the right are really more indifferent. They may not agree with it on a personal level (I'm right-leaning non-religious myself), but they don't really seem to be bothered about it's display in the public square. The left more claims to believe society should be entirely secular, unless perhaps it's their own "spin" of Christianity.
Short, I argue that movements on the left is closer to actual anti-religion than the right.
15 Apr 2020, 12:18 pm
US colleges received millions from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia...and didn't report it
Universities and colleges across the United States failed to report nearly $1 billion in foreign gifts from 2013-2018, despite legal requirements from the Department of Education, according to the Clarion Project.
Campus Reform previously reported the investigation launched by the Department of Education into Harvard and Yale’s undisclosed foreign gifts. Since then, the Clarion Project has revealed that more than $10 billion has flowed from foreign countries to colleges and universities from the United States since 2012. However, a significant portion of these gifts remain undisclosed.
"The fact that these gifts were hidden for such time speaks to the questionability of the gifts in the first place."
According to a report from the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, foreign government spending is a "black hole" and often goes unreported.
The Clarion Project has found that colleges and universities failed to report funding from countries such as China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
More than $140 million dollars in funding from China to 48 universities and 281 contracts have gone undisclosed.
About $500,000 in funding from Russia to New York University went undisclosed in 2018.
Over $70 million dollars in funding from Saudia Arabia to 19 universities and 193 contracts have gone undisclosed.
The Senate Subcommittee also found that the Chinese government has been using Confucius Institutes’ "soft power" to "encourage complacency towards China’s pervasive, long-term initiatives against both government critics at home and businesses and academic institutions abroad."
The Department of Education is concerned about colleges and universities giving "unprecedented levels of access to foreign governments, corporations and persons without adequate oversight."
The Department of Education also said, “These colleges and universities actively solicit foreign governments, corporations, and nationals for funds although some donors are known to be hostile to the United States and may be seeking to project 'soft power,' steal sensitive and proprietary research and development data and other intellectual property, and spread propaganda benefitting foreign governments.”
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14700
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