Tag: political correctness

‘New McCarthyism:’ Professors investigated by their own universities speak out

Nearly two dozen professors investigated by their universities are now sounding the alarm on what they say were essentially witch hunts against them for doing something that upset the campus status quo.

The recently published book “Professors Speak Out: The Truth About Campus Investigations” contains 20 personal vignettes authored by professors who argue that the probes were largely unnecessary and unfounded, in some cases malicious, and certainly biased against them.

The topics of the probes centered around three main issues: sex; race and ethnicity; and religion and politics.

Edited by Nicholas Wolfinger, a professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah, the book details the experiences of scholars who faced so-called kangaroo courts, and some were fired from their jobs.

“The book features conservatives attacked for their views, and progressives attacked for theirs. Other cases, such as mine, were essentially apolitical,” Wolfinger told The College Fix in an email interview.

Anyone concerned with cancel culture or academic freedom, or who’s been critical of the modern academy, should read the book, he said, adding administrators who want to improve their institutions should also get a copy.

Keep reading

Now woke schools teach pupils that Stonehenge was built by black people… while Waterloo and Trafalgar go untaught

Children are being taught that Stonehenge was built by black people and the Roman Emperor Nero married a trans woman as woke narratives increasingly infiltrate schools, according to an education think-tank.

They are also being told – in pro-transgender resources – that genital mutilation of slaves was a form of ‘gender transition’.

But landmark British victories such as those at Waterloo and Trafalgar go largely untaught – with as few as one in ten pupils learning about them.

A Policy Exchange investigation has warned that schools have ‘taken it too far’ as they adapt history curriculums in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.

The prestigious centre-Right unit found that George Floyd’s death in 2020 led to schools hastily including material about ethnic minorities to appear ‘anti-racist’.

Former history teacher and chairman of Campaign for Real Education Chris McGovern said it was ‘clear that the subject has been captured by the Left’.

The report added that some resources, such as the book Brilliant Black British History, push ‘contested narratives’ – such as black people building Stonehenge.

The book is marketed as ‘a must-have in any school library’ but its claim that early black Britons built the world-famous Neolithic stone circle is ‘hotly contested and outside mainstream historical thinking’ yet ‘presented as fact’, according to the think-tank.

While in some cases these initiatives have a ‘positive effect’, such as exposing pupils to ‘wider world history’, the report flagged serious concerns about replacing facts with biased narratives.

It warned: ‘In too many cases this process has gone too far, leading to the teaching of radical and contested interpretations of the past as fact, or with anecdotes of interesting lives replacing a deeper understanding of the core drivers of history.’

One resource, from the Classical Association’s ‘Queering the Past’ project, claims the Roman Emperor Nero married a trans woman called Sporus but omits the fact that they probably underwent a forced castration rather than consensual gender reassignment. 

It comes as the Government conducts its curriculum review to ‘reflect the issues and diversities of our society’ – which the report says may be unnecessary as schools already do it.

Backed by former education secretaries Lord Blunkett and Nadhim Zahawi, it also calls for pupils to be impartially given a better overview of British history.

A Classical Association spokesman said its teaching resources were ‘complicated and nuanced’ where ‘more than one interpretation is possible’.

A Department for Education spokesman said: ‘The curriculum and assessment review is considering how to ensure young people have access to a broad and balanced curriculum.’

Meanwhile, Mr McGovern warned history is ‘seen as a vehicle for undermining and destroying British national identity’.

Keep reading

FEMA’s Woke Disaster: $2 Billion Fraud, Reverse Discrimination, and Retaliation Buried for Six Years

For six years, FEMA has quietly buried one of the worst scandals in federal disaster response—a toxic mix of reverse discrimination, fraud, and whistleblower retaliation tied to the Hurricane Maria recovery in Puerto Rico. I led the contractor team that uncovered it firsthand.

In 2018, I deployed as the technical lead of a Lean Six Sigma team made up of straight, older, white veterans and executives.

Our mission was to bring order, transparency, and efficiency to a FEMA operation crippled by dysfunction. What we found was not just inefficiency—it was corruption: theft, favoritism, and rot embedded deep in FEMA’s culture.

We documented widespread violations of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Anti-Deficiency Act.

FEMA leadership stole contractor-developed intellectual property and inflated performance metrics in a $1.5 billion scheme to mislead Congress.

Unqualified personnel were promoted—not for merit, but for checking the right identity boxes. This was not mismanagement. It was deliberate.

FEMA’s culture was dominated by DEI politics—identity trumped merit, and promotions were rigged. One insider told us: “Straight white men are at the bottom here.” That was not just talk. It was policy.

At the heart of it was a tight-knit special interest group dubbed internally by FEMA insiders the “LGBTQ Mafia.”

They wielded outsized influence, shielded by management and FEMA’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and FOIA offices, which buried complaints and blocked accountability.

Keep reading

Priorities at U. Rhode Island include hiring more ‘faculty, staff of color’

A goal in the University of Rhode Island’s “Strategic Plan 2023-2033” to “prioritize” hiring people “of color” is raising concerns about equal protection violations among civil rights experts.

The multi-part plan describes various priorities for the university over the decade-long period. Specifically, “Priority 3: Foster an Inclusive Culture” outlines ways the university intends to advance “anti-racist” and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” efforts in faculty and leadership positions, according to the university website.

One of the goals of “Priority 3” expresses the university’s intentions to “enhance search and hiring processes to prioritize the recruitment, hiring, and retention of faculty and staff of color.”

Two outside civil rights and legal advocates told The College Fix that this practice could be a violation of the law.

“Prioritizing color over merit and qualifications sets a bad precedent that on its face can be discriminatory,” Linda Lee Tarver said as an ambassador of Project 21, an African-American civil rights initiative at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Tarver, a former Michigan civil rights commissioner, told The Fix in a recent email that such practices undermine merit-based hiring.

Keep reading

David Hogg, Victim of Wokeness

David Hogg is a 25-year-old political activist and, for now, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. A survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Hogg first drew national attention for speaking out vigorously in favor of gun control. He has since become an all-purpose progressive campaigner.

He is controversial, even among Democratic circles, because he has clashed with the party’s establishment. He previously pledged to spend $20 million to primary members of his own party, though he insisted that he would only target Democrats who reside in safe districts. His thinking is that elected Democrats are too old and that the current iteration of the party fails to appeal to younger voters, particularly young males. Hogg is definitely onto something there: Donald Trump made huge inroads with Gen Z voters, in part because Democratic messaging to young men failed to resonate with them.

Hogg made a version of this argument on Bill Maher’s show last weekend, and the comedian was impressed enough to give Hogg a standing ovation and shake his hand. Hogg also won over centrist Democratic strategist James Carville, who had previously called him a “twerp.”

But Hogg has not won over everybody. On the contrary, the DNC is trying to oust him as vice chair. And the reason for that is, frankly, hilarious.

Kalyn Free, a 61-year-old woman with Native American ancestry and a rival candidate, filed a complaint that Hogg’s election as vice chair had violated certain DNC bylaws designed to promote gender-based equity. Essentially, she argued that the process was unfair because it was not sufficiently rigged in favor of her as a woman. For now, the DNC is buying it and has taken steps to void Hogg’s election. The party may schedule a redo, which would require Hogg to rerun for the vice chair position.

What’s funny about all this is that it illustrates the DNC’s precise problem with appealing to young male voters. Essentially, the DNC is clinging to its principles of identity politics, affirmative action, and gender-based preferencing—concepts that are toxic to most voters, including many Democratic voters—to undo the election of a younger,  more rebellious political actor in favor of an older woman.

Keep reading

DEI’s defenders are massive First Amendment hypocrites

The Trump administration’s efforts to rein in diversity, equity, and inclusion policies plaguing public schools suffered a setback last month when judges in three states ruled in favor of advocacy groups defending the status quo. In one complaint, the American Federation of Teachers claimed the Trump administration policy change “will chill speech and expression.”

As a recently retired teacher who was a member of the union for decades, color me skeptical of the union’s commitment to the First Amendment. When I spoke against a union-approved DEI program and came under fire from school officials for my opinion, the union hung me out to dry.

Nineteen states, including my home state of Connecticut, followed the teachers’ union’s lead by suing the Department of Education over its plan to condition federal school funding on an end to DEI. The state coalition similarly claims that Trump’s policy change “threaten[s] to chill … speech[.]” But in my case, Connecticut school officials made it clear they can and will silence any speech they don’t like.

Such rank hypocrisy may not affect outcomes in court, but it should alert voters and teachers that when it comes to DEI, those cloaking themselves in the mantle of free speech view it as a one-way street.

This past fall, I ended a 35-year career teaching and training students in Hartford Public Schools. In that time, I successfully worked with kids from nearly every ethnic background.

But then I was told minority students couldn’t learn from me because I didn’t share their skin color, and that as a male I could not effectively teach female students. My privilege and implicit biases, according to DEI indoctrination, made me inadequate for the job — and possibly even a threat to the success of the children I thought I was helping.

What had changed? Not me. In 2017, new school administrators brought with them a race-focused agenda and sought to implement it through classroom teachers. They enlisted the Hartford Federation of Teachers, a local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, to support their new direction.

Keep reading

UCLA med school allegedly discriminates against white, Asian applicants: Lawsuit

A class action lawsuit from Do No Harm and Students for Fair Admissions alleges that the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA is illegally discriminating against white and Asian applicants by holding some applicants to a much lower admissions standard.

“(Jennifer) Lucero and the Admissions Committee routinely admit black applicants with below-average GPA and MCAT scores — even significantly below-average scores — while requiring whites and Asians to have near-perfect scores to even be seriously considered,” wrote the plaintiffs in their class action complaint.

Jennifer Lucero was appointed associate dean of admissions of David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in 2020. She also serves as vice chair for inclusive excellence — formerly called diversity, equity and inclusion — for the Geffen Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine.

In 2020, UCLA was ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the sixth-best medical school for research.

But UCLA fell to 18th by the time U.S. News and World Report stopped ordinal ranking of medical schools and eliminated reputational ranking of departments within medical schools after numerous former top medical schools boycotted submitting data to USNWR over “equity” concerns.

The number of students failing exams has increased tenfold since 2020 for some subjects, according to reporting from the Free Beacon.

Under Proposition 209, passed by California voters in 1996, it is illegal for state entities to consider race in hiring, contracting and education. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that race-based affirmative action policies for college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The complaint details several notable incidents in which Lucero engaged in unusual behavior during admissions committee meetings.

Keep reading

Two State Capitals Adopt LGBT Flags as Official City Flags in Bid to Circumvent Law

“Cutting off your nose to spite your face” is a metaphorical expression.

I’m not letting most of you, our infinitely wise readership, at home in on this self-evident fact. Instead, this is more of a public service announcement to the family, friends, and co-workers of those employed or elected by the cities of Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, Utah: Keep sharp objects away from these people for the next few weeks or anytime you hear someone saying something about their visage. Thank me later.

I mention this because, within hours of each other, lawmakers in both state capitals, 330 miles away, passed laws that made the LGBT rainbow “pride” flag and other flags official city flags in order to sidestep state laws that would have barred the display of such flags.

According to KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, “[t]he new flags would add the sego lily logo from Salt Lake City’s city flag to the Juneteenth, Progress Pride and transgender flags” in order to make them official city flags, essentially a move to sidestep a bill that would ban flying most flags that were not the official national, state, city, or school flags.

BoiseDev reported a similar reasoning behind the move “retroactively designating the Pride flag and the Donate Life flag, commemorating April as Donate Life Month, honoring the benefits of organ donation, as official flags of the City of Boise. This puts these two flags alongside the traditional blue City of Boise flag featuring the Idaho State Capitol as official flags of the city’s government.”

“This move comes after weeks of tension over [the mayor’s] decision to continue flying the Progress Pride flag in front of city hall in defiance of HB 96 brought by Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard.

“That bill, passed in the 2025 legislative session, restricted the flags local governments in Idaho can fly to a specific list of flags, including the United States flag, the State of Idaho flag, official city flags, the POW/MIA flag, branches of the U.S. military, Indian tribal flags, flags for colleges, universities or public schools and the flags of other nations for special occasions.”

Now, it’s worth mentioning that, when conservatives protested against the universal protection for killing babies in the womb and for same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court miraculously discovered in the Constitution — we were reminded that we were one nation and should respect the law of that nation — “penumbras” and “emanations” conveniently located in a vaguely written amendment, which originally dealt with the aftermath of the Civil War but is now used as a cudgel for every left-wing cause that cannot pass muster at the ballot box.

Now, two states have passed perfectly legal and clear laws about what flags may be displayed, a clear shot across the bow of liberal locales that put rainbow or transgender flags atop poles across the city for “pride” month, often overshadowing or ignoring the flag of the nation or state and alienating the electorate.

Very well, Boise and Salt Lake City are saying after the massive backlash: We’re going to make symbols of enforced acceptance of sexual deviance official city flags because nyahhhh!

“The feedback we have gotten since we ventured into this space has been overwhelming from local Boiseans in support of this because we know that’s not just a flag. We know it says who we are, and we know that this bill was about just one flag,” Boise Mayor Lauren McLean said.

“We now have three official flags in this city in response to this bill, but most importantly, that action demonstrates who we are, the values we hold, our commitment to those seen and unseen to show you are welcome and wanted here.”

Keep reading

Biden admin prioritized ‘social engineering’ over air traffic safety, key aviation Republican says

The chairman of the House’s Aviation Safety Caucus is accusing the former Biden administration of helping fuel the current air traffic control (ATC) crisis, by its choice to fund progressive diversity initiatives instead of modernizing the aging system.

Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital that the former administration’s marquee bill, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was among several “missed opportunities” to fund a revamp of the ATC system.

“That was before I came to Congress, but, you know, you had just mistaken priorities in that, all this DEI policy, DEI staffing, that all got baked into the cake,” Langworthy said. “They could have taken that money and spent it on real modernization of what is critical infrastructure in this country.”

“We had the longest period of incident-free aviation in this country’s history, where we didn’t have a commercial air crash from the time the crash happened in Buffalo, in my district, back in 2009, to just this year, and what happened at [Ronald Reagan Airport]. And it was avoidable,” he said.

It comes after a blackout at Newark Liberty International Airport reportedly caused a roughly 90-second outage to its air traffic control screens.

And earlier this year, a military helicopter collided with a passenger plane coming from Wichita, Kansas, in a deadly incident just off the shores of the nation’s capital.

Langworthy clarified that he does not believe DEI policies “necessarily” directly hit ATC.

“It’s what they spent the money [on]. I mean, you know, there’s infrastructure projects, ones in my backyard, where they want to bury and tunnel over our main artery in the town because it’s going to reunite a community somehow,” he said.

Keep reading

When did charities turn into insufferable activist groups?

When did charities become so political? From Oxfam to the British Heart Foundation, many British charities are going well beyond their core missions of saving lives and helping the needy and have branched out into political lobbying, whether it’s for sugar taxes or so-called climate justice. The third sector has relegated old-fashioned charity work to second place, behind lobbying the government for ‘progressive’ policies.

This trend should not be allowed to pass unnoticed, especially when there is such a clear revolving door between charities and politics. According to research from Transparency International in 2023, almost one in three ex-Conservative ministers ended up in jobs that overlapped with their government brief – many in charities. After last year’s General Election delivered a landslide of new Labour MPs, more than 35 per cent of parliamentarians now have a ‘background’ in the charity sector, including eight members of the cabinet.

Labour figures have proved most adept at floating seamlessly between NGOs and government. Gordon Brown’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, now specialises in ‘refugee resettlement and assistance’ at the International Rescue Committee. Others, like UNICEF and Save the Children’s Justin Forsyth, have gone back and forth between charity and government. In 2023, Oxfam appointed Halima Begum as its chief executive, who tried to become Labour MP in 2019.

The result of this echo chamber is clear in charities’ output. Last year, Oxfam, which was founded to help famine relief efforts in the developing world, called for a 60 per cent tax in the UK on income, stocks, shares, rent and other revenue ‘that the rich disproportionately rely on’. The British Heart Foundation pledges to reach Net Zero by 2045 and pushes for nanny-state policies like sugar and salt taxes. Christian Aid was set up to provide life-saving support when wars blighted some of the world’s poorest communities. Now it also campaigns for ‘climate justice’, whatever that means.

Keep reading