Tag: universities

University offers professors $3K to ‘redesign’ courses with social justice, ‘anti-racist’ content

University of Memphis faculty are getting $3,000 stipends to redesign courses that further diversity and “social justice.”

The university is offering stipends to 15-20 faculty in two installments after “syllabi redesign” and course completion are finalized. 

The $45,000 – $60,000 project is part of the university’s “Eradicating Systemic Racism and Promoting Social Justice Initiative,” presents the effort as “an opportunity for interested faculty” to promote the commitment to “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice.”

Scott Sundvall, assistant professor of English at Memphis, told Campus Reform that the stipends evolved from a discussion during a department meeting about which courses could be applied to a social justice minor. 

Sundvall said that the stipends for redesign “may seem ideological” but is “really not as radical” and a “good idea.”

“It is imperative that no area of the curriculum is excluded,” an Eradicating Systemic Racism and Promoting Social Justice Initiative report stated. “[I]t is the nature of race oppression for it to find ways to operate invisibly, and in turn to produce conceptual spaces that are mistakenly judged to be ‘race neutral.’”

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Law student government rejects free speech group because debate can cause ‘real harm’

For the second time recently, Emory Law School in Atlanta is dealing with a controversy involving a student-run organization seeking to squelch debate in the name of preventing harmful speech.

Its Student Bar Association, the law school equivalent of student government, denied a charter to the Emory Free Speech Forum (EFSF) in part based on the “lack of mechanisms in place to ensure respectful discourse and engagement” at its events, such as a moderator.

This could cause a “precarious environment” and “potential and real harm” on fraught topics such as race and gender, “when these issues directly affect and harm your peers’ lives in demonstrable and quantitative ways,” the rejection letter said.

A charter comes with eligibility for university funding and the use of university resources. Given Emory Law’s “well-established promotion of free speech values” and EFSF’s “overlap” with other chartered groups, the letter said, “we fail to see a need” to fund it.

A week earlier, three law professors pulled their essays from a forthcoming issue of the Emory Law Journal in response to student editors ordering one of them to remove “insensitive language” from a “hurtful and unnecessarily divisive” critique of the concept of systemic racism.

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‘White people should commit suicide as an ethical act,’ Duquesne professor says

He defended a proposition by a fellow professor

Duquesne University Professor Derek Hook said there are merits to the argument proposed by another professor who argued that it would be ethical for white people to kill themselves.

The anti-critical race theory group Mythinformed MKE posted the video recently. “This is part of an ‘anti-racist’ discussion on ‘nice white therapists held by the [American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work],” the group wrote on Facebook. The video appears to be from a summer session hosted by Hook, though the content is not otherwise publicly available.

“White people should commit suicide as an ethical act,” the top of a presentation by Hook said.

He quoted from a South African philosophy professor named Terblanche Delport, who wrote in 2016 about white people killing themselves.

Delport allegedly made similar comments in 2016, in reaction to racial division in the former apartheid state.

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Political science professor claims in Politico essay that Constitution is enemy of Democracy

The day prior to the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, Politico magazine ran a guest column by a political science professor who argued the U.S. Constitution has become a threat to democracy.

Corey Robin, a professor at Brooklyn College and the City of New York Graduate Center, wrote a piece titled “Republicans Are Moving Rapidly to Cement Minority Rule. Blame the Constitution.” 

In the piece, he argues the modern Republican Party and the Constitution are preventing the “national majority,” meaning the Democratic Party, from legislating effectively.

“Driving the initiatives of the Republicans and the inertia of the Democrats are two forces,” Robin writes. “The first is the right’s project, decades in the making, to legally limit the scope and reach of democracy. The second is the Constitution, which makes it difficult for the national majority to act and easy for local minorities to rule.” 

In the essay, Robin also criticizes constitutional facets of the American electoral process including the Electoral College and the Senate, all for the purpose of repeatedly leveling anti-Democratic accusations against the GOP.

“Democracy is not just the enemy of the Republican Party. It is also the enemy of the Constitution,” he writes. “Americans associate the Constitution with popular liberties such as due process and freedom of speech. They overlook its architecture of state power, which erects formidable barriers to equal representation and majority rule in all three branches of government.”

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Saint Louis University Threatens to Expel Student for Posting Flyers Promoting Conservative Speaker’s Event

Saint Louis University is threatening to expel or suspend a student for posting flyers advertising the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh’s off-campus speaking event, according to the Young America’s Foundation.

The student, James Dowling, was told in a Dec. 9 videoconference with school administrators that he could face expulsion for his “inappropriate conduct” and “failure to comply,” according to YAF.

Dowling, a member of the Saint Louis University College Republicans group, was putting up flyers advertising Walsh’s off-campus event on Dec. 1 when nearby SLU administrators, uncomfortable with the presence of SLU’s name on the same flyer as the SLU College Republicans, told him to take them all down, according to YAF.

Dowling reportedly offered to cross out the names on the flyers with a marker, but the administrators wouldn’t accept the compromise.

In a letter dated Dec. 9, the SLU Office of Student Responsibility and Community Standards sent Dowling a letter detailing his alleged breaches of SLU’s “Community Standards.” The letter also noted that Dowling would be required to attend a hearing for his “Suspendable Violations.”

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Too good to fact-check? Academic journal publishes hoax on conservative takeover of higher ed

Aprestigious academic journal has egg on its face for publishing a hoax paper that claimed to find widespread concerns about “undue” conservative influence in higher education.

“Right-wing money strongly appears to induce faculty and administrators … to believe that they are pressured to hire and promote people they regard as inferior candidates, to promote ideas they regard as poor, and to suppress people and ideas they regard as superior,” according to the abstract in Higher Education Quarterly.

Peer reviewers failed to perform basic due diligence on the paper submitted in April and approved in October, neglecting, for example, to verify that authors “Sage Owens” and “Kal Alvers-Lynde III” were UCLA professors as they claimed. Owens even used an encrypted email service for correspondence with the journal.

They didn’t check whether the conservative foundations named as active funders of higher education actually existed. The “Randy Eller Foundation” is made up, while the Olin Foundation shut down in 2005.

The author who goes by Owens told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the journal didn’t even ask to see their data: “Every page has some glaring errors.”

The authors’ stated names provide a clue when spelled as an acronym: “SOKAL III.” That indicates this is the second successful hoodwink tracing its inspiration to physicist Alan Sokal’s famous parody of leftist “gibberish” in the journal Social Text in 1996.

“We wanted to improve over previous hoaxes by publishing in what was supposed to be a reputable journal,” Owens wrote in an email to Just the News. 

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WSU amplifies claim that farmer’s markets, food charity are ‘white supremacy’ in action

Washington State University is amplifying claims that farmer’s markets and food charities are examples of “white supremacy” and “white dominant culture.” It has nothing to do with helping farmers thrive. This is about creating left-wing social justice activists.

The Agriculture Program Coordinator for WSU’s San Juan County Extension Ag Program promoted a webinar event titled, “Examining Whiteness in Food Systems.” During the hour-long presentation, attendees learned that “white supremacy culture” creates food insecurity by “center[ing] whiteness across the food system.”

The materials claim that “whiteness defines foods as either good or bad” and that farmer’s markets are merely white spaces.

This webinar is the latest example of a critical race theory lens framing noncontroversial issues as racist. And given WSU operates a 4-H program, it’s worth wondering how much of this will eventually get in front of young kids.

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Penn State Employees Who Refuse Vaccination Face Reeducation

Despite a federal judge declaring President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate unconstitutional, Penn State University will keep its Jan. 4 deadline requiring employees to get vaccinated, and some employees who choose not to get vaccinated will be given education and counseling.

“Many of you know (the mandate) is being challenged in the courts so we don’t know the outcome of that process yet, but we are planning around it prevailing, and so implementing that mandate,” Penn State Provost Nicholas P. Jones said Tuesday in the University Faculty Senate meeting. “We’ve got to prepare because there’s not a lot of runway between now and January the fourth.”

The University is navigating two versions of the mandate. The federal contractor mandate applies to nine campuses and the College of Medicine, Wyatt DuBois, assistant director of University Public Relations told The Epoch Times in an email. Employees covered under the federal contractor mandate must upload proof to the university that they have received their final vaccine dose by Jan. 4 or be granted a disability/medical- or religious-related exemption. For those with an exemption, “accommodations will include a requirement to test weekly in the university testing protocol program,” DuBois said.

Employees at all other Penn State locations are subject to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) on vaccination and testing, which applies to employers with 100 or more employees. “Under the OSHA ETS, disability/medical- and/or religious-related accommodations are not required for an employee to be put into the testing protocol. So, employees at these locations must receive their final vaccine dose by Jan. 4 or test weekly for COVID-19,” DuBois said.

In other words, those under the OSHA rules won’t lose their jobs if they don’t get vaccinated, but those under the federal contractor mandate who are not granted an exemption could lose their job.

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Bad week for college professors continues: Purdue professor specializing in ‘positive emotions’, ‘happiness’ arrested for beating wife, locking son in dog cage

Well, it sure doesn’t seem like a good week for far-left college professors.

First, we had an Old Dominion University professor placed on leave for defending pedophilia.

Now we’re learning of a Purdue University assistant professor whose specialties include “positive emotions” and “parental involvement” who was arrested by police in Indiana, according to Fox News.

His crimes? Apparently he beat his wife in front of his 10-year-old son, who happened to be locked in a dog cage at the time.  You literally cannot make this stuff up.

John Froiland was arrested by police in West Lafayette, Indiana after he allegedly beat his wife with the leg of a chair, according to a report in the school’s student newspaper, the Exponent. Froiland has been placed on paid administrative leave, according to Purdue spokesperson Tim Doty.

When asked the terms of his paid leave, Doty did not respond. Fox News said they reached out to the school for comment, however they did not immediately respond. It was reported that he has been banned from campus for a year.  

Froiland was charged last week and charged with domestic battery, intimidation, interference in reporting a crime, neglect of a dependent, and criminal confinement.

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School Places Professor on Leave After Controversial Interview Defending ‘Minor-Attracted Persons’

Old Dominion University announced it had put a professor on leave following comments attempting to normalize the phrase “minor-attracted persons.”

“Old Dominion University has placed Dr. Allyn Walker on administrative leave, effective immediately, from their position as assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice,” Amber Kennedy, a spokesperson for the university, said in a statement on Tuesday evening.

“Reactions to Dr. Walker’s research and book have led to concerns for their safety and that of the campus,” Kennedy added. “Furthermore, the controversy over Dr. Walker’s research has disrupted the campus and community environment and is interfering with the institution’s mission of teaching and learning.”

The university president also released a statement condemning child sexual abuse.

“I want to state in the strongest terms possible that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society,” ODU President Brian O. Hemphill said. “This is a challenging time for our University, but I am confident that we will come together and move forward as a Monarch family.”

The leave announcement followed an earlier statement in which the university said it does not “promote crimes against children.”

“Following recent social media activity and direct outreach to the institution, it is important to share that Old Dominion, as a caring and inclusive community, does not endorse or promote crimes against children or any form of criminal activity,” the Virginia university said.

The statement comes after one of its associate professors of sociology and criminal justice, Allyn Walker, said in a Nov. 8 interview that people can be attracted to children without acting on it.

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