Tag: universities

Degree program exclusively for Black men launched at Chicago-area college

The Chicago-area Oakton Community College has started an academy exclusively for black men in collaboration with the nearby Evanston Township High School.

The Emory Williams Academy for Black Men, which launches this fall, will provide a two-year academic program that culminates in an associate degree, assistance transferring to a four-year university, or other vocational opportunities.

The program will also offer financial aid, scholarships and “additional financial resources,” its website states. The Daily Northwestern reported it’s a “free degree program for Black, male-identifying locals.”

It will offer students academic pathways in fields such as computer science, marketing, engineering, accounting, law enforcement and criminal justice, business, and cannabis studies.

The academy’s values statement reads in part: “We advance equity by acknowledging the harm perpetrated against Black men by systemic racism in all levels of their education, and intentionally disrupting it here at the College.”

The program’s exclusion of non-Black male candidates does not run afoul of federal guidelines, according to the college.

“The development of the Emory Williams Academy does not violate any laws. Oakton Community College is an open-access institution to which all students are invited to apply, enroll and access services,” spokesman Steve Butera told The College Fix via email.

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The intolerance of free speech in higher education

Emory Law School’s Student Bar Association recently refused to recognize a free speech debate group because open discussions may spark “harm” and potentially “give rise to a precarious environment.”

As an alumnus of Emory Law, the decision was especially disappointing — but not surprising — and thankfully, overturned.

But a similar instance of an Emory University group retaliating against protected free speech came in October 2020, during the first year of my attending Emory Law’s Juris Master program.

The Emory University College Republicans hosted Heather Mac Donald, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.”

A “safe space” was established by Black and Latino groups at the university, seeking to “express their reaction to what McDonald had to say,” according to a post by the Emory NAACP.

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University Will Only Give Tenure Position To ‘Women, Transgender, Non-Binary, Or Two-Spirit’ People

A tenure track position at a Canadian university is only available to individuals who self-identify as “women, transgender, non-binary, or two-spirit” people, according to a job bulletin.

The University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Environment is looking “to fill a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Tier 2 Canada Research Chair and tenure track position at the rank of Assistant Professor” to “address the underrepresentation of individuals from equity deserving groups among our Canada Research Chairs,” according to the advertisement.

“Because this is a special opportunity for a specific member of the four designated groups, applicant self-identification information will be used for the purposes of screening and consideration,” it said.

The public university can implement “special programs” which are allowed to assist “marginalized groups … who experience hardship, economic disadvantage, inequality or discrimination,” according to the Ontario Human Rights Code.

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Prestigious $30K federal scholarships doled out almost exclusively to progressive students

The 2022 recipients of the prestigious federal Truman Scholarships once again lean heavily toward Democrats and progressives, according to an analysis by The College Fix.

Of the 58 scholarship recipients announced last week, only three have any connection to Republican politics. At the same time, five recipients have connections to Democratic politics, while an additional 35 more list a progressive cause as their primary area of advocacy.

The primary interests of the 35 progressive-leaning students granted the award in 2022 included environmental justice, “menstrual equity,” transgender rights, Latinx political engagement, diversity and inclusion, intersectionality, gun control, and the “gendered impacts of uranium mining.”

One student aims to set up a “safe space” for his school’s “multicultural male students and faculty to receive free food, haircuts, and showcase vulnerability as strength through meaningful conversations.”

Of the remaining awardees, 15 have political leanings that could be considered neutral or non-political.

The highly prestigious $30,000 scholarship is granted each year to a new set of college juniors to help them attend graduate school. The award was established by Congress as a nonpartisan federal program, and recipients must pledge to serve three of their first seven years after graduation in public service. It is granted to “persons who demonstrate outstanding potential for and who plan to pursue a career in public service.”

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Emails Suggest The Federal Government Colluded With U-Pitt To Cover Up Experiments On Babies

Recently released emails show National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins agreeing to a Zoom meeting with University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) administrators apparently to downplay allegations about the university’s experiments on aborted babies.

Last fall, revelations about the University of Pittsburgh’s fetal tissue research sparked outrage that the institution may have received organs that were extracted from live fetuses, or that tissue may have come from abortions that violated federal anti-trafficking law. Now, emails obtained by Judicial Watch indicate Biden’s NIH may have been working behind the scenes in collusion with Pitt to dampen the news and the pushback that followed it.

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Professor says minors can be ‘enthusiastically involved’ in ‘initiating sexual activities with adults’

Professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire participated in a March 23 talk discussing the “elements of voluntary participation” by juveniles involved in sex crimes, saying that when trying to prevent sex crimes against children, it’s key to realize that in some cases, it is the children themselves that are “initiating sexual activities with adults.” Finkelhor is the Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at UNH.

“If young people are initiating sexual activities with adults, or enthusiastically involved,” he said, “we can’t be effective in working with them if we assume that all such relationships start with a predatory or criminally inclined adult. As we’ve seen in the discussion, young people bridle at being forced into this box of being seen as being the victim of a predator.”

These remarks were made during a Haruv USA lecture about the “Implications for Prevention and Response” for sex crimes wherein there are “elements of voluntary participation” by the minors involved in those crimes.

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“Decolonising Math”: University Asks Professors To Consider Race Of Mathematicians Before Relying On Their Work

We previously discussed the view of University of Rhode Island and Director of Graduate Studies of History Erik Loomis that “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist.”

Others have agreed with that view, including denouncing math as racist or a “tool of whiteness.”

Now, as part of its “decolonization” efforts, Durham University is calling on professors in the math department to ask themselves if they’re citing work from “mostly white or male” mathematicians.

According to the Telegraph and The College Fix a guide instructs faculty that “decolonising the mathematical curriculum means considering the cultural origins of the mathematical concepts, focuses, and notation we most commonly use.”  It adds:

“[T]he question of whether we have allowed Western mathematicians to dominate in our discipline is no less relevant than whether we have allowed western authors to dominate the field of literature. It may even be more important, if only because mathematics is rather more central to the advancement of science than is literature.”

Some professors have objected to being asked to consider the race or gender of mathematicians rather than their underlying theories or formulas.

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Catholic University Speaker Says White Students Should ‘Crucify Their Whiteness’

The Atkins Center for Ethics at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hosted an event titled “Rejecting White Christianity” on March 3. A guest speaker at the event, Miguel De La Torre, called for White Christians to “crucify” their “whiteness.”

“Eurochristian nationalism has been used to justify white supremacy. Many within communities of color, with colonized minds, seek to assimilate to a Euroamerican version of Christianity which is detrimental to their being,” reads an event description. “This presentation will explore what it means to see through the eyes of the dominant culture, how one rejects the Christianity of the dominant culture, and how one begins to create a different cultural foundation upon which to base one’s faith.”

The discussion was also billed as an “indigenous Latinx” lens through which one can conduct “ethical analysis” of Christianity. During his speech, De La Torre, a professor of “Latinx studies” at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, said white Christians should “crucify” their “whiteness”, according to The College Fix.

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