Tag: universities

NYU scholar argues philosophical case against men competing in women sports

Called a ‘dictator’ for his position

Philosophy, not “empirical studies,” can prove why men should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports, according to a New York University scholar.

Professor Daniel Kodsi laid out his case in a new paper in the Journal of Controversial Ideas and expanded on his arguments in comments to The College Fix. The paper and comments came prior to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling affirming that states can prohibit gender-confused men from competing in women’s sports. 

Kodsi and his co-author, John Maier, wrote this paper based on a version of an amicus brief they helped write in the Supreme Court case.

The paper argues “that it is justified to exclude male people, and only male people, from certain spaces—sports teams, leagues, events and competitions—set aside for female athletes.”

“More generally, it argues that it is justified to organize sports around the biological distinction between male people and female people,” they wrote.

Kodsi told The Fix via email that his paper’s argument was not based on scientific studies, but solely on philosophical reasoning.

“A key point we attempt to drive home is that no ‘empirical studies’ are needed to establish that men who identify as women may justifiably be excluded from women’s sports, just as no empirical studies are needed to establish that adult athletes from Switzerland may justifiably be excluded from junior sports,” he said.

His argument is focused on promoting women’s rights within their sports, not motivated by unjust discrimination against men.

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Renowned Feminist Historian Loses Professorship as Experts Tear Apart Her So-Called Historical Findings

A black feminist historian whose work is being labeled as misleading — and who may have lost her cushy academic job — says it all comes down to an attack on black women.

The New York Times tells the tale of Kerri Greenidge, whose 2022 book “The Grimkes” was hailed for its narrative about a slaveholding family and its work in the abolitionist movement.

Publishers Weekly put the book on its list of that year’s top books, while the American Historical Association handed Greenidge the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, which honors scholars in women’s history and feminist theory.

But the glow has dimmed as the furor over her flimsy factual foundation is being linked to the end of her gig as a tenured associate professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University — and the loss of a book deal.

Myra Glenn, a retired professor of American history at Elmira College, was among the first to question what she was reading in 2024 when she was reviewing the book for a journal.

“I said, ‘Where is she getting this?’” she said. “Boy, it became a major problem.”

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Racist ‘Hispanics Only’ Program At USC and Loyola Marymount University Draws Civil Rights Complaint

“A Hispanics-only program hosted at the University of Southern California and Loyola Marymount University has drawn a federal civil rights complaint.”

According to a report from The College Fix, a complaint has been filed with the Education Department for Civil Rights after Los Angeles universities promoted a scholarship program exclusively for Hispanics.

The complaint against this program was naturally due to the fact that “it is expressly limited to students who identify as being of Hispanic heritage.”

It should go without saying that this violates civil rights laws. If there must be special civil rights laws, how would this not be a violation of them?

This program, by definition, would amount to segregation based on race, something which would never be tolerated if done for White students.

“USC and LMU participation in the YLI program violates Title VI by discriminating on the basis of national origin. Moreover, this participation violates California’s own discrimination statutes and the nondiscrimination policies,” states the complaint, lodged June 29.”

“William Jacobson, president of the Equal Protection Project, told the New York Post that it’s “open discrimination, they don’t try to hide it.”

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Chinese University Espionage and How Biden Shut Down the Program That Might Have Stopped It

Chinese enrollment in U.S. higher education grew steadily through the Obama years, climbing from under 200,000 in 2011–12 to a peak of 372,532 by 2019–20. By March 2018, alongside that growth, the FBI warned in its bulletin, “China: The Risk to Academia,” that the broader population of international students and scholars in the United States, then numbering 1.4 million, posed a national security exposure. Chinese students were the largest source of that population.

The Bureau warned that a subset of those students and scholars was being used by Beijing as “non-traditional collectors,” exploiting the openness of U.S. research institutions through talent recruitment programs, unsolicited research collaboration offers, and academic visits to advance Chinese military and commercial interests. The bulletin stated that China does not “play by the same rules of academic integrity” as American institutions and called on universities to report suspicious contacts to their local FBI field office.

That assessment fed directly into the Department of Justice’s response. On November 1, 2018, the DOJ launched the China Initiative under Attorney General Jeff Sessions to counter Chinese economic espionage. The initiative was led by Assistant Attorney General John Demers of the National Security Division, alongside a senior FBI executive and five U.S. attorneys.

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College Students Are Testing at the Level of 10-Year-Olds

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”

According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries — a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler.

The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.

The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math. Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent — only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.

It seems there are numerous compounding explanations for these test results: pandemic-era learning gaps leading to lower levels of preparation, declining college enrollment forcing schools to lower admissions standards, and lower levels of public funding for education, to name a few.

The results also coincide with the explosion of large language models like ChatGPT, which by many accounts have carved out a new floor for academic failure in both K-12 and college-level education.

While there’s no denying how complicated the issue is, there is evidence that removing technology from classrooms altogether could offer an immediate boost.

In one classroom in Minneapolis, for example, a literature and English teacher banned phones and laptops, requiring all coursework to be done on pencil and paper. As the school-year started in September, just 46 percent of the students involved said they felt confident about their reading skills. A few months later in February, that number stood at 95 percent.

Though it’s just one classroom, something is clearly off the rails in the education systems of the richest countries of the world — and the longer it goes unaddressed, the more students will be pushed into the world with the reading skills of 4th graders.

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Missouri State University Been Training Chinese Communists In Business

Missouri has voted strongly Republican since the 2000 election. A red state! How nice. Not exactly. Look deeper.

The Missouri State University, a tax-payer-funded institution like all state schools, has been offering an MBA program to Chinese nationals. Their website seems to be proud of that:

“Missouri State University

Missouri State University is a comprehensive institution offering undergraduate and graduate programs, including the professional doctorate. The university educates students to be global citizen scholars committed to public affairs.

It’s that last line to which I call your attention. “Global citizen scholars.”

Since the year, 2000, MSU HAS TRAINED OVER 1,500 CURRENT AND FUTURE MANAGERS FOR CHINESE STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES AND GOVERNMENT BODIES – INCLUDING THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY – BY THE YEAR 2018!!

Global Citizen Scholars.

The amount that US Taxpayer’s have been spent on this runs into the tens of millions of dollars, or more, says Strategy Risks, a business intelligence firm focused on global risks which is based in New York City. I believe it has to have been much more.

The estimate of taxpayer funding rests on the most detailed figures available, which appear in a recruiting presentation from the Chinese Agricultural University, according to the report.

A report, “Heartland For Hire,” from Strategy Risks, provides the first public accounting of several MSU master’s programs that have “trained more than 1,500 current and future managers for Chinese state-owned enterprises and government bodies” since the programs began in 2001.

Graduates from these MBA and Executive MBA programs have gone on “to senior roles in China’s defense industry, strategic supply chains, and surveillance-technology sector”—including those sanctioned for aiding the People’s Liberation Army and providing technology to Russia for its war against Ukraine.

However, the report notes that the materials Strategy Risks found gave “conflicting accounts of the program’s finances.” Public recruiting materials for the MBA program describe “different prices, subsidy arrangements, and responsible payers.”

This bears repeating:

A publicly funded university in the State of Missouri, USA, provided a steady flow of business training to the Chinese Communist Party for over 20 years. The ads for the program still appeared on Chinese websites as late as 2024 – when DJT took office for the second term. During his first, you will see he placed this on a watch/special licensing list. Read on.

There is more.

By 2015, 107 finance positions from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) system entities had completed the MSU MBA program, according to the report.

AVIC is “China’s primary state-owned aviation and defense conglomerate,” which the Department of War designated as a “Communist Chinese military company” in June 2020, and an Executive Order from the Trump administration “prohibited Americans from holding securities in any company on that list.”

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Florida Votes to Ban Illegal Immigrants from Public Colleges and Universities

The Florida State Board of Education voted 6–1 on Tuesday to prohibit illegal immigrants from enrolling in the state’s 28 public colleges and adult education programs.

Under the new policy, institutions within the Florida College System will only admit U.S. citizens or individuals lawfully present in the country. Applicants must attest to their legal status and provide supporting documentation before enrolling. The rule also applies to adult general education programs, including GED classes.

This action builds on last year’s repeal of in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants. Governor Ron DeSantis and state leaders have stated that Florida’s public resources, funded by the state’s hardworking taxpayers, should prioritize American citizens and legal residents, rather than individuals who entered the country illegally.

The Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s 12 public universities, advanced a similar measure last week. Beginning with the 2027–2028 academic year, individuals unlawfully present in the United States will be ineligible for initial enrollment at selective public universities. A final vote is still pending, but the proposal is expected to move forward.

These policies send a strong message to other states and the federal government: Florida will not subsidize or reward illegal immigration through taxpayer-funded higher education.

As expected, left-wing activist groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Democratic lawmakers criticized the reform, describing it as «cruel.» Critics argue that the policy could reduce institutional revenue and negatively affect students who grew up in Florida despite lacking legal immigration status.

However, supporters argue that illegal immigrants should not compete with legal residents for limited spaces and resources at public institutions. They also contend that Florida taxpayers already bear significant costs associated with illegal immigration, making the policy a logical step toward enforcing federal immigration law at the state level and restoring policy priorities.

According to supporters, taxpayer-funded higher education for illegal immigrants is a policy that Florida voters have repeatedly rejected, a position they say aligns with Governor DeSantis’s record on border security and the rule of law.

Florida now joins a small group of states taking firm action on illegal immigration in higher education. The broader question is whether states can—and should—protect their sovereignty, their citizens, and their fiscal stability through similar measures.

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Unfair! University of California, Riverside Grant Funding Favors Illegal Aliens Over Americans

According to a report from Campus Reform, the University of California, Riverside’s Undocumented Student Programs offers up to $9,000 annually through its Butterfly Project Fellowship to “DREAMers, students from mixed-status families, and undocu allies,” while a comparable graduate research grant for U.S. citizen graduate students provides up to $4,000 per year.”

This program rewards lawbreakers while punishing American citizens, something which is entirely unfair.

“According to fellowship materials reviewed by Campus Reform, the Butterfly Project Fellowship provides up to $9,000 annually to illegal alien graduate students, with awards disbursed through the Financial Aid Office.”

There shouldn’t be incentives at American academic institutions for foreign nationals who break our laws, and the fact that there are is an outrage that rewards lawlessness.

Recipients of this insane “fellowship” are also given the opportunity to attend college and “Undocumented Student Programs events while continuing to advance their graduate research.”

“A comparable funding opportunity for American citizens available through UCR is the Dissertation Research Grant, administered by the university’s Graduate Division. The grant provides up to $2,000 per application during both the fall and spring quarters, allowing recipients to receive up to $4,000 annually.”

That’s a considerably lower amount than what illegal aliens get and shows a disparity.

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“We’re Running Out of Oil”: The Lie Used to Support the Green Energy Agenda

In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, then the nation’s leading oil producer, warned that the U.S. had only four years of oil remaining. Forty years later, in 1914, when oil still hadn’t run out, the federal government said the U.S. had only a ten-year supply remaining. In 1940, the government announced that reserves would be depleted within a decade and a half.

An article published on August 3, 1966, reported that “a geologist stuck a figurative dipstick into the United States’ oil supplies Tuesday and estimated that the country may be dry in 10 years,” placing the projected date of U.S. exhaustion at 1976. The most widely cited doomsday prediction came in 1972, when the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report calculated that global petroleum reserves, growing at then-current consumption rates, would be exhausted within 20 years, implying oil would run out by 1992.

For the past several decades, the claim that oil will run out has been used to promote the green energy transition, framing the use of solar and wind power as necessary to preserve human life. However, the people and institutions promoting the “oil is running out” narrative are the same people and institutions advancing the climate crisis narrative. As with other forms of propaganda, new vocabulary had to be invented, including the term “peak oil.

Peak oil is the theory that global oil production rises to a maximum point and then declines irreversibly as a finite resource is depleted. Yale Environment 360 reported that Rystad Energy expects natural gas production to peak and decline as renewables take over, and that the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021 called on oil companies to immediately end oil prospecting and pull back on production as part of a net-zero pathway explicitly grounded in the “peak oil” framing.

The context of the Yale report, and the peak oil claim in general, is somewhat dishonest. If they really believed the world was running out of oil, they wouldn’t need to warn anyone or demand that we stop looking for or producing oil. Instead, they could simply wait ten or twenty years, or whatever the latest prediction is, until oil runs out naturally. At that point, the world would transition to green energy out of necessity, and the climate advocates would win. The fact that they continue pushing the issue suggests they don’t really believe oil is running out.

A Cambridge University Press academic text states plainly that the peak oil belief is a myth, “at least for the next decades,” and warns that peak oil framing can backfire on climate advocates because the oil industry echoes the peak oil argument to convince governments to approve, and even assist with, new fossil fuel projects whenever prices spike. Effectively, the article presents circular logic. It suggests that the peak oil argument should be abandoned to prevent the oil industry from drilling for new oil, which would prevent the world from running out of oil.

All of the peak oil predictions had a common flaw: they made straight-line mathematical projections, assuming that no alternatives or solutions would be found. Each treated known reserves and existing extraction methods as fixed, when, in practice, both variables continued to change simultaneously.

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The Kids Are Not Okay With AI, And They Know It…

Eric Schmidt hadn’t finished the word “artificial” before the booing started.

The former Google CEO stood at the University of Arizona’s commencement last month, ready to deliver the kind of speech he had probably given a dozen times before: AI as the next great transformation, graduates as its rightful authors.

He got as far as telling them the technology would “touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person, and every relationship you have.” The boos rose before he could finish his own sentence. “I can hear you,” he said gently. The boos continued, as did Schmidt, who was unable to fully conceal the awkward embarrassment.

He wasn’t the only one. A week earlier, at Middle Tennessee State University, Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta told graduates that “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.” The boos from graduates started immediately. He responded with tough love: “I know it. Deal with it.” But the boos only grew louder.

A week before that, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield barely got through the phrase “next industrial revolution” at the University of Central Florida before the crowd erupted. “Okay, I struck a chord,” she said, turning around with her hands up in disbelief and clearly caught off guard.

They were all caught off guard. This isn’t how graduations usually go.

Older generations had their own frustrations with the people steering their world, but they rarely stood up at their own commencement, in front of their families, and told a stranger they didn’t believe them or what they had to say about their future.

It would be easy to read the response as simple nerves about a tough job market and leave it there. But when you look more closely at how this generation actually lives with technology, their worldview takes a different form.

A recent Gallup survey found that Gen Z’s use of AI has leveled off, but their feelings about it have not. Excitement has fallen 14 points in a year, to just 22 percent. And anger has climbed 9 points, to 31 percent. Even among those who use it every day, enthusiasm dropped by 18 points over 12 months. Eight in ten now believe AI will make learning harder. Forty-two percent believe it will hurt their ability to think carefully. Only a quarter believe it will help. Nearly half say the risks of AI in the workplace now outweigh the benefits, which is a sharp rise from the year before. And when asked whose work they actually trust, 69 percent said human work. Only 3 percent said AI’s work alone.

A separate Gallup study found that 47 percent of college students have seriously considered changing their major because of what AI is doing to the job market. Sixteen percent have already changed. The students who use AI most, such as in technology, business, and engineering, are also the ones most likely to be reconsidering whether they picked the right field at all.

The kids know the use of artificial intelligence is built into every device they touch throughout their day. It is being wired to replace the skills they were once told to seek in every career they had been advised to pursue.

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