What Students Really Learn at University
Perhaps no one has written more about the plague of identity politics on America’s college campuses than MTC's contributor, Philip Carl Salzman. Salzman, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McGill 
University, and a contributor to many public policy organizations, has now published some of his most powerful essays in an e-Book collection called Universities Today. Salzman writes, "Since the 1980s, universities have increasingly turned away from producing and disseminating knowledge and taken up as their objective neo-Marxist radical social reform, often labeled ‘social justice.’ Today, universities focus on political propaganda and activism and are increasingly like closed religious cults."
Attention Middle Easterners! You Don’t Have to Be White Anymore
So says Harvard University in a convoluted explanation of race, identity, culture and white privilege. According to Harvard, “Since 1944, Middle Eastern- and North African-Americans have been legally “white,” having to check the “white” box on demographic surveys like the U.S. census.” OMG—what a burden! Well, fear no more my Lebanese and Syrian friends, my pals from Iraq and Iran—you no longer have the burden of being white—you can be a MENA! A middle-eastern north African. What a joy to shed the mantle of white privilege once and for all. How wonderful to have such a joyous moniker of peace, achievement, cultural contribution, and tolerance to wrap around oneself.
If You're On Time, You're a White Supremacist
The National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education, or NCORE, will feature a “pre-conference” session led by an educational consultant who believes being on time is a form of “white supremacy.” The story appears in The College Fix. NCORE is a function of the University of Oklahoma’s Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies. This year, Heather Hackman of the Hackman Consulting Group will speak about “…Racism and Whiteness and Achieving Racial Justice.” Hackman is a former professor of multicultural education at St. Cloud University who, at 2016’s “White Privilege Conference,” informed attendees that “the racial narrative of White” includes “making sure you’re not tardy.” Individualism, honesty, discipline, and rigor were other factors.
Peggy Noonan on the Coming Fall of ‘Woke’ Progressives
"The past decade saw the rise of the woke progressives who dictate what words can be said and ideas held, thus poisoning and paralyzing American humor, drama, entertainment, culture and journalism. In the coming 10 years someone will effectively stand up to them. They are the most hated people in America, and their entire program is accusation: you are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic; you are a bigot, a villain, a white male, a patriarchal misogynist, your day is over. They never have a second move. Bow to them, as most do, and they’ll accuse you even more of newly imagined sins. They claim to be vulnerable victims, and moral. Actually, they’re not." -- The Wall Street Journal, January 4 -5
Let's Ban the SAT and ACT!
That's what a coalition of civil rights lawyers wants to do in California in order to end discrimination based on merit for Latinos and African Americans. According to a report in The New Yorker, the only tests the lawyers would allow are Advanced Placement exams. The shell game of accepting test results, then distorting them to achieve a "racially balanced outcome," has been known for years at some of the most prestigious schools in the country. But two events have prompted this action in California: One is the ongoing challenge by Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard to level the playing field for Asian students, who score high on grades and tests. The other is the changing makeup of the Supreme Court, which has become more conservative in the last few years. Does anyone care that American students continue to decline in global matchups against other developed countries?
If You're White, You're Wrong
Following a growing trend in higher education, a Dartmouth professor called for mandatory white privilege courses. Dr. Emily Walton wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling for all students to take courses in white privilege and black history. She accuses white people of being afflicted with "white blindness" or a state in which racial privilege is invisible. She also claims the K-12 public schools perpetuate "white blindness" (read discrimination) by not mandating ethnic studies classes. To top it off, she equates the meritocratic system of hard work with white discrimination against minorities.
Several issues deserve to be discussed separately:
1. Did Sandusky actually perform anal rape on a pre-adolescent boy in 2002? What he did in other cases is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the charges in this case.
2. Did McQueary observe this as it was occurring or did he mistakenly confuse a physical encounter with a rape? Or did he exaggerate nine years later what he saw in 2002?
3. Was what McQueary did in 2002 morally and legally appropriate? According to his own account, he didn’t appear to take very drastic action at the time.
4. What did McQueary tell Joe Paterno and the two University officals in 2002 as compared with what the three of them remember his telling them? Memory is notoriously fallible even after ten minutes. In order to believe the account of the three University officials, we don’t have to believe that McQueary lied; his memory of the events might simply be incorrect.
5. Grand juries are well known to indict innocent people because they are influenced strongly by evidence provided only by prosecutors. (The accused person does not have an opportunity to present his case to the grand jury.) Remember that the Duke lacrosse players were indicted by a grand jury for rape at the prodding of a prosecutor who was later disbarred for improper behavior in the case.
Jackson Toby
Professor of Sociology Emeritus
Rutgers University
This argument that Paterno was unfairly fired presupposes that there was a single incident–the 2002 one–that Paterno did or did not act upon. But the grand jury report, as the media coverage of this has made clear, indicates that there were multiple incidents known to the athletic staff as occurring at the football facility. It becomes increasingly difficult to defend Paterno if his failure to act was not on the 2002 incident but in permitting Sandusky to remain hanging around the place after his retirement in 1999 when the stories kept coming up. Paterno probably did run a very first class program. But he didn’t deal with the creepy former staff member about whom stories kept circulating. That’s the failing. Sometimes you have to let your friend go when they are doing things that you don’t condone.