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.
If you want a degree from a state school in Oregon, and you can’t get into the highly selective, prestigious Oregon Institute of Technology, you don’t really have a choice. OSU is the college for most- programming and computer science is apparently more highly rated from U of O- STEM field studies.
Oh no.
This ‘Accusation Circus’ assembled by the University of Oregon is not, in any way an attempt by the Offended to “make the world around them a better, more inclusive place.” This is a part of a continued and concerted effort to make the world around them an absolutely intolerant place.
Big Brother (and all his various toadies and minions) is watching…and watching very carefully there at Oregon’s Stepford U. And for what do all these Informers, these newly minted Handicapper Generals watch? Why they watch for Error: they listen for Offense; they note Bias in all its various forms & shapes and they tally the offenders.
And what is the source of this omnipresent Error? It is freedom, of course. For when the Unenlightened…the Wrong Thinkers…the Flawed and the Foolish are given freedom, they think bad things….they use inappropriate words in uncomfortable ways and they do what must not be done. As a result, when we encounter their wrong thoughts & ill words, we feel bad, or hurt, or offended, or discomfited, or uncomfortable, or just a bit out of sorts — our bellies all woosie.
And obviously that must stop if we are to achieve the paradise envisioned by those who bless & staff these glorious Bias Response Teams.
Of course, like all those who believe the world can be perfected in the here & now, they fail utterly to understand that Life, itself, is offensive. Its slings and arrows, full of outrageous fortune, beset us all, every single day. We see things we find disconcerting; we hear things which disturb our increasingly fine-tuned sensibilities — worse, we do and say things, in our deluded freedom, that inevitably someone, somewhere will find to be offensive. But, thank God, that is how it should be.
Indeed, that is how it must be. Freedom guarantees that our world is full of people doing and saying things that we might not …. just as we do and say things that the Other might not. That is the beauty of Freedom. And what we see at Oregon and the rest of the totalitarian one-hundred is, tragically, the furthest thing from freedom.
As the Chief Reporter for one of the very first Bias Response Teams put it, “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”
Most college students today have never been in a situation where they had to deal with adversity on their own.
Helicopter parents, participation trophies, zero competition in primary education, 1001 anti-bullying campaigns, and a host of other protections from reality. These people have either had someone else to deal with any difficulties, or they were so coddled that those difficulties were squashed before they even realized they were there.
It’s not surprising that they not only lack the skills to deal with problems themselves, but also expect authority figures to immediately fix every minor difficulty they run into.