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.
“At least $6.5B” unreported. Why should we not cut off funding to those institutions that failed to report and place it elsewhere in academia. We might have a pause in research, but talent will follow money every time. When you got them by the checkbook, their hearts, minds, and residences will follow.
“One would think that the government would want to encourage financial transfers to American universities from China”
Do you think China is handing out this money from the goodness of their hearts?
Or are they getting stuff in return — and what? Do not forget that Zaosong Zheng was arrested at Logan with 21 vials of something concealed in a sock in his luggage. It’s rumored that the Chinese actually stole the Corona Virus from a Canadian lab. And this is biological warfare, we’re not talking about the basic patent piracy and such which they are notorious for.
Yes, Higher Education has essentially declared war on half the country and as that’s the half that’s currently in power, Higher Education ought to anticipate consequences of its vitriol. But that’s not this — they found the man with 21 vials of something that he admitted to have stolen from Beth Israel Deaconess….
The Harvard/Charles Lieber matter has the potential of being considerably more serious than it might appear at first glance.
The US Attorney states that “Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China.” Reportedly this was biological material used in cancer research that Zheng had stolen from a lab at what was then the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center* — a primary teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.
Yes, that Harvard….
The US Attorney added that “Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy.”
Stating that she was currently in China, the US Attorney continued that she is
“a Lieutenant of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the armed forces of the People’s Republic of China and member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On her J-1 visa application, Ye falsely identified herself as a “student” and lied about her ongoing military service at the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), a top military academy directed by the CCP. It is further alleged that while studying at Boston University’s (BU) Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering from October 2017 to April 2019, Ye continued to work as a PLA Lieutenant completing numerous assignments from PLA officers such as conducting research, assessing U.S. military websites and sending U.S. documents and information to China.”
It was initially reported that both Zheng and Ye were associated with Dr. Charles Lieber and worked in his Harvard lab (in Cambridge, as opposed to the one in Wuhan which Harvard apparently didn’t even know about). At this point, it isn’t clear what relationship there is between the three, if any.
And yes, that Wuhan — the Chinese city that is ground zero of the Corona Virus.
The Wuhan University of Technology is where Liebar established his second lab and spent “not less than nine months a year” — somehow without Harvard ever knowing about it. Maybe — like you really don’t notice that the chair of a fairly significant department isn’t on campus “not less than nine months a year”?!?
It gets worse — the Wuhan University of Technology is where China reportedly is working on Biological Warfare — in violation of International law. That’s what makes the smuggling of pathogens so scary — it isn’t just the theft of the intellectual property but that they may be potentially making things more virulent and more lethal. (And we don’t yet know where the Corona Virus came from….)
Oh, and Charles Lieber — his research involves nanotechnology for mind control. It has potential for good (e.g. with Parkinson’s disease) but in the hands of the ChiComs, ummm….
* Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has since merged with the Lahey Clinic and is now known as Beth Israel Lahey Health. An interesting aspect of this is that Lahey is one of the main teaching hospitals of Tufts Medical School….
A couple of odd things in this piece.
“The Journal does not explain what, if anything, the money was intended for. What we do know is that it has not been used to lower tuition costs for students.”
Well, why would anyone expect China and Russia to donate money to Harvard and Yale to lower tuition for American students?
“The Journal says that some universities are dismissing the idea that national security might be compromised by accepting huge payments from foreign governments.”
The question is not whether accepting the donations compromise national security, or even whether they are illegal — as far as I know, they are not. The question is whether the universities failed to report them properly. The universities are claiming that the federal laws — or regulations? — are so unclear as to be difficult or impossible to know what is required to comply with them.
By all means, if Lieber ilegally lied about his dealings with China, then he probably deserves what he will get both from the U.S. government and from Harvard. But let’s not have a witch hunt.
One would think that the government would want to encourage financial transfers to American universities from China, given the huge imbalance in trade with that country. The government claims that China hinders imports in goods and services from the United States.
It is hard not to suspect that at least part of what is going on involves a vendetta against American academia, given that it is overwhelmingly anti- or at least not pro-Trump. The same holds for the Trump administration’s repeated absurd moves to cut science funding at American universities.
This seems like a really dumb way to advance the well-being and power of the United States.
“By all means, if Lieber ilegally lied about his dealings with China, then he probably deserves what he will get both from the U.S. government and from Harvard. But let’s not have a witch hunt.” Probably? What witch hunt? It’s hard not to suspect that “Jonathan” is a troll, if not in the pay of China. This website has repeatedly pointed out the misuse of government funding for duplicative, sterile and non-reproducible “science” . What’s absurd in attempting to rein in useless, if not criminal, squandering of public funds? This one does not think that the government should want to encourage “ilegal” theft or purchase of our intellectual property by a potential adversary.