Arizona’s Education Department is attempting to engage the state’s children in a greater awareness and appreciation of American citizenship.
Earlier this month, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne revealed that the Arizona Department of Education would be conducting a “drawing, painting, and poster contest celebrating Citizenship.”
In a statement accompanying the news release, Horne said, “I am a strong proponent of the Six Pillars of Character which are, Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship. I am very pleased to announce this contest promoting Citizenship, which emphasizes volunteering, cooperation, being informed and voting, knowing and obeying laws, choosing to protect the safety and rights of others and doing your share to make your home and community better.”
According to the Department, there will be two tiers to the contest: K-8 students “who can create a drawing, painting or poster that conveys the trait of Citizenship,” and high school students who “create a poster that supports character values on social media using the good Citizenship pillar.” The contest is open to all Arizona K-12 students in district, charter, private, and home schools, and the deadline to turn in submissions is at the end of the year, December 31.
The Department also offers a Character Education Matching Grant, which is made available to “any public or charter school that teaches a character education curriculum pursuant to section 15-719.” Programs are expected to include a minimum of six of the following ‘character’ attributes: attentiveness, caring, citizenship, compassion, diligence, discernment, fairness, forgiveness, generosity, gratefulness, initiative, integrity, obedience, orderliness, respect, responsibility, sincerity, trustworthiness, virtue, and wisdom.
The Republican schools chief is a strong advocate for Arizona’s emphasis on character education training in schools. He noted, “I believe every school in Arizona should be using the Six Pillars of Character program to help students understand these basic characteristics that, when followed, result in students having overall strong character and classrooms that have students who respect others. This is foundational for a healthy society.”
There will be a ‘Character Education Celebration Event’ in January, where the winners of this new contest will be honored.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Two Arizona State University (ASU) professors are demanding an end to free speech rhetoric, as it tends to align with right-wing political agendas and undermine experts.
Just over a week ago, professors Richard Amesbury and Catherine O’Donnell wrote an opinion piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Dear Administrators, Enough With the Free Speech Rhetoric!: It concedes too much with right-wing agendas.” The pair argued that a greater focus on freedom of speech, or intellectual diversity, would ultimately undermine the true purpose of higher education, which they claimed was imparting the minds of experts, or “academic expertise.”
“Our contention is that calls for greater freedom of speech on campuses, however well-intentioned, risk undermining colleges’ central purpose, namely, the production of expert knowledge and understanding, in the sense of disciplinarily warranted opinion,” said Amesbury and O’Donnell. “A diversity of opinion — ‘intellectual diversity’ — isn’t itself the goal; rather, it is of value only insofar as it serves the goal of producing knowledge. On most unanswered questions, there is, at least initially, a range of plausible opinions, but answering questions requires the vetting of opinions.”
Amesbury teaches and serves as the director for the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (SHPRS). He joined ASU in 2019. Prior to ASU, Amesbury chaired Theological Ethics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and chaired the Philosophy and Religion Department at Clemson University.
O’Donnell also teaches for the SHPRS, as well as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Lincoln Center Applied Ethics, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, and SST American Studies.
In their article, the professors wrote that academia is restrained by “intellectual responsibilities,” and that the social costs of unfettered free speech were too great to merit entertainment. They argued that academia has a fiduciary responsibility to the public and therefore must vet speech, dismissing the notion that the marketplace of ideas converges on truth.
“[C]olleges are under no obligation to balance warranted, credible, true opinions with unwarranted, discredited, false ones,” stated the professor. “Only by disavowing pretensions to be the public sphere can colleges perform their critical role in relation to it.”
Amesbury and O’Donnell then argued that free speech deprived faculty of academic freedom and deprived the public of the faculty’s “regime of expertise.” They lamented that experts “enjoy no special public esteem,” and that the scholarly expertise has come to be viewed as further opinion equivalent to a “flattened-out theory of knowledge.”
“When free speech drowns out expert speech, we all suffer,” said the pair. “‘Free speech’ is what we are left with when we recognize no experts.”
Ultimately, the pair said that free speech arguments weren’t about truth-seeking but a guise for the lucrative fulfillment of particular, unscholarly, and inexpert interests. As examples, Amesbury and O’Donnell cited the University of Tennessee’s Institute of American Civics, the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center, and the University of Texas at Austin’s Civitas Institute.
“[T]he institutions themselves are peopled by faculty who serve on each other’s boards, invite and re-invite each other to give talks, appeal to the same funders, and even publish in each other’s journals and book series,” stated the professors. “[A]lthough such efforts are frequently portrayed as making colleges democratically accountable to the wishes of the public and their elected representatives, the logic of intellectual diversity arguments is toward ever greater mistrust between colleges and the public they serve.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona’s schools chief is literally turning his back to antisemitism.
Earlier this month, the Arizona Department of Education posted a picture on “X” of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne at a recent Board of Regents meeting with the caption, “Superintendent Horne will not tolerate antisemitism. When protestors started speaking in support of a terrorist organization at the Arizona Board of Regents meeting, he turned his back to hatred.”
Superintendent Horne will not tolerate antisemitism. When protestors started speaking in support of a terrorist organization at the Arizona Board of Regents meeting, he turned his back to hatred. pic.twitter.com/s2DTM6DSF5
This gesture from Horne follows a recent press conference he hosted to “denounce antisemitic and anti-American materials provided by two organizations at a high school club event that made Jewish students feel unsafe.” The high school where this action occurred at was Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale.
Horne minced no words in alerting the public to the dangers to students by the presence of these materials at this school – or any school in the state, saying, “The materials presented to these students were profoundly antisemitic in particular and anti-American, in nature. Some of the material states that ‘Palestinians have been subject to killings, torture, rape, abuse, and more for over 75 years.’ This is a ‘blood libel’ similar to the blood libels used in the Middle Ages to get people to go out and kill random Jewish people.”
In an interview with a national outlet, Horne explained why this issue has been so important to take a stand on, saying, “All of my extended family were killed in the Holocaust. So I grew up with just my parents and my sister. No grandparents, no nieces and nephews, no uncles or aunts. They were all killed. So when I see signs of antisemitism developing in the United States, you can imagine it’s something that affects me personally.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Energy executives overseeing Arizona’s utility companies stand to gain financially for adherence to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria — namely, whether they stay on track to eliminate carbon emissions by 2050.
According to Arizona Public Service’s (APS) holding company Pinnacle West (PNW) Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) report last year, they link 20 percent of compensation based on Clean Energy Commitment performance — specifically, the total number of “clean megawatts installed” over a period of three years.
Altogether, PNW’s seven executives made about $21.5 million last year.
PNW’s Clean Energy Commitment is to achieve a resource mix of 65 percent clean energy (45 percent of that coming from renewable energy) by 2030, end APS coal-fired generation by 2031, and ultimately transition completely to carbon-free electricity and eradicate all carbon emissions by 2050.
PNW’s progress on its Clean Energy Commitment has earned it a top-100 ranking with Energy Intelligence since 2019. In 2005, the company had achieved 24 percent clean energy; since 2019, they have maintained 50 percent clean energy. The company projects that they will reach 65 percent clean energy by 2030.
As part of their commitment, APS plans to add at least 2,500 megawatts of clean energy technologies such as solar and storage by 2025. In their 2022 SEC report, PNW projected the addition of 210 megawatts of utility-scale solar energy, 238 megawatts of wind energy, and 341 megawatts of energy storage. They also reported that APS had 2,400 megawatts of renewable capacity at present and over one million solar panels across their 10 grid-scale solar plants.
PNW reports that APS has been integrating ESG practices for nearly 30 years, but have undertaken extra steps in recent years to prioritize it. Their entire board “dedicates a significant amount of time to ESG matters,” and the company formed a Sustainability department to integrate ESG into everyday APS work and an ESG Executive Council to guide the company’s ESG pathway. That latter entity, the council, measures and reports on Clean Energy Commitment actions.
The company also tasked multiple committees to advance ESG: “Environmental” is handled by the Nuclear and Operating Committee, “Social” is handled by both Corporate Governance and Public Responsibility as well as Human Resources Committees, and “Governance” is handled by the Corporate Governance and Public Responsibility Committee.
The Corporate Governance and Public Responsibility Committee also reviews ESG trends that may impact the company. Earlier this year, PNW amended the committee’s charter to include oversight of climate change-related issues and strategies for response.
As for the Tucson Electric Power (TEP) and UNS Energy Corporation (UNS), their owner, Fortis, offers an ESG-related financial incentive of 10 percent for its executives. Fortis executives made over $4.5 million last year.
The ESG incentive is part of Fortis’ “sustainability and people performance,” factored for the first time last year. It carries a 40 percent performance pay incentive; in addition to ESG leadership, it includes the weighting factors of safety (10 percent); diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) (10 percent); and reliability (10 percent).
This year, Fortis raised the ESG incentive to 15 percent, and added climate and emissions priorities as well as a DEI objective.
Similar to PNW, Fortis has a 2050 net-zero carbon emissions goal, which includes a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and a 75 percent reduction by 2035. They established a Governance and Sustainability Committee to oversee their emissions reduction goals.
Fortis has planned additions of 3,500 megawatts of wind, solar, and storage energy expansions through 2035. In doing so, Fortis projected by 2032 that TEP will achieve a coal-free generation mix and eliminate the use of surface water-generated power and groundwater use by 70 percent. Additionally, TEP is scheduled to have more than 40 percent of its power derived from wind, solar, and battery storage by 2030, and then over 60 percent by 2033.
Last year, Fortis amended its $1.3 billion revolving credit facility to become a sustainability-linked loan; meaning, its pricing adjustments are now linked to goals related to carbon emissions and board diversity.
Both APS and TEP are part of the California Independent System Operator (ISO) Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM), established in 2014. The WEIM allows participants to buy and sell renewable energy power based on need, and offers visibility of neighboring grids. If one utility has excess hydroelectric, solar, or wind power, the ISO will deliver that energy where needed elsewhere.
APS entered the WEIM in 2016, and TEP entered in 2022. Also members are the Salt River Project (SRP), joined in 2020, and the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) Desert Southwest Region, joined in 2023.
As reported earlier this month, the world’s largest globalist investors are now backing the ESG push across Arizona’s utility companies.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) gained a significant victory this week over Democrat Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
On Monday, the AZGOP announced that the ‘Patriot Party’ “failed to secure enough valid signatures to qualify for the 2024 ballot,” crediting the “unwavering dedication of over 50 volunteers who…meticulously reviewed over 37,000 signatures by hand.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: AZGOP Succeeds in Upholding Integrity of the Petition Signing Process
In that communication, the AZGOP explained that the “Liberal Democrat Adrian Fontes quietly and drastically changed his procedures on political party petition filings and denied observer access and public records requests by the Arizona Republican Party.” According to the AZGOP, this occurred when Secretary Fontes allegedly failed “to notify the political parties with ballot access that an appointment had been made by the ‘Patriot Party’ to file signatures on their Petition for Political Party recognition.”
In their release, the AZGOP asserted that Fontes’ actions with the ‘Patriot Party’ filing was “a big departure from what (he) did when ‘No Labels’ filed,” adding that the Secretary’s motivation in running his office is “to help the Democrat Party and hamper (Arizona Republicans).”
The AZGOP outlined the process by which Secretary Fontes “conducted the No Labels filing,” which included the following steps:
The Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian parties of Arizona were informed about the filing appointment ahead of time.
All three recognized political parties were permitted to have observers present for the entire intake and SOS scanning of petitions with full observer coverage for chain of custody transition.
The scans of the petitions, as filed, prior to SOS processing, were made available the morning after filing through a secure fileshare provided by SOS.
The fileshare to which counties upload their processed samples was made available to all recognized political parties so that they could follow the filing process throughout.
As the release concluded, the AZGOP demanded that Secretary Fontes “restore the long history of impartiality that existed in the SOS’s office under Secretary Reagan, Secretary Bennett, Secretary Brewer and others.” The party asked for the Secretary of State’s Office to “fulfill (their) public records requests in a timely manner and maintain a fair and unbiased process for all filings made in (the) office.”
The AZGOP threatened Fontes with litigation if he were to “move to validate (the ‘Patriot Party’) as (an actual party) regardless in a partisan effort to hamper the Republican Party. That threat appears to be neutralized thanks to the State Republican Party’s hard work to go through the signatures itself.
With the saga of the petition signatures moving to the rearview window, the AZGOP is focusing on an extremely important election season in 2024, boasting of a “grassroots army of over 5,500 precinct committeemen in Arizona, combined with an additional 20,000 party volunteers.” The AZGOP noted that Arizona Republicans are “united in our mission to register more voters, champion family values, strengthen the economy, and advocate for better educational outcomes and parental choice.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
Just as with the rest of the activist community, school board members are taking sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Chandler Unified School District (CUSD) Governing Board member Patti Serrano helped organize the appearance of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-12), the only Palestinian-American in Congress, scheduled for last Friday at Arizona State University (ASU). The event has since been canceled. In an email obtained by AZ Free News, Serrano notified Arizona Palestine Network subscribers of the Tlaib event.
Serrano sent the email in her capacity as the East Valley coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and as a co-sponsor of Tlaib’s “Palestine is an American Issue.”
The bottom of Serrano’s email identified other affiliated groups behind the canceled event: Arizona Palestine Network; Palestine Community Center of Arizona; Council on American Islamic Relations of Arizona; Jewish Voice for Peace – Tucson; Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP) at ASU; Arizona Palestinian Solidarity Alliance; Arizona Democratic Party Progressive Council; National Lawyers Guild at ASU; Central Arizona National Lawyers Guild Attorney Chapter; and Middle Eastern Law Students Association at ASU.
Since ASU rejected Tlaib’s appearance on campus, student and community activists convened to protest, claiming freedom of speech was denied. In a statement, ASU said that the event was organized by groups not affiliated with the university and outside university policies and procedures, and therefore not permissible.
“Organizers of events using ASU facilities must be properly registered with ASU and must meet all university requirements for crowd management, parking, security, and insurance. In addition, the events must be produced in a way which minimizes disruption to academic and other activities on campus,” said ASU. “The event featuring Congresswoman Tlaib was planned and produced by groups not affiliated with ASU and was organized outside of ASU policies and procedures. Accordingly, that event will not take place today on the ASU Tempe campus.”
Tlaib didn’t issue any public statements following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Only after Israel issued a response to Hamas in Gaza did Tlaib call upon the Biden administration to advocate for a cease-fire. Tlaib also introduced a resolution facilitating a cease-fire.
The Biden Administration is failing in its duty to protect all civilian and American lives in Gaza.
Tlaib was censured for her repeated endorsement of the controversial slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” largely understood to be a call for the eradication of Israel from the land.
From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.
In addition to PDA, Serrano also served as an academic research project director for ASU.
Upon becoming a CUSD governing board member earlier this year, Serrano took her oath of office not on the Bible but on “Life is a Banquet,” a book containing the sexual awakening and explicit fantasies of a fictional 17-year-old and his peers, written by ASU Professor and Drag Story Hour Arizona co-founder David Boyles.
Serrano has led a number of widely-reported protests against elected leaders to advocate for various progressive issues over the years.
In 2021, Serrano was one of the activists that rallied, marched, and sat in on the office of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) to demand an end to the filibuster.
In 2020, Serrano helped organize a protest outside the Arizona Republican Party headquarters demanding greater government action to counter COVID-19, such as mask mandates.
In 2018, Serrano went to former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake’s Washington, D.C. office to demand he oppose the confirmation of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, based on the sexual assault allegations.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
