Any sensible person can see that there is something seriously wrong with many American universities.
For several decades many of our most prestigious seats of learning have become hostile to free speech and genuine inquiry. Speech codes have been introduced to prevent so-called ‘microaggressions.’
Speakers that do not subscribe to ‘woke’ orthodoxies have been ‘de-platformed.’ Those that do get invited on to campus risk being mobbed, as recently happened to a federal judge at Stanford and Riley Gaines at San Francisco State.
Intellectual inquiry, too, has narrowed. Anyone presenting ideas outside the approved parameters risks having their career terminated. (See what happened to Harvard’s then-president, Larry Summers, in 2006 when he suggested that genetics might help explain why there are more male than female scientists.)
Then on October 7th, Hamas slaughtered over a thousand Israelis, most of them civilians. Far from condemning the massacre, student groups at Harvard, Cornell and other universities rushed to issue statements attacking Israel.
Anti-Israel protesters on campus made statements and chanted slogans that went beyond being merely rude or unpleasant. Some seemed antisemitic. Others sounded like they were calling for a Jewish genocide.
How come those campus speech codes suddenly no longer applied? Having spent years policing what could be said to avoid ‘microaggressions,’ where were the university authorities when Jewish students faced actual aggression?
Giving evidence before a Congressional committee the other week, Claudine Gay of Harvard appeared to suggest that however unpalatable the protesters might be, it was all part of their right to freedom of speech. “Our university embraces a commitment to free expression” she said. Both she, and Liz Magill of Penn, failed to confirm that calls for genocide of Jews violated the university’s code of conduct.
Free speech appears to apply at these universities when you want to call for genocide, but not if you want to talk about genetics.
Watching both Gay and Magill give evidence, they both appeared out of their depth. I may not have been the only person left wondering how either of them was appointed to their respective roles in the first place. (Some have unkindly suggested it may have something to do with ‘woke’ hiring practices.)
The problems at US universities run deeper than just a handful of poor appointments.
Many US universities, including some right here in Mississippi, have DEI, or Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, programs. This needs to stop. Now.
DEI can sound entirely harmless. Who could possibly be against supporting different groups of individuals, including people of different races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, and sexual orientations? Pretty soon, however, DEI proves to be something much more sinister.
In the name of diversity, some US universities have been systematically discriminating against some Americans on the basis of their race, limiting admissions to ‘overrepresented’ groups. In the name of equity, US universities have set out to address structural inequalities – historic and current – that advantage some and disadvantage others. In the name of inclusion, those with the wrong views are excluded.
DEI is flawed because it demands we think in terms of groups of individuals, rather than just individuals. Universities that apply DEI no longer treat everyone on campus equally, but on the basis of their immutable characteristics. DEI is a fundamentally un-American ideal.
DEI is also a formula almost guaranteed to produce institutional incompetence. Imagine, for a moment, that your favorite football or basketball team was to be run on the basis of DEI. If they recruited players on the basis of something other than their ability to play the game, they would lose. It makes no sense to run a public university that way.
What is to be done?
Last week, the Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, showed the way. He issued an executive order banning DEI programs in public universities. Mississippi needs to do something similar.
An executive order in Mississippi could prohibit public universities from using state funds, property or resources for DEI initiatives.
To be sure, if the Governor was to do this in Mississippi there would be howls of protests. Various pundits would whine. It is what pundits do. Some will scream “supremacist!” There is nothing supremacist about insisting every American is treated equally. Others will warn that unless we continue to pay DEI staff six figure salaries Mississippi will somehow regress.
I suspect most Mississippi parents wanting the best for their children would breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the sort of scenes we witnessed at some of those so-called ‘elite’ institutions never happen here.
If we want to stop the ‘woke’ takeover of our institutions, we need to act now.
Northern Arizona University (NAU) will play a key role in an effort to validate indigenous knowledge as scientific knowledge using millions in federal funding.
Ora Marek-Martinez, NAU’s associate vice president of the Office for Native American Initiatives and assistant professor of anthropology, will be part of the University of Massachussetts’ newly-established Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS). Marek-Martinez will serve as the CBIKS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) & Ethics Co-Lead for the center’s Southwest Hub.
Biden’s National Science Foundation (NSF) gave $30 million to CBIKS, a grant lasting five years. CBIKS may qualify for additional federal funding come 2028.
CBIKS researchers will focus initially on collaborating with indigenous Nanwalek Alaskans to study their traditional methods of salmon population preservation, indigenous Hawaiians to study their agricultural and food waste practices, and indigenous Australians to study environmental signs of climate change. Sonya Atalay, CBIKS Director and UMass Amherst Provost Professor of Anthropology, said that current scientific approaches were limited.
“CBIKS is about recognizing that Indigenous knowledge systems carry tremendous information and value, and it’s shortsighted to think that current research practices founded on Western knowledge systems are the only or ‘right’ approach,” said Atalay.
In one of CBIK’s initial postings, Atalay gave credence to the belief that rocks are alive, per indigenous knowledge.
Atalay criticized Michigan archaeologists for “disregard[ing] Native understanding of the rock as an animate being.” The rock in question bears Native American petroglyphs.
The rock wasn’t available for comment.
In order to obtain more indigenous knowledge beyond the consciousness of rocks, CPIKS will interact with 57 indigenous communities through its eight regional hubs across the country and in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
The initiative is part of a larger effort by the Biden administration to prioritize “indigenous knowledge” into “research, policies, and decision making,” as noted in a memo from the Office of Science and Technology Policy issued last November. The office, newly assigned cabinet-level status by the Biden administration, further declared indigenous knowledge to be “an aspect of the best available science” and directed its inclusion in “Highly Influential Scientific Assessments.” Those assessments directly shape costly federal policies.
The Biden administration wasn’t the first to attempt to assign parity to indigenous knowledge in scientific inquiry: as Washington Free Beacon reported, Canadian researchers reported adverse results after their country incorporated indigenous knowledge into policymaking, ranging from counterproductive at best to dangerous at worst.
“[T]he acceptance of spiritual beliefs as ‘knowledge’ by governments was dangerous because it could be used to justify any activity, including actions that were environmentally destructive,” stated a 2006 academic assessment.
One apparent outcome of catering to indigenous knowledge occurred when Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) deputy director M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, delayed the release of water to combat the Maui fires because he insisted that officials obtain permission from a local taro farm. Taro is integral to Native Hawaiian agriculture and tradition.
Washington Free Beacon also reported some of the early fruits of the Biden administration’s indigenous knowledge labors: reinterpreting time as cyclical rather than sequential, entertaining proposals to pay tribal elders to assist in federal rulemaking, scrapping peer review processes, acknowledging alleged interdimensional relations between animals and humans,
NAU’s involvement in the Biden initiative aligns with the university’s policy of prioritizing Native American individuals in admissions and employment.
In February, NAU established a program providing free tuition regardless of income to Native Americans while requiring a financial threshold for students of all other races. They also pledged $10 million to “indigenous,” or prioritize indigenous people, in their curriculum. The equitable treatment of Native Americans resulted in a boost to the university’s enrollment.
The Office for Native American Initiatives, which Marek-Martinez helps lead, played an integral role in these equity efforts.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The assistant dean of University of Arizona (UArizona) law school admits that they have an ongoing system in place that effectively curtails the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling prohibiting affirmative action.
The SCOTUS ruling ended race-based admissions in June, requiring colorblind criteria. Cary Lee Cluck, UArizona James E. Rogers College of Law assistant dean for admissions and financial aid, admitted that they still factor race in admissions during last month’s Association of American Law Schools (AALS) conference on affirmative action. Cluck was a key panelist tasked with discussing how law schools can achieve diversity without affirmative action.
Cluck shared that UArizona’s law school relies on a “holistic review” of applicants. In defining what a holistic review entails, Cluck explained that their admissions team reviews college transcripts and resumes to better understand what an applicant is all about, within the context of meeting the law school’s diversity goals. Cluck added that applicants who volunteer more information about themselves in their application are more likely to benefit, specifically citing race.
“When I say ‘holistic file review,’ we’re looking at all of those little pieces of things that we’ve asked you to give us and, some that are optional, that you can give us to get a fuller picture of who you are as a person,” said Cluck. “[I]ncluding other types of diversity beyond or alongside, you know, talking about your racial background is a good thing because it gives us, like we’ve been talking about, another piece or many more pieces of the puzzle to consider who you are in a holistic manner and trying to make a decision about you.”
Cluck said that they don’t proactively ask for a diversity statement, but do consider them when they’re submitted by applicants.
“It’s another piece of the puzzle […] that we take into consideration, when we are reading the application,” said Cluck. “They’re not always about racial discrimination or gender discrimination, but they can be a diversity statement about a lot of different things. They are very useful in the application process.”
It’s likely that applicants include a diversity statement into either materials containing their personal statement or “other considerations.” The law school requires applicants to submit a personal statement concerning personal characteristics and qualities, education and work experiences, talents and special interests, socioeconomic background, involvement in community affairs and public services, and “any other circumstances that have helped shape your life or given it direction.” The law school admissions team also reviews an unspecified slew of “other considerations.”
Both UArizona College of Law students and faculty sit on the admissions committee, but Cluck is the final arbiter.
In response to the SCOTUS ruling, UArizona issued a press release noting that Arizona law has already prohibited the consideration of race or ethnicity in university admissions since 2010. It appears that the university and its law school have had 13 years to find a workaround to the prohibition.
Watch the AALS conference below:
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Phoenix Police Department (PPD) is focusing its recruitment efforts on bringing in more women and diversity staff.
PPD announced they wanted female officers to make up 30 percent of their force. Presently, women make up 14 percent of PPD’s force. The push by PPD is part of the 30×30 Initiative, a national effort to increase the number of females in police departments. PPD signed a pledge in January to fulfill the initiative.
The pledge comes at a time when PPD continues to sustain significant staffing shortages. Although PPD departures from Jan. to April were less than they were during the same time period last year according to PPD data, PPD still has over 560 vacancies to fill. Vacancies totaled 500 last June.
In an interview with 12 News, a PPD spokesman credited the reduction in departures to the $20,000 raise given to officers.
PPD credits Commander Aimee Smith for persuading the department to sign the initiative. Smith has served in PPD since 1997, working 11 years in patrol as both undercover and investigative positions, five years as a sergeant, four years as a lieutenant, and for the past five years as a commander. Smith also teaches as an adjunct criminal justice professor at Rio Salado College within the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD).
PPD follows in the footsteps of other police departments across the state who have already signed onto the 30×30 Initiative: Tempe, Mesa, Apache Junction, Gilbert, Queen Creek, Tucson, University of Arizona, and Arizona State University. Over 320 law enforcement departments in the U.S. have signed onto the initiative
The Secret Service, Marshals Service, Customs and Border Protection, Department of Agriculture, Supreme Court of the United States Police, IRS Criminal Investigation division, and FBI have also signed on to the 30×30 Initiative.
The 30×30 Initiative encourages special accommodations for women, including nursing stations for female officers. Some departments, like in Mesa, are developing special accommodations for women: medical benefits for life, alternative work schedules, part-time positions, and around-the-clock daycare.
The 30×30 Initiative was launched to establish “gender equity,” over equality, by artificially reducing natural disparities in law enforcement departments. The initiative is based on a Critical Race Theory (CRT) approach of weighing individuals based on intersectionality.
“Each of a woman officer’s many identities — race and ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, and more — defines her experience, and often multiplies her exposure to discrimination,” states the initiative. “Black women and other women of color, in particular, face compounding experiences of bias and discrimination in law enforcement because of their race or ethnicity, in addition to their gender. Transgender and gender non-conforming officers face discrimination on the basis of their gender identity and presentation. Other identities, too, shape a woman officer’s experience in law enforcement: a mother or caregiver may require a modified schedule for caretaking duties, or a pregnant officer may require certain physical accommodations.”
The 30×30 Initiative issues a lengthy list of action items that it ranks “essential,” “strongly recommended,” and “recommended.” Those that are deemed essential are considered integral to fulfilling the pledge to the initiative.
Essential action items include: collecting gender, race/ethnicity, and age data on sworn officer applicants, hires, promotion applicants, promotion recipients, and separations and retirements. Also deemed essential was bias training for individuals seated on promotional panels, and for recruitment content to exactly reflect the community demographics.
The 30×30 Initiative declares that “latent bias” may exist if a department has more female applicants than female hires, and that “gender-relevant issues” may exist if a greater number of female officers voluntarily leave than men.
The initiative justifies purposeful prioritization of hiring female staff over males based on research showing that females present a reduced risk of excessive force incidents, make fewer arrests, and are named in fewer lawsuits and complaints.
However, other research shows that female officers are at a greater risk of enduring assault and sustaining injuries when responding to calls.
The 30×30 initiative works in partnership with the New York University School of Law Policing Project, the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives (NAWLEE), Crime and Justice Institute, Police Executive Research Forum, National Policing Institute, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, International Association of Women Police (IAWP), NOBLE National Headquarters, Women Leaders in Law Enforcement Foundation, and Women in Federal Law Enforcement.
The initiative receives funding from Arnold Ventures, a progressive philanthropic organization, and Mark43, a law enforcement-oriented technology company.
Arnold Ventures was founded by John Arnold, a billionaire hedge fund trader, and his wife, Laura.
Mark43’s angel investors included Goldman Sachs, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher, and General David Petraeus.
Mark43’s co-founders — Scott Crouch, Matt Polega, and Florian Mayr — attended Harvard University together in the early 2000s. Polega interned for three months for major defense technologies contractor Raytheon in the summer of 2012 while co-founding Mark43.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Jonathan Haidt is a professor at NYU, an acknowledged leader in the field of social psychology, and a champion of free speech. He recently faced a requirement that all scholars wishing to present research to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology were to submit a statement explaining “whether and how this submission advanced the equity, inclusion, and antiracism goals of SPSP.”
He resigned instead. This was no small sacrifice, but Haidt takes his principles seriously. Moreover, as he pointed out on his way out the door, “Most academic work has nothing to do with diversity.”
Scholars working, for example, on ultra-bright, nano-structured photo emission electron studies would be required to present their “anti-racist” bona fides. Academics in all disciplines, as well as administrators, would be forced to “betray their quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth by spinning, twisting or otherwise inventing some tenuous connection to diversity.”
This is not just another quibble among pointy-headed academics. Refusing jobs to dissenters is meant to quash the last remnant of open debate in American higher education.
Our universities, particularly the elite, were once celebrated as sanctuaries for unpopular ideas, where free discourse was sacrosanct and none need face fear of censure over doctrinal disputes.
But when the Left achieved numerical domination in the majority of universities over recent decades, their mindset evolved into rooting out the few dissenters in their midst, or, better yet, blocking them from getting a job in the first place.
The reason so-called anti-racists feel justified in forcing their views into unrelated disciplines, such as the hard sciences, is that they view the entire world through the lens of race. Ibram S. Kendi, the leading proponent of anti-racism, writes “there is no such thing as a non-racist or race-neutral policy.”
Their opinions on everything from raising taxes (good) to merit-based promotion in schools (bad) are race-based. It follows that if you disagree with their views, then you’re a racist.
The philosophy of anti-racism is profoundly anti-education and anti-merit. Colleges and universities are less and less committed to the search for truth or the transmission of knowledge. Instead, they are in thrall to the endless dictates of the ironically titled “social justice” bureaucracy.
DEI offices, larger than many academic departments (and better paid), are now sprouting in the halls of academia. 25% of all universities now mandate DEI statements from job applicants, and 40% more are considering jumping on the bandwagon.
DEI statements are loyalty oaths to race-based ideologies, similar to those required by authoritarian regimes throughout history. They often demand evidence of the applicant’s past support of such notions as Critical Race Theory, which holds that an individual’s tendency to racial bias can be reliably determined from their skin color.
To our state’s shame, Arizona’s universities have enthusiastically thrown themselves into the front lines of this movement. According to a Goldwater Institute report, Arizona State University last fall required DEI loyalty oaths for 81% of all job applicants. NAU was at 73% while the University of Arizona demanded 28% bend the knee to be considered for a job.
Such required ideological allegiance makes a mockery of the value of any research these aspiring scholars may do. The results are predetermined. In 2020, two major research organizations and 16 scientific societies issued a joint statement that researchers “must stand against the notion that systemic racism does not exist.” No research was cited.
Topics like urban crime, immigration, and welfare fraud are rarely studied when only the approved narrative is permitted anyway. Ignoring data inconsistent with the agenda gives us startling conclusions as when “scientists” proclaimed that family dinners and church services were COVID “superspreaders,” while massive racial protests and pro-abortion rallies were no problem.
The Left has a way with words. Diversity now means rigid conformity. Equity stands for unearned equal outcomes. Inclusion means exclusion of dissenters.
But Americans are starting to catch on. Outraged parents are protesting overt racism in school curricula. A growing number of universities and corporations are pulling back on DEI mandates. In Arizona, SCR 1024 is a proposed constitutional amendment that will hopefully be on the ballot next election. It would eliminate racist instruction in our public schools.
Take heart.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
