The Time Is Now: Abolish the Department of Education

The present essay is an attempt to make the case for the elimination of the Department of Education.

Why pick on that Department? There are two reasons. One, it was established 31 years ago. We got along without it up until the year of our Lord 1978; we can get along without it now.

But why not pick on Veteran’s Affairs and Homeland Security? They came along even later, so, following a “last in, first out” argument, they should be abolished first. Sorry, they will have to wait. Each department deserves its own moment in the sun.

The second reason for choosing the Educrats for elimination is that they are now in the news, and every op-ed writer worth his salt knows full well there is a journalistic prohibition about writing on any topic that does not have a “peg.” No one, it would appear, ever wants to hear about anything not already heavily discussed in the media.

So, what’s up with the Department of Education? Why are they now hogging up all that ink? First, a little background.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, those accused of rape or sexual harassment on campus were dealt with approximately as they would have been in any other non-university context. There would have been due process, the presumption of innocence, the right for the defense to confront the accuser, the right to an unbiased judge, the right for the defendant to hire a lawyer, and other such hoary traditions of justice.

The underlying principle, then, was that it was better that 10 criminals go unpunished, than one innocent person be found guilty.

But in 2011, a “Dear Colleague” Title IX letter came from the Obama administration. It swept away virtually all of those ancient protections for the accused. Here, the even-handed procedures of the courts were deemed too favorable to accused rapists and harassers at universities. This is more than curious; in the past, left-liberals had insisted upon the right of legal aid for the poor. Evidently, that does not apply to the accused on campus. Are there no poor male students?

Betsy DeVos, secretary of education, pretty much rescinded all that and “turned back the clock” to the pre-“Dear Colleague” institutional arrangements. Those of us who believe that justice is justice is justice, whether on the mean streets or the campus quad, certainly welcome this alteration. Yet, that positive change is not enough to save the Department from abolition.

The Department of Education should disappear, simply, because each university, each business, each person ought to be able to impose whatever rules of justice they wish on all people and institutions they deal with voluntarily. Suppose I set up a grocery store and announce that if there is any altercation between me and a shopper, the matter will be settled with the flip of a coin, or dice, or chicken entrails, or tea leaves, or based on my own subjective interpretation. Do I or do I not have the right to impose that rule? Of course I do—at least in a free society. If you, gentle customer, do not want to abide by that, take your business elsewhere.

The same applies to every institution, including those of higher learning. DeVos, well-intentioned as she may have been, was imposing a one-size-fits-all rule on some 4,000 colleges and universities in the nation.

Obama’s Dear Colleague letter threatened to withhold funds from schools that disobeyed him. But the same charge can be made against DeVos’ new rules. Both are in the business of imposing their view on what is right with the threat of withholding other people’s money from recipients.

We got along without the Department of Education before 1979 and we can do so again. The value of a college education will not disappear if the federal government takes a hands-off approach.

Both DeVos and Obama are educational “authoritarians.” Both want awesome power over the educational decisions of thousands of universities.” Just because the DeVos’ concept of justice is by far the more reasonable one does not mean she has the right to impose on all voluntary transactions. With the Department of Education in place, Obama-era guidelines will return when the Democrats next occupy the White House. Without the Department, universities will be able to compete with one another based on their standards for misconduct and justice as well as on the basis of the more traditional educational issues.

Suppose both Obama’s and DeVos’s strictures were struck down and free enterprise reigned in this vital part of our economy. All institutions of higher learning were now allowed to adopt whichever policy they desired in this regard. Which would pass the market test?

Undoubtedly, DeVos would win, hands down. Other things equal, many parents would be unlikely to send their male children to an Obama University; instead, they would select a DeVos College. This difference might tip the balance and lead in the direction of all-female student bodies for those which employed the Obama rules. But many customers prefer co-education. This effect would mitigate in favor of DeVos rules.

The annual budget of this department is some $81 billion. I know of some taxpayers who would rather keep those funds in their own pockets.

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Ivy League College Decides to Embrace Black Lives Matter in a Problematic Way

Cornell University student Avery Bower blasted the Student Activities Funding Commission (SAFC) for donating $10,000 to the Cornell Students for Black Lives fundraiser. According to Bower's letter to the editor in the Cornell Sun, this was the largest sum of money given to any student organization, even though the university didn't officially recognize the group. After all, the group was formed a short two weeks prior.

Bower, rightfully, takes issue with three main points: 1) that student funds are being used for the fundraiser that will eventually be divided among Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, Communities United for Police Reform, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Southside Community Center and Tompkins County Showing Up for Racial Justice; 2) students had no prior knowledge of the decision; 3) SAFC supported an overtly political organization.

While organizations put in years of hard work and dedication to work their way up to performance tier status, Cornell Students for Black Lives has springboarded beyond the upper echelon of student organizations. Despite not even being a registered student organization, they have received $2,500 more than the highest tier student organization receives in an entire semester. In just one donation to their fundraiser, they are now better funded than any performance tier organization on campus. Yet this money was not given as funding to a registered organization, it was a donation to a fundraiser organized by students. Even more questionable, the SAFC, entirely funded by students’ activity fees, used your money to do it. The SAFC ought to answer for this unprecedented use of student funds.

Cornell Students for Black Lives stated two weeks ago that the money raised will be evenly divided among five political activist organizations: Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, Communities United for Police Reform, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Southside Community Center and Tompkins County Showing Up for Racial Justice. The issue of racial justice is a matter of universal concern and for many it is extremely personal. All these organizations have pledged themselves to this noble cause. However, this does not give the SAFC license to support organizations with overtly political objectives. These organizations speak for a variety of radical objectives well beyond the scope of racial justice, and the SAFC has made the dubious decision to endorse their actions with students’ funds.

Bower stated he took issue with the SAFC endorsing Black Lives Matter, something he would oppose if it was done for a right-leaning organization, like the National Rifle Association or the Federalist Society.

"The student activity fees we pay are meant to fund just that: Cornell student activities. This fee is not mandatory so that students in charge of the SAFC can fund political causes, no matter how worthy they are deemed," Bower wrote.

The student also brought up a solid point: students are free to donate their money to whatever causes they choose to support. Using mandatory student funds when the political beliefs don't represent every single student shouldn't even be on the table.

"The decision to donate was made by the SAFC leadership, a group of students trusted with responsibly allocating our money. Money meant to fund the over 500 registered student organizations at Cornell, not charities and political action committees from outside the Cornell community," he explained. "The SAFC has broken the trust of every student who is required to pay the fee when they chose to make a clear and deliberate statement by donating to this fundraiser. At best it is making a political statement using the money of unwilling participants, at worst it is a deliberate mismanagement of student activity fee funds."

It's not surprising that student government organizations are using mandatory funds to pick and choose what causes they find worthy. Sadly, social justice warriors tend to get their start in schools and on student government boards. It's their way or the highway. But if a pro-gun group asked for funds for targets and range fees, would that be approved? If a pro-life group asked for funds to post on-campus displays of what aborted babies look like? Would those funds be approved? Doubtful.

It needs to be all or none: either every political stance gets collective money thrown at it or no organization does. It can't be cherry-picked.

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Education: Australia risks squandering a lucrative export - and a diplomatic opportunity

There are a few things Australia is really good at. Most of them are resources, given to us through good fortune and geographical circumstance, we dig them up and send them all over the world, earning about $180 billion a year in the process.

A look down the top 10 list of Australia's exports - a roll call of the country's areas of comparative advantage – puts education at number three, tourism at number five, and mostly rocks in between.

Iron ore makes good steel but does little for exporting Australia's values or influence. Education does. Now it appears we may be squandering it.

Historically, the flow of people for educational exchange in Western democracies is seen as a way of transferring democratic values to non-democratic regions of the world.

There is no larger non-democratic market than China. At Australia's top universities they account for 60 per cent of all international enrolments, or 110,000 students. It is a massive market – worth $3.1 billion a year to the top 10 universities alone − and with many international students coming from more privileged backgrounds than average, a huge strategic opportunity to influence the potential future leaders of industry and government.

On Friday, the Business Council of Australia's Asia Taskforce published a report that found the single greatest post-COVID-19 opportunity for the Australian economy lies in Asia. China is the only G20 economy and along with Vietnam, one of the few economies in the world currently forecast to show growth in 2020.

"Australia must maintain a comprehensive and multi-faceted economic relationship with China in a strategy which focuses on the national interest but based on the principle of “China and” rather than “China or," the taskforce said.

"A challenge for Australia is that China has a different political system and is becoming more
assertive on the international stage as its economy grows. At the same time, China will remain our largest trading partner and a significant foreign investor in Australia, and thus a significant contributor to much of our prosperity for the foreseeable future."

The key to harnessing that growth is people. Particularly those who understand how business operates in both China and Australia, many of whom are likely to be Chinese students who have studied here themselves.

Unfortunately, the flow-on effects of increasingly heated diplomatic rhetoric from politicians on both sides into the community is undermining that opportunity, as is a spike in discrimination against Chinese students and Chinese-Australian migrants during the coronavirus.

China has ratcheted up the tension in its increasingly shaky relationship with Australia, with the government now urging its citizens not to travel here.

Researchers from Stanford University in California this week released research that found Chinese students who study in the United States are more predisposed to favour liberal democracy than their peers in China. It is not unreasonable to expect similar tendencies to appear in those heading to Australia.

But the study of more than 300 Chinese first-year undergraduate students in 62 universities across the US found once they encountered anti-Chinese discrimination, it significantly reduces their belief that political reform is desirable for China and increases their support for authoritarian rule.

"Strikingly, we find that encountering xenophobic discrimination is more likely to increase support for autocracy among students who are more predisposed against the Chinese regime and less supportive nationalistic Chinese policies," researchers Yingjie Fan, Jennifer Pan, Zijie Shao, and Yiqing Xu found.

"Altogether, this means that xenophobic discrimination blocks and perhaps unravels the micro-foundation of the effects of education on transferring democratic values."

Two years before the coronavirus ravaged the global economy, Australia’s former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane warned the China debate was “threatening to spill over into a general suspicion of Chinese-Australians,” Australia was "flirting with danger” and “intolerance has been emboldened”.

Asian-Australians reported almost 400 racist attacks since the beginning of April, according to a Per Capita survey.

It is jarring to be considering this now as Hong Kong goes through a violent and distressing erosion of its civil liberties driven by the very top of the Chinese Communist Party, but China thinks in decades, not years. It is likely that our engagement with our largest trading partner will have to continue in some form after its most liberal territory is suppressed.

To be sure there are valid reasons for alarm rising in the Australian community about Chinese government’s growing influence and ambitions in the region. It has waged campaigns of disinformation, attempted to manipulate Australian politics, hacked computer networks, is expanding its military reach in the Pacific and repressed, often brutally, ethnic minorities at home.

But the tenor of the conversation in Australia has now reached such a point that two of Australia's foremost foreign policy experts were denounced by Michael Danby, a former member of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, for briefing a Labor shadow cabinet on the need for “sensible engagement” with China.

The two experts were Allan Gyngell, a former foreign policy adviser to Paul Keating and head of the Office of Nat­ional Assessments and Dennis Richardson, the former head of ASIO and Australia's ambassador to Washington.

Both suggested that a rising group of claw-branded Parliamentarians known as the Wolverines, who aim to aggressively curtail China's influence, may be counterproductive.

Danby was incensed. “It reeks of someone trying to reinforce ideological conformity," he told The Australian.

In other words, shut down the debate, there is no room for nuance on China.

"The list of compradors to be dragged before the Committee on UnAustralian Activities over not adhering to the correct line on China is getting longer by the day!," Richard McGregor, a senior fellow with the Lowy Institute posted on Twitter.

In the midst of all this, business is largely being cowed. Until Friday, the public has heard very little from the BCA or the Australia-China Business Council since bilateral diplomatic ties went into the freezer earlier this year. Big names such as Seven Group chairman Kerry Stokes and miner Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest go out and take the hits (with a heavy dose of self-interest) before retreating under a swell of anti-China sentiment. For every big business there are thousands of small businesses underneath that rely on China.

They cannot take part in the debate lest they are accused of reinforcing ideological conformity.

The Stanford University study suggests that while nuance is out of fashion, it might be the best chance Australia has of sending back well-informed former students to China with ideas that it may benefit from in the long term.

Those students that were not exposed to discrimination but were made aware of criticisms of the party did not tend to gravitate back towards authoritarianism.

"We find no increase in support for authoritarian rule when Chinese students encounter non-racist criticisms of China, the Chinese government, and China’s political institutions made by Americans," the study found.

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