I remember how it was -- JR
Benefactor behind Arizona State University center pulls funding after faculty shows 'alarming' hostility toward event's conservative speakers
The benefactor behind an Arizona State University center announced last week that he pulled his annual funding after faculty members showed "alarming" hostility toward conservative speakers who hosted a campus earlier this year.
Tom Lewis of the T.W. Lewis Foundation released a statement last Friday declaring that he would no longer be funding the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett, the Honors College at ASU.
In 2019, Lewis' foundation donated $2.5 million to Barrett to finance the center.
Lewis, the CEO of the real estate group T.W. Lewis Company, blamed the school's apparent "left-wing hostility and activism," claiming that he "no longer had any confidence in Barrett to adhere to the terms of our gift."
He explained that the decision to pull the $400,000 of annual funding was in response to faculty members' and administrators' strong resistance to a February 8, 2023, event titled "Health, Wealth & Happiness" at the school's Gammage Auditorium. The event featured "Rich Dad Poor Dad" author Robert Kiyosaki and conservatives Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk.
"Because these were mostly conservative speakers, we expected some opposition, but I was shocked and disappointed by the alarming and outright hostility demonstrated by the Barrett faculty and administration toward these speakers. Instead of sponsoring this event with a spirit of cooperation and respect for free speech, Barrett faculty and staff exposed the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college," Lewis stated.
In response to the scheduled event, nearly 40 faculty members, who claimed to support "a broad diversity of voices and viewpoints," signed a letter calling Prager and Kirk "purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, as well as the institutions of our democracy."
"I regret that this decision was necessary, and hope that Barrett and ASU will take strong action to ensure that free speech will always be protected and that all voices can be heard," Lewis said.
He told KNXV-TV, “The speaker series was intended to… teach self-awareness, leadership, and career management."
“They were not complaining that we were being too conservative, they don’t want any conservatives,” he added.
Last month, the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development's executive director, Ann Atkinson, claimed the university fired her for organizing an event featuring Prager and Kirk.
ASU denied firing Atkinson because of the event, stating that she "has lost the distinction between feelings and fact." The university claimed that Atkinson's termination was due to Lewis' foundation pulling the center's funding.
"Ms. Atkinson's current job at the university will no longer exist after June 30 because the donor who created and funded the center decided to terminate his donation. Unfortunate, but hardly unprecedented. ASU is working to determine how we can support the most impactful elements of the center without that external funding," ASU said.
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Universities: The Public and the Rule of Law Be Damned
College admissions won’t become “color blind” anytime soon.
The collegiate brouhaha over the landmark Supreme Court decision striking down race-based affirmative action in college admissions has revealed the true colors of the supposed crème de la crème of American higher education. Let me share the views of four current or former Ivy League presidents (courtesy of the staff of Sen. J.D. Vance):
Christopher Eisgruber (Princeton University) vowed to pursue “diversity ... with energy, persistence, and a determination to succeed.”
Peter Salovey (Yale University) said he was “deeply troubled.... Yale’s core values will not change.”
Lee Bollinger (Columbia University), after saying the Supreme Court decision was a “tragedy,” added, “Diversity is central to our identity.”
Elizabeth Magil (University of Pennsylvania) said, “We remain firm in our belief that our academic community is at its best when it is diverse,” and, “Our values and beliefs will not change.”
It is, as my friend, Samford University law professor (and Yale Law grad) Mike DeBow, described it, “a nice collection of ‘massive resistance’ statements.”
I find the reaction of many schools to the Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard decision to be appalling on at least six grounds. First and most fundamentally, the university presidents imply that the university itself takes positions on controversial public policy issues. Contrast this to the perspective expressed at the University of Chicago over a half-century ago in its Kalven Report and, more recently, in its Chicago Principles. To quote from the 1967 Kalven Report:
The university ... is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent by which it thrives.
When Magill says, “We remain firm in our belief,” and, “Our values ... will not change,” she sounds more like King Louis XIV (with the use of the royal “we”) than like an administrator overseeing a campus where a vigorous, although civil, debate occurs in a “marketplace of ideas.” Perhaps this is not unexpected from a university that is putting one of its more eminent professors (Amy Wax) through disciplinary hell simply because she has views differing from the woke majority at Penn.
Second, the outcry over the suppression of “diversity” is clearly completely related to the fact that “diversity” in the minds of many in the university community is mainly about race. The Kalven Report spoke positively of “diversity” —equating it to an environment where differing ideas flourish. Making decisions based on the race of the individuals used to be called “racist” because that is what it is. Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard continues a constitutional tradition going back to the 13th and 14th amendments, which forbid and condemn the most virulent forms of racism.
Third, the collegiate presidential reaction shows contempt and overt hostility toward public opinion. Opinion polls show that most Americans favor race-blind policies, opposing affirmative action efforts to incorporate race into decision-making. The decidedly liberal voters of California have twice said, “There will be no race-based affirmative action at California state universities,” as have others in blue states, such as in Washington and Michigan. The university presidents are effectively saying, “The public be damned,” or, “Us Philosopher Kings know more than the Little People who vote.” The hysterical reaction to the Supreme Court decision by our so-called educational leaders (and many of their followers as well) will further the decline in the proportion of Americans attending college.
Fourth, the objections of Ivy League leaders are breathtakingly hypocritical. These schools create the perception that they are “great” institutions precisely because they primarily serve a wealthy, mostly white clientele. Most have legacy admission policies favoring the mostly white children of alumni (along with a smaller number of nonwhite applicants whose parents are doctors, lawyers, academics, or business executives).
Fifth, the presidents seem to be advocating resistance to the rule of law—of having big decisions made through a two-century-old constitutionally created process that has served the nation extremely well. They seem to suggest, “We are going to continue to make decisions based on the race of applicants, even though we will have to be more circuitous about how we do it.”
Sixth, the reaction among influential thinkers in other nations is negative regarding the racial fanaticism of the elite schools. For example, the following pieces appeared in two of the most respected English magazines: “Why affirmative action in American universities had to go” (the Economist—on the cover!); “The Moral Bankruptcy of Ivy League America” (Financial Times). As for the French, they even outlaw the collection of data based on racial classifications, an idea deserving serious consideration in the United States.
As someone involved with universities over parts or all of eight decades, from the 1950s through this one, I love them. But I am sadly coming to the view that Milton Friedman seemed to be reaching shortly before his death: Rather than subsidize universities to accommodate their positive spillover impact on society, perhaps we should tax them to help pay for the damages arising from the “negative externalities” that they create.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14620
**********************************************Australia: End of ‘a 40-year-old fad’ as NSW shuts door on open-plan classrooms
The construction of open learning classrooms in NSW public schools will cease after repeated complaints from students, parents and teachers about a “40-year-old fad” they say created noisy environments unsuitable for learning.
Some new public schools built over the past decade were designed with flexible or open-plan classrooms. The large spaces intended to combine multiple classes in one room to facilitate collaboration and group work, while students were supervised by numerous teachers.
Research published this year found children who learn in open-plan classrooms have slower reading development and spend more time disengaged from educational activities because higher noise levels mean students find it difficult to focus.
The department wrote to the NSW Teachers Federation in May saying the classrooms would no longer be built.
“Current and future new and upgraded school projects will not include the construction of open-plan classrooms that cannot function as an individual space for a single class group,” the letter to the union said.
NSW Teachers Federation vice president Henry Rajendra said they had been fielding complaints about the unsuitability of the classrooms since about 2018.
“The department at the time did not engage with the profession [and] the union about its usefulness, that it would lead to lower student engagement in the classroom,” he said.
“We had a lot of complaints from teachers and parents and students that it was a very difficult environment to learn.”
Rajendra said it was a misnomer to describe many open-plan learning classrooms as “flexible learning spaces” because they had not been built with sound-absorbent walls which could be moved to create smaller spaces.
“The layout of our schools was in the hands of architects, and not teachers, and the result of that for many was that it didn’t work ... it is a 40-year-old fad, they introduced it as something new and innovative,” he said.
Open-plan classrooms originally proliferated when “team teaching” became fashionable in the 1970s. That practice of two teachers working together with a larger group of students dwindled in popularity over the following decades.
The rise of “student-led” and “21st-century learning” put an increased emphasis on doing work in groups, collaborative projects and fewer lecture-style lessons.
Education academics from Latrobe University in 2013 noted flexible learning spaces promoted flexibility, visibility and scrutiny and were a reaction against the “industrial-era enclosed and authoritarian classroom”.
By 2016, the Department of Education had established its Futures Learning Unit which was focused on rethinking and redesigning the way teaching and learning was conducted.
It said flexible learning spaces reflected the environments students may encounter in the workforce where there is an enhanced focus on self-direction, self-reflection, evaluation and collaboration.
A University of Melbourne study published this year said students found it more difficult to learn in open-plan classrooms because of the high noise levels.
“This increased cognitive effort to suppress the distraction, in turn, creates additional working memory load and thereby impacts on the learning occurring,” it said.
Students with poorer attention skills were also “found to be at increased risk of either spending more time disengaged from educational activities in the open-plan environment or requiring more cognitive resources to maintain attention, leaving fewer to facilitate their learning”.
Plans for new public schools use “learning hub layouts”, which are used as a starting point for school designs. They include learning spaces which allow for movement and collaboration across classes.
A Department of Education spokeswoman could not say how many open-plan classrooms had been built over the past decade, but work was being done to identify them in schools.
“The vast majority of recently completed new and upgraded schools have traditional classroom spaces that include breakout areas,” she said.
“The department is identifying the number of schools with open-plan classrooms. If schools have concerns that these spaces are impacting student learning, the department will work with each school.”
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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