I remember how it was -- JR
Connecticut teacher sues after being disciplined for criticizing 'identity, privilege' training
A Connecticut teacher is suing Hartford Public Schools for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights after he disagreed with an "Identity and Privilege" training.
John Grande claimed in a federal lawsuit that Hartford school officials "fabricated" evidence during a "witch hunt" investigation against him after he disagreed with the training. The Hartford Public Schools district implemented the training in 2020 titled "Identity and Privilege" via Zoom as mandatory professional development.
Grande was a gym teacher for the school system for over 30 years.
"I was targeted for punishment by school district administrators because I refused to endorse their agenda to push critical race theory on teachers," said Grande, who is filing the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
"They launched a witch hunt against me and ran a kangaroo court to convict me for exercising my free speech rights. They threatened my career to silence me, but with this lawsuit, I’m leveling the playing field and forcing school officials to answer for trampling my rights."
The "Identity & Privilege" training, Grande believes, was part of an effort to push critical race theory in the school system.
Per the lawsuit, the Privilege Presentation provided "examples of privilege" and used language that would prompt Grande, a "straight, white, Christian male," to mark "yes" in a section of his "identity wheel."
"Based on those prompts, Mr. Grande believed that the Privilege Presentation targeted a certain class of people, including him, and was an exercise in critical race theory, rather than one aimed at improving the education of students," the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit alleges that the school district attributed language to him that he refutes saying. The gym teacher faced accusations from fellow participants that he made statements about the training that were false as well as a survey response he alleges was altered to include language he had not attested to.
In October 2021, school board members conducted a pre-disciplinary hearing to discuss Grande’s statements. After deliberations in the hearing, the Board issued a disciplinary letter about Grande’s "inappropriate and unprofessional" conduct.
Grande who is represented by the Fairness Center, urged the court to rule that the Hartford Public Schools officials’ conduct was unconstitutional under the First Amendment and to rescind the disciplinary letter from his employee file. The physical education teacher also requested that the court "award him compensatory and punitive damages."
This came after the Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations ruled in Grande’s favor in August 2023 when he brought the issue to the Hartford Federation of Teachers (HFT). According to the CT Insider, the Hartford Federation of Teachers refused to hear Grande’s complaint about Hartford Public Schools because he was not a dues-paying member.
He also claimed that the HFT supported the "Identity and Privilege" training.
The Board of Labor Relations declared that the HFT illegally discriminated against him based on his membership status. The decision enshrined all workers in Connecticut the right to fair representation.
Hartford Public Schools sent Fox News Digital a statement in response to Grange's lawsuit.
"Hartford Public Schools remains committed to creating safe spaces and robust professional learning opportunities regardless of staff background, beliefs or ideology," a spokesperson for the district said.
"While we respect the right for all to seek representation, we disagree with the allegations included in said lawsuit. Due to the pending nature of the litigation, we will not issue further comment."
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Everything Is Racist, Crows Higher Ed
The pinheads who run our institutions of higher education want us to believe that racism is everywhere. In fact, The College Fix reports, 2023 apparently saw 72 items that academics are calling “racist.”
Of course, “racism” has become a catch-all phrase for Democrats that typically just means something they don’t like. For academics, there’s an ideological undergirding — a.k.a. Racial Marxism — that’s based on critical race theory and manifests under the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) banner. Under this cornucopia of bad ideas, there is a victimhood hierarchy that ranks people based on race, sex, and sexual orientation. The more “oppressed” boxes one can check off, the less racist one can be.
If you are gay, black, and a woman, you are the least racist person around because you are historically the most oppressed. But if you are straight, white, and a man, you are the greatest of oppressors and a racist by default. In fact, being white at all just means you’re racist. This sort of thinking is trash, but academics push it because it is advantageous to do so.
If you want a perfect example, look no further than former Harvard President Claudine Gay, a pusher of DEI initiatives who believes that anti-Semitism is bad only if threats turn into actions. Despite her refusal to stand against anti-Jew racism, her school would have let her stay as president. But as donors began to pull their financial support, and as Gay’s extensive record of plagiarism in her academic papers came to light, she finally was forced to step down as president. She still works at the school, however, and will continue to make $900,000 per year as a professor. She blames racism for the fact that she had to step down at all. Yet poor, oppressed Claudine Gay continually fails upward because Americans ostensibly are so racist.
Going back to the list of 72 things that academics called racist last year, here are a few of the most ludicrous ones:
The Body Mass Index is considered racist because black people tend to score a higher BMI than whites or Asians. Last year, the Associated Press compiled articles describing the larger issues of health disparities based on race. But much of what the AP tried to explain as “inequity” and “racism” are really cycles of poverty, genetic predispositions, or poor personal responsibility. The issues of poverty and personal responsibility are particularly malleable to the new definition of “racism.”
Then there are petty items like the new film “Wonka” that is supposedly racist. That’s because the titular character Willie Wonka is the focus of the story, not the other black female lead.
If you keep reading the list, you might be astounded to see that fast food, clowns, classical music, Shakespeare, and even the Apostle Paul make the list of “racist” things or people. It’s beyond parody.
Racism, under the machinations of the woke, has lost its true meaning and is a token for perpetual victims to use as an extortion tactic. Real racism — acts of exclusion, job discrimination, verbal abuse, and violence based on race or skin color — is a relatively rare thing in this era. It’s also illegal. Yet it doesn’t count anymore if the racism is against whites, Asians, or Jews.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103287-everything-is-racist-crows-higher-ed-2024-01-04
**************************************************Harvard’s Identity Politics Roulette Wheel
Americans owe a debt to Harvard University’s leadership – not for its obvious decision to oust the school’s president, Claudine Gay, this week – but for hiring her in the first place.
Harvard’s presidential search committee named Gay to her position in December of 2022 after five months of interviews and deliberation – the shortest selection period for a leader of the school in 70 years.
In doing so, the committee’s 15 members chose Gay from a pool of 600 candidates, and its chair, Penny Pritzker, praised Gay as “a remarkable leader…devoted…to expanding opportunity” and who, in her previous leadership roles at the school, “brought…a rare blend of incisiveness and inclusiveness.”
Pritzker emphasized that Gay “has a bedrock commitment to free inquiry and expression, as well as a deep appreciation for the diverse voices and views that are the lifeblood of a university community.”
Liberal alumni groups such as The Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, which counts as its mission “to fight for diversity, equity and inclusion” at the school, gushed at the “historic appointment” of Gay as the university’s first Black woman president.
“We believe that a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion [(DEI)] and racial justice must be at the fore of Harvard’s goals, and this appointment is an important strategic and symbolic step,” the group raved.
Against this backdrop, Gay’s resignation this week after testifying before Congress that calls by Harvard students for the genocide of Jews do not constitute bullying and harassment. Revelations of nearly 50 allegations of plagiarism in her meager academic writings have done more than any event in recent memory to expose the DEI cancer metastasizing in so many prominent societal institutions today.
Had Harvard’s leaders taken their normal time to select a president with unassailable academic credentials rather than focusing on breaking demographic barriers, the same weak Congressional testimony and surrender to anti-Semitism by its chief executive would have done nothing to spotlight the bankruptcy of non-meritocratic identity hiring that forms a central pillar of the DEI grift.
Harvard’s decision to spin the identity roulette wheel with Claudine Gay has cost the school dearly. Investor Bill Ackman, a prominent alum, told Harvard’s leadership last month that her “failures have led to billions of dollars of canceled, paused, and withdrawn donations to the university.”
In addition to Gay’s testimony, Ackman called out Harvard’s DEI racket specifically for its decline, arguing that the university’s diversity office, formed in 2019 under Gay’s leadership, has “led to preferences and favoritism for certain racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ groups at the expense of other groups, and made some members of the Harvard community feel included at the expense of others that are excluded.”
Harvard’s swift financial and reputational freefall under Claudine Gay’s leadership is just the latest confirmation of how the American public sours on once-mighty brands that prioritize woke virtue signaling rather than staying in their lane of excellence.
Bud Light, Target, and the NBA have cratered in public opinion and lost tens of billions in revenue through identity-politics grandstanding. They represent only a few of the more prominent poles holding up the DEI circus tent following the 'Defund the Police' riots in 2020.
Indeed, under President Biden, the federal government has become one of the DEI movement’s biggest cheerleaders.
In addition to rolling out Claudine Gay-esque marquee identity hires in his Cabinet and White House, Biden bragged early in his term, “On my first day in office, I signed [an Executive Order that] charged the Federal Government with advancing equity for all, including communities that have long been underserved, and addressing systemic racism in our Nation’s policies and programs.”
Among other actions, Biden established “the federal government’s first-ever Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council…as a coordinated effort to embed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility principles across the federal government,” reminiscent of political commissars in the Soviet and Chinese militaries.
The result of Biden’s DEI push across the federal government mirrors that of Harvard and Bud Light in their respective spheres, whether in a historic drop-off in military recruitment or the rewriting of President Lincoln’s words at the Department of Veterans Affairs to conform to woke speech codes.
The good news is that Claudine Gay’s public and spectacular dive this week has unmasked the universal damage that DEI has wrought across American society in a few short years, and an opportunity remains to reverse course.
Gay said it best three short months ago in her inaugural address after becoming Harvard’s president: “Rebuilding trust in the mission and institutions of higher education won’t be easy…It lies partly in our courage to face our imperfections and mistakes, and to turn outward with a fresh and open spirit…”
No doubt about it – the DEI-driven sabbatical from our standards is over, and for that, we can thank Harvard’s leaders and their shoddy presidential selection process.
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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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