I remember how it was -- JR
Higher Ed’s DEI Plagiarism Dilemma
Academic culture is facing a crisis of its own making.
The now myriad plagiarism and other scandals rocking the ivory tower increasingly are being waved away by left-wing media. But this growing phenomenon represents an existential crisis for institutions that have long coasted on flimsy claims to their exalted position in our society.
Following the January resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, who a month earlier had had a disastrous performance before a House committee hearing on antisemitism, several other professors and diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators have been hit with serious accusations of plagiarism.
The latest is influential Harvard sociology assistant professor Christina J. Cross, whose writing on families and race have appeared in The New York Times. She’s been accused of lifting huge sections of uncited work and claiming it as her own—among other, smaller infractions.
The Left’s message on these scandals—copied and pasted, it seems—is that plagiarism has been “weaponized” by the Right.
“As the culture wars lurch on, the Right has found a perfect weapon with which to hit the university—taken straight from the academy’s arsenal itself: claims of plagiarism,” wrote the editorial board of The Harvard Crimson in February.
Yes, how dare those mean conservatives use basic academic standards against academics for the purpose of the “culture war,” which our unbiased and totally meritocratic universities surely never engage in.
Defenders of the academy have also gone with the old standby of crying “racism.”
Tiresome, but all very predictable.
I will have to concede one thing, though: In a certain sense, plagiarism has been “weaponized,” by the Right, which holds no power in academia outside of a handful of small, isolated bastions. This method of criticism has only become possible because higher education has made itself so open to attack.
To use a historical comparison, the peoples conquered by Islam in the days after the rise of Muhammad were typically preyed upon and powerless. What those living under dhimmitude had was the Quran. Their only protection came from pointing out the violations of faith by their new rulers. That forced a choice on their Muslim overlords: Weaken their rule or weaken their faith, which was ultimately tied to their power and status.
That’s the dilemma facing academia.
While universities don’t punish leftist students for shutting down politically incorrect speakers and other kinds of illiberal conduct, they still—for now, at least—make an attempt to punish those who have violated their most basic standards.
Here’s a question, though: Would plagiarism and other kinds of scandals have been such a problem if our elite institutions weren’t filled with so many superfluous, underwhelming hacks?
That may sound mean, but it’s impossible not to notice that the quality of our most elite schools—and of the people who staff them—is quickly dropping.
Stories about left-wing insanity on college campuses became run-of-the-mill generations ago. But now, something new is happening.
Now, many Americans, even ones who placed a huge amount of faith in higher education despite its flaws, are coming to see that they aren’t even providing the most fundamental service they—at least in theory—promise to provide; namely, an elite education delivered by scholars in pursuit of the truth.
With the costly, borg-like takeover of DEI initiatives that have bled into all disciplines, it’s become obvious to all who are not wholly blinded to reality that higher education now places more emphasis on ideology and identity politics than teaching and scholarship.
In the end, those who hired and appointed the DEI administrators and “anti-racism” swamis like Ibram X. Kendi didn’t expect them to produce high-quality research. No, they are there to demonstrate institutional commitment to leftist beliefs. Nothing else has mattered, and now the original product that allowed them to amass such power is slipping away.
Consider this: Harvard University’s history department finally brought back an introductory history course after going nearly 20 years without one. The previous yearlong survey course was dropped in 2006 for being too “Eurocentric,” according to The Harvard Crimson.
A description of the class makes it sound more like an NPR podcast than a high-minded instruction at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. It’s apparently been designed to teach “empathy,” and according to one of the professors, “on Wednesdays, they will ‘riff’ on recent headlines for a portion of the lecture.”
I only wonder what famed Harvard alum John Quincy Adams would think about this kind of coursework. In his day, its students used to be required to know Latin and have a deep understanding of the classics before they attended the school.
Now, they don’t even require courses in Latin or Greek to complete a degree in the classics.
The dirty open secret is that higher ed has abandoned its role of providing trustworthy research and transmission of Western ideas to new generations. It is increasingly an environment more committed to enforcing extremely narrow left-wing ideology and ensuring that all other governmental, political, and civic institutions throughout the West maintain the same level of ideological gatekeeping.
Legacy admissions may be on the decline, but they are being replaced by new, smugger so-called meritocratic pseudo-elites who lecture America about all its problematic history while making excuses for genuine evil in the here and now.
As the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel starkly revealed, these institutions hardly have claims to moral authority. Hating the West and excusing savagery are just part of the overall package.
While the power that elite academic institutions have in Western societies is immense—perhaps greater than it has ever been—they nevertheless have a collective weakness.
These schools are ultimately dependent on the support, both social and material, of the rest of society. They’ve operated for decades with nearly a blank check of private and public funding. And higher education has run up a massive bill on their graduates, too, that they expect taxpayers to pay.
Let me ask: Would you rather pay for your groceries with money to spare or ensure that a Starbucks employee with pronouns on his or her name tag can get his psychology degree paid for? Exactly.
The goodwill from times past is long gone. In its place is well-earned doubt and hostility.
Higher education is now left with a choice: Abandon the path of DEI and ruthless ideological enforcement in a return to genuine merit or double down on them with the fading support from the rest of society.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/28/higher-eds-dilemma-punish-plagiarism-stick-dei/
***********************************************************Mississippi Schools Push Radical Ideology, Often in Secret. A Parental Bill of Rights Would Remedy That
Some school officials in Mississippi seem determined to keep parents out of their child’s education. But state lawmakers have a chance to join about two dozen other states that have prevented that from happening.
Mississippi legislators are considering a proposal that would create a parental bill of rights, reinforcing parents’ authority even when a child is on school grounds.
The proposal is simple, but powerful: Public employees, such as teachers and school administrators, cannot substantially burden a parent’s right to direct a child’s upbringing and health care.
What does this look like in practice?
When children start the school year, moms and dads typically have to sign forms stating a child’s allergies, directing the school to administer painkillers if a child is injured at recess, and consenting to basic medical treatment if a child is in need.
In today’s upside-down culture, however, school officials are allowing minor-age children to “change” their name and whether they want to be addressed as a boy or girl, regardless of his or her sex, while at school.
In some states, teachers do not have to tell parents that a child is making these choices during the school day.
What results is “social affirmation,” in which adults tell a child that yes, the child was born in the wrong body and should act as if they are someone they are not. That can foster a child’s desire to seek medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments and perhaps even surgeries that will damage their reproductive organs.
An exaggeration? Whistleblowers have exposed centers such as the St. Louis Children’s Hospital for prescribing children as young as 11 to take puberty-blocking drugs.
The results were horrific in some cases: Young women would return to the hospital bleeding through their clothes because testosterone treatments thin the vaginal wall, and the wall can then tear open. Some males experienced liver toxicity after taking drugs to make them appear more feminine.
Researchers continue to raise alarms as they find an overlap between mental illness or special needs such as autism and claims of sexual confusion among youth.
In the U.K., England’s National Health Service has recommended that doctors not encourage young people to assume a different “gender” because autism and anxiety and depression were often found in children expressing confusion over their sex. And research finds that this confusion resolves on its own as children progress into adulthood in 80% to 95% of cases, which means watchful waiting is far healthier for children than social affirmation.
Yet some Mississippi educators are still pushing the dangerous “gender” agenda.
Parents Defending Education, an advocacy organization, uncovered that a school in Jackson received a grant to promote gender ideology. Oxford School District officials surveyed students and asked children if they identified as queer or “trans.” In Tupelo, teachers were trained to allow students to change their name and pronouns. Educators were instructed to call the child by his or her given name and pronouns when talking to parents unless the child gave a teacher permission to tell parents that the child had assumed a different gender—a secretive technique that hides information from families.
When a child is confused about their sex, social affirmation can have lasting consequences. Some medical treatments are irreversible and can lead to sterility and other complications.
For at least these reasons, school personnel should not be allowed to keep parents in the dark about what is happening to their young children in the classroom.
State legislators can help. For more than a decade, state lawmakers around the country have been adopting parental bills of rights similar to the proposal before Mississippi lawmakers. Legislators should state plainly that parents are a child’s primary caregivers and that public officials cannot burden, or obstruct, a parent’s role.
Teachers have a responsibility to report abuse or neglect, but that does not mean educators should accept a child’s self-diagnosis that he or she needs drugs to alter their body chemistry.
The reports from Jackson, Tupelo, and elsewhere demonstrate why Americans are increasingly skeptical about K-12 education.
Mississippi officials should increase academic transparency and strengthen parental rights, restoring a civic value in short supply today between local communities and their schools—specifically, public trust.
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Top Journalism School Mandating Diversity Course to Earn Degree
Mandatory wokeness has crept into one of the top journalism schools in the United States.
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is requiring students to complete the course Diversity and Civility at Cronkite (DCC) in order to earn their bachelor’s degree in journalism.
The course, which also applies to students studying sports journalism and digital media, redefines such traditional phrases as “America is a melting pot” as race-based microaggressions and teaches future journalists to avoid assuming “unearned benefits” that come with “heterosexual privileges.”
Examples of outdated heterosexual privileges given in the curriculum include excluding biological males who identified as female from traditional sex-segregated places like women’s locker rooms and women’s prisons.
“To object to a man using a women’s bathroom is an example of discrimination against transgender individuals,” reads a chapter in the course entitled “Sexuality and Gender Identity.”
Also part of the seven-unit course is required reading material entitled “A Guide to Gender Identity Terms.”
“You should offer your own pronouns first and then ask for the other person’s pronouns,” the reading material states. “While it can be awkward at first, it can quickly become routine.”
The course also teaches students to view statements like “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” as a microaggression that translates into “People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race,” and “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough,” as implying that “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.”
In response to inquiries from The Epoch Times, the state-run college described the mandatory course as “an entry-level course intended to bring thoughtful, open-minded discourse to issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, income, geography and other aspects of personal identities.”
“The goal of the course is to help students appreciate people’s differences and to channel disagreements toward civil discussion,” the college said in a statement. “With that view, students should be better able to approach reporting and communications projects with a multicultural perspective and inspire mutual respect among students from various backgrounds and beliefs while at the university, and beyond.”
Opt-Out Possible
A spokesperson for the Walter Cronkite School, which is part of Arizona State University (ASU) also told The Epoch Times that students may opt out of specific discussions by sending their professor a private email requesting to do so.
Timothy Minella, Senior Constitutionalism Fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy told The Epoch Times that the required journalism course is especially disturbing because it is being mandated by a public, taxpayer funded college.
“Students who decide to major in these subjects are not necessarily signing up to be progressive activists,” he said. “A public university that should be serving the entire public, not just the liberal slice of it, needs to return to its core mission of education, not indoctrination.”
Mr. Minella, who recently wrote a critical analysis of the course after obtaining student assignments and teacher syllabuses through a public records request, said he was especially shocked by an assignment for students contemplating a career in public relations.
The assignment, as shown by records obtained by Mr. Minella, was based on an NPR interview with Demi Lovato, a pop star who has changed her gender identity multiple times.
It asks students: “Imagine you’re working at a PR firm and you have a client whose first album is about to drop. Your client’s gender identity is nonbinary and they use they/them pronouns. They have a massive press tour planned. How do you prepare journalists to talk with your client?”
Mr. Minella said the designers of the course “seemingly attempted to include every aspect of leftist identity politics” they could think up.
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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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