Classes on weekends, no spring break: Colleges scramble academic schedules for upcoming year

A growing number of New England colleges are shifting their academic schedules for the upcoming year, sending students home for the fall semester before Thanksgiving, canceling spring break, and holding classes on holidays and the weekends.

Emerson College announced Wednesday that most classes in the fall will incorporate both in-person and online components, but students will not return to Boston after Thanksgiving break. Clark University in Worcester also announced that fall classes would end before the Thanksgiving break and, in order to accommodate that schedule, students will have to take classes on Labor Day and skip the fall break. Clark will also offer both in-person and online classes and, due to the longer break between the fall and spring semesters, the university said on Wednesday that it will offer a winter intersession with online classes.

Earlier this week, Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire also reworked its calendar to begin in mid-August and end classes before Thanksgiving. Saint Anselm will also have a longer break between the fall and spring semester to avoid students returning to campus during the height of the flu season, when scientists expect a resurgence of the coronavirus.

Colleges across the country are reshaping their academic calendars to address the public health risks posed by the pandemic. Notre Dame and Tulane University have announced similar plans, where students will not return to campus after Thanksgiving break.

As part of Emerson’s plan to bring students back to campus, it will launch a program called “One Emerson Flex Learning,” the college is adjusting its academic calendar to accommodate a “de-densification of classrooms, residence halls, and offices.”

“The vast majority of our students and their parents have expressed a strong desire to return to living and learning on campus,” President Lee Pelton wrote in a community e-mail. “Flex Learning is our approach to serve the various and diverse needs of our students, faculty, and staff during these unprecedented times, while preserving our commitment to a robust and vibrant campus experience.”

Repopulation of Emerson’s downtown campus will be staggered, starting mid-August when roughly 15 percent of the college’s staff will return. Classes will begin online on Aug. 31 to accommodate off-campus students moving into apartments, and the first day of in-person classes will be Sept. 2.

Because of the coronavirus, students and faculty will spend less time in Boston this year, finishing the semester online, Emerson said in its e-mail to students.

Following Thanksgiving break, all classes, review sessions, and final exams will be conducted remotely. After final exams, the college will offer an optional online winter term, although it is unclear whether that will come at an additional cost for students.

Emerson said it has plans for COVID-19 screening, contact tracing, and tracking supported by digital technology, and limiting capacity in stairways, elevators, and hallways. Face covering will be required in all campus spaces, including classrooms and residence halls, and they will be supplied by the college.

“No doubt, the Fall 2020 term will look and feel different from past semesters at Emerson, as it will at almost every college or university across the nation,” Pelton wrote.

Pelton said he anticipates the spring term will be “more traditional.”

Emerson’s online and in-person plan is similar to other Boston area school.

On June 1, Boston University announced that it would give its more than 18,000 undergraduate students the choice of in-person and online classes this fall under a program it has dubbed “Learn from Anywhere.” Later in the week, Northeastern University released similar plans, launching a program called “NUflex,” which will allow both students on campus and those living elsewhere to participate in classes.

In an e-mail to the Clark community, outgoing president David P. Angel and its new incoming leader David B. Fithian warned that while the university is trying to firm up its plans, the situation remains uncertain.

“The pandemic is far from over, and new information is emerging constantly about its evolving scope even as society strives to reopen and the intense pursuits for a vaccine continue,” Angel and Fithian wrote. “Should changes in the situation require it, the University will be prepared to adapt, including if in-person courses are not possible and the fall semester must be completely online.”

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Student Religious Liberties Act Heads to Ohio House for a Concurrent Vote

The Ohio Senate just unanimously passed HB 164, The Student Religious Liberties Act, which protects prayer and religious expression in public schools. Sponsored by Representative Tim Ginter, the bill ensures students in Ohio’s K-12 public schools cannot be discriminated against because of their faith.

“No student should be forced to check their faith at the door just because they walk into a public school,” said Aaron Baer, president of Citizens for Community Values. “The Student Religious Liberties Act ensures that all Ohio students – of any faith or no faith – are not penalized or rewarded because of their Christian beliefs.”

“We are thankful for the leadership of Senate President Larry Obhof, Majority Leader Senator Matt Huffman, and Senate Education Chair Peggy Lehner. This important bill puts Ohio directly in line with the Trump Administration’s Executive Order that protects prayer and religious expression in school. It is a time-tested approach to ensuring religious freedom is protected, and public schools are able to maintain orderly and diverse environments.”

At least 10 other states have enacted similar legislation, and it has been proven to provide protections for all students of faith.

The bill now heads over to the House for a concurrent vote, and then up to Governor Mike DeWine.

Email from ccvofohio@gmail.com






Anonymous Berkeley Professor Shreds BLM Injustice Narrative

An anonymous history professor at U.C. Berkeley has penned an open letter against the current narratives of racial injustice underpinning the BLM movement and ongoing protests over the death of George Floyd.

Its authenticity was confirmed by Kentucky State University Assistant Professor of Political Science, Wilfred Reilley, who says he was sent a copy of the letter along with Stanford University economist Thomas Sowell.


Dear profs X, Y, Z

I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field.

In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them.

In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.

Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or 'Uncle Toms'. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders. Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.

The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.

A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email. Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates' undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black.

Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries.

And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department's apparent desire to shoulder the 'white man's burden' and to promote a narrative of white guilt.

If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it's fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. "Those are racist dogwhistles". "The model minority myth is white supremacist". "Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime", ad nauseam.

These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department.

Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM's problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is no small number.

I personally don't dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.

The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is.

No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd. For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald's and Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.

The claim that black intraracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn't led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices - as do Nigerian Americans, who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession.

Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades; the 'systemic racism' there was built by successive Democrat administrations.

The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence. This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent in academic circles. I refuse to serve the Party, and so should you.

The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed.

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