University Lesson: ‘If a Few of the Worst Republican Politicians Were Assassinated, it Wouldn’t Be the End of the World’

Todd Starnes

I received a disturbing note from one of my radio show listeners the other day about a political science lesson that was presented to students at Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

“The Moral Foundations” questionnaire probed student opinion on some highly charged political statements. Students were asked to either strongly agree, agree, strongly disagree or disagree.

“If a few of the worst Republican politicians were assassinated, it wouldn’t be the end of the world,” read one of the statements. “Conservatives are morally inferior to liberals.”

“I am in favor of allowing the government to shut down right-wing internet sites and blogs that promote nutty, hateful positions,” read another. “Political violence can be constructive when it serves the cause of social justice.”

I reached out to the university’s media relations department as well as the chairman of the government and justice studies program. I gave them 48 hours to respond and provide some context for the lesson. So far, they have not replied to my inquiries.

However, a university leader did reply to a parent – explaining that the assignment is to “show students how we need to respect and better understand individuals on both sides of the political aisle.”

Students were asked to either agree or disagree with statements like:

· All political conservatives are fools.

· I can’t imagine myself becoming friends with a political conservative.

· Deep down, just about all conservatives are racist, sexist and homophobic.

· Conservatives are morally inferior to liberals

· Political violence can be constructive when it serves the cause of social justice.

As I wrote in my new book, “Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation,” many of our taxpayer-funded universities have been turned into radical indoctrination centers. Professors are using their classrooms to foster great unrest and social anarchy in our nation.

And get a load of the statements targeting capitalism:

· The rich should be stripped of their belongings and status.

· Capitalism’s hyper-competitiveness has made it increasingly difficult to build community and trust with our neighbors.

· The head of most large corporations are as immoral as the Ku Klux Klan.

· It’s virtually impossible to be both upper-class and a good person.

· It is important that we destroy the West’s nationalist, imperialist values.

· Demanding true social and economic equality requires restricting certain personal and civil rights.

· Most rich Wall Street executives deserve to be thrown in prison.

· I can imagine myself committing an act of political violence to help a left-wing revolution succeed.

· I would prefer a far-left leader with absolute authority over a far-right leader with limited power.

· If I could remake society, I would put members of historically and presently marginalized groups at the top.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Appalachian State University is laying the foundation for an overthrow of the United States of America. Now you understand what’s happening in the streets of so many of our American cities.

The survey was especially focused on shutting down free speech:

· Hateful speech must always have serious real-world consequences (firing, internet humiliation, blacklisting from jobs).

· Political correctness does not hinder free speech – it expands it.

· I oppose allowing people who advocate nutty right-wing views (say on abortion, capital punishment, gun rights, and gay marriage) to speak in public.

· Fox News, right-wing talk radio and other conservative media outlets should be prohibited from broadcasting their hateful views.

· I am in favor of allowing the government to shut down right-wing internet sites and blogs that promote nutty, hateful positions.

· Colleges and universities that permit speakers with intolerant views should be publicly condemned.

To be fair there were a handful of statements that were skewed towards students who might be conservative:

· I would never want to burn the American flag.

· I try to expose myself to conservative news sources

· There is nothing wrong with Bible camps.

· Conservatives can be good people.

· Forced-labor camps for right-wing extremists are a terrible idea.

“The survey and reading highlights how both Liberals and Conservatives develop policy preferences based on their morals,” the professor went on to say. “The difference is Liberals and Conservatives approach issues from different moral perspectives.”

But that’s not what the online lesson was really about. The lesson clearly states there are no right or wrong answers – just honest responses.

Now some folks might say, what’s the big deal? It was just a survey.

Tell that to Congressman Steve Scalise. He was nearly killed by a left-wing activist who opened fire on Republican lawmakers on a baseball field. Three other individuals were also wounded.

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing – that a leftist college student would be willing to assassinate a Republican lawmaker or that a university would suggest that such an act is neither right nor wrong.

SOURCE





Some Useful Information to Help Students Choose a College

Many students come to regret their choice of college. They expect that getting a degree will mean a significant boost in their labor market prospects, but often their college “investment” fails to pay off.

That might be due to a lack of effort on the student’s part.  Quite a few enroll in college mainly for the partying—the Beer and Circus, as professor Murray Sperber entitled his 2000 book. Others, however, do their best but still find that their college choice didn’t pay off. The school’s curriculum might have been ill-suited to the student’s abilities and goals, or perhaps the cost of attending was just too high for whatever advantages were gained.

The good news is that two recent reports issued by the American Enterprise Institute can help students avoid college decisions they’ll later regret.

The first of the two is entitled “Does Attending a More Selective College Equal a Bigger Paycheck?” Co-authored by Joseph Fuller and Frederick Hess, the report says that going to a more selective college will not necessarily result in a payoff after graduation.

Students are often advised to go to the most prestigious college they can, but that can be bad advice. The authors put it this way:

[M]edian salaries for undergraduates, four years after degree completion, appear surprisingly similar across the selectivity spectrum. Even more telling, it appears that the premium for graduating from a selective institution may have actually decreased materially over time.

Could it really be that someone who chose a non-selective college, even with open admissions, might fare as well after graduation as someone who spent far more to get a degree from a prestigious school?  Fuller and Hess answer yes. Their data show that four years after graduation, students who attended a very selective school earned, on average, just 10 percent more than graduates from both minimally selective and moderately selective colleges.

That finding is perfectly consistent with the argument made by advocates of the “screening” theory of higher education: What a college degree does is mainly to signal that the person might be worth hiring, not that he or she has left college with important knowledge that will be compensated for. (That argument was recently made by professor Bryan Caplan in his book The Case Against Education.) Most of what a worker needs to know is learned on the job, not in the classroom, and employers won’t pay much of any premium just for an impressive educational pedigree.

The Fuller/Hess report dovetails perfectly with a 2015 book by New York Times writer Frank Bruni, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, which I reviewed here.

Bruni argued that students can do very well in life, whether they graduate from an elite institution or one that’s far down the prestige ladder. “The nature of a student’s college experience,” he wrote, “the work he or she puts into it, the skills he or she picks up, the self-examination undertaken, the resourcefulness honed—matters more than the name on the institution attended.” He proceeded to give plenty of examples, among them former National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, who graduated not from an Ivy League school, but the University of Denver.

Therefore, there is no reason for students to go to the added expense just to get into a highly selective school. It’s unlikely to make much difference over the span of their careers because how well someone does depends on job performance, not the diploma hanging on the wall at home.

The other AEI study is entitled “Winners and Losers,” authored by Jorge Klor de Alva and Cody Christensen. Their interest is in how well higher education helps students achieve upward mobility. Nearly all schools claim that they transform their students in ways that will make them better off financially, but does that really happen? And if so, which institutions seem to be the most helpful?

Here’s what they conclude:

Over half of low-income students who enrolled in public and nonprofit universities in the early 2000s moved up to one of the highest two income quintiles by the time they reached their late 20s or early 30s. But not all postsecondary institutions deliver an education that puts students on an upward path. Consequently, it is a matter of great importance for students, families, and policymakers to understand the variation among colleges in the rates at which their students climb the income ladder.

That is quite encouraging. Many students from low-income families do very well after college. This fact is a strong refutation of the often-heard claims that America has little income mobility—that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The report’s finding also undermines the so-called “Chivas Regal” effect, namely the belief that colleges that cost a lot must be better.

Klor de Alva and Christensen write, “It is increasingly evident that there is no single recipe to generating strong mobility outcomes; indeed, some less-competitive institutions outperform highly competitive universities in the rate at which they move students from the bottom two income quintiles to the top two income quintiles.” In other words, higher college spending does not guarantee better student outcomes.

Even more striking is the data showing that some students who come from fairly well-to-do families actually decline. The authors report that 18 percent of students from the top income quintile had slid into the lowest two quintiles by the time they were in their late 20s to early 30s. So, much as they may believe it, the wealthy can’t guarantee that their children will remain wealthy by putting them through prestigious colleges.

In other words, higher college spending does not guarantee better student outcomes.

That finding supports the anecdotal evidence in Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s 2014 book Aspiring Adults Adrift (a follow up to their 2011 book Academically Adrift, which showed that many college students learn little during their years of study): Some students who had earned degrees from prestigious schools were nevertheless unemployed or underemployed several years after graduation.

A key part of the Klor de Alva and Christensen report is its school-specific information regarding income mobility of students. Some of the colleges with income mobility outcomes below expected levels are competitive to highly competitive, including Evergreen State University, Ohio University, Miami University, and SUNY-Purchase.

On the other hand, some schools that have student mobility outcomes above expectations are low on the competitiveness ladder, such as Dickinson State University, University of Texas at Arlington, and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

This study doesn’t prove that certain schools ensure success and others don’t.  It’s not that simple. What it can do, however, is to keep students and their families from selecting a college for the wrong reasons—because it’s “selective” or that it has high tuition. It is still up to the student to figure out how to make the most of the educational opportunities at whatever school he or she decides on.

Klor de Alva and Christensen’s work should also be of interest to college officials, especially those where many students appear not to be making much economic progress after graduation. They should be thinking, “Why are other schools, often those with smaller budgets, apparently doing more good for their students than we are?”

These two AEI studies provide students, parents, college leaders, and policymakers with a lot to think about.

SOURCE





Trump Wants to Restore ‘Patriotic Education’ in Schools

President Donald Trump says he wants to restore patriotic education in U.S. schools in order to heal the division across the nation that has, in recent months, led to violence and rioting.

“The left’s war on police, faith, history, and American values is tearing our country apart, which is what they want,” Trump told reporters on Aug. 31 at the White House. “The only path to unity is to rebuild a shared national identity focused on common American values and virtues, of which we have plenty. This includes restoring patriotic education in our nation’s schools, where they’re trying to change everything that we’ve learned.”

The president made the remarks as part of extensive comments about the recent violence and deaths seen in riots and protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon. The agitators fomenting violence in these and other cities are aligned with the extremist Antifa group, which seeks to bring about a communist revolution in the United States.

“To defeat them, we must jail lawbreakers, and we must defeat their hateful ideology about this country, about America. We must teach our children that America is an exceptional, free, and just nation worth defending, preserving, and protecting. And that’s what we want to do,” Trump said.

“What we’re witnessing today is a result of left-wing indoctrination in our nation’s schools and universities. Many young Americans have been fed lies about America being a wicked nation plagued by racism.”

The Department of Education didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Groups under the broad umbrella of Antifa and Black Lives Matter have in recent months toppled dozens of historical monuments across the nation. Trump criticized his election opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, for failing to mention Antifa by name during a recent Biden speech.

“He didn’t mention the far left, or, from what I saw, I don’t believe he mentioned the word ‘Antifa.’ Antifa is a criminal organization, and he didn’t mention Antifa thugs, but mostly seemed to blame the police and law enforcement,” the president said.

Biden responded by criticizing Trump for not condemning Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager charged with shooting three people, two of them fatally, during a riot in Kenosha. Trump defended Rittenhouse on Aug. 31, saying that the teen acted in self-defense.

“Tonight, the President declined to rebuke violence. He wouldn’t even repudiate one of his supporters who is charged with murder because of his attacks on others. He is too weak, too scared of the hatred he has stirred to put an end to it,” Biden said.

Videos posted on social media show a man attacking the shooter with a skateboard prior to being shot. One video also shows another man lunging at the shooter with a handgun before he was shot in the arm.

SOURCE





Australia's universities would fail any basic ethics test

Leading up to and during the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, some high-profile university academics weighed into the debate.

Appalled by what they regarded as egregious conduct by a number of financial institutions, the argument was put that a royal commission was needed and stiff punitive and regulatory action required to deal with the misconduct.

Last week, Professor Ian Harper delivered a lecture in which he queried his views on financial deregulation. (He had been a panel member of the Wallis inquiry that recommended deregulation subject to light-handed rules and compliance.)

“Having championed disclosure as a strong deterrent of unethical behaviour in financial markets, I was dismayed to witness the litany of shameful behaviour uncovered by the Hayne royal commission. Had I thought more about the need for strong ethical foundations, I might have been more circumspect about the need for ongoing regulation.”

But, given that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, it is a bit rich for academics to be picking on financial services when it is very clear that universities operate in a larger amoral space.

The concepts of values and culture – terms that Commissioner Hayne emphasised as being crucial for financial services – are largely absent in the way universities operate.

In the long list of royal commissions, is there a case for one into the conduct of universities in order to expose instances of misconduct?

On Sunday the Morrison government announced it would launch an inquiry into foreign interference in Australian universities, but it needs to be broader than that. Obvious issues include the recruitment and treatment of international students, the dilution of educational standards, the casualisation and underpayment of staff, the feeble commitment to free speech and the selective take-up of tied funding.

International students have been the cash cow for universities and in the decade from 2009, international student fee revenue rose more than 250 per cent. On a per capita basis, we have had the highest number of international students of any country. The principal source countries have been China, India, Nepal, Brazil and Vietnam.

Most are recruited by overseas-based, essentially unregulated agents. We know little about the inducements used to secure enrolments, and little about the accuracy of the information provided to potential students about prospects for employment while studying and after graduation, or about the chances of students eventually obtaining permanent residence.

In exchange for a percentage of the fees paid by these students, these agents have strong incentives to make possibly unrealistically positive cases to them.

Some recent material related to Indian students studying in New Zealand has been revealing. It’s clear that some agents use coercive tactics and add large dollops of misinformation to secure enrolments – promises of well-paid employment and an easy pathway to permanent residence.

The reality is Indian students in New Zealand disproportionately exploited in the labour market, often by employers who arrived from India some time ago. The path to permanent residency is often uncertain and tortuous.

And there is clear evidence that pass marks have been adjusted to ensure international students do not fail. Cheating is common, with students buying assignments undertaken by third parties, as is the practice of contrived group assignments in which international students are placed in groups with able domestic students.

The dip in standards is not confined to international students. When universities admit students with low scores – it has been common for students to be admitted to teaching degrees with ATARs well below 50 – you know something is wrong. Being unsuited to university study, these students fail and drop out at higher rates. Money triumphs over principle.

Then there is the growing casualisation of teaching staff. The extent of this is unclear as senior management has an incentive to keep the figures under wraps.

In recent months, it has become clear that there has been significant underpayment of casual staff members, in part due to inappropriate classifications but also to insufficient pay for preparation and marking. Sydney University, for instance, has agreed to pay almost $10m in back pay to casual staff.

The fact that many vice-chancellors have been slow to implement the model free speech code recommended by Robert French in his review commissioned by the federal government is also telling. The commitment to free speech within many universities is very dependent on who is talking and what is being said.

Tied funding is a vexed issue particularly for some academic staff. But compare the operation of a number of Confucius Institutes at Australian universities with the debate over the Ramsay Centres for Western Civilisation.

A mixture of language teaching and propaganda, the Confucius Institutes appoint their own staff members and are essentially unsupervised. The fact that some universities have baulked at the conditions that these centres demand is telling.

Recall also the controversy surrounding the proposal for an Australian Consensus Centre by Bjorn Lomborg, the respected Danish climate change researcher. In the end, the enterprise died because no university vice-chancellor was prepared to stand up to the opposition of a small clique of staff members.

The bottom line is that much of the conduct of Australian universities does not meet the ethical standards our community rightly expects. Rather than serving the core mission of universities to provide excellent teaching and research, too many practices lack any moral basis and are undertaken to raise money.

Of course, the federal government has contributed by providing international students with easy entry and pathways to permanent residence. And international student fee revenue has also relieved the taxpayer of some spending. But the regulation of higher education is an ineffective, box-ticking exercise.

The result is extraordinarily well-paid senior university managers, growth of non-academic staff numbers at the expense of academics, and excessive investment in campuses and glittering new buildings, many of which will not be needed in the digital age.

The fact that many ordinary folk neither trust nor care about universities should come as no surprise.

A royal commission into higher education would be very revealing.

SOURCE