Thursday, October 15, 2020



Oxford professor who was forced to retire aged 69 is awarded £30,000 and his old university job back after winning landmark age discrimination case

Oxford University has been ordered to re-employ a professor who it illegally forced to quit before his 70th birthday.

Professor Paul Ewart has also been awarded £30,000 in compensation after he won a landmark age discrimination battle against the university last year.

The former head of atomic and laser physics, who had worked for the university for 38 years, had demanded to be given his old job of senior lecturer back - even though he only wants to carry on working there for another year.

The university had refused, saying that his role had gone. Now a tribunal has ruled that the professor must be re-instated and ordered for him to be paid substantial damages.

However, Prof Ewart failed in his bid to have the tribunal order for the controversial policy, known as the Employer Justified Retirement Age policy (EJRA), to be abolished.

Oxford introduced the rule forcing senior staff to retire the September before they turn 69 in the hope it would encourage the recruitment of younger and more diverse staff.

Prof Ewart said that in 2014 he was granted an extension to continue working until he was 69.

But when his contract with the Physics department was not renewed in 2017, Prof Ewart, who was based at Oxford's world famous Clarendon Laboratory, sued the university for age discrimination and unfair dismissal.

In its judgement last year, the tribunal in Reading ruled in his favour, saying the EJRA had a 'highly discriminatory effect' on older employees. It has now ordered Oxford to re-instate him.

A hearing last month was told that Prof Ewart wished to return to his post but only wanted to continue in a paid role until September 2021.

After that, he was happy to move to an unpaid Emeritus position.

Applying to be re-instated, the academic said that since his dismissal he had 'lost standing' within his field of research.

The tribunal's judgement states: '(He) emphasised that there appeared to be no criticism by the (university) of his abilities, academic credentials or relationships with colleagues both within and outside the Physics department.

'He also pointed to the (university's) willingness to retain his services and involvement on an Emeritus (i.e. unpaid) basis.'

Prof Ewart told the tribunal that a grant had already been awarded for proposed work with colleagues on a project in Oxford and Cambridge.

This included a £24,000 consultancy fee for him which would help cover the costs of his re-employment.

However, the University argued that giving him his job back was problematic. It argued: 'The role he used to perform had gone. There was now no research team for him to lead. 'He used to have direct supervision of students, but that was now not going to happen.

'He had other responsibilities which could not now apply on any reinstatement. (The University) was not obliged to create a non-existent role to reinstate (him) to.'

However, the tribunal ruled in Prof Ewart's favour. It said: 'If (he) were to be reinstated it is not disputed that he would perform his role to the standards expected of a senior academic at Oxford.

'His work cannot be the same as he left off, but that is not to say that he cannot be reinstated and continue to act in the role with his former distinction.

'Given (the University's) emphasis on cutting-edge research, (Prof Ewart's) role will never at any point in his career have been the same as it was three years previously. 'That is not a reason to say that reinstatement is not practicable.'

In addition to his reinstatement, the tribunal ordered Oxford to pay Prof Ewart £22,500 for injury to feelings and an additional £7,100 in interest.

Employment judge Laurence Anstis did however refuse Prof Ewart's request to recommend the abolition of the EJRA as it would not apply to him in the year he had left working at the University.

During the original hearing Prof Ewart had accused Oxford University of spending up to £1million in legal fees fighting cases brought by not only himself but other academics since the introduction of the age restriction in 2011.

He paid £5,000 for data from the independent Higher Education Statistics Agency which showed that the EJRA policy had only a 'marginal' effect on creating vacancies for younger people.

In Prof Ewart's witness statement to an employment tribunal last year, the physicist said that in 2014 he had been given an extension to carry on working until he was 69, and that he had expected to receive another allowing him to continue to 2020.

In his final two years, Prof Ewart published 15 papers and won leading roles in projects to create ultra-efficient engines. He argued his research was 'blossoming'.

He was told in February 2017 that his application for a three-year extension to work part time had been rejected.

Prof Ewart said that this was despite the fact his salary would have been almost entirely covered by grants.

An Oxford University spokesperson said: 'The University has reviewed in detail the 2019 Employment Tribunal decision regarding Professor Paul Ewart and Oxford’s EJRA policy.

'This decision followed an earlier Employment Tribunal, on a separate case but of equal legal weighting, which ruled in favour of the Oxford EJRA.

'The University has decided it does not accept the more recent tribunal’s ruling and will be appealing against it.

'The EJRA policy remains in place and will continue to be applied as normal.'

In 2018, John Pitcher, a Shakespearean scholar at St John's College, Oxford, lost his claim for age discrimination and unfair dismissal.

An employment tribunal ruled the policy was a 'necessary and appropriate means of achieving [a] legitimate aim'.

Leftist Teacher Shoves SICK Note In Students Backpacks, Parents Livid After Reading Only 2 Words

Chloe Bressack, a math and science teacher sent a letter home to parents headlined “About Mx. Bressack.”

“… my pronouns are ‘they, them, their’ instead of ‘he, his, she, hers.’ I know it takes some practice for it to feel natural,” the letter reads, “but students catch on pretty quickly.”

The letter also asks that students use “Mx.,” (pronounced ‘Mix’) when addressing the teacher rather than Mr. or Ms.

The letter alarmed the parents.

A parents who wrote a post on a Facebook Page group “Tally Moms Stay Connected,” said her child’s teacher sent home a “Welcome to my class” note, which included the request.

The parent ended her original post with the question,“What would your reaction be as a parent of 9 & 10 year olds?”

According to Tallahassee, Canopy Oaks Principal Paul Lambert said he and the school are in full support of Bressack.

“We support her preference in how she’s addressed, we certainly do,” Lambert said. “I think a lot of times it might be decided that there is an agenda there, because of her preference — I can tell you her only agenda is teaching math and science at the greatest level she can.”

Bressack declined an interview with the Democrat Wednesday, but commented in an email, “I feel very lucky to be teaching at Canopy Oaks, and I look forward to working with my students this year.”

Superintendent Rocky Hanna addressed the situation in a statement sent to the Democrat. He said he met with Canopy Oaks administrators after learning about the letter.

“According to Principal Lambert, the teacher addresses students daily by using the pronouns he, she, him and her. The teacher also uses ma’am and sir when responding to students. As a personal preference, however, the teacher simply prefers to be referred to in gender neutral terms as that of a coach,” Hanna wrote.

“I can assure you that teachers in our district will not be allowed to use their influence in the classroom to advance any personal belief or political agenda. At this time, I do not believe that is the case in this instance.”

15 October, 2020

BLM-minded High School To Hold Disciplinary Hearing For Student Who Opposed Socialist on Instagram

According to attorney Jesse Binnall, who also represents Michael Flynn with Sidney Powell, his new client, a 17-year-old conservative student, is being investigated by her school for a disciplinary violation for…wait for it …being conservative on Instagram! Yes, you read that right. It’s 2020, after all.

Episcopal High School in Northern Virginia is a private boarding school that charges $63,200 per year for tuition. But academics are not featured on their website. Instead, there is a huge tab for “Racism, Understanding, and Belonging” — which appears to be reactionary to the 2020 BLM movement. Indeed, they invited the race-baiting socialist Ibram X. Kendi to give a speech on campus.

As you can imagine, a conservative would be up-in-arms over a socialist racist being elevated and paid thousands by her school for lies and indoctrination. True to form for an American girl born free and accustomed to the 1st Amendment, Ms. Mackenzie Andrysiak expressed her disagreement with the school by writing on Instagram, in a private story, “Absolutely DISGUSTING that @episcopalhs let this man speak at our school. Unbelievable.” Along with the words, Mackenzie shared a screenshot from Fox News of a Kendi tweet in which he accuses federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett of being a racist for adopting two black children from Haiti. “Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity,” were Kendi’s words.

And, my hero Mackenzie also used her private Instagram account to repost content through stories from mainstream conservative groups like PragerU and Turning Point USA.

There is nothing inaccurate or outrageous about Mackenzie’s words or posts. The same surely cannot be said of Kendi. But in Woke 2020, reality is of no consequence. The high school, without identifying any particular violative social media posts (all of which her lawyer has reviewed in entirety and advises are squeaky clean and made up of mainstream conservative content re-shares) is moving to dismiss her from the institution right before the PSAT exam for her Instagram posts.

The undoubtedly leftist private “educational” institution will begin proceedings this week to dismiss the conservative student for holding a politically contrary opinion to their own. “The disciplinary committee process, of course, will be a politically motivated attack against a conservative student—one whose simple act of expression has alarmed the school in a way that illuminates its egregious bias against conservative thought—and in turn—a conservative student,” wrote Jesse Binnall in a letter to the school about the absurdity of kicking out a child for disagreeing with the school’s choice in hiring a racist socialist as an ethics speaker. “Of course, none of Mackenzie’s posts come close to violating school rules as outlined in the EHS Student Handbook. While it might wish to push its political narrative on students, conservative ideology and freedom of thought has not (yet) been explicitly forbidden by the school. …[I]n a series of actions that would make Orwell blush, EHS has tried to force Mackenzie out because she refuses to surrender to the school’s Newspeak type-agenda surrounding rhetoric supported by the Black Lives Matters organization—an admittedly Marxist group.”

Moreover, Binnall accused Episcopal High School of entirely ignoring the bullying and harassment that was directed at Mackenzie by other students. Guess why. Any guesses? Alright, I’ll tell you: for being in an interracial relationship. You can’t even make this stuff up! 2020 Woke stories are The Babylon Bee on steroids.

According to Binnall, Episcopal High School “has been aware of the harassment and bullying of Mackenzie by students, an alumna, and even a teacher; harassment and bullying based upon her mainstream political beliefs, her physical appearance, and even based upon her previous interracial relationship.” But the school turned a blind eye to the conservative victim. Maybe they determined that she deserved the abuse, which would be in line with the BLM ideology that deems private businesses owned by white people as deserving of annihilation.

Certainly, this school isn’t the right place for Mackenzie, nor for any self-respecting family for that matter. But this is mid-school-year and right before the PSAT. The idea of being dismissed in such a prejudiced manner is wrong and unethical and unfair. I can only hope that the school comes to its senses and that Mackenzie is given the opportunity to part on her own volition once she is ready

Coronavirus Enrollment Effects: Small but Consequential

Early preliminary data from the respected National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show total enrollments this fall are down only 1.8 % over last year. Since after the Covid-19 pandemic hit many were concerned fall enrollment might be down precipitously, say 10 or even 20%, these numbers are actually rather comforting to many in the higher education community.

But two caveats are in order. First, the numbers are based on only a sample, schools responding by September 10. I would not be surprised that biases enrollments upwards a bit—schools with big enrollment could be slower in responding to data requests. Second, the numbers are way down (11%) for foreign students, many of whom typically pay out-of-state tuition fees. The negative revenue effects are probably greater than 1.8%. Graduate enrollments are up, in keeping with the historic trend that during downturns unemployed persons seek degrees to improve long-term employment prospects.

The surprise to me regards community college enrollments, down 7.5%. I thought that they might increase, as students stayed away from their four-year colleges because of remote teaching and Covid-19, choosing a low-cost alternative near home. But I insufficiently considered the big contemporary trend in higher education: the flight to quality. Postsecondary credentials are not what they used to be, and a degree from a second-rate liberal arts college or state university no longer seems enticing, while degrees from top-reputation schools still are in high demand. And community colleges are suffering the most reputationally.

The decline in community college enrollment comes, ironically, at a time when some Americans are looking for ways to demonstrate vocational competency that do not require spending $100,000 or $200,000 for a piece of paper (diploma). Community colleges theoretically could provide this, but there is a lot more hype about things like coding academies that provide non-traditional, non-degree training; I suspect the National Clearinghouse data fail to fully pick up this trend.

Moreover, this fall’s enrollment drop will be the ninth in a row, I suspect a record for the nation since constitutional government began in 1789 (and certainly a record for the last century or so). Moreover, the old reliable solution to budgetary woes—tuition increases—is off the table. The drop in the demand for higher education is having the predicted impact, a decline in tuition revenues per student. Colleges are mostly reluctant to cut published fees, but are instead giving ever bigger tuition discounts. My guess is that total tuition revenues received by colleges will be down from last year, possibly a good deal, at a time when other traditional revenue sources (state appropriations and private donations) are also under pressure. Spending cuts are thus often considerable.

My sense about all of this is perhaps excessively colored by the experience of my own university, but I see grudging budgetary reductions that do little to correct for recent practices pushing up costs a lot. Two examples: first is the excessive bureaucratization of universities in modern times. The ratio of administrators to faculty, for example, has risen because of budget cuts in the past year at my school, and I suspect that is not unique. Second: some schools lose literally tens of millions of dollars annually on ball-throwing contests (intercollegiate sports). Why?

University incentive systems are perverse, with little reward for promoting efficiency and innovation. Schools spend recklessly on buildings that are underutilized, hire staff doing little or nothing to advance the primary teaching and research mission, and are slow in responding to changing labor market demands.

Perhaps governments, foundations and other private donors should give fewer dollars to schools: “starve the beast.” Perhaps governments should give more funds to individuals at the heart of universities—students or professors doing research. Pay students or even professors directly rather than institutions, and then let the institutions compete to get students for their tuition fees and professors for their research grants. Have student financial assistance depend in part on academic performance and probability of graduation, reducing vast sums currently wasted on students not fitting into the college environment and failing to even graduate. Introduce more price competition and performance standards into higher education. Make the Ivory Tower resemble more the Real World.

1619 – The Left’s final assault on America

Leftists have launched what they hope can be their final assault on America. Their goal is to obliterate everything good that America ever did or aspired to achieve, erase its citizens’ memories, and sow the seeds for future generations to revile and reject everything that is decent and noble in our country.

They intend to fundamentally change America’s historical narrative away from events and circumstances that made our country the world’s beacon of hope for freedom and representative government. They intend to replace well-documented reality with a false narrative of America being the scourge of the world, based on its enslaving and stealing from minorities to enrich and aggrandize white ruling elites.

Their plan is called the “1619 Project,” an alternative history curriculum for American elementary and secondary students. It was announced in July 2019 with a series of front-page stories in the New York Times, and other major newspapers, explaining its content and the need to:

“reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

The 1619 premise is: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.” Everything that happened in American history flows from the “original sin” of slavery. Every concept, document and institution that shapes and guides America was actually designed to promote slavery and therefore must be eradicated to atone for centuries of racial oppression.

1619 proponents declare that we must “make amends” for America’s crimes against humanity by eliminating monuments, the Electoral College, the Senate, Supreme Court justices, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, federalism, capitalism, and all vestiges of white history and culture. Even hard work, objective thinking, the scientific method, self-reliance, being polite and two-parent families are the product of racism and “white dominant culture,” according to a document that has since been removed from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The 1619 Project is partnering with those who deem the American Flag, Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem as offensive vestiges of racism, slavery and white privilege.

We could ignore the 1619 Project if it were simply the ravings of a coddled leftist professor in some Ivy League sinecure. But it is not, or at least it is no longer.

The New York Times leads an array of news media, academic, think tank and public officials who see the 1619 Project as the final solution for turning America against itself. Once they indoctrinate the current generation of elementary and secondary school students with (even greater) hatred for America, drowning out and canceling dissenting voices with charges of racism and white privilege, they will have free rein to establish a permanent totalitarian socialist state.

The 1619 Project was embraced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when she led members of the Congressional Black Caucus to Ghana during the August Recess. They wanted the 1619 narrative of the first African slaves arriving at Jamestown to upstage commemorations of the first session of an elected government at Jamestown. To succeed, the 1619 Project must ignore mountains of facts, and fabricate mountains of lies.

The centerpiece of the 1619 Project is the false claim that slavery was a uniquely American crime, infecting everything and everybody it touched to the present day.

In reality, the capture and enslavement of defeated foes and “inferior” people is as old as humankind. Slavery was integral to establishing regional dominance for the Egyptian Pharaohs, Muslim Emirs, Roman Emperors and countless other rulers. The Western Hemisphere’s great civilizations of the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs enslaved their subjugated people for labor and ritual sacrifice.

African rulers trading their slaves to Muslims or other Africans, and then to Europeans, was born from improved sailing technologies and the need for cheap, forced labor. The 1619 Project ignores the fact that only 9.7% of the Atlantic slave trade involved England’s North American colonies; 90.3% of African slaves were shipped to South America and the Caribbean.

The 1619 Project ignores that while 12 million West Africans were shipped by Europeans to the Americas, over 17 million East Africans were shipped by Arabs into the Middle East. The 1619 Project ignores the fact that the American colonies began banning slave importation in 1778, during the Revolutionary War, leading to a formal (largely ignored) ban for the entire United States in 1794.

England did not ban slavery in its colonies until 1807. Meanwhile, the Arab slave trade in East Africa was not eradicated until England destroyed the last slave forts in Zanzibar in 1909. Slavery remains active, if officially banned, in much of the Arab world today – as well as in parts of Africa, in the Chinese and Russian penal systems, and in China-run mines in Congo, where 40,000 children labor for $1-2 a day.

The year 1619 is important, not because slaves arrived in the new world, but because for the first time in the Western Hemisphere, a free people elected representatives to govern and be held accountable in subsequent elections. This was the first step to America becoming the most exceptional civic culture in world history. That is the true 1619 lesson that leftists want to expunge.

The Left and New York Times would also have us believe that black Americans are in lockstep with Nikole Hanna-Jones and other authors of the divisive, revisionist 1619 pseudo-history. The claim helps drive their anti-American agenda. But it is false. .

Many African Americans have battled 1619 fabrications and assertions, while black American thought leaders have eviscerated it – including civil rights leader Robert Woodson, who founded the 1776 Project to combat 1619 falsehoods, because he objects to assertions that the “shadow of slavery and Jim Crow” hangs over the destiny of Black Americans. “Nothing is more lethal,” he says, “than to convey to people that they have an exemption from personal responsibility.”

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Jason Riley notes that the NY Times 1619 scheme is also a foundation of “critical race theory,” which insists that problems within the black community are the fault of whites and the responsibility of whites to solve. It is now being taught in colleges, high schools, middle schools and even elementary schools across the USA – and in companies and government agencies via “diversity” and “racial sensitivity” sessions, where “diversity consultants” tell attendees the US is inherently racist and “virtually all white people” contribute to or benefit from racism.

Other vocal black critics of the 1619 Project and its adherents include political commentators Armstrong Williams and Candace Owens. Incredibly, notes columnist Deroy Murdock, the NY Times own family history is “rife with slavery, Confederate boosterism, and enforcement of Jim Crow segregation.”

Eminent historians have also excoriated the phony 1619 history, and Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) has drafted a bill that would cut funding to schools teaching this fake American history.

Sadly and outrageously, all too many academics, Democrats, race hustlers and even some Republicans are vigorously advancing destructive 1619 ideas. Others are too intimidated to speak out against them, out of fear that they will be ridiculed, fired, canceled, harassed online or in restaurants, even beaten or killed.

Americans must do all they can to stop the 1619 Project and stand-up for the greatest nation on earth, before it’s too late. Bob Woodson’s 1776 Project is a good start. Let’s build on it, starting right now.

Scot Faulkner is the former Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of the bestselling political memoir, "Naked Emperors."

Via email

An arts/humanities degree has long been the butt of predictable joke but there's another side

Comment from Australia

Of course I have an arts degree. How could you tell?

I've always said that an honours degree in art history is the most useful preparation you can ever get for the kind of daily journalism and broadcasting I do: it's not until you truly understand the imagery and meaning of a Renaissance painting of a crucifixion that you will ever make sense of a federal leadership spill.

The blood; the sorrow. The weeping and rending of garments. And that's just on the Coalition side.

Yesterday the Federal Government revealed that the humble arts degree was now going to be nailed to the cross, with fees set to soar for humanities subjects from 2021.

An arts degree has long been the butt of many a predictable joke, but the other week a senior employment recruiter shared with me on air what organisations were telling her they wanted to see in new employees, and there was a familiar echo in what she had to say.

As AI replaces more and more of the jobs we once assumed our children could grow up to do, this recruiter's research with leaders across several industry sectors identified the most important character traits needed in a post-COVID-19 workforce. They include adaptability, emotional control and resilience, persuasion and negotiation skills, relationship building and “skin or soul in the game”.

Let's say your infrastructure firm needs to persuade the Queensland Government of your construction agenda. You had better check the above list. Or say you're an economist advising the loans division of a bank or the manager of a medium-sized business dealing with suppliers. Imagine you are a primary producer scouring for a new export market: check the list.

That list above describes my four-and-a-bit years at uni, travelling in and around art history, English, Russian literature and Australian history. It describes the self-reliance, organisational skills, critical and comparative thinking and sheer enthusiasm for new and challenging ideas that those years fostered in me and my peers.

Despite the Federal Government's announcement yesterday, they clearly get this too: indeed the Education Minister, Dan Tehan, was the one who funded and opened a new centre at RMIT in Melbourne last year to investigate the ethical use of emerging AI technologies. Humanities, eh?

Is 'job-ready' the goal?

I'm not going to bang on here about how our shared and contrasting human histories and experiences, and our emotional connections to and understanding of the world, are almost entirely contained within the study of the humanities — after thousands of years of human civilisation that much is clear.

One Vice Chancellor — with double degrees spanning the sciences and creative arts — remarked to me that viewing university education as fundamentally about turning out "job-ready" graduates misses the point.

The question now is what the consequences of this de-funding will be?

The late essayist and quicksilver intellectual Christopher Hitchens once argued that "above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment … and this Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person".

For many, the universality of the humanities degree is the most democratic expression of this ambition.

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

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://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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