I remember how it was -- JR
Friday, October 30, 2020
The future of higher education will be determined on Election Day
A Leftist view
Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and their parties, have starkly different visions for colleges and universities, and for students.
Virtually everything that matters seems to be on the ballot this year, from the economy to democracy to “the soul of the nation.” And there’s a real choice, since the two major-party candidates for president have presented two starkly divergent visions for all of those things. But voters are also casting their ballots for another important issue that could shape the country for generations to come: the future of higher education.
“We’re about to see the beginning of a transformation of higher education in America,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, a research professor and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “COVID is just the kickoff.” Indeed, the current economic and public health crises have caused a great deal of financial strain on many colleges and universities across the country. Some institutions will not survive; others will have to deal with issues that have been brewing below the surface for a while: costs and funding, student loan debt, transparency, and more.
For the many crises colleges and universities are facing, a Biden presidency — and a Democrat-controlled Senate — would be a step in the right direction. The most immediate challenge for institutions of higher learning is making it to the other side of the pandemic. And as colleges face budget cuts from their state governments, Republicans are stalling on a second coronavirus relief package that would send crucial federal aid to states for these institutions. The GOP’s unwillingness to act, and President Trump’s inability to reach a deal, is putting colleges and universities at risk of shutting down.
As for students, if all its elements are passed, Joe Biden’s plan to make colleges more affordable, for example, would increase access to higher learning, ease student loan debt, and help stimulate the economy in the long run by creating a more highly educated workforce. Trump’s plan, on the other hand, would repeal regulations around for-profit colleges, many of which take advantage of poor and vulnerable populations, and make it harder for low-income students to pursue higher education. This editorial board has already endorsed Joe Biden for president; the issue of higher education underscores why.
Trump did sign a bill that cemented funding for historically Black colleges and universities. But while that funding helped alleviate some financial woes for HBCUs, it simply isn’t enough in the long term. (It should also be noted that while Trump often touts his record on HBCUs as evidence that he’s “done more for the Black community than any other president,” annual federal funding for HBCUs actually peaked under the Obama administration.) In contrast, Biden has proposed tuition-free access to HBCUs for families making under $125,000 a year, and forgiving student loan debt to graduates of these institutions.
Biden could push through some of his agenda, even with a Republican-controlled Congress; there is some bipartisan interest in higher-education reform. But it’s clear that he could get far more done if Democrats hold the House in the coming election and win the Senate. Senate Republicans have proposed only $29 billion for colleges and universities to navigate the economic crisis — a figure that advocates have called “woefully inadequate” — while Senate Democrats have proposed $132 billion. That difference in the scale of federal aid would have dramatic consequences for the trajectory of many of these institutions. Control of the Senate could also have implications for undocumented students, who Senate Democrats want to make eligible for emergency grants, a proposal that Republicans have so far rejected.
Many Republicans also believe that the best way to handle the issue of student debt is to let the market take care of it. “What is so awful about that is that it will have predictive effects by class and race,” Carnevale said.
Biden’s student debt plans are far from perfect. While they help ease debt in the long term by making college more affordable, they don’t alleviate the biggest strains on most graduates who already have loans. But a Democratic Congress could push a President Biden further.
Higher education, like so many other industries, is facing a critical moment. Whatever policies will be enacted in the coming years will be consequential for the future of the economy, people’s day-to-day lives, and the pursuit of scholarship for intellectual enrichment. Democrats and Republicans are offering two very different visions, and in the next week, voters will decide which path to take. The choice is clear.
What Happened When a High School Offered a PragerU Video
As far as HuffPost and the rest of the American left are concerned, no non-left-wing idea should be allowed to enter an American school. Not even for five minutes.
This past month, Maumee High School, a high school near Toledo, Ohio, offered its students a way to receive some extracurricular credit. In the words of the Maumee City Schools administration office -- released before the HuffPost-induced uproar:
"Students were offered an extra credit assignment intended to challenge their critical thinking skills ... A second option in the extra credit assignment asked students to view a video from a conservative website, analyze it and explain what they may have learned from it, and how it may have challenged or supported their own beliefs. ...
"We believe that students deserve a balanced presentation of materials and we support our educators in using a variety of instructional tools and materials in their teaching, expecting them to always exercise good judgement."
In an open and liberal society, the stated aims of Maumee High School are not only not controversial but also laudable. They are exactly what good parents and educators would want for students.
So, who finds these aims revolting? Only an anti-liberal ideology. Namely, the left.
It all started with one -- yes, one -- parent. She so objected to a PragerU video being offered as a conservative option that she withdrew her child from the class. And then she contacted HuffPost.
Thus began a national left-wing uproar over students being offered extra credit if they chose to view a five-minute conservative video.
The HuffPost headline: "Videos From Right-Wing Site That Preaches 'The Left Ruins Everything' Assigned In Ohio School."
A few observations about the headline:
First, on the left, everything nonleft is "right-wing." The reason? Because "conservative" is not inflammatory enough.
Second, the video "The Left Ruins Everything" was never "assigned." No specific video was assigned.
Third, the HuffPost writer, Rebecca Klein, chose the most controversial title she could find out of approximately 450 PragerU videos.
Fourth, the video makes clear that it is about leftism, not liberalism.
Fifth, ironically, this whole story validates the video: Look at what the left is doing to schools, to liberal education and to open inquiry.
As the HuffPost itself reported:
"Andrea Cutway, the mother of 16-year-old student Avery Lewis, brought the assignment to the attention of Maumee City Schools administrators and immediately pulled her daughter out of the class. ... Lewis was immediately alarmed when she started her extra credit assignment last week. The assignment asked her to watch PragerU videos and then answer questions about how the videos challenged her beliefs. ... Cutway, Lewis' mother, was similarly shocked when her daughter showed her the assignment. ... 'It's ALT RIGHT propaganda,' Cutway said in the email to the school principal.
"Lewis met with school administrators soon after to discuss the issue. Together, they came up with a solution -- that the student could also include viewpoints from the opposite side, Cutway said.
"For Cutway, though, this ignored the larger issue -- that PragerU videos be assigned at all and that school administrators did not see a problem (italics added) ...
"'When I talked to the principal and vice principal, they acted like this was just another assignment,' said Cutway, who works as a juvenile parole officer for the state. ... 'This really is some scary stuff,' Cutway said of PragerU. 'I do feel like they have found a way to get into the public school system.'"
As a result of the HuffPost article, mainstream media went nuts, contemplating the possibility that American students might watch five minutes of non-left thought.
NBC TV in Toledo tweeted:
"HuffPost reports that a Maumee High School class is offering students extra credit for viewing videos from a right-wing source. Are you a Maumee parent? How would you feel about this?"
ABC TV in Toledo headlined:
"Maumee parent raises concerns over controversial assignment."
And the station broadcast a report on "Maumee High School alumni petition politics in the classroom" about more than 200 alumni objecting to the use of any PragerU video. The broadcast featured a 2001 graduate of the school, Catherine Wood, the organizer of the petition, who told the ABC-TV station, PragerU videos "kind of deny the humanity of many groups of students: people of color, women, LGBTQ members."
Catherine Wood lied. There is nothing in any PragerU video that demeans or in any way "denies the humanity" of people of color, women or LGBTQ members. Not to mention that we have women, people of color and gays presenting videos. Her libel exemplifies something I have said all my life: Truth is not a left-wing value.
But left-wing lies often work. Within days, the inevitable took place. As The Toledo Blade headlined: "Maumee Removes Conservative Content From Class Syllabus."
Amy Coney Barrett's Memphis Liberal Arts College Fostered Diversity in Views
All other eight justices on the court have Ivy League law school degrees on their walls, but Barrett's is from Notre Dame, the current capital of conservative Catholic academia, where she also served as a professor before being tapped for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals by President Donald Trump.
The White House touted Barrett's Notre Dame pedigree in appointing her, but it also bragged about her undergraduate alma mater, Rhodes College, with a verbal faux pas few people likely caught.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called Barrett "a Rhodes scholar," which was inaccurate, as that moniker applies to a select group of students from around the country chosen for post-graduate study at England's Oxford University.
But Barrett's undergraduate connection bears more examination.
A tiny college of about 1,200 people when she attended in the early 1990s, the liberal arts school in midtown Memphis has turned out to be a cradle of sorts for today's political leaders.
For a school that size and of that little renown, merely producing a single Supreme Court justice would be notable, which it did with Justice Abe Fortas, who graduated when it was called Southwestern at Memphis in 1930 and appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965, resigning just four years later amid a scandal.
By reference, only the undergraduate programs of Stanford, Princeton and Cornell have produced women who've sat on the Supreme Court.
But Amy Coney was not the only up-and-comer roaming the quads of Rhodes College. Amber Khan, the current and first ever Muslim chairman of the Interfaith Alliance, was one class ahead of Barrett.
Before Barrett's rise to Trump's shortlist, the most famous Rhodes alumnus in politics was Chris Cox, a member of the class of 1992, who was CEO of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action until 2019 and earned a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
The CEO of Planned Parenthood in Tennessee and North Mississippi, Ashley Brian Coffield, a former Clinton administration official, was two classes ahead of Barrett. She ran the political campaign against Tennessee's anti-abortion constitutional amendment in 2014, and her Rhodes class of 1992 peer, Republican ad maker Brad Todd, was the lead strategist for the other side.
Todd, with whom I co-wrote a book about the conservative populist coalition that formed during the 2016 presidential election cycle, is best known for making the ads that supported the defeat of five Senate Democratic incumbents.
In Coney's class, and in the same English department where she starred, was Matt Hardin, president of the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association. There was also Coney classmate Robyn Thiemann, chief of staff of law enforcement at the Department of Justice, as well as Liz Cotham, class of '92, the first of that wave of bright young people to hit it big as then-Vice President Al Gore's scheduler at the White House.
So, what was Rhodes College doing right in the late 1980s and early 1990s?
Wendy Talent Rotter said attracting young, smart people who came from different backgrounds and worldviews was the college's precise aim at that time.
"That was a stated value of the college and Rhodes from 1983 to 1987, it shaped who I am, and I admit, shaped all of us, preparing us with academic rigor, with the express purpose of broadening our worldview," said the 1987 Rhodes graduate. "The purpose of the Rhodes experience was to prepare us to be world citizens, to think critically, to respect and have open dialogue with people of different worldviews, backgrounds, and cultural perspectives. We have a lot to learn from each other. We did then. We grew up together, and moreover, Rhodes ingrained in us this responsibility to serve."
Rotter, who began her post-Rhodes career in nonprofit fundraising, specifically major gift fundraising for Rhodes, now owns one of the largest companies in the southeastern United States providing home care for the elderly.
When magazines began ranking colleges in the 1980s, Rhodes sought to get itself reclassified from consideration as a "regional liberal arts college" to a "national liberal arts college" -- and its means to do so was a broad, merit-based scholarship program designed to lure the South's best and brightest to Memphis instead of better-known universities in the region, such as Vanderbilt and Duke. The private college changed its name in 1984 to escape the preconceived notion that it might be a state school serving a mere region of a state.
Enough teenagers like Barrett, who grew up in the suburbs of New Orleans, took the bait to raise Rhodes' academic admissions profile, and the school is now routinely listed among the 50 or so best national liberal arts colleges in the country.
But some who knew Barrett and her peers think it was the mixing of diverse talents and a commitment to rise that created an environment where high achievers could take off.
Rotter said she has the greatest respect for Barrett's accomplishments: "We may not agree on every single political issue, but she absolutely has the qualifications to serve the highest court in the land and to serve our country. We have a lot to learn from each other."
That, she said, is what Rhodes fostered, and that is what Barrett will carry on.
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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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