I remember how it was -- JR
Friday, March 12, 2021
Georgetown Law professor is fired for being honest about black students
The gap between black and white educational achievement has been known for decades
Georgetown Law has fired one white professor and placed another on administrative leave after a video of their discussion about a black student was condemned on social media.
Dean Bill Treanor anounced on Thursday that the school had ended its relationship with Professor Sandra Sellers, 62, after the video showed her complaining on Zoom that black students were predominantly at the bottom of her class.
She was speaking to Professor David Batson, who was placed on leave on Thursday for not correcting Sellers pending a further investigation by the prestigious law school, which was attended by former first daughter Tiffany Trump.
The interaction happened at the conclusion of a negotiations class around February 21, which was being recorded so that students could watch it later, according to the Washington Post.
The professors had stayed on Zoom to discuss the students after they left and where unaware that it was still recording. It was online for two weeks until students noticed the conversation between Sellers and Batson at the end and reported it to the school on Monday.
'They were a bit jumbled. It's like let me reason through that, what you just said,' Sellers said of a student's performance, who the Black Law Students Asssociation claims is the only black person in the class.
'You know what? I hate to say this, I end up having this angst every semester, that a lot of my lower ones are blacks,' the adjunct professor of mediation and negotiation continued.
'It happens almost every semester, and it's like, oh, come on. You know, we get some really good ones but there also usually some of them that are just plain at the bottom,' Sellers concludes.
Batson, also a mediation law expert, does not initially respond but simply looks down and nods in the short 43-second clip, which was allegedly leaked to social media by a student.
He subsequently returns to discussing the student in question, stating, 'what drives [him] crazy is...the concept of how that plays out in whether that is [his] own perceptions playing in here with certain people' or '[his] own unconscious biases playing out in the scheme of things'.
The school was immediately called on to act as the video of the interaction spread.
The dean said Thursday that Sellers told him she had intended to resign when they met to discuss what he branded as the 'reprehensible statements concerning the evaluation of Black students'.
She also issued a statement to the Post on Thursday in which she apologized for the 'hurtful and misdirected remarks'.
'I would never do anything to intentionally hurt my students or Georgetown Law and wish I could take back my words,' Sellers said in the resignation letter. 'Regardless of my intent, I have done irreparable harm and I am truly sorry for this.'
The school also issued a statement on Wednesday after the video went viral but initially did not name the professors involved.
Dean Treanor issued an update on Thursday in which he confirmed that 'Sellers is no longer affiliated with Georgetown Law'.
Batson will remain on leave until the investigation by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action is complete.
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Top Teachers' Union Issues a Warning for Members
The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), one of the Golden State's top teachers' unions, allegedly told members in a private Facebook group to be cognizant of posting pictures and details of spring break vacations.
"Friendly reminder: If you are planning any trips for Spring Break, please keep that off of Social Media," a member posted in a private Facebook group. "It is hard to argue that it is unsafe for in-person instruction, if parents and the public see vacation photos and international travel."
"We have a diverse membership and they are able to post their views on personal Facebook pages and in this Facebook group - however UTLA does not monitor nor is responsible for the content," a UTLA spokesperson told reporter Bill Meliguin of the FOX affiliate in Los Angeles.
The revelation comes days after the union voted overwhelmingly to not return to the classroom until their demands are met. UTLA said teachers would not return to in-person instruction until Los Angeles county moves out of California's purple COVID tier, the most restrictive designation, ABC 7 reported. The union also wants staff to be fully vaccinated or have access to vaccines, as well as safety measures in place on school campuses.
As of now, on-campus instruction in the Los Angeles Unified School District – the state's largest school district – is on hold until ULTA comes to an agreement with the school district, FOX LA reported. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is attempting to speed up the process to reopen schools by allocating 25,000 vaccines to school district employees.
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Bi-racial high school senior who can pass for white receives failing grade after refusing to publicly confess his 'white dominance' and 'attach derogatory labels' to his race, gender, religious and sexual identity
A bi-racial high school senior, who can pass as white, was allegedly failed by his teacher after he refused to confess his 'white dominance' during a class at his Las Vegas charter school.
William Clark received a failing grade in his Sociology of Change class after he refused to categorize and label his racial, religious and sexual identities, according to a press release from Schoolhouserights.org, which supports civil rights litigation in defense of students' freedom of conscience in public education.
According to a lawsuit filed by his mother, Gabrielle Clark, in December 2020, William is described as having 'green eyes and blondish hair' and 'generally regarded as white by his peers'.
His mother is black and his deceased father was white, according to court documents.
During the class, William was reportedly asked to publicly reveal his race, gender, religious and sexual identities and 'then attach derogatory labels to those identities'.
'Students were then asked to "undo and unlearn" their "beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that stem from oppression,"' the statement says.
Now, according to his mother, Gabrielle, who sued his school Democracy Preparatory Academy at Agassi Campus in Las Vegas, they're unsure if he'll be able to graduate after being handed a failing grade.
The lawsuit targets Democracy Prep for violating their constitutional free speech and due process rights. William and his mother, who is a single parent, says that he was compelled 'to make professions about his racial, sexual, gender and religious identities in verbal class exercises and in graded, written homework assignments which were subject to the scrutiny, interrogation and derogatory labeling of students, teachers and school administrators'.
The lawsuit says that by asking him to reveal his identities, he was coerced 'to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm'.
When the lawsuit was filed in December 2020, the Clarks, who are being represented by New York-based lawyer Jonathan O'Brien, claimed that William was threatened with 'material harm including a failing grade and non-graduation if he failed to comply with their requirements'.
The court document says that his school 'rejected his requests for reasonable accommodation and acted on their threats'.
One of the exhibits that the lawsuit includes is a presentation slide that reads: 'Racism = Prejudice + Power. Therefore, people of color CANNOT be racist.'
Another image presented in the suit is one of SpongeBob SquarePants that reads: 'Reverse racism doesn't exist.'
The suit says that the Clarks are seeking 'monetary damages, including compensatory and punitive damages, for the damage done to William Clark’s future academic and professional prospects, and for the Defendants' deliberate and protracted harassment, emotional abuse, and violation of Plaintiffs' Constitutional Rights'.
They also want the court to prevent the school from denying William a high school diploma and accommodate him with 'an alternative non-discriminatory, non-confessional class'.
Democracy Prep said in a statement that the school could not comment on pending litigation. However, a spokeswoman said that 'Democracy Prep stands firmly against racism'.
'Our curriculum teaches students about American democracy and movements for social change throughout our history. We strongly disagree with how the curriculum has been characterized in this filing
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Website Tracks Which Colleges Embrace Training in Critical Race Theory
It takes only a few clicks to see that critical race theory is influencing hundreds of college campuses and universities across America.
A new website called Critical Race Training in Education allows users to quickly access information about more than 230 schools and the ways in which those schools are instituting critical race theory on campus.
Critical race theory holds that whites use their social status or their legal and economic advantages to create or maintain power over people of color.
The rapid embrace of critical race theory training programs for students and faculty is “very troubling,” website founder William Jacobson told The Daily Signal in a phone interview earlier this month. “My greatest concern is campus free expression [which] is already [under] a very coercive and repressive atmosphere on a lot of campuses,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson is a professor at Cornell Law School and founder and publisher of Legal Insurrection, a conservative media news and commentary platform.
Training in critical race theory likely will “exacerbate a free speech and free expression problem that already exists on campuses,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson’s concerns about critical race theory training began to grow when he saw how rapidly Cornell was implementing the ideology on campus.
Ibram A. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” is a leading advocate for training programs in critical race theory. Kendi has delivered many lectures on anti-racism, including to teachers and leaders in Virginia’s Fairfax County school district, just outside the nation’s capital, where he charged $20,000 for a one-hour lecture in September.
Kendi defines “anti-racism” as actively working to combat racism in all its forms, arguing that inaction is racism.
Cornell University last year encouraged students to read Kendi’s book, calling it recommended summer reading. Cornell provided students and faculty with a link to read the book online for free, which Jacobson did. “I read it and was actually pretty shocked about it,” Jacobson said.
Kendi “advocates racial discimination as a cure for past racial discimination, which is of course illegal,” he said.
Kendi argues that all people fit into only two categories, Jacobson said: activists working to destroy systemic racism or, “if you are not an activist, … you are a racist.”
Not allowing for any middle ground, but simply categorizing all humans as activist or racist, was troubling enough, Jacobson said. But what concerned him more was Cornell’s acceptance of the ideology.
Cornell President Martha E. Pollack issued a letter in July embracing Kendi’s definition of anti-racism and calling on the university’s Faculty Senate to create and implement a “for-credit, educational requirement on racism, bias, and equity for all Cornell students.”
Pollock also announced that Cornell faculty would be required to participate in a lecture series focused on “equity and cultural competency,” and be evaluated on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” practices during performance reviews.
Pollack’s announcement spurred Jacobson to research the actions of other universities. He soon discovered that Cornell was far from the only school taking steps to implement training programs in critical race theory.
But Jacobson said his central motivation to create the web platform came when a group of several hundred Cornell students, staff, faculty, and alumni issued a list of demands to the university. The demands included “cluster hires of Black and other faculty of color,” and “recruiting of graduate students of color in clusters.”
The list of demands, he said, “proved to me that, whatever the president [of Cornell] had intended with regard to the term ‘anti-racist,’ it was interpreted by the campus as being anti-racist in the way Kendi [defines] it and to advocate for discriminatory policies.”
Jacobson’s Critical Race Training in Education website shows that New York University has taken steps to implement anti-racist training for students and Portland State University announced the disarming of campus security. Tufts University, just outside Boston, created a new class for incoming students on civic engagement and racial equality.
The website and interactive map are intended to be a bipartisan resource, Jacobson said.
All of the data is information taken directly from the websites of colleges and universities. Students who would like to attend a university that requires training in critical race theory can use the site as easily as those who wish to avoid such requirements.
“This is not a boycott list,” Jacobson said.“This is simply a database where you can go and find out, ‘Do you like what is going on or do you not like what is going on?’”
Jacobson is personally familiar with the negative implications of far-left ideology being promoted on many college campuses.
Last summer, some Cornell students sought to “cancel” Jacobson by encouraging other students to boycott his course after he wrote an honest history of Black Lives Matter. That boycott failed, but Jacobson’s experience opened his eyes to the “hostile atmosphere” at his own university, he told The Daily Signal in December.
Ultimately, Jacobson said, he hopes to grow the list of schools on the Critical Race Training in Education website to provide information about such training on 500 colleges and universities.
When asked whether students had expressed their views to him about required training in critical race theory, Jacobson said he believes students are “afraid to speak up.” “They are afraid to speak their minds,” he said.
The promulgation of cancel culture and the quick embrace of progressive ideologies such as critical race theory, Jacobson said, have created “an ideological orthodoxy on campuses, which is the opposite of what an education institution should have.”
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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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