I remember how it was -- JR
Thursday, February 03, 2022
Yet Another History Professor Says Collin College Fired Him Over Free Speech Concerns
For months, Collin College history professor Michael Phillips had advocated for colleagues who claimed they were fired in violation of their rights. Now, it appears he’s next on the chopping block.
In a Twitter thread Monday, Phillips announced that Collin College decided against renewing his contract, which expires May 15.
For one thing, he says, the administration was upset that he’d publicly posted about a policy preventing professors from recommending masks in class. Despite this, Phillips encouraged mask use, discussed anti-mask leagues amid the 1918 influenza pandemic and assigned coursework related to the history of epidemics and pandemics. Soon enough, Phillips said, he received a discipline warning for his social media posts and classroom speech.
Phillips also says he was warned by an administrator that he’d violated school policy after co-authoring a 2017 open letter that called for the removal of Dallas’ Confederate statues. The letter identified him as a professor at Collin College. Another professor there had also signed the letter, which she claims became part of the school's reasoning for her termination.
“The news that I have been fired is heartbreaking to me,” Phillips said in a tweet. “Teaching, mentoring, and getting to know my students and watching them flower into full adulthood has been one of the most rewarding parts of my life.”
Speaking with the Observer, Phillips said the school was upset that he’d made the masking “gag rule” public and spoken to the Board of Trustees.
“It’s just apparent that they feel like college policy trumps the First Amendment, some kind of vague policy that the foundational document of the United States somehow is not relevant anymore,” he said. “It doesn’t say in the First Amendment I have the freedom to petition my government for a redress of grievances — as long as I talk to my associate dean first.”
In his Twitter thread, Phillips says that last week, he was called in for a meeting in which the institution’s senior vice president suggested he make a “graceful exit” from Collin College. Phillips claims that he was asked to work in tandem with the school to “construct a narrative” around his departure, such as by telling others that he would be leaving voluntarily.
“He further said that, with such cooperation, the college could help me in my search for a new position,” Phillips continued. “I declined the offer.”
When asked for comment, Collin College spokesperson Marisela Cadena-Smith sent a statement describing the school’s contract renewal process. She declined to publicly comment on personnel matters “out of respect for the privacy of our faculty members and their respective current and future employment.”
In a separate email, the Observer also specifically asked about Phillips' allegation that he'd been encouraged to say his departure was voluntary, purportedly in exchange for help finding another job. Cadena-Smith reiterated that the school would provide no further comment.
Phillips is the latest Collin College professor who says the school targeted them over free speech. He’s long been a harsh critic of district President Neil Matkin, but he’s far from the only one.
Lora Burnett was a history professor at Collin College until last year, when she says she was let go in violation of her constitutional rights. So, she sued the school, and last Tuesday accepted its offer to pay her $70,000 plus attorneys’ fees.
Burnett said she was “absolutely beside [herself] with righteous indignation” when she learned of her former colleague’s announcement.
Phillips is a beloved employee and longtime advocate for the rights of all North Texas citizens, in addition to being an all-around extraordinary person, Burnett said. For the administrators to suggest that he lie about the circumstances behind his non-renewal is perhaps the most shocking thing she’s ever heard coming out of Collin College, she said, adding that “if that’s not criminal, it should be.”
Moving forward, Burnett said, she’s willing to do everything she can to support Phillips, who tirelessly advocated for her and other professors who were “wrongfully fired.” She will continue to focus public scrutiny on the malfeasance of Collin College, a government entity that has continually violated the citizens’ constitutional rights, she said.
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Virginia's new GOP AG prompts three largest universities to drop vaccine mandate for students
The three largest universities in Virginia have dropped their sweeping vaccine requirements after the state's attorney general issued his legal opinion calling such mandates illegal.
George Mason University, Virginia Tech and the University of Mary Washington all announced reforms to their previously strict vaccination requirements. The colleges now emphasis recommendations to vaccinate without negative consequences for remaining holdouts.
"Proof of vaccination against COVID-19 is no longer a condition of students’ enrollment or in-person attendance, nor will unvaccinated or eligible unboosted students be subject to separate testing requirements," University of Mary Washington wrote in a memo.
Virginia's newly elected Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares warned the universities they would not be allowed to mandate vaccines for students in a legal opinion published Jan. 26.
"Virginia’s public institutions of higher education are public corporations," Miyares wrote in the opinion. "As such, they are afforded separate corporate status but remain under control of the General Assembly and may only exercise such powers as the General Assembly has expressly conferred or necessarily implied."
The attorney has already taken hard line stances on public policy from education to criminal prosecution, saying that Virginia would be moving forward with "common sense" instead of partisan platforms. Unpopular mask and vaccine mandates at public schools and universities are a focus of both Miyares and Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
"All George Mason University students are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated and to submit COVID-19 vaccination documentation and COVID-19 booster documentation," the university now says, though the request for documentation is now rendered toothless.
The university followed up the change with a letter to students from the school's president, Dr. Gregory Washington.
"Given our high vaccination rate, the continued decline of the omicron variant, the Governor’s recent executive orders and directives, and the recent Attorney General’s opinion, we will now strongly encourage vaccination protocols for all Mason students, faculty, and staff, though we no longer require them," Washington wrote. "We also strongly encourage everyone to upload their vaccination status so we can continue to understand the effect of the virus on campus community."
Virginia Tech is also following the new legal opinion, stating that the school "will no longer require students to be vaccinated as a condition of enrollment or in-person instruction, effective immediately."
However, the University of Virginia wrote in an online message, "Attorney general opinions, though they do not have the force of law the way a court ruling does, nonetheless warrant careful consideration."
The university said that because over 99% of its students are already fully vaccinated and boosted, they do not intend to follow the attorney general's opinion, but will not disenroll students who have not received a booster.
Within hours of taking office, Miyares announced investigations into two campaign issues that were prominent topics on the campaign trail, the Loudoun County, Virginia, sexual assault controversy and alleged impropriety within the Virginia Parole Board’s release of dangerous criminals.
Fox News Digital reached out to Miyares' office for comment but has not yet received a response.
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Harvard’s Method of Discrimination Is Affront to Individual Dignity
In a move that may finally put an end to race-conscious admissions, the Supreme Court accepted a petition to hear Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard on Jan 24.
The case was filed by a group of Asian Americans who allege, with strong evidence, discrimination by the nation’s most prestigious school, for reasons related to ensuring a diverse “racial mix” in the composition of its student body.
The Supreme Court will now begin debate on whether the value of racial diversity can truly trump the constitutional prerogative to not discriminate on the basis of race.
In the case of Harvard, race is not simply used as a tiebreaker in admissions. A 2013 internal Harvard study revealed by the lawsuit showed that had Harvard only considered academics, Asians would make up 43% of Harvard’s student body. Adding legacy, athlete recruitment, “extracurriculars,” and a “personal” score lowered Asians to 26%. Finally, in the years the internal Harvard study looked at, Asians actually made up only 19% of the student body.
Central to the case is Harvard’s especially distasteful method of discrimination: the creation of a “personal score” that, evidence shows, the school manipulates to give Asian applicants the lowest scores. Although this sort of discrimination avoids the blunt edges of explicit racial quotas, such as President Joe Biden’s explicit insistence that he will nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court following Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement, it is arguably crueler to those who fall under its exclusion.
Harvard’s discrimination is discrimination via character assassination. For Harvard to suppress the vast quantity of qualified Asians (who make up 50% of the top SAT scores in the nation) from its admissions books, it questions their character and minimizes their accomplishments.
Harvard’s admissions officers conveniently rate Asian Americans lowest in the “personal score,” having never met them, while similarly academically qualified black, Hispanic, and white students respectively score first, second, and third. What is the evidence Asians deserve this sort of treatment in the personality measurement?
The objective evidence points to none. Asian Americans get the highest alumni interview scores, the highest teacher recommendation scores, and the second-highest counselor scores out of all the racial groups. There is simply no objective basis for Harvard’s attack on Asian American “personalities.”
Instead, the admissions officers who make the final judgements on applicants disproportionately label Asians “standard strong,” which is another way of saying “good but not good enough.”
When you get “standard strong” on your Harvard application, “It’s automatic you don’t get in,” says Duke professor Peter Arcidiacono, the expert witness for the plaintiffs who read and analyzed every Harvard application in the case. “And Asian Americans get ‘standard strong’ more often than any other race.”
The use of the personality score for nefarious purposes borrows from Harvard’s history. In 1922, Harvard’s President Abbott Lowell proposed capping Jewish enrollment at 15% of the student body. His proposal was widely criticized and eventually rejected by Harvard’s admissions committee, which opposed an explicit quota. Lowell responded by adding a non-academic “character” evaluation to the admissions process:
To prevent a dangerous increase in the proportion of Jews, I know at present only one way which is at the same time straightforward and effective, and that is a selection by a personal estimate of character on the part of the Admission authorities, based upon the probable value to the candidate, to the college and to the community of his admission.
He targeted Jews with low personal character scores, forcing Jewish Americans to the threshold he desired. Lowell explicitly invented the character evaluation for the sake of racial gatekeeping, and it remains in full force today. Although Harvard moved away from anti-Jewish discrimination, it retains the system and applies it to a new “overrepresented” racial group—Asian Americans.
Harvard’s blueprint of discrimination, if not checked by the U.S. Supreme Court, allows any actor with racially malicious intent to bury their discrimination underneath a fake “character” trait, while gaining full legal immunity in the process. Any lawyer will be able to point to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling to show that their discrimination is legal.
The primary consequence of Harvard’s discrimination won’t just be Asian American deprivation. It will be the penalization of hard work felt by America’s high-achieving students. Asian American success in education is no secret: They study twice as many hours as the average American and take more challenging courses than other racial groups.
Harvard’s discrimination will teach children not to aspire to be like the highest-achieving kids in their class. Rather, students will get rewarded for playacting a certain victimhood category than they will by working hard and becoming academically competent.
When the Supreme Court hears Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard this year, more will be on the line than just a few admissions spots. The strength of our commitment to the ideals of a colorblind meritocracy, where hard work and drive is rewarded irrespective of one’s background, will be tested.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
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://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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