I remember how it was -- JR
Staff at Britain's 'wokest university' that excluded white people from classes now to push bias tests
This sounds a lot like the self-criticism and "struggle" sessions in Mao's China. It is ineffably authoritarian
A university that barred white members of staff from free tai chi classes also encourages lecturers to take a 'unconscious bias' test, it can be revealed.
Woke toolkits for employees at King's College London tell academics there is a difference between being 'not racist' and 'anti-racist'.
If they are white, they should understand they have 'benefited' as a result of their racial identity, it advises.
The toolkit, which is not mandatory, surfaced amid a race row engulfing the university after it hosted stress-busting martial arts lessons exclusively for non-white staff – just days after a former senior lecturer labelled the institution one of the 'wokest' in the UK.
Dr Kai Jager, who quit his job last year, said the material forces academics to 'conform' to woke ideology. He added: 'These university programs are aimed to impose conformity to this ideology and to turn scientists into woke activists.
'But the very foundation of scientific knowledge is that it is based on evidence and thus open for criticism and different perspectives. Diversity programs often result in less diverse viewpoints.'
The anti-racism toolkit teaches staff how to be an anti-racist 'ally' and suggests they read books including What White People Can Do Next and Me and White Supremacy.
Other recommended reading includes Anti-Racist Ally: An Introduction to Action and Activism, in which activist Sophie Williams says 'not being racist is not enough'.
Staff are also encouraged to examine their prejudice with an 'implicit and unconscious bias test'. The term 'unconscious bias' is used to explain when learned stereotypes on race, gender or sex are made without conscious awareness.
A demand for reform by the Black Lives Matter movement has seen universities adopting the training to make staff and students aware of their biases.
At Kings's, the toolkit also encourages staff to find out more about a student-led initiative to 'decolonise' the university.
Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, described the training materials as 'infantile' and said they were 'seemingly designed for Year 10s in set three English rather than university lecturers'.
He added: 'It's disappointing to see how infected KCL has become by the woke mind virus.'
King's became embroiled in a race row over its martial arts classes that barred non-white staff. Academics were invited to take part, but were asked 'how do you identify in terms of your heritage/ethnicity?'
The question added: 'We are asking this to ensure participants are all from global majority backgrounds... the sessions are intended specifically for those who experience racism.'
The term 'global majority' is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as 'the group of people in the world who do not consider themselves or are not considered to be white'.
Dr Jager added: 'The woke movement likes to hide behind noble words like tolerance, inclusivity or diversity, but actively purges anyone who deviates from its orthodoxy.'
King's said it was 'proud to be a university which fosters an inclusive environment... where everyone can feel they belong regardless of their background or political views', adding: 'As a place of learning, we have a whole range of voluntary materials and resources for staff to engage with these issues and learn more.'
******************************************
University to undergo free speech training, pay $80,000 in settlement for allegedly issuing 'no-contact orders' against student, instructing peers to report her 'harmful' Christian, political views
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville will pay $80,000 in a recent settlement agreement with a graduate student who accused the school of wrongfully issuing "no-contact orders" against her and instructing her peers to report her "harmful rhetoric."
Maggie DeJong and Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against the school after the student claimed she was discriminated against for sharing her Christian and conservative political views.
Three of the school's professors have been ordered to undergo First Amendment training as part of the settlement agreement. Additionally, the university has been required to revise its policies and student handbook to protect students' political, religious, and ideological views.
In February 2022, school officials issued "no-contact orders" against DeJong after some of her peers reported her comments about religion, politics, critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, Marxism, censorship, COVID-related regulations, and the criminal justice system.
Students accused DeJong of "harassment" and "discrimination," claiming her rhetoric had "harmed and offended" them, according to the ADF's lawsuit.
Examples of DeJong's so-called "harmful rhetoric" included social media posts where the student shared others' quotes, including one from January 6, 2021, that read, "Storming the US Capitol is a set back for our cause. It undermines the purpose of the PEACEFUL protest. To the very small minority of protesters trying to break into the Capitol, please stop. We are better than this; we cannot destroy this country like BLM riots!"
DeJong also shared a quote from pastor and author John MacArthur: "Those who dare to take an unpopular stand, declare truth in a definitive way — or worst of all, express disagreement with someone else's teaching — will inevitably be marked as troublesome. Compromise has become a virtue while devotion to truth has become offensive."
DeJong was prohibited from having "any contact" with the peers who reported her and was never allowed to defend herself.
In a Wednesday statement, ADF legal counsel Mathew Hoffman said, "Public universities can't punish students for expressing their political and religious viewpoints. Maggie, like every other student, is protected under the First Amendment to respectfully share her personal beliefs, and university officials were wrong to issue gag orders and silence her speech."
"As a result of Maggie's courage in filing suit, SIUE has agreed to take critical steps to comply with the law and the U.S. Constitution and move closer to accepting and embracing true diversity of thought and speech," he added.
SIUE Chancellor James T. Minor noted that the school is "unequivocally committed to protecting First Amendment rights and does not have policies that restrict free speech nor support censorship," Fox News Digital reported.
"For decades, universities have embraced the challenge of vigorously protecting free speech while at the same time creating a safe learning environment for the expression of diverse views," he continued. "Protecting these two principles can create tensions. For example, while the First Amendment protects free speech (no matter how offensive), it does not protect behavior on a campus that creates a pervasively hostile environment for other students. We accept that balancing these two deeply valued principles of free speech and a safe environment, in real-time, represent inherent complications for administering prudence."
Minor encouraged people to "see beyond the sensationalism of clickbait, media reports and headlines in search of a more complete understanding of the facts."
******************************************
How big tech and big money made our schools go woke
Few issues have emerged as cultural flashpoints quite like Critical Race Theory. Better-known as CRT, the ideology — which places race and racism at the center of learning — has become a cornerstone of academic curricula nationwide. Some parents embrace it, others despise it – and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis tried to ban it from Florida public schools entirely.
In his new book “School of Woke,” author Kenny Xu explores the intriguing path CRT has navigated to reach this critical juncture and the roles that big tech, big money and political elites have played in the process.
In the summer of 2018, Merrick Garland, who had just lost his bid to become a Supreme Court Justice, walked his daughter Rebecca Garland down the aisle of the luxurious St. Vrain wedding venue in Longmont, Colo., her arm clutched in his.
He was leading her to her about-to-be husband, Alexander “Xan” Tanner.
Xan Tanner, then 27, was the wunderkind cofounder of Panorama Education, a New York Times-profiled full-service “analytical software and services company” based in Boston, Mass.
A millionaire and a Mark Zuckerberg acolyte, Xan Tanner sat at the pinnacle of what was increasingly becoming the height of liberal fashion — Yale grad, big-tech CEO, education activist.
But what was behind his fortune?
The New York Times may have described Panorama in cagey language in its coverage of the Tanner-Garland wedding, but the reality is that Panorama Education is not a software company at all but rather an educational technology company whose lead business model is data, particularly data about children.
Along with his fellow Yale graduates Aaron Feuer and David Carel, Tanner created a student-surveying platform that focuses on the mysterious concept of “social-emotional learning,” which Panorama defines rather vaguely as “supporting the whole student.”
Yet what’s curious is his quick rise to riches.
There’s nothing technologically savvy about Tanner’s product, which could have been created on SurveyMonkey. But strangely, Zuckerberg chose Tanner out of many potential investment opportunities and elected to fund him. Tanner ended up raising more than $16 million personally from the tech billionaire and $76 million from others by using Zuckerberg’s name between the years 2017 and 2021, as Forbes reported.
Zuckerberg had a very intense interest in “fixing” public schools, and his $1 billion Startup: Education fund, which he established in 2012, was actively looking to invest in educational do-gooders like Tanner. The fund was made to “[improve] education for the nation’s most underserved children.” Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, believed that they could “solve” education in America by leveraging what he knew best — the power of big business.
But the Facebook CEO needed loyal servants for his cause.
And Xan Tanner, with his prestigious background and social-justice bona fides, fit the profile. Tanner himself had plenty to gain from a partnership with Zuckerberg — in particular, money, and lots of it.
His path to riches was to run a child-research firm with Mark Zuckerberg’s money attached to it.
But as soon as Tanner took the job, Zuckerberg asked him to tackle what had previously been an intractable problem: how to persuade America’s public-school boards to give the fund access to private data about their children. After all, the last time Zuckerberg spent big money on education — in a widely publicized takeover of the Newark, NJ, public schools, in 2012 — he watched his $200 million disappear into a black hole of mismanagement and graft.
“There was $20 million that went to consultants who received, in general, $1,000 dollars a day for carrying out various management reform efforts,” wrote Dale Russakoff, a journalist who documented Zuckerberg’s attempt at school reform.
Another $89 million went into a teachers’ contract, which had little direct effect on learning. The New York Times excoriated Zuckerberg’s gift as one that “slowly melt[ed] into an ocean of recrimination.”
The national embarrassment convinced the fledgling philanthropist that he should exert his influence in subtler, more under-the-table ways in the future. And one of those ways was through conduits such as Tanner.
Still, how was the young Yale grad going to get his foot in the door with the notoriously hard-to-crack school boards? After years of keeping his nose to the grindstone, pitching, and trying to persuade the school board to adopt his Zuckerberg‑backed surveying product, Tanner found the answer: go woke.
Tanner’s pitching strategy was to convince schools that they needed data on “racism” at their institutions to help children with their “social-emotional health.” (The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act mandated that schools find some way to address social and emotional wellness in students.) The company targeted the most progressive districts in the nation, such as those in El Dorado County, California, the city of Boston, and Washington, DC.
Promising that the districts would gain insights into the state of racism among local fourth graders, Panorama secured the contracts, which ranged in value from the hundreds of thousands to the millions of dollars, by asking questions such as “How clearly do you see your culture and history reflected in your school?” and “How often do you feel that you are treated poorly by other students because of your race, ethnicity, gender, family’s income, religion, disability, or sexual orientation?”
These questions, when answered by emotional nine- and 10-year-olds, would usually swing toward the direction of critical race theory — averring that our institutions and our schools retain and abet racism.
As revealed in new documents leaked from Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), in northern Virginia, Panorama had signed a five-year, $2.4 million deal with FCPS to conduct surveys among students about ways in which they were being targeted because of their race and gender. This included transgenderism: Panorama asked questions such as “Some people describe themselves as transgender when their sex at birth does not match the way they think or feel about their gender. Are you transgender?”
The surveys were not optional for students, meaning that students had to sit down for at least an hour, probably more, to take this survey, conducted on behalf of a for-profit business.
But because Tanner positioned himself as the ur-woke surveyor, progressive school boards let him in. In fact, local governments eventually showered Panorama with more than $27 million in payments between 2017 and 2020. Other organizations quickly noticed Tanner’s business model and followed him.
In Loudoun County, Fairfax County’s immediate neighbor, students were asked to take “social-emotional” surveys conducted by the University of Virginia and the Virginia Department of Education. UVA went even further than Panorama when it came to injecting sensitive political issues directly into the bloodstream of the school day, asking Loudoun County ninth graders: “During the past 12 months, did you ever seriously consider attempting suicide?” and “During the past 12 months, did you ever feel so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that you stopped doing some usual activities?”
Data-mining children by asking traumatizing questions may appear to be an exercise in futility. But rest assured, the progressive school administrators had a purpose for these surveys. Coincidentally enough, soon after the contracts were signed, school boards, including those in the District of Columbia Public Schools, started reporting things such as “Black and at‑risk students were less satisfied with their schools than their White, Asian, and not at‑risk peers.” Their evidence? Right there in the footnote: Panorama Education.
Armed with “data” on “racism,” activists and special interests could walk up to the front of the aisle and loudly crow “systemic racism” at the district and demand reparations and policy changes — usually to persuade weak-willed administrators to give them more money and power.
All the while, the Garland family, woke educational bureaucrats, and billionaire elites cashed in on the grift. Elite progressives got rich and politically influential by going woke.
So Merrick Garland must have been very pleased that his daughter was going to marry Xan Tanner. He fit every quality that Garland must have wanted in a son-in-law: elite, liberal, a natural at playing at the elite liberal game of kowtowing to the forces of social justice and bowing down to the Zuckerbergs of the world.
Most important, Tanner understood the business purpose of propagating Critical Race Theory: to land the contract.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/29/how-big-tech-and-big-money-made-our-schools-go-woke/
******************************************************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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
******************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment