I remember how it was -- JR
Truman Scholarships overwhelmingly awarded to progressive students for tenth year in row
Meanwhile, fewer than one in 10 are openly conservative, analysis finds
Nearly three in four recipients of this year’s prestigious, federally funded Truman Scholarship have clear ties to Democratic politicians or progressive causes, a College Fix analysis found.
Approximately 43 of the 60 students have worked for Democratic politicians, advocated for progressive causes, or identify as left-leaning — continuing an annual trend exposed in past Fix analyses.
In contrast, only five scholars have worked for Republican politicians, advocated for conservative causes, or identify as right-leaning. The College Fix determined this information based on provided biographies, LinkedIn profiles, and email inquiries.
Terry Babcock-Lumish, the executive secretary of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, told The Fix in a recent email the foundation does not consider students’ political affiliation “as a criteria for selection.”
“The Truman Foundation’s selection process is based solely on applicants’ demonstrated commitment to public service, leadership potential, and academic excellence,” she said.
Babcock-Lumish said the foundation often does not know applicants’ political affiliations and students regularly work for politicians “with whom their beliefs are not 100% aligned.”
She continued, “Our annual competition requires nominations from undergraduate institutions, so the Truman Scholars we select are reflective of the pool of candidates that we have before us. If students are not nominated or do not apply, we cannot select them. Accordingly, let me again ask The College Fix to encourage readers making commitments to careers in public service to apply.”
The Democratic politicians whom the 2024 scholarship winners have worked or interned for include Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, California Rep. Adam Schiff, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, and Michigan state Rep. Abraham Aiyash.
Awardees also have been involved with left-wing organizations, including Planned Parenthood Generation Action, College Democrats, Young Democrats, Equal Rights Advocates, and Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security, and Conflict Resolution.
Additionally, some have advocated for progressive issues such as “the safety of LGBTQ+ disabled youth,” “racial justice activism,” “pro-union policies,” “environmental justice,” and “social justice and equity,” The Fix analysis found.
A few of this year’s recipients worked for Republican politicians, including Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty, Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, and Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger.
The remaining 12 recipients did not respond to inquiries from The Fix about their political leanings, and their ideologies could not be definitively determined based on public information.
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New York City’s public school system has received billions of dollars in additional funding since 2020 — despite enrollment cratering
Per-student spending at K-12 Department of Education schools is expected to hit $39,304 in the upcoming fiscal year 2025 budget — a massive 26.3% increase, equating to $8,185 more per student since 2020, the “Did You Know” study by the Citizens Budget Commission found.
Mayor Eric Adams proposed a 10.2% increase or $2.1 billion more in city taxpayer funding for the Big Apple public school system — which would mostly offset the $2.4 billion phase-out of federal pandemic aid given to DOE.
Total DOE spending will be $269 million, or 0.7%, less than current funding levels.
But the CBC analysis said, “Between fiscal years 2020 and 2025, spending climbed steadily as enrollment fell.”
Total DOE expenditures are projected to reach $39.8 billion in fiscal year 2024, an increase of $5.2 billion, or 15.2 percent, since fiscal year 2020.
City spending rose from $19.7 billion to $20.6 billion from 2020 to 2024, while state aid increased from $12.3 billion to $14.2 billion, according to the report.
Federal funds funneled to the DOE jumped from $2.1 billion in 2020 to $4.6 billion in 2024.
Enrollment plummeted precipitously during the COVID pandemic with the DOE losing 104,374 students between fiscal years 2020 and 2023.
The city now projects an increase of 10,355 K-12 students this year and next, thanks in large part to the migrant influx.
But DOE still has 94,019 fewer students than in the pre-COVID-19 era, the CBC report noted.
During a City Council budget hearing on Wednesday, Council members made it clear they want to jack up education spending in the final negotiated budget with City Hall.
The Council is pushing to boost spending on early education pre-K and 3-K programs by $170 million more than the mayor recommended.
Education officials and the Council are awaiting a report that spells out where the demand is needed for early childhood education seats and where they are not.
Councilwoman Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the education committee, expressed concern about the more than $200 million gap — the loss of federal aid that was not replaced by city and state funding — in the DOE budget.
“That’s significant,” she told Schools Chancellor David Banks, who testified at the hearing.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/15/us-news/nyc-spends-billions-more-on-shrinking-school-system-analysis/
***********************************************Hard to Argue With Logic of 13 Judges Who Say They Won’t Hire Columbia Grads
Is it proper for federal judges to boycott hiring students who attend a particular university? Thirteen federal judges, all of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump, have announced that they are going to do just that.
In a May 6 letter to Minouche Shafik, president of protest-rocked Columbia University, the 13 judges referred to “recent events” there and informed her that, “absent extraordinary change,” they would “not hire anyone who joins the Columbia University community whether as undergraduates or law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024.”
The recent events, of course, are the campuswide anti-Israel demonstrations that resulted in the occupation of a school building (Hamilton Hall), multiple arrests, and a smaller-than-usual commencement ceremony punctuated by ongoing protests.
Such antisemitic protests, of course, have been taking place on dozens of campuses, but things seem to have been particularly bad at Columbia.
In addition to occupying a Columbia University building and assaulting maintenance workers, protesters accosted and assaulted Jewish students, shouting “F— Israel” and “Israel is a b—-” and telling them that they would be Hamas’ “next targets” and should “Go back to Poland!” (This last was a thinly veiled reference to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzek, Sobibor, and Chelmno, the horrific extermination camps for Jews that existed in German-occupied Poland during World War II.)
Many protesters at Columbia were joined by sympathetic faculty members (hundreds, according to The Guardian), who linked arms and formed a protective wall around the anti-Israel encampments. Among these supportive faculty members was Joseph Massad, who said Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, which left over 1,200 dead and 250 hostages taken, was “awesome” and a “stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.”
The situation became so dicey that one rabbi associated with Columbia said Jewish students should go home and remain there because the school could not guarantee their safety.
Columbia Law School was not exempt from this activity. The editors of the Columbia Law Review—presumably among the best and the brightest students—said that they, like most of their classmates, were “irrevocably shaken” by what was happening on campus and demanded that the school cancel final exams and simply pass all students.
What judge could have faith in the integrity and academic rigor of any institution teaching future lawyers that this is an appropriate response to disturbing events?
As someone with a long family history at Columbia (my grandfather taught at the medical school and I went to Columbia, as did my father and my daughter), this hits close to home.
In their letter to Shafik, the 13 federal judges wrote that they had “lost confidence in Columbia as an institution of higher education” and that the school had “become an incubator of bigotry.” To restore academic freedom and reclaim a “once-distinguished reputation,” the judges stated, Columbia should do three things at a minimum:
1) See to it that students and faculty members who violated the school’s rules and disrupted campus life, including by threatening Jewish students, suffer serious consequences.
2) Ensure that in the future the university protects free speech and enforces rules of conduct in a neutral and nondiscriminatory fashion.
3) Make “[s]ignificant and dramatic change[s] in the composition of its faculty and administration” to promote viewpoint diversity.
Two of the judges who signed the letter are appellate judges, namely James Ho of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Elizabeth Branch of the 11th Circuit. Also signing: eight District Court judges from Texas (Alan Albright, David Counts, James Hendrix, Matthew Kacsmaryk, Brantley Starr, Jeremy Kernodle, and Drew Tipton), a District Court judge from Georgia (Tilman Self), a District Court judge from North Dakota (Daniel Traynor), a judge on the Court of Federal Claims (Matthew Solomson), and a judge on the Court of International Trade (Stephen Vaden).
The federal judges noted that the anti-Israel demonstrations on the Columbia campus had made it clear “that ideological homogeneity throughout the entire institution … had destroyed its ability to train future leaders of a pluralistic and intellectually diverse country,” and that it was equally “clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct.”
The judges cited abortion as an example, stating that they had “no doubt” that the response of Columbia administrators would have been “profoundly different” had religious conservatives on campus who “view abortion as a tragic genocide” engaged in an uprising.
I also have no doubt that this is true, and could cite many other examples: Protest racial preferences in admissions policies or the establishment of black-only housing on campus? Rally against biological males being allowed to compete in women’s sports? Galvanize a petition drive against being forced to refer to students by their preferred personal pronouns? Raise a ruckus over the legality and morality of same-sex marriages? Gather a crowd and give a speech claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen?
Not a chance! Any student group that did any of those things would be subjected to discipline for engaging in “hate speech.” But wear a mask and carry placards proclaiming, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” (with its implicit message that Israel must and will be eliminated)? Well, then, “It depends on the context.”
There are those, including Columbia Law grad Dan Abrams (whom I recently debated on this subject on his NewsNation show) and MSNBC columnist Jessica Levinson, who say this is a dramatic overreaction tantamount to guilt by association that punishes innocent students who didn’t participate in anti-Israel protests.
Levinson goes so far as to say that the 13 judges are engaging in extortion and blackmail of Columbia. Other commentators, such as Berkeley Law School professor Orin Kerr, say they believe that “judges as judges do not have an important role to play in our society beyond the work they do in the courtroom or in chambers … , and they shouldn’t be trying to help American society solve problems like anti-Semitism, in any kind of official capacity.”
Still others, less thoughtful or kind, have stated that the judges who vow not to hire Columbia graduates are engaging in a performative protest designed to appeal to “their chosen audience of wackjobs.”
One wonders whether these critics would respond the same way if a university or college, and especially a law school, were to foster a hostile environment, replete with threats to students by mask-wearing fellow students and faculty members, for female, black, or LGBTQ students?
Are there students who will suffer the consequences of this hiring boycott even though they had nothing to do with, and may well have disapproved of, the campus protests? Certainly. But the same could be said of any boycott.
When a group chooses to boycott a product or restaurant chain because of some corporate policy or practice, those who produce that product or work in that restaurant inevitably will suffer the consequences and may well lose their jobs, even though they had nothing to do with formulating the policy or implementing the practice that the protesting group finds objectionable. Boycotts are a blunt but often effective tool designed to bring about systemic change from the top. And change is certainly needed here.
Many of our elite universities, including Columbia, pay far less attention than they should to teaching students how to think and far more attention than they should to teaching students what to think. Overwhelmingly liberal faculty members and administrators divide the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed,” indoctrinate students in left-wing ideology, and “cancel” any contrary views in the process.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/17/13-federal-judges-boycott-columbia-university/
******************************************************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
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