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Taking On the College Cartel

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By Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane

The venerable economist Milton Friedman once said, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” That’s the impulse behind Winston Churchill’s admonition (later famously echoed by Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel): “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Well, welcome to the world of American higher education. Crippling tuition, bloated bureaucracies, huge rates of noncompletion, campus groupthink, DEI loyalty oaths, grade inflation, enrollment cliffs, and stretched institutional budgets have all added up to a crisis of confidence—inside higher education and among the broader public.

Trust in the nation’s colleges has been crumbling for the better part of a decade. In 2023, Gallup reported that just 36 percent of American adults said they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in higher education. Among Republicans, the share of adults who trust colleges plummeted from 56 percent in 2015 to 19 percent in 2023. But it wasn’t just a right-wing thing. Among independents, the numbers plunged by a third, from 48 percent to 32 percent, and among Democrats, trust declined from 68 percent to 59 percent.

There is a challenge here—and an opportunity.

Policymakers who are troubled by this state of affairs but unsure how to respond may be inclined to look to the K–12 playbook, thinking that what’s needed is a strong dose of “school choice for college.” But the truth is that American higher education already features an extraordinary degree of choice. Pell Grants, the GI Bill, and many state scholarships essentially operate as vouchers for low-income students to attend the school, public or private, of their choice. Heavily subsidized federal student loans can also be used at nearly every institution of higher education. And yet, for all this, the higher education landscape is a mess.

It would be a profound mistake to read this as an indictment of educational choice. Rather, the problem is that anti-competitive practices have been allowed to stymie robust, healthy competition and fuel the self-dealings of campus mandarins.

What’s needed today is a heavy dose of trust-busting, deregulation, and entrepreneurial energy.

Busting the Accreditation Trust

Federal policymaking over the past half-century has mostly focused on subsidizing higher education. Pell Grants, institutional aid, and the student lending program have provided vast sums to cover or underwrite tuition, plumping college coffers while expanding their consumer base. In order to guard against waste and fraud, these programs have relied on a system of college accreditation that has, ironically, served to further protect incumbent institutions and encourage bureaucratic bloat.

For an institution of higher education to receive federal funds (including Pell Grants and subsidized loans), it must be accredited. The problem is that accreditors are trade associations operated and funded by the colleges they oversee. This means they’re essentially a legally sanctioned, publicly funded cartel. Mediocre colleges keep their accreditation even as they overcharge and underperform. Meanwhile, new and nontraditional entrants must leap over enormous hurdles just to get started.

The current system isn’t suited to facilitate competition and creation. However, some form of oversight is necessary as a matter of fiduciary responsibility. The obvious solution is to build on the Trump administration’s efforts to create room for new accreditors that are less entwined with the cartel and more hospitable to new providers. This is eminently doable: Under existing law, the US Department of Education can recognize new accreditors not beholden to the same entrenched interest groups.

The Postsecondary Commission (PSC) offers one intriguing approach. PSC seeks to adapt the K–12 model of charter authorizing to higher education by focusing more on outcomes than on inputs and compliance. PSC founder, Stig Leschly, says that the goal is to stop counting faculty or campus materials and instead judge colleges based on economic returns, transparency, accountability, and innovation. To be accredited by PSC, institutions need to track and report short-term results like rates of graduation, year-to-year retention, and job placement. Over the longer term, they would need to track student labor market outcomes and calculate graduates’ earnings—as compared to a counterfactual estimate of what they would make had they not attended the institution—minus the cost of attendance. Such a system rewards institutions that build programs and approach staffing with a focus on outcomes and ROI—a development that, in turn, should have the happy effect of squeezing out the ideological stylings that have proliferated at institutions where students or faculty have too much idle time and too little focus. PSC is an example of the type of forward-thinking activity that could allow for the emergence of new accreditors, and thereby new colleges, that are less beholden to the unworkable status quo.

The College Shakedown Racket

But there is an even more insidious trust lurking just under the surface of American higher education. Employers use college credentials as a hiring requirement—whether they’re demonstrably relevant to the job in question or not. This practice took off after the Civil Rights Act of 1965, when it became increasingly dicey for employers to use other kinds of hiring tests. The Supreme Court warned in the early 1970s that college degrees shouldn’t be treated any differently than any other hiring requirement, but nonetheless, they have been given exactly that kind of carve-out—making them a safe haven for risk-averse HR departments and employment attorneys. The result is that employers who are fearful of screening based on knowledge or skills will casually demand a diploma even for jobs that don’t truly require one. These paper credentials have become admission tickets to the middle class that must be purchased from existing institutions of higher education.

It’s time to level the playing field. Students should enroll in college because they want to or because they need specific training, not because it’s the only way to ensure they’ll get a fair look from potential employers. There are several ways to reduce employers’ reliance on college degrees. First, the courts should subject college credentials to the same kind of scrutiny applied to any other hiring test. Degrees should be required only if they’re demonstrably related to the work at hand. Meanwhile, there’s a need to devise reliable, credible, legally sound hiring tests that can offer an appealing alternative to college credentialing for applicants and employers. Public officials have a unique opportunity to lead on this issue. Indeed, they should take a page from red and blue governors like Larry Hogan in Maryland and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania and eliminate degree requirements for most state government jobs, thereby requiring that positions be filled based on skills and experience rather than paper credentials.

Higher education is ripe for a new era of institution building. Choice works when new, better alternatives force lazy, self-indulgent incumbents to raise their game or risk obsolescence.

The merit of a college education isn’t the point. The issue is that today an arbitrary judicial standard, an excessive regard for employer convenience, and an unwillingness to stand up to the college cartel mean that Americans are required to pay the ransom of a college diploma in order to seek professional success. Compelling Americans to buy an expensive degree of dubious value is behavior more typically associated with protection rackets than engines of opportunity.

Public Scams and Public Subsidies

Higher education is also rife with dubious practices that reward influence peddling and shower massive public subsidies on unaccountable providers. Some of these practices especially advantage brand-name institutions, while others insulate the broader sector from the consequences of its failings.

Today, wealthy families who make influence-peddling “donations” to help grease the admissions skids for their children are allowed to write off the full amount as charitable contributions. This is nonsensical. After all, the IRS has long held that donors can only deduct the value of their contribution minus the value of any good or service they receive in return. This makes obvious sense: An exchange of goods or services is not a charitable contribution. Yet the IRS currently ignores the quid pro quo when it comes to admissions. Elite schools shake down wealthy families to pad their endowments and insulate themselves from market pressure. They then gift seats to donors’ children at the expense of their more deserving peers. Taxpayers pick up the tab as donors buying access wind up illegally deducting 50 percent or more of these “charitable contributions.” That publicly subsidized institutions engage in such influence peddling is particularly galling given the leaders of those same institutions are prone to go on at great length about the evils of privilege and their commitment to equity.

There is also a general lack of institutional accountability for publicly provided funds. Colleges admit students and, as long as they’re enrolled, keep pocketing taxpayer dollars—directly in the form of Pell Grants or indirectly through federally subsidized loans. If the student never graduates, the college keeps all that money. The student leaves with no degree but all the debt. When students don’t repay their loans, taxpayers are on the hook for the balance. Now we are seeing the frustration over accumulated debt fuel a political push for loan “forgiveness” that sticks taxpayers with the tab for hundreds of billions in borrowed funds, even when those funds simply serve to alleviate financial pressure on colleges whose students have no degrees or earnings to show for all the time and money they spent there.

Institutions that accept public funds should be expected to make taxpayers whole for the tuition and fees they’ve collected from students who don’t repay their loans. This would create intense pressure on colleges to help ensure that students complete their degrees and find gainful employment. It would also likely make colleges more cautious about whom they enroll. That’s a good thing. Admitting students who are unprepared for college and then pocketing tuition from them isn’t good for anyone.

Building New Institutions

Dynamism used to be the norm in higher education. Americans weren’t stuck with the institutions we inherited. Rather, we built new institutions in response to changing needs. Between 1820 and 1899, 672 new colleges were established in the US. Of those, 573 were private. That’s an average of more than a half-dozen new private institutions each year. During the second half of the nineteenth century, private donors founded 11 universities that are today ranked among the nation’s top twenty, including such famous names as Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago. We’ve fallen out of this habit. In recent decades, donors have steered big gifts toward old, inflexible institutions and given short shrift to new entrants.

Much of that nineteenth-century dynamism was born of the millionaires produced by the Industrial Revolution. They saw a need for new institutions attuned to the changing needs of the economy and society. Today, the deep-pocketed donors born of the Information Age have seemingly concluded that it’s foolish to build from scratch when there are already so many prestigious institutions. Instead, they direct their giving to existing schools, ballooning endowments and erecting new buildings while further entrenching familiar brands. Nearly $60 billion was donated to higher education last year, with close to a quarter of that flowing to just 20 institutions.

Higher education is ripe for a new era of institution building. Choice works when new, better alternatives force lazy, self-indulgent incumbents to raise their game or risk obsolescence. Long lists of rules, regulations, and subsidies have yielded a higher education landscape that’s neither responsive nor responsible. It’s time to look for institutions that can do better.

Deep-pocketed donors would do well to focus on underwriting new entrants rather than cutting eight-figure checks to erect buildings, stadiums, and new initiatives at institutions busy squatting atop ten-figure endowments. We’re seeing this kind of pioneering spirit play out with the promising new University of Austin. And there’s great value in creating quasi-autonomous new units at universities to provide a home for heterodox scholarship on civic virtue, American history, and the Great Books (as at Arizona State and the University of Florida). It shouldn’t be either-or. We need a wave of such efforts.

In time, of course, these new institutions may themselves lose their way or get captured. But that simply strengthens the case for building a steady supply of new ones. This requires a shift in how we think about the tension between tradition and dynamism in higher education, where the former impulse has usually won out. Big donors troubled by the status quo should refuse to subsidize bad behavior and instead invest in new institutions—whether those are focused on workforce preparedness, the liberal arts, or anything in between.

Looking Forward

There’s much more to be done, of course. In our new book, Getting Education Right, we explain the need for both structural changes in higher education and a renewed commitment to rigor, free inquiry, and the telos of the enterprise. However frustrated we may be with higher education today, it’s a mistake to reduce colleges and universities to social media punching bags. Whatever the manifold failings of performative professors and slacker students, higher education plays a vital role in safeguarding human knowledge, promoting scientific inquiry, and teaching wisdom to the next generation.

We can’t afford to merely lament or critique the woeful state of higher education. We need to pursue changes that will help colleges and universities better fulfill their purpose. As Friedman, Churchill, and Emanuel would remind us, there’s a lot of silver in those clouds. Finding it requires institutions of higher education to honor their mission and serve as beacons of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom for the students they serve today as well as those yet to darken their doors.

*****

This article was published in Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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Bribing Future Generations for Marx?

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By Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.

Can anybody name one-square inch on the planet where Communism has done anyone any good? Anywhere? Not for the ruling elites, but for the people themselves?

It doesn’t exist. How, then, do they continue to manage to create new recruits? Well, a story out of California last week explains one strategy.

Writing for The Free Press for Free People, Francesca Block reports (3/7/24): “An activist group in California has paid nearly 100 public high schoolers $1,400 each to learn how to fight for racial and social justice.”

This is the brainchild of a group called Californians for Justice (CFJ), and they’re working in Long Beach to create a new breed of Communists, who are interested in learning “restorative justice practices.”

Here is an example of where CFJ stands on the issues. After the brutal October 7th Hamas attack against some 1200 Israeli men, women, and children in the Gaza area, Californians for Justice described Israel (the victim) as being guilty of “ethnic cleansing and apartheid orchestrated by white supremacist settler colonialism bent on the goal of wiping out the indigenous Palestinian population.”

Dividing the world into the supposed oppressors (Israelis) and the oppressed (Hamas) is Marxism at work.

The Free Press for Free People notes a recent social media video helping to recruit other students to join the movement for so-called “social justice.” One student was asked: “Why should students join CFJ?” The student replied, “You get paid good.”

But, all bad grammar aside, do these naïve students realize what they are defending?

Years ago, I read a fantastic book by a former socialist and idealist on the problem of socialism and Communism.

His name is Joshua Muravchik, and as a young man, he was the president of the Young Socialists. But as he matured intellectually, he came to be a major critic of that which he had earlier espoused.

He wrote the book called, Heaven on Earth. The basic thesis is that the Communists promised heaven on earth and instead delivered hell on earth.

And how could they not? It always begins with the premise that there is no God and that man is basically good. Thus, from the very outset, it is always doomed to fail.

As Muravchik noted in an interview I once did with him for Coral Ridge Ministries for our video expose on socialism: “In terms of the most terrible kinds of socialism, the kinds that engaged in mass killing, I think there’s, at the root of that, this idea that you can make a perfect society here in this world, that you can make a heaven on earth. And that’s just a false idea.”

Muravchik observed that when you start from that premise, and you refuse to learn from experience and reality, you’re in for trouble. And the Communist and socialist radicals didn’t learn. “They just kept insisting that their ideas were perfect, and it was only the human beings who were getting in the way of achieving it. Then it’s not such a big step to start killing these human beings until you get all the bad ones out of the way, to build your little utopia out of the ones who are left.”

And the result, per Muravchik? “The Communist countries did prove to be the greatest killers of all time.”

One of the remarkable books I have in my office was published by Harvard University Press in 1999. It’s The Black Book of Communism.

At the end of the 20th century, this bold book, written by many authors, dared to tell the truth that the vast killing fields of the 20th century were the fruit of communism in one form or another.

In a review of the book, Publishers Weekly notes: “Essentially a body count of communism’s victims in the 20th century, the book draws heavily from recently opened Soviet archives.”

America’s founders showed the world a better way to promote lasting good in the world. You begin with the foundational truth that our rights come from God, not the state. Our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence, indeed mentions God four times.

And then, building on that clear structure, because of man’s inherent sinful nature, you divide power so that no one man or small group can seize all the power for themselves. As James Madison, a key architect of the Constitution, summed up well: “All men having power ought to be distrusted.”

Communism works the opposite way. It says man is good, but the system is bad. Let’s tear down the system and implement “social justice,” and we’ll usher in the long-awaited millennium. But as Muravchik notes: They promised heaven, but only delivered hell. If only more young people could learn the lessons of history and resist the temptation of intellectual bribery, before it’s too late.

©2024. All rights reserved.

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How Biden’s 2025 Proposed Budget Impacts Values Issues

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By Family Research Council

President Joe Biden released his proposed 2025 budget on Monday. “As the president is fond of saying, a budget is a reflection of our values,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) at Senate hearings on the multi-trillion-dollar proposal. But Biden’s proposed budget would:

  • Place transgender-identifying minors into the foster care facilities of the opposite sex, a policy that has led to sexual abuse and human trafficking;
  • Deny most Americans, especially Christians, the right to participate in foster care for certain children unless they agree to subject those minors to transgender medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone injections;
  • Seek to expand abortion;
  • Overturn laws that punish prostitutes for knowingly infecting others with HIV/AIDS;
  • Eliminate abstinence-based sex education;
  • Spike funding for Title X, a program that encourages doctors to give contraception to underage minors without parental knowledge and conceal children’s sexual activity from their parents;
  • Entrust government-funded workers with raising children beginning at the age of three; and
  • Increase funding for controversial, United Nations population programs.

Below is an overview of the budget’s most controversial features in his 2025 budget, which would raise taxes by more than $5 trillion, spend more than $8.6 trillion, enact a constitutionally-dubious wealth tax, implement a global minimum tax, and add $16.3 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

Promoting Extreme Transgender Ideology

Joe Biden has repeatedly committed his administration to promoting the LGBTQ agenda. The Biden administration’s proposed 2025 budget intends to make the LGBTQ revolution permanent by placing children in sex-segregated group homes of the opposite sex, and by denying Christians the right to participate in aspects of foster care.

Buried in Table S-6, on page 153 of the budget (page 157 of the PDF), is a line item committing to “[p]revent and combat religious, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex discrimination in the child welfare system.”

That apparently refers to a proposed rule the Biden administration issued last September requiring the foster care system to place LGBTQ-identifying children with “safe and appropriate” homes — homes that agree to facilitate a child’s social and medical “gender transition.” The rule would “require specific steps before the placement of transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming children in sex-segregated child-care institutions (CCIs),” specifically that they place children and teens in foster care facilities according to their gender identity. That is, the Biden administration intends to place children who say they identify as transgender into sex-segregated foster care facilities of the opposite sex. Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, pointed out this would open the beds and showers of female foster homes to teenage boys.

Such a policy has already led to tragic results. In Virginia, a 14-year-old girl named Sage began to identify as a boy. Police found the teen after she ran away and got sexually trafficked, but instead of returning her to her home, a judge accused her custodial grandparents of “emotional and physical abuse” by “misgendering” her. Sage was placed in the male section of a foster home, where she was beaten and given drugs. She then ran away again, where she was apprehended by a human trafficking ring in Texas, where she was “drugged, raped, beaten, and exploited.”

The definition of “safe and appropriate” also excludes anyone who expresses skepticism about exposing children to transgender procedures. Christians and anyone who shows “hostility” toward the LGBTQ agenda would be deemed unsafe to foster children who identify as transgender. Similar policies have already denied Christians the right to care for children in Oregon and Massachusetts. This issue stood at the heart of a 2021 Supreme Court ruling, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which ruled the city’s policy against contracting with Catholic Social Services because of their religious beliefs “violates the First Amendment,” specifically the Free Exercise Clause. The rule attempts to sidestep this concern by saying Christians can still care for foster children, just not those who identify as LGBTQ.

Multiple U.S. senators expressed concerns with the language of the rule at the time. “We are fighting back against the Biden Administration’s woke gender ideology and pronoun politics,” said Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) “Their new proposed rule aims to exclude faith-based foster care providers from helping children in need.” A coalition of 19 state attorneys general also raised alarms about the policy’s unconstitutional, and religiously discriminatory, language.

To justify these policies, the Biden rule falsely asserts, “when a LGBTQI+ child has their identity respected and supported by the caregivers in their life, their risks of attempted suicide decrease dramatically.” Yet a host of studies, from around the world over multiple decades, have found that transgender procedures do not help, and may harm, those who undergo them. A 2021 study in the Journal of Urology found, “The overall rates of suicide attempts doubled” among trans-identifying men “after vaginoplasty,” commonly referred to as “bottom surgery.” The budget indicates Biden is doubling down on this rule and its flawed methodology.

Abortion

In releasing the 2025 proposed budget, the “Biden-Harris [a]dministration has taken action to protect and expand access to reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, “in every way possible.”

The budget spreads misinformation while announcing the administration’s intention to expand abortion in all 50 states. “Twenty-seven million women of reproductive age — more than one in three — live in one of the 21 [s]tates with an abortion ban currently in effect. In the last year, women have been denied medical care needed to preserve their health and save their lives,” the budget asserts. In fact, no state bans abortion if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. Pro-life advocates say doctors may have been confused specifically because abortion industry lobbyists have repeatedly claimed “miscarriage care” is illegal.

After touting Biden’s actions on behalf of the abortion industry, the budget states, “The [a]dministration continues to call on the Congress to pass legislation restoring the protections of Roe v. Wade in [f]ederal law.” The Biden administration endorses the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act, which goes well beyond Roe.

In concrete terms, the budget proposes giving $390 million to the “family planning” services of Title X, a 36% hike. As this author exposed, training sessions funded by the Biden administration encourage Title X providers to talk about sex with minors behind parents’ backs, hide minor children’s sexual activity from parents both during live conversations and in medical records, and even to have vans roam neighborhoods giving minors federally funded contraceptives.

The budget also “provides $594 million, an increase of $37 million above the 2023 level, for USAID directed high-impact and lifesaving voluntary family planning and reproductive health programs and America’s voluntary contribution to the United Nations Population Fund,” the budget states. UNFPA was long complicit in forced abortions necessitated by China’s one-child policy and remains tied to controversial population control efforts worldwide.

The abortion lobby said the proposed budget proved the Democratic administration is enacting their values. “The Biden-Harris administration is fighting by our side,” said Mini Timmaraju, CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL). “[T]his budget is proof. We look forward to partnering with our allies in the White House and Congress to pass a budget where our values are reflected.” Planned Parenthood also greeted the budget as “an encouraging sign of their continued support for sexual and reproductive health care.”

Universal Pre-K

As he did in last year’s $6.9 trillion budget proposal, Joe Biden proposed offering “free” preschool to children beginning at age four and “charting a path” to expanding the program to three-year-olds. The program is a longstanding item on the Left’s wish list, constituting a part of Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, mentioned in Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address, and referenced in Obama’s 2010 report to the UN Human Rights Council. Yet children being raised by daycare are associated with a panoply of negative outcomes for children and, polls show, is unwanted by parents, especially mothers.

Fighting Laws against Spreading AIDS, Combatting ‘Hate Crimes’

The 2025 proposed budget continues President Joe Biden’s fixation on overturning state laws designed to prevent AIDS-infected prostitutes from spreading HIV. “The Budget further supports State and local efforts to promote equity and protect civil rights by including $10 million for a new initiative to modernize outdated criminal statutes with a discriminatory impact on HIV-positive individuals … and $50 million for programs to combat hate crimes.”

The Biden administration sued the state of Tennessee over its aggravated prostitution law (§ 39-13-516), which charges anyone who knowingly sells sex while HIV-positive with a felony. The lawsuit came as the administration is negotiating the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Agreement. In January, WHO Secretary-General Tedros Ghebreyesus instructed “[p]olitical leaders at all levels” to “counteract conservative opposition” and “enact progressive laws” championing “sexual rights.” Specifically, “Countries must repeal laws that criminalize homosexuality, sex work and HIV transmission.”

Ending Abstinence-Based Education

The Biden budget would end funding for the Sexual Risk Abstinence Education program. Instead, he would give $101 million for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, despite a 2015 survey which found 40% of teenagers said these classes made them feel pressured to have sex. The Department of Health and Human Services lists eight regional Planned Parenthood alliances among the current Teen Pregnancy Prevention grant recipients.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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The Smartest Person in the World Wiffs. Marilyn vos Savant makes a major gaff!

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By John Droz, Jr.

Marilyn vos Savant is reportedly (according to the Guinness Book of Records) the person who has the highest IQ of anyone in the world — maybe ever!… Although I’ve been accepted into Mensa, Marilyn would be considered to be a Super-Mensa person.

I’ve read Marilyn’s weekly column (Ask Marilyn) for several years, and she uniformly has good answers — which is why I read it. However, even the smartest person in the world can make mistakes. I recently saw this interestingly question she was asked:

“I know a young woman who failed all her classes during her first (and only) semester of college. How could the school have admitted her?”

Marilyn’s very surprising poor answer (where I bolded three key parts):

Plenty of students bomb as freshmen, with no one having a clue beforehand. Reasons vary wildly (from stress to finances and being just plain sick of schooling), but they have little to do with ability or intelligence.

Spending much of one’s youth sitting in classrooms, doing homework and taking tests is unnatural and taxing. And then in college, students must study subjects in which they have no interest and will never put to use…

Marilyn: here are some “beforehand clues” that are in bold flashing neon signs:

  1. In K-12 there is rampant grade inflation — so freshmen assume that all they have to do is show up for a good grade. Not so in a quality school, or the world.
  2. In K-12 they are indoctrinated with Woke ideology — so freshmen go into college with an entitlement mentality. But in a good school that won’t cut it.
  3. In K-12, Critical Thinking is not taught — so freshmen who have to do things like write papers are unable to produce more than superficial work. That won’t be sufficient at a good school — or the real world.

Marilyn, you also surprisingly stated that students are FORCED to “study subjects in which they have no interest, and will never put to use.” OMG!

  1. Typically, in college it is up to the Student to choose their major — i.e., something they are interested in. That would mean that the majority of resulting subjects would be consistent with (or necessary for) the student’s selected major.
  2. My degree was physics, and as a freshman at Boston College I was assigned an advanced English class. I thought it would be boring and not relevant, but I applied myself anyway! It turned out to be one of the most useful and interesting classes I EVER took! I’ve put that class to use thousands of times — like write now!
  3. Students also get to choose electives. Again, how is that consistent with your statement that they are forced to “study subjects in which they have no interest”?

My takeaway is that the above “Ask Marilyn” woefully inadequate answer was likely written by a staffer while Marilyn was away on vacation.

A more representative observation from Marilyn is: Don’t be afraid to challenge conventional wisdom; sometimes the greatest breakthroughs come from questioning the norms.

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

My Substack Commentaries for 2023 (arranged by topic)

Check out the chronological Archives of my entire Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?

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The Takeover

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By Neetu Arnold

A massive increase in foreign money and students on American campuses is driving radicalization and subsidizing institutional failure

Something new and peculiar stands out about the wave of anti-Israel student activism that has rocked American university campuses since October: There is a visibly more radical element to these protests. Student activists almost seemed to take glee in Hamas’ massacre of innocent civilians—when they weren’t denying that it happened at all. The antisemitic rage struck a different tone than the typical anti-Israel fare that has become a central part of American student activism since Students for a Democratic Society formed in the 1960s.

So what changed? The answer is clear to anyone who watched the videos: these student protests are no longer composed solely of left-wing American students steeped in critical theory and post-colonial ideology. The protests are now havens for foreign students, especially those from Arab and Muslim countries, with their own set of nationalist and tribal grievances against Israel and the United States. In some cases, such foreign students appear to lead the protests in their pro-terrorism chants—some of which are in Arabic, or translations of Arabic slogans.

What we are witnessing is the latest consequence of a quiet revolution in higher education: the internationalization of the American university. Today, there are more than one million foreign students enrolled at American universities, making up more than 5% of the total student population. At elite universities, the situation is much more extreme: international students make up almost 25% of the student population.

The process of internationalization was slow at first, but it has rapidly accelerated in the past two decades. Since the Institute of International Education started to keep track of foreign student enrollment in 1948, it took over 50 years for enrollment to increase from 25,000 to more than 500,000 by 2000. But it only took 15 years after that for the number of international students to double to its current level of one million.

The motivations of universities to admit so many international students are two-fold. Foreign students, first and foremost, serve as cash cows. They disproportionately pay full price for tuition and housing, whether it comes from sponsorships by foreign governments or their own families’ largesse. The deal is even better for public universities—international students pay the out-of-state price, which is significantly higher than the tuition rate for in-state students.

Increasing international student enrollment also fits neatly into universities’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals. While this particular phenomenon is more recent, it is crucial for understanding the current shifts in international student recruitment. It also provides universities with a moral justification for their equivocating response to egregious—and perhaps even illegal—acts by international students in recent months…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Tablet Magazine.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Weekend Read: A Tale Of Two Lies – Part 1: Jewish Settler Colonialism  thumbnail

Weekend Read: A Tale Of Two Lies – Part 1: Jewish Settler Colonialism 

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By Marvin A. Treiger

Are there settler-colonial states in the modern era? Of course, there are. The best example of such a state is Tibet. The Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959. In the past 40 years and counting, 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed constituting one/fifth of the population. The occupiers have destroyed 6,000 monasteries arguably exceeding the total number of Churches in Europe during the Middle Ages. Chinese have moved into Tibet, primarily into the larger cities in vast numbers. Their total numbers are unknowable because they are hidden by the Chinese government but their number grows daily.

This is settler colonialism. Few in the West seem much bothered by these atrocities. Nor is there much knowledge or concern for other ongoing atrocities. Over 52 thousand Nigerian Christians have been martyred at the hands of Jihadi Muslims. Although not strictly speaking an example of “settler colonialism,” over 18,000 Churches have been burned to the ground and Muslim Nigerians simply move into destroyed neighborhoods.

In contrast, the Western world’s myopic attention zeroes in almost exclusively on Israel as a “settler-colonial” state. Israel is branded as illegitimate. Jihadis, other Arab Muslims, and growing numbers of Western leftists share this view. An illegitimate state is necessarily oppressive. Hence, the calls for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” i. e. the elimination of the whole of Israel and all of its Jews.

Support for Hamas for this genocidal project soared after the October 7 massacres with 85% of Palestinians on the West Bank believing the attack was correct while those in Gaza supported it by 57%. This is an extremely important reaction to note because it constitutes an endorsement of genocide in its most barbaric form by the population itself.

Yet, the whole bloody mess is built on a tissue of layered LIEs. Let’s take a look at them from the beginning.

Historical Jewish Presence in the Region

Jews have maintained a continuous presence in the “Holy Land” for the past 3,100 years. This was factually true even during occupations by Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire. The most significant invasion took place in the 7th century when Islamic hordes from the Arabian Peninsula overran and colonized the region.

It is true that the number of Jews ebbed and flowed in the face of alternating conquest and renewal. These conquests were achieved through force and violence which is one of the abiding features of settler-colonialism and was visited upon the indigenous Jews of the region.

Still, the Jews survived and persisted in many places such as Tiberius on Lake Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee, and in mountainous Safed where the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah was forged and flourished in the 1,500s and abides to this very day. Also, in Hebron and in numerous small communities Jews survived.

Jerusalem, of course, was central to the deepest religious impulses of Jews as it is for Christians. As recently as 1850, the first official census was conducted by the Ottoman Empire and found that 50% of the population of Jerusalem were Jews.

At that time, the region had been so neglected by the Ottomans, that depopulation left the region somewhat uninhabited with an optimistic total of only 380,000 persons by around 1880.

The Period in Question and the Rise of Zionism  

The period in question targeted by accusers as foundational to Jewish settler-colonialism is 1878-1948. During that period many Jews began to migrate to this region during the reign of the Ottoman Empire and also when the region remanded to the British mandate following the Ottoman collapse after WW I.

The Zionist Movement was established in 1897 as part of the broader movement for the self-determination of nations that swept the world of oppressed peoples at that time. The principal Zionist impetus for Jews to migrate came from the periodic and rising pogroms in Europe and Russia.

Jews constitute both a people and a religion. The religious dimension was predominate for over 2,000 years. Every year in every family the Ceder was concluded with the words “Next year in Jerusalem”. This was the heart yearnings of displaced people so often marginalized and persecuted in the lands to which they had been exiled while never being fully accepted in their new homes.

Zionist forerunners established some 20 villages before Zionism became an official movement thus adding to the original Jewish population living there. The Ottomans had been in decline and its many absentee owners and administrative operatives were happy and eager to accept Jewish money for land purchases.

The Zionist movement stepped up this process dramatically. The Rothschilds and other means were helpful in this endeavor of land purchases. Most Jews moving to the region were poor. Inspired and resourceful, these settlers made uninhabitable areas livable. Swamp lands which were numerous due to nearly non-existent water management were also plagued by malarial mosquitoes and thus readily sold to immigrants. Ironically, once drainage techniques were employed, some of this land became highly fertile.

The land prospered. As a result, word spread, and many Arabs moved in to participate in the prosperity resulting from Jewish innovations. For the first time in centuries, the area began to show promise and impoverished Arab fellaheen rushed in. It was the time of the greatest prosperity for the poor Arabs of the region. As a result, they moved to the region in droves. For example, as late as 1920, there were 565,000 Arabs, up from 380,000 in 1880. This number soared to 1,247,000 by 1947.

In the early years, this process was almost entirely non-violent although there was a tradition of Bedouin bandits, local feuds, and squabbles to be sure. It’s a stretch, to put it mildly, to fancy this process as some sort of colonial invasion imposed on a resident population. It fails the smell test. It is only brought up in this way to invalidate Jewish presence and smear it as essentially the dirty deeds of dirty, oppressor Jews – a familiar theme in the Middle East and the West from time immemorial.

These decades of Jewish migration involved hundreds, even thousands, of land transfers which are documented in detail, including the political and economic circumstances surrounding the principal transfers. All these were contractual. They were neither the result of land grabs nor conquests. 

Finally, after years of painstaking research, these records from the Ottoman period and the British Mandate were all gathered in the work of Arieh Avneri: The Claim of Dispossession: 1878-1948. The book is a bit of a slog but well worth your time if you wish to go into the land question in depth. Colonialism it is not. Unless paying exorbitant prices en masse beyond a land’s worth equals colonialism.

A Palestinian “national” movement only appeared in the 1920’s. Why so tardy? In part, because it needs to be remembered that the Ummah, or extended community of Muslims of the “House of Peace” transcended the category of traditional nations.

Once a region is conquered by the armies of Islam it remains in the Ummah unless defeated in war. Eventually, its place in the Ummah must be revived. Doing so is a special mission obligatory for true Muslims. For example, it is believed that southern Spain must one day be returned to the Ummah. One way or another. The region of Palestine is no different. The Jewish presence violated this sacred principle of the “House of Peace” and must be eliminated.

In our modern period, nations and national consciousness emerged. The advent of the self-determination of nations represented a necessary tactical adjustment for Jihadis as a workable method for restoring Ummah to lost lands. And so the nationalist movement began in the region.

By 1921, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem began stimulating riots which morphed into pogroms by 1929 when the Hebron Massacre occurred. Ironically, few European or Ashkenazi Jews lived In Hebron. Most were Sephardic Jews, i.e. Arab Jews who lived there for religious reasons from earlier times. Again in the 1930s there were several more pogroms. 

The Grand Mufti, now leader of the Palestinian movement, and Hitler formed an alliance in 1941. By 1943, the Grand Mufti, who by then was the established leader of the nationalist movement, advised Hitler that same year to take the Jews to Poland where the “final solution” was already known to be awaiting them. By then, Hitler had his hands full and couldn’t be bothered.

In 1948, the UN established a partition of a Jewish and an Arab Muslim state. This was the first internationally legalized “two-state solution” which we hear so much about today. By late 1947, the population of the area of what was to become Israel in 1948, contained 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs.

On May 15, 1948, Israel declared its independence. The following day, the armies of 5 Arab nations declared war on Israel. This would be the first of many attempts to prevent a “two-state solution” by Arab nations.

The origins of the specific theory of Israel as a Settler-Colonial state arose as a corollary to Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Lenin argued that while early colonies were based upon a mercantilist advantage to the Mother Country, modern domination of weaker countries was based upon the export of capital and the profits derived therefrom. 

Lenin’s data was compromised primarily in terms of what it omitted. it turned out that most foreign capital was invested in other advanced countries, not in colonies. It also emerged that investments in colonies also stimulated industry and benefitted those nations to some extent in the long run.

The use of the theory of “settler-colonial imperialism” was taken up by the Jihadis and initiated the Marxist radical left’s alliance with Islamism. After all, they have a common enemy in the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (America), the Little Imperialist and the Big Imperialist.

*****

Next: A Tale Of Two Lies – Part 2: The Two-State Solution and Freedom Caucus Resolution

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Does America have a brilliant or woeful future? Watch, ‘The Millennial Job Interview’ to understand thumbnail

Does America have a brilliant or woeful future? Watch, ‘The Millennial Job Interview’ to understand

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By Dr. Rich Swier

A reader sent us this short video that struck us as so funny but sadly so true. The public education system has created a generation of youth who are addicted to social media, with no job skills or knowledge of how to succeed. They aren’t taught how to think, rather they’re taught what to think.

WATCH: The Millennial Job Interview

In a December 11, 2019 Daily Signal column titled Students’ Test Scores Unchanged After Decades of Federal Intervention in Education Lindsey Burke wrote,

Federal “Highly Qualified Teacher” mandates. Adequate Yearly Progress requirements. Smaller learning communities. Improving Teacher Quality State Grants. Reading First. Early Reading First. The dozens of other federal programs authorized via No Child Left Behind. School Improvement Grants. Race to the Top. Common Core.

All of that has been just since 2000. Over those past two decades, while federal policymakers were busy enacting new federal laws, creating mandates for local school leaders, and increasing the Department of Education’s budget from $38 billion in 2000 (unadjusted for inflation) to roughly $70 billion today, the math and reading performance of American high school students remained completely flat. That is to say, stagnant.

The U.S. is now above the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average in reading, but alas, not because U.S. reading performance has improved. Rather, other countries have seen declines in reading achievement, despite increases in education spending.

In mathematics, however, U.S. performance has steadily declined over the past two decades.

Those are the findings from the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA exams, released last week.

As The New York Times’ Dana Goldstein reported:

About a fifth of American 15-year-olds scored so low on the PISA test that it appeared they had not mastered reading skills expected of a 10-year-old, according to Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers the exam.

What’s more, the achievement gap between high- and low-performing American students has widened.

The international findings mirror last month’s National Assessment of Educational Progress report, which revealed that math and reading scores across the country have continued a years long stagnation, with students largely showing no progress in academic achievement.

Just one-third of students in the fourth and eighth grades reached proficiency in math and reading nationally on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is administered every two years.

As with the Programme for International Student Assessment’s findings that the achievement gap stubbornly persists for American students, the National Assessment of Educational Progress highlighted similar findings within the U.S.

The scores of students who are among the lowest 10% of performers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have dropped significantly since 2009.

The stubborn achievement gap is not new, but the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Programme for International Student Assessment provide additional data points on its persistence.

As Harvard professor Paul Peterson writes in The Heritage Foundation’s new book “The Not-So-Great Society”:

The achievement gap in the United States is as wide today as it was in 1971.

The performances on math, reading, and science tests between the most advantaged and the most disadvantaged students differ by approximately four years’ worth of learning, a disparity that has remained essentially unchanged for nearly half a century.

One of the more recent, major pieces of federal intervention sold as a way to improve American standing in education was the Common Core State Standards Initiative promoted during the Obama administration.

Common Core national standards and test, proponents argued, would catapult American students to the top of the math and reading pack. It was time, they argued, for the U.S. to have the same “epiphany” Germany did in the late 1990s, and adopt centrally planned national standards and tests.

Germany now lags the U.S. in reading, according to the new Programme for International Student Assessment data, and is far below Canada, a country that does not have national standards.

Indeed, our neighbor to the north has performed consistently well on the Programme for International Student Assessment since 2000, significantly outpacing the United States, and has neither national standards, nor a federal education department.

Canada’s is a decentralized education system, in which Canada’s 10 provinces set education policy.

The fact that Common Core didn’t catalyze improvements in the U.S. isn’t surprising. Large-scale government programs rarely, if ever, do.

But neither have the myriad federal programs created since No Child Left Behind in 2001, nor have the more than 100 federal K-12 education programs created since President Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society initiative in 1965 designed, ostensibly, to narrow opportunity gaps between the poor and the affluent.

Heritage’s Jonathan Butcher and I detail Yuval Levin’s theory of government failure in “The Not-So-Great Society.” Levin explains that large-scale government programs fail for three reasons:

  1. “Institutionally, the administrative state is ‘dismally inefficient and unresponsive, and therefore ill-suited to our age of endless choice and variety.’”
  2. “Culturally and morally, government efforts to ‘rescue the citizen from the burdens of responsibility [have] undermined the family, self-reliance, and self-government.’”
  3. “Fiscally, large-scale federal programs supporting the welfare state are simply unaffordable, ‘dependent as it is upon dubious economics and the demographic model of a bygone era.’”

Federal government efforts to improve education have been dismal. Even if there were a constitutional basis for its involvement—which there isn’t—the federal government is simply ill-positioned to determine what education policies will best serve the diverse local communities across our vast nation.

The sooner we can acknowledge that improvements will not come from Washington, the sooner we’re likely to see students flourishing in learning environments that reflect their unique needs and desires.

©2024. All rights reserved.

NYC: High school students call teacher ‘dirty Jew,’ praise Hitler, write ‘Free Palestine’ on classroom door thumbnail

NYC: High school students call teacher ‘dirty Jew,’ praise Hitler, write ‘Free Palestine’ on classroom door

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By Jihad Watch

It’s impossible to tell from this report whether these students are under the influence of the likes of Sneako, a popular “influencer” who has converted to Islam and praises Hitler, and Nick Fuentes, a supposedly “America First” agitator who mocks the Holocaust, or whether they are Muslim students. Either way, dark clouds are on the horizon.

by Susan Edelman, New York Post, March 2, 2024:

A Brooklyn high school has become a haven for Hitler-loving hooligans who terrorize Jewish teachers and classmates, The Post has learned.

On Oct. 26, just three weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis, 40 to 50 teens marched through Origins HS in Sheepshead Bay waving a Palestinian flag and chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Kill the Jews!” staffers said.

The hateful procession was shocking even for Origins, a school rife with bias and bullying, insiders told The Post.

“I live in fear of going to work every day,” said global history teacher Danielle Kaminsky.

According to interviews with multiple staffers, and a Jewish student’s safety transfer request, recent hate incidents include:

A student painted a mustache on his face to look like Hitler, and banged on classroom doors. When someone opened, he clicked his heels and raised his arm in the Nazi gesture, security footage shows.

Three swastikas in one week were drawn on teachers’ walls and other objects, a manager found.

A 10th-grader told Kaminsky, 33, who is Jewish, “I wish you were killed.”

Another student called her “a dirty Jew” and said he wished Hitler could have “hit more Jews,” including her.

Students pasted drawings of the Palestinian flag and notes saying “Free Palestine” on Kaminsky’s classroom door. One scribbled note that said simply, “Die.”

The teen tormentors have so far faced no serious discipline under interim acting principal Dara Kammerman, who has done little beyond contacting parents in an effort to practice “restorative justice,” staffers said.

“She is perpetuating an antisemitic environment and a school of hate,” said Michael Beaudry, campus manager of the Sheepshead Bay building that houses Origins and three other schools. “The students continue these behaviors because they know there won’t be any consequences.”

In response, the city Department of Education said it will launch a probe: “There is currently no evidence that these claims are true, but we are investigating the claims.”

In a disturbing instance in late January, a group of boys came into Kaminsky’s classroom at the end of the day, and cornered her, laughing, she said.

“Miss Kaminsky, do you love Hitler?” one asked.

“I was so taken aback,” she said. “I did not respond, and they all gave the heil Hitler sign.”

Frightened, Kaminsky quickly left her classroom….

Continue reading.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

State Universities Are Teaching Students To Blow Up Oil Pipelines, Records Show thumbnail

State Universities Are Teaching Students To Blow Up Oil Pipelines, Records Show

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By Luke Rosiak

‘How to Blow Up A Pipeline’ author wants to send message to ‘capitalists’ that ‘their properties will be trashed’

At least sixteen universities are promoting the book “How to Blow Up A Pipeline,” which outlines for readers how to commit eco-terrorism — oftentimes making it required reading, a Daily Wire investigation found.

The book was published in 2021 by Swedish professor Andreas Malm and calls for terrorism and overthrowing capitalism, acknowledging that people will be killed as a result. “Demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed,” the book says.

Now multiple state-funded universities took classes that were nominally on unrelated topics, and contorted them into courses that read just four books, including the pipeline manifesto and a communist manifesto. At the University of California-Berkeley, for example, students of Geography & Interactive Biology were required to read the book. Instructors Jake Kosek and Paul Fine took what was ostensibly a biology course and transformed it into one on “decolonization.” The syllabus states that the “class focuses on the scientific practice of modern botanical taxonomy as a colonial formation that conditions our modern relations” and how the names of plants “were often forged to be of service to empire-building.”

The lessons across the country suggest that universities’ support for terrorism extends beyond the students supporting Hamas on many campuses. In fact, the book looks to Palestinian terrorists for inspiration, advising that, “As part of the mass resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip in the spring of 2018, Palestinians invented techniques for sending kites and helium-inflated condoms carrying incendiary materials across the wall to burn Israeli property.”

U.S. intelligence identified the book as a “developing threat” and security risk because “Malm encourages pipeline sabotage and property destruction.” Twenty-three government agencies, including the FBI, warned that the film adaptation of the book, released in 2023, could spark terrorism.

A New York Times interviewer was taken aback at Malm’s willingness to cause death. “It’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage,” the interviewer said.

“Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately,” Malm answered.

“Don’t say ‘unfortunately,’” the interviewer interjected.

“Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents,” Malm replied.

Malm said he hasn’t had the opportunity to blow up a pipeline personally but that he would “gladly participate” if given the opportunity.

“If I were part of a group where something like blowing up a pipeline was perceived as a tactic that could be useful for our struggle, then I would gladly participate,” he said. “I have engaged in as much militant climate activism as I have had access to” and “I’ve done things that I can’t tell you or that I wouldn’t tell others publicly.”

He said he trained his four-year-old son to “be on the lookout for S.U.V.s” because the child “knows these are the bad cars” and has “an awareness of the tactic of deflating S.U.V. tires.”

His own children were not the only youth being inculcated with an ideology of destruction.

In Spring 2022, City University of New York professor Joseph Mohorcich required students to read the book as part of a course called Politics and Human Survival, which persuaded students that without radical action, “everyone could die a terrible death.” Students were also required to read “Revolutionary Suicide” by Black Panthers member Huey Newton, who was accused of murder and rape. Mohorcich wrote a paper called “What level of resistance to air pollution is justified? On violence and self-defense.”

Arizona State University, a public university, required students of Professor Mina Suk’s “Are Humans Special? Environmental Theory” to read “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” that same semester…..

*****

Continue reading at the Daily Wire.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Experts Worry that Illegal Immigration Is Affecting the Education System thumbnail

Experts Worry that Illegal Immigration Is Affecting the Education System

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By Family Research Council

Since the beginning of the border crisis in which millions of illegal immigrants have flooded into the country, American citizens have been affected in various ways, most notably by the spike in crime.

Some sanctuary cities have recognized that crime is out of their control and have sought changes in their sanctuary policies. Saturating news headlines are cases of illegal immigrants stealing, assaulting, raping, or even murdering innocent American civilians. In addition, taxpayers are funding the housing, food, and health care of people who aren’t legally in the U.S., with taxpayer money funding gender transition procedures as well.

Experts are also pointing to how illegal immigration is affecting the education system, as Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, explained on Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.”

FRC President Tony Perkins highlighted that “the ongoing border crisis undermines our nation’s education system” and is “often left unmentioned.” But the reality, Kilgannon said, is that both poor and wealthy districts are affected by the illegal immigrant students coming in.

“Americans are very generous,” she said, “and it’s hard for us to turn down a student at the schoolhouse door if they present themselves to learn.” But even so, most schools don’t have a choice on whether they accept the illegal migrants, which then places an added and significant “strain on the budget,” Kilgannon added. And she explained how a lot of them come in without an ability to speak English, which requires special services.

Financial strains, in particular, are hard on the high poverty areas, Kilgannon described, because they’re already struggling to fund their schools. They hardly have enough money for the legal American citizens, she noted, but additionally, “it affects wealthy areas too because of the drug crisis.” As drug overdoses at schools increase, Kilgannon discussed the growing controversy over “whether or not the school is notifying parents when children overdose at school.”

She added, “But the reason that kids are overdosing at school is because, for one thing, there’s poor control over the environment by the people who are running the schools. But there’s [also] an increase in drugs coming across the border. … There’s more availability of these drugs, and it’s causing all kinds of pressures to be put on many, many areas of our society. And of course, it’s happening to our school system as well.”

As a former state legislator, Perkins highlighted that what he used to see were parents who had to deal with very strict rules about which schools they could attend based on the district they lived in. But with illegal immigrants, he shared that those same rules don’t apply. “I mean, we’re making our own citizens have to live within the boundaries and the rules, but then someone who’s not even a citizen of this country can come in and go wherever they want, and we have to pay for it,” he said. Kilgannon agreed and stated “there are so many rules that they do not have to follow that regular American citizens have to follow.”

Perkins observed that it looks like “these schools are just expected to absorb the cost of the Biden administration’s immigration policy.” Kilgannon referred to it as “an unfunded mandate,” which can be defined as “regulations or other requirements imposed by a higher level of government on a lower one, but without accompanying appropriations to cover the cost of compliance.” Both Perkins and Kilgannon reflected on whether “local governments could take action against the Biden administration for that reason.” Kilgannon added, “I certainly would want to if I were running a school system that was dealing with these kinds of things.”

In addition, Perkins briefly mentioned how these education concerns caused by illegal immigration only add to the concern over declining test scores and proficiency rates with each year. Considering this push for schools to cater to the Biden administration’s open border policy, he concluded, “I would just think at some point a state’s got to draw the line and say, ‘We’re not doing it.’ … [T]his is absolutely out of control.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Poll: 69% of Americans Believe Free Speech Is ‘Heading in the Wrong Direction’ thumbnail

Poll: 69% of Americans Believe Free Speech Is ‘Heading in the Wrong Direction’

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By Family Research Council

Over the years, research centers have routinely polled American citizens on the topic of free speech. And with each passing year, the country seems more convinced that while freedom of speech is important, how one practices that right can be problematic.

For example, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Polarization Research Lab (PRL) at Dartmouth College recently released a poll that revealed 69% of the 1,000 Americans they surveyed believe free speech is “heading in the wrong direction.” However, it’s noteworthy that their concerns stem from the growing inability for people “to freely express their views.” And “alarmingly,” the researchers wrote, roughly one-third of the Americans polled believe the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.”

The poll experimented with a variety of controversial statements, asking respondents to choose which ones they found most offensive. Out of the most surprising results, 52% felt their community “should not allow a public speech that espouses the belief they selected as the most offensive.” Additionally, “A supermajority, 69%, said their local college should not allow a professor who espoused that belief to teach classes.”

Reason magazine summarized, “These results indicate that though the average American is concerned about protecting free speech rights, a significant portion of the population seem poised to welcome increasing censorship.”

FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said the “results were disappointing, but not exactly surprising.” He continued, “Here at FIRE, we’ve long observed that many people who say they’re concerned about free speech waver when it comes to beliefs they personally find offensive.” But Stevens, as well as Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm, believe the best way to protect free speech is, in fact, to protect the right to be potentially offensive or controversial.

Backholm, who serves as a senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at FRC, commented to The Washington Stand, “It isn’t just that the First Amendment also protects offensive speech, it primarily exists to protect offensive speech.” He explained that there’s “no need to recognize the right to say, ‘I like tacos,’ because” most people wouldn’t see a reason to silence that. The entire reason for the constitutional guarantee to the freedom of speech,” he added, “is because the Founders understood the government’s instinct to stop people from saying things the government disliked.”

Especially with the rise of cancel culture, Backholm emphasized, “A lot of people today believe there is a constitutional right not to be offended.” Additionally, they also often “believe the right not to be offended is of greater importance than the freedom of speech,” which he noted is commonly the reason why “pronoun laws and campus safe spaces” are created. “Yes, there are limits to free speech, but those limits are not triggered by the emotional stress associated with discovering there are people in the world who disagree with you,” he said.

As for the Americans in the poll who are more worried about offensive beliefs being freely expressed, Backholm said, “The problem with restricting ‘offensive’ speech is that different things are offensive to different people. The pro-life position is offensive to some while the pro-abortion position is offensive to others.” Ultimately, it begs the question: Should all conversations about the issue be banned? To which he answered, “Obviously not.”

Stevens emphasized the importance of teaching this generation about the value and meaning of the First Amendment. “These findings should be a wake-up call for the nation to recommit to a vibrant free speech culture before it’s too late.” Because, as Backholm concluded, “If we want to be free, and most of us do, we must accept the fact that being exposed to ideas and behaviors we dislike is the cost of being able to do and say things other people don’t like.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

POST ON X:

The suppression of free speech through intimidation and arrest goes directly against what our Founding Fathers intended. The Twitter Files, Missouri v. Biden and Kennedy v. Biden reveal a full scale war by the US government on the First Amendment! https://t.co/A5ibXxWLnd

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) March 2, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

UC Berkeley’s Hitler Youth Accost Jewish Speaker & Attack Jewish Students thumbnail

UC Berkeley’s Hitler Youth Accost Jewish Speaker & Attack Jewish Students

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By The Geller Report

University of California, Berkeley, administrators have offered no apology to Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat, whose speech to a campus Jewish group was abruptly canceled by the university after violent protesters choked a female student attendee, spit in another attendee’s face, and broke into the auditorium where Bar-Yoshafat waited onstage….more here.

By

The Berkeley schools have declared themselves a chapter of Hamas.  Teachers and Administrators openly and quietly are going after Jewish teaches and students.  This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

“The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) “knowingly allowed its K-12 campuses to become viciously hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students,” according to a copy of the complaint, filed with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Parents who have signed onto the complaint say anti-Semitic incidents in the schools have “positively surged” since Hamas conducted its unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

“At BUSD, a virulent wave of anti-Semitism swept through its schools immediately following the massacre,” the complaint alleges. “Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop anti-Semitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards.”

Reminder;  Like the Nazi’s, Communists, using Karl Marx principles are also Jew haters—so this should be no surprise that the Communist city of Berkeley promotes Jew hating.

Berkeley Public Schools Hit With Federal Complaint Over ‘Severe and Persistent’ Anti-Semitic Bullying

Complaint alleges hallway chants of ‘kill the Jews’ and anti-Semitic teacher rants in support of Hamas

Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon,  2/28/24  https://freebeacon.com/campus/berkeley-public-schools-hit-with-federal-complaint-over-severe-and-persistent-anti-semitic-bullying/

A public school district in Berkeley, California, was hit with a federal complaint on Wednesday alleging it has failed to stem an escalating series of anti-Semitic incidents that include hallway chants of “kill the Jews” and anti-Semitic teacher rants in support of the Hamas terror group.

The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) “knowingly allowed its K-12 campuses to become viciously hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students,” according to a copy of the complaint, filed with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Parents who have signed onto the complaint say anti-Semitic incidents in the schools have “positively surged” since Hamas conducted its unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

“At BUSD, a virulent wave of anti-Semitism swept through its schools immediately following the massacre,” the complaint alleges. “Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop anti-Semitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards.”

The complaint, filed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, follows a flurry of similar federal filings against many of America’s top universities, including Harvard, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania, among others. Like its college counterparts, the Berkeley school district stands accused of becoming a dangerous place for Jews and Israelis.

“Reported incidents of anti-Semitism include school ‘walkouts’ praising Hamas with students shouting ‘f— the Jews’ and ‘KKK,’” according to the complaint. “Teachers use class time to propagandize that the Hamas massacre was admirable ‘resistance.’ Following their teachers’ lead, students bully their Jewish peers and deride their physical appearance.”

Berkeley Unified did not respond to a request for comment.

Parents have reported this behavior to school administrators, the complaint says, but the district “has done nothing to address, much less curtail, the hostile environment that has plagued BUSD for over four months.”

The ADL and Brandeis Center are asking the federal government to open a formal probe into the school district to determine if the Jewish population’s civil rights are being violated.

Anti-Semitism is allegedly “normalized throughout BUSD. And teachers have responded with threats.”

In one case, a teacher approached a parent who had complained and said, “I know who you are, I know who your f—ing wife is and I know where you live,” according to testimony included in the federal filing.

Perhaps taking a cue from their instructors, students have harassed their Jewish classmates, telling them, “it is excellent what Hamas did to Israel” and “you have a big nose because you are a stupid Jew,” according to incidents relayed in the complaint.

“While Berkeley Unified School District plasters its buildings with ‘United Against Hate’ posters, Jewish hate is ignored,” said Berkeley Unified parent Ilana Pearlman.

In the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Berkeley Unified teachers and administrators have allegedly staged walkouts “denigrating Israelis and calling for the elimination of Jews.”

“Teachers, staff, and administrators,” the complaint states, “have participated in and encouraged students to join walkouts, depriving Jewish and Israeli students of a safe place to learn and all students of instruction.” In some cases, these events have taken place during school hours.

In another case cited in the complaint, an unnamed art teacher “spent significant class time imposing his anti-Semitic views on students by showing them violent pro-Hamas videos, projecting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic images during class.” This includes an image of a fist holding a Palestinian flag punching through a Star of David.

The complaint outlines other similar incidents, including anti-Semitic harassment, that has left Jewish students shaken and scared about going to school each day.

“The Berkeley public school district is just one of many districts in California and other states that are experiencing an extreme wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic language and incidents in the classroom and the schoolyard,” said Rachel Lerman, vice chair and general counsel for the Brandeis Center. “Since October 7, there have been continual anti-Israel rallies, taking kids off campus without parent permission, where students are provided with signs and permitted to call for the extermination of Zionists and Jews. Students feel free to engage in anti-Semitic speech and bully their Jewish classmates because a number of their teachers tolerate and even encourage it. Meanwhile the administration does nothing in the face of widespread parent complaints.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Jewish Students Tell House Committee: ‘It’s Open Season on Jews on Our Campus’ thumbnail

Jewish Students Tell House Committee: ‘It’s Open Season on Jews on Our Campus’

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By The Geller Report

Jews are fair game now. This is exactly what Jewish students and academics experienced in Nazi Germany.

For years, the growing Jew hatred on college campuses was ignored or excused. Before my colleagues and I were banned, we experienced vicious, violent hatred.

No one stood with us. Or took action.

What did they think was going. to happen?

‘I didn’t come to study in a living laboratory of antisemitism’

In DC, Jewish students tell House committee: ‘It’s open season on Jews on our campus’

Months after the Education and Workforce Committee hearing that contributed to the resignation of top school presidents, Jewish students say the hatred continues unchecked

By: Jordana Horn, Times of Israel, March 1, 2024:

NEW YORK — The House of Representatives’ Education and the Workforce Committee held a bipartisan roundtable Thursday with Jewish students from nine American universities to hear testimony about their experiences with antisemitism on campus.

✡️🇺🇸 — WATCH: Harvard Student describes the antisemitism Jewish students go through since October 7th:

“I know these students. I sit in class with them. I share study halls with them. They publicly praise Hamas.” pic.twitter.com/hJkmh0jWjV

— Belaaz News (@TheBelaaz) March 1, 2024

Testimony given before the Education and Workforce Committee’s last hearing in December led to the resignations of Harvard University president Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill.

“These students are dealing with antisemitism at their respective universities on a daily basis. Their courage to speak out and share their stories will give the American people a new look at what is truly happening on college campuses around the country,” Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said before the roundtable in a statement. “This roundtable will help inform the committee’s next steps in the antisemitism investigation as it continues to hold postsecondary education accountable for rampant antisemitism.”

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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POSTS ON X:

@Hunter_College @CUNY you need to stop this. This is not free speech. This is putting a target in Jewish students backs. @GovKathyHochul you need to speak out immediately and condemn this https://t.co/6WuviWSTQI

— magsblue (@builderstrong23) March 1, 2024

Harvard *faculty* members are posting old-school classic antisemitic posters.

No excuse for this. This is plain old antisemitism. Shame on @Harvard.

h/t: Harvard Chabad pic.twitter.com/T2Ri6wWRxu

— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) February 20, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

FL Rep. Chase Tramont: ‘There is no objection to the teaching of facts and truth of history. In fact, we demand it!’ thumbnail

FL Rep. Chase Tramont: ‘There is no objection to the teaching of facts and truth of history. In fact, we demand it!’

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By Dr. Rich Swier

Republican Florida Representative Chase Tramont of Port Orange, Florida took to the floor of the House this week to defend out history and refute the big lie that Republicans are somehow trying to censor the teaching of history in a new bill that outlaws the use of ideology to interpret hard fast facts.

Chase is a cosponsor of a bill that requires an honest rendition of our past, warts and all.

The bill prohibits teacher preparation programs, EPIs, and Level I and Level II school leader preparation programs from distorting significant historical events or including a curriculum or instruction that teaches identity politics, violates the Florida Educational Equity Act, or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.

The bill requires all teacher preparation programs and EPIs to afford candidates the opportunity to think critically, achieve mastery of academic program content, learn instructional strategies, and demonstrate competence

The bill requires Level I and Level II school leader preparation programs to afford candidates the opportunity to demonstrate mastery of program content, including instructional leadership strategies, coaching development, school safety, and continuous improvement efforts.

Representative Chase Tramont, “…[A]nd for the future education of my son who will be introduced to the world on Wednesday, I am proud to stand on the right side of protecting our history today.’“

WATCH: Representative Chase Tramont Defends History

©2024. Volusia GOP. All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Democrats’ lawfare against Trump! thumbnail

PODCAST: Democrats’ lawfare against Trump!

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By Conservative Commandos Radio Show

GUESTS & TOPICS

REVERAND BEN JOHNSON

Rev. Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand. His writings have also appeared in The (UK) Guardian, Human Events, The Stream, Real Clear Policy, Conservative Review, The Daily Caller, and have been cited by National Review, CBS News, and Fox News. He was managing editor of FrontPage Magazine and U.S. Bureau Chief at LifeSiteNews. He is the author of two books on tax-exempt foundations, as well as Party of Defeat (2008, Spence, with David Horowitz). Before turning to online journalism and editing, he spent more than a decade in all facets of radio broadcasting, including news and talk.

TOPIC: Teachers agree! Trans, CRT Lessons Hurt Rather Than Help Schools!

MARTHA ZOLLER

Martha Zoller is a conservative strategist, activist, policy expert, and pundit with extensive campaign and government experience. For twenty years, Martha has hosted radio programs and was named to the Talkers Top 100 Radio Shows in America multiple times. She was a regular contributor on Cable and Broadcast News and served as a longtime panelist on Fox 5 Atlanta’s The Georgia Gang. Martha is the host of “Morning Talk with Martha Zoller” heard weekdays on WDUN AM550 and WDUN FM102.9.

TOPIC: What are Georgians saying about Fani Willis?

©2024. Conservative Commandos Radio Show. All rights reserved.

10 Times as Many Teachers Say Trans, CRT Lessons Hurt Rather Than Help Schools thumbnail

10 Times as Many Teachers Say Trans, CRT Lessons Hurt Rather Than Help Schools

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By Family Research Council

A new survey reveals a cavernous gap between teachers’ unions and the views of most parents, teenagers, and teachers on whether public schools should teach LGBT ideology to students — and whether parents should have the right to opt their children out of those classes.

While elite teachers’ unions such as the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) believe schools should teach sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) classes to children, their customers — parents and students — disagree, as do many of their members, according to a series of new polls released last week.

More than 10 times as many teachers said debates over LGBT ideology, including sexual orientation and gender ideology, “have had a negative impact on their ability to do their job,” compared to 4% who said they improve learning, according to the Pew Research Center: 41% to 4%. Social Studies and English teachers were the most likely to say SOGI topics harmed their teaching time; they were also the classes most likely to discuss those issues, the survey found.

Yet some left-wing activists are working to change that. MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, donated $10 million to a group that instructs math teachers to “infuse social justice into mathematics.”

Teachers, Parents, and Students Do Not Want LGBTQIA+ Issues in the Classroom

Half of all teachers say “students should not learn” about gender identity issues in school, including 62% of elementary school teachers, 45% of middle school teachers, and 35% of high school teachers. Among those who believe the school should weigh in on such divisive topics, 33% of teachers say gender “can be different than sex assigned at birth,” while 14% believe in biological sex. More than twice as many elementary teachers believe transgender ideology as believe in biology; the proportion reaches three-to-one among high school teachers (45% vs. 15%).

The poll apparently shows those supportive of transgender beliefs are more likely to address the topic in school. Just under one-in-three teachers say sexual orientation or transgender ideology come up occasionally (21%) or frequently (9%). But teachers who belong to the Democratic Party were 15 points more likely to confess that LGBT issues creep into their classrooms than Republican teachers (36% to 21%).

Although a plurality (48%) of teachers believe parents should be able to opt their children out of transgender ideology indoctrination classes, one-third of instructors believed such classes should be compulsory.

“On both topics, parents’ views were more evenly split than the views of teachers,” according to the Pew survey. For instance, a majority of parents (54%) believe they should be able to determine whether teachers can subject their children to trans ideology.

The largest percentage of teens do not want to hear about LGBT ideology in the classroom, either: 48% say the topics should not be taught at school. Teens are also slightly more likely to believe in biological sex than in transgenderism (26% vs. 25%). But Democratic students are 525% more likely than Republican students to say gender identity is not tied to physiognomy.

Teenage students are more likely to feel uncomfortable hearing about transgender or sexual orientation issues than feel comfortable (33% vs. 29%). More than twice as many Republican students are more likely to feel uncomfortable hearing about such topics than to feel comfortable.

Only 14% of all teens say transgenderism or homosexuality “has never come up in any of their classes.”

The poll seems to indicate many teachers believe parents have too much say in their children’s education. While a plurality of teachers said parents had “the right amount” of influence, teachers were more likely to say parents had “too much influence” than not enough (32% to 19%). Democrats were 42% more likely than Republicans to believe parents had too much influence.

Republican-leaning teachers are more likely to honor parents’ views on these subjects, the poll found: 69% of Republican teachers say schools should not be in the business of teaching LGBT issues, and 80% say parents should decide whether their children attend such classes. Half of Democratic teachers say public school LGBT classes should be mandatory, and 53% say schools should teach transgender ideology.

A strong majority of teachers (58%) belongs to the Democratic Party, Pew noted.

Asian and “[w]hite Democrats are more likely than [b]lack and Hispanic Democrats to say parents should not be able to opt their children out of learning about sexual orientation and gender identity,” Pew stated. In all, 53% of Asian Democrats and “six-in-ten [w]hite Democrats say this, compared with 42% of Hispanic Democrats and 34% of [b]lack Democrats.” A plurality of black Democrats say parents should be able to opt out of LGBT indoctrination (46%, compared to 34% who oppose it).

Teachers’ Unions Out of Touch with Students, Poll Shows

The views of teachers, parents, and students strongly conflict with the stance of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, the three-million-member NEA and the 1.5-million-member AFT. The NEA provides model legislation to teach LGBT ideology in public schools and carries out numerous training sessions to promote gender ideology to teachers.

The NEA’s “Pronoun Guide” includes “Ze, Zim, Zir, Zay or Zee.” It urges teachers, “Inspire and encourage your student” with its two-page list of “LGBT+-affirming books.” It instructs teachers in 33 states how they can obtain a free “Rainbow Library” from GLSEN.

“You can use your work environment,” e.g., the classroom, “to show support for students of all backgrounds — for example, by hanging a Black Lives Matter poster or Pride flag or making clear that you will use a student’s personal gender pronouns,” the NEA advises teachers.

The union’s leadership has strongly emphasized its commitment to radical LGBTQ advocacy, regardless of parental objections or, seemingly, state law. “We will say gay! We will say trans!” bellowed NEA President Becky Pringle at the group’s 2022 Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly, taking aim at the popular “Parental Rights in Education” law, signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), who went on to win a rousing double-digit reelection months later. The bill says teachers may not “encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” before the fourth grade. The NEA stated its union members would “validate our students,” presumably when children’s gender choice conflicts with their parents’ values.

The NEA’s chief union rival, the AFT, “also coached its members on how to inject gender identity politics into the classroom,” found a report from the Defense of Freedom Institute. The AFT’s Together Educating America’s Children (TEACH) conference last July held sessions on “Affirming LGBTQIA+ Identities in and out of the Classroom” and “The TGNCNB [Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming, Nonbinary] Inclusive School and Classroom.”

Teachers in Tennessee’s Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, which strongly supported President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, learned that the U.S. operates as a “system of oppression” that confers “privilege status” on “white,” “able-bodied,” “men, cisgendered,” “heterosexual,” “Christian” Americans; but the U.S. allegedly brands an “oppression status” on any “person of color”; “woman, trans, nonbinary, genderqueer,” “LGBQ+, polyamorous”; and people whose religious views are “pagan.”

The LGBTQ movement’s advocacy goes outside the classroom to the restroom, locker room — even the hotel room. Last summer, teachers at Governor’s Ranch Elementary School in Littleton, Colorado, attempted to force a fifth-grade girl to share a bed with a boy who identified as a girl on an overnight field trip. Last July, the AFT adopted a resolution supporting “inclusive” policies allowing men to access female facilities, “including, but not limited to, bathrooms and locker rooms.” AFT President Randi Weingartenwalked away from a reporter who asked her about girls who do not feel safe undressing in front of boys in their locker rooms.

“Both teacher unions ignore the reality that most teachers want to teach, not affirm a student’s gender identity, either due to their personal values or their beliefs that doing so oversteps their authority and encroaches on the role of parents,” says the Defense of Freedom Institute.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Teachers Ran LGBT Education Program At Dallas School Without Approval: REPORT thumbnail

Teachers Ran LGBT Education Program At Dallas School Without Approval: REPORT

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By The Daily Caller

An LGBTQ program that partnered Dallas Independent School Districts (ISD) teachers with a local transgender care-providing clinic was never approved by Dallas ISD officials, documents obtained in a public records request by the Dallas Express showed.

The Out for Safe Schools program reportedly partnered the district with a transgender-affirming clinic called the Resource Center, which allegedly provides transgender patients with hormones. The program educated teachers on how they could be “allies” to the LGBTQ cause, according to the outlet.

This partnership agreement was allegedly signed by the Resource Center, but not by any Dallas ISD officials, according to the Dallas Express.

“The department said there was no executed agreement,” JoAnna Talley, public information coordinator for Dallas ISD, told the Dallas Express.

Despite this apparent lack of support on behalf of the district, the program was reportedly operating anyway, the outlet reported. Further documents obtained by the Dallas Express allegedly show that the program was struggling to recruit teachers.

“Update. We still only have one person signed up for today,” Mahoganie Gaston, the LGBTQ youth support services coordinator for Dallas ISD, said in an April 2021 email, according to the outlet.

“Ok. Let’s go ahead and cancel today & ask today’s participant to attend in May. Hopefully, the trustees can push out the training in the areas they represent & attendance will be higher for the final two sessions,” Rafael McDonnell, an employee of the Resource Center, responded, according to the outlet.

Mentions of the Out for Safe Schools program were allegedly taken off the websites of Dallas ISD and the Resource Center after the Dallas Express exposed the program previously, according to the outlet.

There is still time to register for tomorrow’s training! Email mgaston@dallasisd.org ! pic.twitter.com/8GWWJnWasu

— Dallas ISD Support Services for LGBTQ Youth (@DallasISDLGBTQY) May 21, 2020

The Dallas ISD LQBTQ support center did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

Recently, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office permitted Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to refuse to hand over documents in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) pertaining to the $90,000 they paid to Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago since 2021, as reported by the DCNF.

The payment was reportedly for a series of training sessions from the hospital’s Sexuality Education Program, which includes “age-appropriate” lessons on anal sex and “gender-affirming” sexual communication, according to the hospital’s website. The denial was made on the grounds that Illinois law protects “course materials” from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, according to the DCNF.

AUTHOR

THOMAS MCGIFFIN

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Criminal’: Legal, Parental Advocates Sound Alarm On Blue State Bill Allowing Minors To Consent To Medical Procedures

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BREAKING: LGBTQ youth advocacy organization @TYEFofficial offers to secretly send 13-year-old a chest binder behind her parents’ backs.

We posed as a teen girl and they encouraged her to choose another family, get a job to pay for s*x change surgery, and bashed her Trump… pic.twitter.com/7A9IaB2PTT

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 27, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Why are Americans becoming more stupid? thumbnail

Why are Americans becoming more stupid?

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By The Geller Report

“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” ― Aristotle

Why are Americans becoming more stupid?

Our entire education system needs a revolution

By: Joel Kotkin, Unherd, February 26, 2024:

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind,” said Winston Churchill.

And judging by the state of education in America, it seems both of those empires could soon crumble. The dysfunction is evident from top to bottom: from Ivy League outposts down to the secondary schools. Both are producing a generation that is ill-informed, illiterate and innumerate. In other words, a generation increasingly ill-suited to function as productive citizens in a democracy.

One might expect, then, that the creation of a raft of new universities and schools focused on doing something different would seem like a fundamental necessity. After all, young people are deserting college in droves, with enrolments down by 15% over the past decade; in the lower grades, it’s common to hear talk of “zombie schools”, the product of more than 20% of pupils being “chronically absent”.

And yet, the emergence of these still-small shoots have terrified the educratic establishment. Some claim the shift in emphasis towards classics and civics, now occurring in places such as Florida’s New College, is “sinister development” by nefarious Right-wingers. Similarly, the teachers’ unions have resisted a number of moves to create charter schools — which increase choice in the public system — because they are part of a “war on schools”.

In some cases, the defence of failure is breathtaking. Blue states such as Illinois have worked to all but eliminate charters, even as the Land of Lincoln boasts 53 schools where not one student can do grade-level math and 30 where none can do so in English. These schools are overwhelmingly in Chicago, where a significant increase in spending per student since 2019 seems to have made no impact.

Yet Chicago’s failures are wholly representative. The most recent National Assessments of Educational Progress found that only 27% of eighth graders are proficient in reading, 20% in math, 22% in geography, and a mere 13% in US History. The Covid lockdowns may have accelerated the deterioration, but scores have continued to decline since the pandemic ended. IQ scores, which had been rising for decades, are now falling even among college students.

More influential here is education’s gradual radicalisation, which has its origins at the top of the food chain. Already in 2018, one study of 51 top-rated colleges found that the proportion of liberals to conservatives was generally at least 8 to 1, and often as high as 70 to 1. Five years later, nearly three in five US professors admitted to self-censoring to avoid offending administrators and students.

Continue reading.

A READER’S COMMENT:

“This is now [a] state of war, fifth generational war – from the inside, not kinetic, but lawfare against the society in order to destroy it. Destroy morals and ethics, the sense of fairness, destroy the understanding that rights only work when tied to responsibilities. Break the family – get young to not marry, be bisexual or gay if possible. Create mental illness (phones, entertainment industry, the ‘health departments, vaccine), increase Crime, increase anti-social behavior, import a vast number of unsuitable people, cause them to not absorb in the native culture to fragment society. Destroy religion. Destroy patriotism.

Remove enlightenment liberalism (the writers of the USA Constitution, for example) and replace the philosophy with Postmodernism, which is basically Satan’s creed. Grow debt past the ability to pay to service it, award entitlements to the public sure to bankrupt the nation as they have to be borrowed to pay them out – then have to borrow to ‘service’ that debt’s interest payments, which is called a ‘doom loop’, borrowing to pay interest on debt….. Make home ownership unaffordable to young so they do not have Families. Basically do everything the UNIParty’s of all Western Nations do – abetted and run by their ‘Deep States’ and Globalist masters. Keep ‘Forever Wars” burning to justify a secret Police state, the ‘Security Services’ are now watching you, their resources turned inward….

But enough listing – I am sure you know a hundred more insane things being done – and even enforced, to destroy us all. (Kneeling?) drugs, homelessness, just endless.

At the heart of it all is to destroy Enlightenment and Classical Education. One which has good and evil – not ‘correct and incorrect.’ The people are utterly powerless once you replace that with Postmodernism Liberalism. No morals, No ethics, nothing of ultimate importance.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Florida Weighs Allowing Chaplains in Public Schools

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By Family Research Council

The Sunshine State is considering giving students access to chaplains in public schools. On Tuesday, the Florida State Senate’s Appropriations Committee on Education voted to approve Senate Bill 1044, which would allow chaplains to volunteer to offer counseling at public and charter schools.

The text of the bill states, “Each school district or charter school may adopt a policy to authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide supports, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.” The bill would require volunteer chaplains to pass a background check and would further require school administrators to publicize any chaplain’s religious affiliation and obtain parental consent before a student begins counseling.

Similar bills have been advanced in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas over the past year, facing backlash from Democrats but also some criticism from conservatives and Christians, who fear that the lax requirements around the volunteer chaplain position may allow for atheists, Satanists, and others to present themselves to children as chaplains.

Pastor Jay Johnston, Family Research Council’s chaplain and National Prayer Director, told The Washington Stand, “In speaking with church and ministry leaders about this opportunity to place chaplains in schools, it is suitable from my view if churches who adhere to biblical instruction could commission chaplains and send them to schools — if they have chaplains who know Jesus and have a pastoral heart to minister and bring forth spiritual guidance as they speak life, hope, and encouragement to students, faculty, and parents.”

“However, there is a downside to this,” he continued. “If church and ministry leaders don’t seize the opportunity and chaplains take up positions in schools that are without Christ or associated with a cult, it could give the enemy a foothold and expose the student body to spiritual darkness.”

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, also commented on the good that school chaplains could achieve. “The specifics of the Florida bill may not be perfect,” she told TWS, “but the need that Florida legislators are seeking to address is very real. As a general matter, as long as the chaplain is actually a pastor who has theological training and ministry experience, I think school chaplains would be a blessing to everyone in the school: students, faculty, staff, and parents.”

However, she also warned, “But when I think of my own public school system where I live, I can easily imagine the approval by school officials of a chaplain in drag, an atheist chaplain, and worse. And that is obviously worse than no chaplain.”

A spokeswoman for the Florida Catholic Conference explained to TWS that although the state’s Catholic bishops have not taken an official stance on the legislation, “We recognize the good that chaplains can do in schools by helping students to address their spiritual and emotional needs. We are pleased that parents will determine the services their children will receive as well in districts that choose to establish chaplaincy programs.”

Reverend James Golden, pastor of Mt. Zion AME Church and the co-founder of Pastors for Florida Children, was among those critical of the bill’s lax qualification requirements. He told lawmakers on Tuesday, “We cannot reduce this important job to somebody who is just able to pass a level two background check.” Golden’s comments echo complaints voiced by a coalition of 100 active chaplains in Texas when the Lone Star State advanced similar legislation last year. In a letter, the chaplains wrote that the Texas bill “allows a school district to give any employee or volunteer who can pass a background check the title of ‘chaplain.’ This is simply not enough. Professional chaplains have specific education and expertise to fulfill our role in helping others engage their own religious practices and traditions.”

The Texas chaplains also wrote, “As trained chaplains, we strongly caution against the government assertion of authority for the spiritual development and formation of our public school children. We would never provide spiritual care to someone without their consent. And when children are involved, parental consent is necessary.” Florida’s new legislation, however, specifically addresses this concern.

The Sunshine State’s bill also addresses another concern raised in Texas last year. The Texas chaplains made it clear, “Because of our training and experience, we know that chaplains are not a replacement for school counselors or safety measures in our public schools… We cooperate with mental health counselors — we do not compete with them.” While the Texas bill specified that “a school district may employ a chaplain instead of a school counselor to perform the duties required of a school counselor” (emphasis added), Florida’s bill does not replace counselors but simply adds chaplains.

Florida Senate Bill 1044 is now being reviewed by the State Senate’s Rules Committee. If approved by the state legislature, it will go into effect July 1.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Henry Blackaby — Experiencing God Face to Face

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

New York Times ‘Journalist’ Accused of Participating In Oct. 7th Hamas Attacks Wins Journalism Award thumbnail

New York Times ‘Journalist’ Accused of Participating In Oct. 7th Hamas Attacks Wins Journalism Award

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By The Geller Report

The New York Times proudly announced last Monday that it had “won three George Polk awards, including two for its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.” Those prestigious journalism awards went to “Samar Abu Elouf and Yousef Masoud of The Times” for “photojournalism for their photographs of the conflict from inside Gaza, capturing the horrific toll of Israel’s airstrikes on civilians, including the death and injury of many children.” The Times neglected to mention, however, one telling detail: Masoud has been unmasked as a member of Hamas who participated in the Oct. 7 jihad massacres inside Israel.

The Paper of Record shows no sign of firing Masoud or returning the George Polk award he won, but the Jerusalem Post had the story on Thursday, noting that the media watchdog Honest Reporting had “highlighted his accreditation to a photo provided to the Associated Press, with the caption, ‘Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis southern Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.’ How had Masoud gotten on the scene so quickly, so as to be in a position to take this picture? Honest Reporting “questioned Masoud’s explanation of his presence that he’d been woken up at 5.30 a.m. by rocket fire even though the firing only started an hour later.”

What’s more, “Masoud’s name was included in an investigative report from November showing that journalists from leading news outlets, including The New York Times, AP, Reuters, and CNN, joined Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip on October 7 to document the events with their cameras.” The New York Times responded indignantly: “The accusation that anyone at The New York Times had advance knowledge of the Hamas attacks or accompanied Hamas terrorists during the attacks is untrue and outrageous. It is reckless to make such allegations, putting our journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza at risk.”

Honest Reporting, however, said that claims it had “jeopardized the safety of all media working in Israel and the Palestinian territories” were nothing more than “a deliberate attempt to deflect from the real issues we raised.” And that’s true. Why doesn’t Masoud explain how he came to be on the scene of a Hamas operation on the morning of Oct. 7, and why he stated that he was awakened by rocket fire an hour before the rocket fire started?

After all, there is nothing remotely implausible about the idea of a New York Times “journalist” being a Hamas operative. Honest Reporting pointed out the Times’ “backing of a decision to rehire Gazan freelance filmmaker Soliman Hijjy despite HonestReporting previously revealing how he had praised Hitler on social media.” What’s more, the Times and the rest of the establishment media have for years been consistently anti-Israel, and have worked assiduously to whitewash the bloody reality of Islamic jihad. Why would the Times, or any other establishment propaganda arm, hesitate to hire a supporter of Hamas and fanatical hater of Israel and Jews? Media observer Hugh Fitzgerald states that “save for a single columnist — Bret Stephens — the New York Times has no one on its staff, among its hundreds of reporters, columnists, and op/ed contributors, who could be described as willing to give Israel a fair shake.”

We have just recently discovered how closely the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) collaborated with Hamas, allowing the jihadis to operate on UNRWA premises, employing Hamas operatives, and teaching hatred of Jews and Israel in its textbooks for Palestinian schools. If this could happen before the eyes of a watching world, what would possibly prevent a “journalist” from a deeply biased and essentially pro-Hamas outlet from going whole hog with his support for the jihad terror outfit?

The New York Times has a great deal to answer for, far beyond Yousef Masoud. Masoud may indeed have been a Hamas jihadi, in which case his George Polk award should be rescinded and the Times should not use him again. But the fact that none of that is likely to happen is in large part a result of the Times’ indefatigable efforts to make support for jihad violence respectable and mainstream. The Times should at this point perform a thoroughgoing soul-searching, and a wholesale reevaluation of its uncritical support for jihadis. But nothing is much less likely.

AUTHOR

Robert Spencer

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The operation in Zeytun continues: the soldiers of the 401st Brigade combat team eliminated over 30 terrorists in the last day; At the same time, the deepening of the activities of the 98th Division in the Khan Yunis area continues pic.twitter.com/92XwfueSEO

— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) February 26, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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