FIRE Lawsuit Against California Community Colleges Over "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" Mandates

From today's press release, by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:, about Palsgaard v. Christian (E.D. Cal.):

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach politicized conceptions of "diversity, equity, and inclusion." …

Under the new regulations, all of the more-than-54,000 professors who teach in the California Community Colleges system must incorporate "anti-racist" viewpoints into classroom teaching.

The regulations explicitly require professors to pledge allegiance to contested ideological viewpoints. Professors must "acknowledge" that "cultural and social identities are diverse, fluid, and intersectional," and they must develop "knowledge of the intersectionality of social identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face." Faculty performance and tenure will be evaluated based on professors' commitment to and promotion of the government's viewpoints.

"I'm a professor of chemistry. How am I supposed to incorporate DEI into my classroom instruction?" asked Reedley College professor Bill Blanken. "What's the 'anti-racist' perspective on the atomic mass of boron?"

"These regulations are a totalitarian triple-whammy," said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. "The government is forcing professors to teach and preach a politicized viewpoint they do not share, imposing incomprehensible guidelines, and threatening to punish professors when they cross an arbitrary, indiscernible line."

DEI requirements are controversial within academia. FIRE's research indicates that half of professors believe mandatory diversity statements violate academic freedom. The sole mention of academic freedom in California's model framework frames it an inconvenience, warning professors not to "'weaponize' academic freedom" to "inflict curricular trauma on our students."

"Hearing uncomfortable ideas is not 'curricular trauma,' and teaching all sides of an issue is not 'weaponizing' academic freedom," said Loren Palsgaard, a professor of English at Madera Community College and a plaintiff in the suit. "That's just called 'education.'"

An official glossary of terms released by the state makes plain that the "anti-racist" views it mandates are highly ideological. Indeed, the definition for "anti-racism" states that "persons that say they are 'not a racist' are in denial." California declares that "color-blindness," or the belief that "the best way to end prejudice and discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity," is itself a problem because it "perpetuates existing racial inequities and denies systematic racism."

Even a professor saying something as benign as "I grade my class based on merit" is suspect under the regulations. "Merit is embedded in the ideology of Whiteness and upholds race-based structural inequality," the glossary claims. "Merit protects White privilege under the guise of standards … and as highlighted by anti-affirmative action forces."

FIRE first expressed concerns with the California regulations when they were proposed in 2022, warning in a public comment that the new rules would "unconstitutionally require faculty to profess allegiance to and to promote a contested set of ideological views." The response from the chancellor's office was woefully inadequate, denying that the chancellor or the board of governors could ever violate a professor's academic freedom. The regulations are now in effect in the State Center Community College District, and FIRE's clients have already been forced to change their syllabi and teaching materials, lest they face repercussions.

FIRE's California suit comes almost a year after FIRE filed a lawsuit against Florida's "Stop WOKE Act" as it applies to college classrooms. In that case, Florida's legislature, like California Community Colleges, sought to dictate what views public university professors can express when teaching. In November 2022, a federal court granted FIRE's motion for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of the Stop WOKE Act, calling it "positively dystopian."

"Whether it's states forcing professors to teach DEI concepts or states forcing them not to teach concepts that lawmakers deem 'woke,' the government can't tell university professors what views they are or aren't allowed to debate in the classroom," said FIRE attorney Jessie Appleby….

Note that I've consulted for FIRE before, but I haven't been involved with this case.

Comments

[loki13]

"inflict curricular trauma on our students."
"Merit is embedded in the ideology of Whiteness and upholds race-based structural inequality,"

This is breathtakingly stupid. For all of the terrible things that are happening because of the stupidity of the right, it's useful to remember that there's a bunch of truly inane things being pushed by the loony left as well.

You can believe in structural inequality (as I do, and seems obvious) without having to condone this nonsense.

[David Welker]

I agree completely.

The left has become embarrassing. Absolutely everything is oppression. Human agency is practically non-existent. You have to wonder how these people even get out of bed in the morning.

It is also a sort of self-imposed helplessness. Many really seem to believe that the pathway to "success" is by fighting the "oppressor class" that is to blame for all or most of their problems. When in reality, their five biggest likely problems facing these people are going to be cardiovascular disease, cancer, unintentional medical mistakes, neurological degeneration (e.g. Alzheimer's disease), or metabolic disorders (e.g. type II diabetes). In other words, society has advanced to the point that the main problem we usually face isn't really the maliciousness of other people, but instead nature itself. (Except to the extent other people to inflict stress on us... usually because we ALLOW them to inflict stress on us... generally speaking, the four natural causes of death above are strengthened by chronic stress... but so often, by taking simple steps to take control of our lives, we can also take control of our stress without any need for a political movement to fight some imagined oppressor class.)

The "solution" that leftists have devised is to try to make sure that everyone is "united" against the "oppressor class" and this means that quaint ideas like freedom of speech and academic freedom either cannot be tolerated or must be curtailed. Diversity, in its most superficial sense of skin color, must be celebrated for its own sake. In the meantime, diversity of thought (which is actually far more important than skin color) is treated as a second class citizen.

That these ideas have gained enough traction among the Democrats that primarily run the State of California to infect the community colleges (which are supposed to serve everyone, regardless of their personal beliefs) is sad. I believe that many on the left are ignorant of exactly how unhinged they have become out of a combination of 1) fear of Donald Trump, 2) fear of COVID-19 and 3) difficulty coping with the stresses of the modern world. They feel very vulnerable and that is where their need to take extreme measures to exert control over the thoughts of others comes from.

But trying to take control over others is anti-liberal.

I used to identify as a liberal, but before that I identified as a conservative, but before that I identified as a liberal.

That is how it should be. A person who thinks for themselves will have a tendency to consider a variety of viewpoints seriously.

But no matter what iteration of ideology I have "tried on" in the past, one thing I would have always rejected is the arrogance of ANYONE trying to tell me what to think or what to say or what to advocate. Anyone who does that gets a big GO FUCK YOURSELF.

So, to California Democrats, I have this simple message: Go fuck yourself. Until you can start respecting the individual right to THINK FOR YOURSELF, you don't deserve for me to even consider voting for you. That is my redline in the sand.

I don't care how bad you think racism is, or how bad you think the oppressor class is. Ironically, these leftists are a mirror images of Donald Trump, expecting us to buy incredible claims without sufficient evidence. In the case of Donald Trump, he made incredible claims of election fraud without sufficient evidence. Similarly, these leftists make incredible claims about systematic oppression without sufficient evidence.

I happen to believe that Donald Trump is likely innocent. Why? Because the idea that he sincerely believed that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy resonates in our modern society. We see it reflected here with these leftists, who DESPITE LITERALLY RUNNING THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, still somehow think that THEY ARE THE VICTIM. In the same way, Donald Trump, who was LITERALLY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and a billionaire somehow sees himself as a victim.

For the left, being the "victim" means they need to keep everyone "united" and "on the same page" so that they can defeat the "evil" oppressor class. They can't tolerate things like intellectual diversity.

At this point, I don't identify with either the left or the right. But I do identify with a single point instead. Both the left and the right need to get over the idea that they are helpless victims.

Also, the left needs to start respecting the Constitution. On one hand, they claim that Trump is a threat to democracy. But then they want to censor people even at the university level. NEWSFLASH to leftists: censorship IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH DEMOCRACY.

If you don't believe that people can be trusted to think and speak for themselves and sometimes even be wrong, then you don't really think they can govern themselves. Instead, what you think they need is for YOU to tell them the exact parameters of acceptable thought.

Funny thing, but if everyone NEEDS YOU to tell them exactly what to think, doesn't that mean you are superior? And I thought you were fighting for equality??? What sounds like what you really are fighting for is your own dominance to me. Saying that you are the boss and everyone must repeat after you isn't equality.

At the end of the day, this leftist thinking just leads to a giant contradiction. They always says that they are doing all that killing on "behalf of the oppressed people" but in the process they become the oppressors. And actually, often even worse than the oppressors. In the past, the contradiction has led to such evil regimes as the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party. That doesn't mean that these regimes did not arise from legitimate critiques of society; but nonetheless, they became far worse than the things they were critiquing.

For the above reasons, I also absolutely reject what loki13 refers to as the "loony left." But I also reject the term "loony" because it implies it isn't the real mainstream left. But look, the California Community College system isn't some marginalized institution. Where is Gavin Newsom? Why aren't the so-called mainstream liberal figures in California curtailing these obvious excesses?

Overall, maybe BOTH SIDES need to reject the idea that they are victims. Maybe the social media drama and the desire for attention has gone too far. People on both sides are taking their narratives of oppression way too seriously.

Also, our number one rule should be this. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This movement to impose DEI thought on everyone is really just about power. It is about dominance. The advocates of DEI want to establish the precedent that all must bow down to them. Sorry, but no one can be trusted with the power to control the speaking and thoughts of others. You can't force everyone to "acknowledge" your ideas no matter how much you desire validation.

[David Nieporent]

This is breathtakingly stupid.

Wait until you get to the definitions.

Color Blindness: Is a racial ideology that assumes the best way to end prejudice and discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity. This ideology is grounded in the belief that race-based differences do not matter and should not be considered for decisions, impressions, and behaviors.

Sounds pretty great to me! Oh, but…

However, the term “colorblind” de-emphasizes, or ignores, race and ethnicity, a large part of one’s identity and lived experience. In doing so, it perpetuates existing racial inequities and denies systematic racism.

But if that jargon-filled walkback wasn't enough, the next definition decides the whole term is bad:

Color-Evasiveness: Is a racial ideology that describes the same concept as color-blindness where individuals reject or minimize the significance of race. Color-evasiveness, however, avoids describing people with disabilities as problematic or deficient by using blindness as a metaphor for ignorance.

Get it? So even though color-blindness sounds good, it's actually bad. And since it's actually bad, we can't even use the term to criticize it, because then we're saying that a disability is bad. If these people spent 1/1000th of the time trying to solve problems as they do to inventing them, well… they'd be out of jobs, so it's not surprising they don't.

[loki13]

Ugh. That's ... that's not helping.

It honestly sounds more like a parody than something someone wrote.

[Brett Bellmore]

What we're looking at here is an in group/out group sorting mechanism. They're increasingly common. They want to identify which group you're a member of, and exclude you from the job/benefit if you're not in the in group.

Now, if they promulgated some sensible, or even moderately defensible, demands, sure, the in group would comply. So might a lot of members of the out group! The test wouldn't work.

But if you promulgate something that's batshit crazy? Only in group members are loyal enough to comply! Out group members will balk, because it IS crazy. So it works as a loyalty test.

The goal here isn't just to have the crazy stuff taught. That's secondary. It's to drive off everybody who isn't loyal enough to the Party to be WILLING to teach it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And in the process, destroy higher education.

[Bruce D]

inflict curricular trauma on our students.”

I teach in the California Community College System. You bet I inflict "curricular trauma" on students. I teach math.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Some of us saw through the left years ago.....

[SimonP]

This reads more like a fund-raising pitch than a genuine complaint.

The regulations in question don't seem to require the parade of horribles the complaint and press release run through. Requiring professors to demonstrate awareness of DEIA and anti-racism in how they teach their courses is not tantamount to providing an "'anti-racist' perspective on the atomic mass of boron." Rather - in the case of chemistry, for instance - it would reflect an awareness that not all students are coming to the university with the benefit of high-quality instruction in chemistry or calculus at high school. It would also reflect an awareness that the way a student's performance is subjectively evaluated can often be colored by a professor's own prejudices.

Now - whether the First Amendment prohibits the state from requiring its professors to adopt a particular, informed, and well-researched pedagogical approach is another question. Certainly, a set of standards requiring professors to follow a "don't be an asshole" rule is going to have some bearing on the content one teaches. But the regulations do not seem to require that professors teach DEIA or anti-racism. It requires them to teach in a way that reflects DEIA and anti-racist principles and competencies.

[loki13]

I disagree. I think that this is a flip-side of the anti-woke act in Florida.

If schools want to have their professors attend a ... Continuing Pedagogical Education seminar on not being a jerk (or just learning to be sensitive to issues that effect students), then why not? Doesn't hurt.

But we shouldn't condone stupidity, no matter how well-intentioned.

[SimonP]

The regulations themselves require only the development of local DEIA and anti-racists standards for faculty, and that faculty be evaluated according to them. Nothing "stupid" about that.

The Glossary that you, FIRE, and others are making hay out of admittedly uses jargon that might be off-putting to people not already conversant in their use. But it's not clear how they relate, precisely, to the regulations that FIRE is challenging.

In any event, simply dismissing them as "stupid" isn't very constructive. Indeed, the fact that you believe that your dismissal is self-evidently justified, and likely to be well-received here, is a good clue that the Glossary strikes closer to the truth than you'd care to admit. What is "merit," exactly?

[Savagely Average]

Regardless of whether you believe anti-racism is 'stupid' or not, it's objectively an extreme leftist ideology that espouses positions a huge majority of Americans - including most liberals - reject. California forcing all professors to structure curricula to incorporate it is equivalent to a red state requiring all professors to wear MAGA hats when teaching class.

[loki13]

If you think that I write my comments thinking that they will be well-received here, you are either not familiar with me, or with this place.

[David Welker]

That you assume your comments are not well-received is not necessarily true.

Many commenters here enjoy arguing. We are more likely to respond to things we disagree with than vice-versa.

Saying "I agree" just isn't a good way to start a debate. You shouldn't think that just because people responding to your comments tend to disagree that means your comment isn't well-received overall.

I have usually liked your comments, whether I agree with them or not.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Someone who engages in unsafe sex calling us "stupid"?!?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

This reads more like a fund-raising pitch than a genuine complaint.

That's because it is a fund-raising pitch, aimed at partisan hypocrites, disaffected right-wingers, and gullible clingers.

[David Welker]

"Rather – in the case of chemistry, for instance – it would reflect an awareness that not all students are coming to the university with the benefit of high-quality instruction in chemistry or calculus at high school."

This is a false justification. In a California community college, if you take a calculus class, you should be prepared to do so. If you aren't prepared, you should take classes that make you prepared before you enroll.

A calculus instructor does not have time to engage in personal instruction to teach each and every individual student all of the prerequisite knowledge that they might be missing, especially since the precise knowledge that is missing is likely to be different for each. When I first enrolled in community college, I did not go straight into calculus. I took College Algebra first. This wasn't due to a lack of mathematical ability, but because when I was in high school, my family moved often and this resulted in gaps in my mathematical knowledge. If I had gone straight into calculus, it would not have been the job of the calculus instructor to fix the problem resulting from my unnecessary rush into a class I was not properly prepared to take.

"It would also reflect an awareness that the way a student’s performance is subjectively evaluated can often be colored by a professor’s own prejudices."

Performance in college shouldn't be and generally isn't subjectively evaluated. Whether someone has good writing skills and expresses themselves logically, coherently, and with proper grammar and spelling isn't subjective.

A lot of people don't want to face the fact that their skills aren't what they should be. Instead of looking to improve, they look for someone else to blame. Often the professor. In fact, this is the usual case.

There are cases, of course, where ideological bias from a professor does enter into the calculus of grading. But it isn't always as expected. For example, maybe sometimes a liberal student is graded more harshly by a liberal professor than a conservative student would be because the liberal professor has developed higher standards for the reasoning supporting a liberal viewpoint that they have adopted than for a conservative viewpoint. And, of course, that isn't fair.

Overall, while there is some judgment involved in grading people, the process isn't as wildly subjective as some people (especially those receiving lower grades) seem to assume.

"It requires them to teach in a way that reflects DEIA and anti-racist principles and competencies."

This is a huge problem, because DEI or DEIA or whatever the acronym of the moment happens to be is not necessarily TRUE.

A university is supposed to teach students AND professors (and yes, professors continue to learn too) HOW TO THINK not WHAT TO THINK.

Trying to force everyone to be on the same page regarding particular ideological theories does not promote equality. Quite the opposite, it expresses the dominance of the person doing the forcing.

In China, yesterday people were required to read, recite, and agree with Mao's thoughts. Today, they are required to read, recite, and agree with Xi's thoughts. This is about dominance, not learning.

True learning is LEARNING TO THINK FOR YOURSELF.

[y81]

In all my years of higher education, I don't recall a single professor who was harder on arguments he agreed with than on those he disagreed with. (Of course, I had many professors who evaluated arguments impartially and/or courses with minimal ideological content.) In my experience, saying things the professor agrees with is usually the easiest way to good grades with as little work as possible. The one exception would be (i) if the professor is truly objective in his grading or doesn't really have strong views and (ii) everyone else in the class is going to espouse the view the professor agrees with. In that case, a contrarian approach will make you stand out which might pay off. But it's a little risky unless you are sure of the professor's grading proclivities.

[loki13]

Weird. My best professor in law school (first had him for corporations) would actually bait students by giving them examples to work on with what seemed to be "easy" answers based on what they knew about the professor, but were actually completely wrong.

That said, I do agree with you that professors, like everyone, tend to like the opinions that they already know to be true. But that's not a professor problem, unfortunately, that's a human problem.

Pro-tip for students out there- if you want better grades, it helps to know what your professors have written about. Generally.

[David Welker]

I strongly disagree with this.

I have never changed my writing to please a professor. Not even once.

And I have done well enough in school to make it into Harvard Law School. If you write coherently and support your points with evidence, you are generally going to do well in any class that requires you to write essays.

If you get a grade lower than you expected, there is a simple solution that I used. It is called office hours. In said office hours, go over your essay and seek to truly understand why the professor gave you the grade they gave you. And I guarantee you that the reason they give you will not be because they just don't agree with your overall thesis. (And if they DID admit this, well, then it is time to go to the Dean.) If you do this early, you can definitely turn the situation around. The real problem arises if you don't know what you need to do.

Another strategy. If you have lame professor who is difficult for whatever reason, drop the class. I always took more than the minimum number of classes and used this simple strategy on multiple occasions.

[Brett Bellmore]

I had a ethics prof in college who was like that, though. He was a utilitarian, I spent the quarter arguing for ethical egoism. He genuinely appreciated having a foil instead of an echo.

As a STEM major in the late 70's, of course, most of my professors' philosophy and politics were utterly irrelevant to the course work, and you'd never have known what they were. Sad thing is, under systems like this, that's not so true anymore.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

A university is supposed to teach students AND professors (and yes, professors continue to learn too) HOW TO THINK not WHAT TO THINK.

David Welker either (1) despises conservative-controlled campuses and is too cowardly to say so or (2) is a partisan hypocrite and a whiny little bitch.

I would wager on (2).

[David Welker]

False dichotomy.

It could be both (1) and (2) or neither, Mr. Kirkland.

Maybe when you can avoid a logical fallacy in the first of your two sentences, the opinion expressed in your second might actually have some value.

But let me imitate, for fun.

Either Mr. Kirkland (1) is very tired today or (2) is quite awake but far too stupid to even be an effective troll.

I would wager on (2).

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If you weren't a whiny wingnut and partisan loser, you would have mentioned conservative campuses (far worse than the liberal-libertarian mainstream's institutions you bitch about) in the course of thousands of words complaining about reality-based schools.

Other than that, though, another great comment!

[David Welker]

“weren’t a whiny wingnut”

Your use of alliteration here isn’t making your trolling any more effective.

Also, your constant talking point about how people should talk about whatever you want them to talk about instead of what they are actually talking about is annoying. It is just SO entitled.

I am assuming that acting entitled is part of your trolling.

But, actually, you are literally becoming more and more annoying rather than interesting or funny. You are a bad troll. You need new material. All you really do is repeat yourself.

How many times have you said in a reply that I should talk about X (where X is whatever you want me to talk about) instead of Y.

In fact, that seems to be a favorite of yours. You love to especially say I (and everyone else) should definitely discuss the policies of fourth tier colleges.

I know your trolling, but I have to point out, this is a contradiction. These are, in your assessment, unimportant low quality educational institutions. And on that basis, we should talk more about them? You are making no sense.

I get that you might be making fun of liberals or something with your trolling, but can you please at least develop some new material??? Making the same illogical points over and over… if part of your troll persona is being annoying, can you at least be annoying in an innovative way??? Is that too much to ask of a troll???

[Bwaaah]

Good try, CLINGER.

Your BETTERS are eating your lunch, and you’re still a WHINY BITCH.

ON THIS DAY:
Somebody said “penis” 2 X
There were 300 utterances that were beneath me

Suck on my insights.

With nothing but contempt,
Rev.

[mulched]

Going with the old motte-and-bailey approach. Good on ya'. It's time tested and good for hours of fallacious fun.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“Faculty performance and tenure will be evaluated based on professors’ commitment to and promotion of the government’s viewpoints.”

Well, that’s what the government gets to do if it employs you – it can tell you what you can say while on the clock.

Cops can be limited in whether they can call suspects names, even if the cop *sincerely believes* the suspect is a bad person.

An employee of the government’s lottery commission can be forced to espouse the view that (moderate, of course) gambling is OK.

Off the clock there’s some 1A rights, of course. But on the clock I don’t see how we can reasonably give some public employees 1A rights and not others – even if the public employee is in the professorial class.

Now, if it comes to contract law, there may be the right, agreed to by the government, to have discretion in classroom teaching.

And hopefully there will be a competitive disadvantage for a college which wants its employees parrot bad ideas.

Short of that, the employer can tell the employee what to say on the job.

This includes government’s power to make its employees say dumb stuff – as is the case here.

This should be seen as an argument for limiting government management of educational institutions. Promoting the teaching of certain subjects, and helping needy students – those are good things for the government to do, but if the government runs the show then we create all the dangers of massive, government-sponsored propaganda.

But at least government propaganda has never been proven wrong!

[David Welker]

If the government is going to provide education to people, it must do so in a manner that reflect their status as citizens.

Our theory of government is this. Politicians are public servants; they are not our masters. They are our representatives, not our rulers. That is, they REPRESENT US, they do not RULE OVER US.

Your theory that these politicians, public servants all, get to setup government institutions that in turn brainwash both professors and students and punish independent thinking is completely wrong. That would make the politicians masters over the People rather than servants of the People.

Contrast this situation with the requirement that police officers treat suspects with outward professionalism and respect, even if that doesn't always reflect their true thoughts and feelings. Well, that actually is CONSISTENT with the idea that the government consists of public servants. If the local sheriff is a public servant, then so are the deputies that he hires. Requirements that police treat citizens with decency and respect is consistent with the role of a police officer as a public servant.

The role of a public university in a democracy is to teach people HOW to think, not precisely WHAT to think. Let us say that Gavin Newsom wrote a book that he titles "The Truth." It would be improper for public universities to not only force all faculty and students to read "The Truth" but to claim to be "aware" that all of the assertions in "The Truth" are actually true.

In such a case, the governor would be using his office as a public servant to exercise TOTAL INTELLECTUAL DOMINANCE over the citizens he is supposed to be honored (rather than entitled) to represent.

A democracy requires that citizens have the ability to make up their own minds. Public universities can help citizens better assist democracy by teaching them HOW to think. But what it must never do is teach them WHAT to think. Creating ideological uniformity in higher education, making it so that universities teach specific ideas as indisputable dogma rather than the METHODS OF THINKING FOR YOURSELF so that citizens can decide how to vote or otherwise participate in private and public life, is completely contrary to democracy.

That so many people on the left have rejected the basic tenants of liberalism (and I am not talking about "classical liberalism" as libertarians and conservatives sometimes use it, but liberalism as Democrats used to use it when they identified themselves as liberals) is deeply unfortunate. It seems what many of the left have embraced nowadays is a sort of authoritarianism that insists on trying to force everyone to think alike on "certain important subjects" where the list of "important subjects" is certain to expand.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Well, to be fair, I *did* say of my First Amendment interpretation: "This should be seen as an argument for limiting government management of educational institutions. Promoting the teaching of certain subjects, and helping needy students – those are good things for the government to do, but if the government runs the show then we create all the dangers of massive, government-sponsored propaganda."

Maybe there's even a 1A argument that massive, government-sponsored propaganda is in itself a violation of freedom of speech.

But it would be a difficult principle for the *courts* to manage - especially in a climate where denying DEI dogma is considered equivalent to flat-earthism, and the courts will be challenged to find a principle requiring government neutrality in the first case but not the second.

The best thing, as I suggested, would be for the people to wise up and modify their whole approach to regulating and supporting education.

The top universities with their big endowments will probably be able to survive the economic and cultural shifts around higher ed, but on the lower rungs of the ladder, there will probably inevitably be some shakeups, which the government can encourage. More trade schools and apprenticeships, fewer mass-produced, underemployed, indebted liberal arts graduates. Residential colleges for some key subjects which you have to study on location (like if you have to work in hospitals or laboratories), commuter schools (with flexible hours) for stuff that can be learned either remotely or at satellite campuses where you don't have to rent rooms from the institution.

There's no need for the govt to *run* the schools. just to help the needy and qualified students afford them for subjects which would actually help the students and the country.

[David Welker]

I agree that government run schools are not absolutely necessary. And when it comes to higher education, there are numerous private alternatives.

That said, I think that public universities CAN be useful because they ensure a higher supply of education and also provide competition to the private sector. But I think the condition on this should be that those higher education institutions understand their place in a democratic society. That is, their role is to teach people specific knowledge as well as, more importantly, the methodologies by which knowledge is produced and evaluated.

That there is a major misunderstanding of the democracy-promoting role of public universities is evident given modern trends. But my first preference would be to first try to fix the misunderstanding and reform rather than wholly disrupt these institutions. The reason is not because an alternative without these institutions is impossible, but instead because moving to that alternative would be expensive and this is probably not the most efficient path forward.

I do not believe that anyone, left or right, truly objects to public universities that are focused on teaching people intellectual skills that they then use for their own purposes rather than indoctrinating them. (Although, apparently the left, given its now dominant position on many university faculties, has a desire to go beyond the core mission of the university, I don't believe that is because they actually object to the basic mission.)

Ultimately, what we probably ought to be promoting for public universities is INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY among the faculty based on the theory that they will then check each other. Also, while I don't necessarily have a problem with tenure, I am skeptical of faculty having too much influence over the actual governance of the universities. After all, if you have private individuals who effectively control a public institution, is that institution really public or is it actually private?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

All this whimpering and moaning about academic freedom and freedom of expression, not a word about the hundreds of conservative-controlled campuses that are fourth-tier (or worse), censorship-shackled, strenuously discriminatory, nonsense-teaching, dogma-drenched, science-suppressing, statement of faith-issuing, loyalty oath-collecting, superstition-soaked dumbass factories.

You sound like a disaffected, partisan culture war casualty, David Welker.

[David Welker]

Mr. Kirkland,

You usually don't have anything to say that is actually worth responding to. Let's be honest. You seem like a consistent troll who speaks mainly for shock value.

But, just in case there is some amount of sincerity in what you are saying, I actually do agree with your point insofar as it reflects a goal I would have for the universities.

But before I talk about any agreement, let me talk about my disagreements. Universities don't come in tiers. Much less are there precisely four of them. Let me be blunt, if you really believe that there are four tiers of universities, then I consider you to be at least a little bit unintelligent.

Your complaint, in your troll persona, is typically about people who have superstitious belief systems and/or religion. Presumably, your critique here, if there is actually a serious one underneath all that trolling, is that there is not enough satisfactory evidence to establish religious belief systems on an individual basis, much less should religious beliefs be a basis for creating law with a coercive effect on the rest of society including non-believers.

But your belief in four tiers of schools is similarly unsupported by evidence. The idea is completely arbitrary.

My view is that knowledge is knowledge. People can get a good education from any university or even from no university at all. (But I would just say, until you reach a certain level of intellectual sophistication yourself at least, self-study may not be as efficient as being a student, at least for a person with an average level of initiative.) That a person got their education from such-and-such university in such-and-such imaginary tier is NOT an intellectually serious way to judge them. That you would purport to do so I hope is trolling. But if you are serious, then I must say that this is a huge intellectual deficiency on your part.

Anyway, back to your point. I do believe that private universities should also focus on HOW to think rather than WHAT to think. However, I also recognize that certain religious institutions deviate strongly from that ideal to greater or lesser degrees. And I don't personally approve. That said, there is some deviation in my ideals and still chemistry is chemistry. Even when taught by a university that does things that I don't agree with. And the same goes with California community colleges. To the extent that these institutions start doing indoctrination in some of their classes doesn't mean that the entire curriculum is indoctrination.

But, at the same time, I don't think the same critique applies with the same force. Recall that my critique is based on the idea that politicians (and by extension political institutions such as public universities) act as public servants rather than public masters. As such, they have no legitimate role in indoctrinating citizens. Ordinary citizens are supposed to be the ultimate deciders, not politicians. Therefore, it is an abuse for politicians to use public universities or any other public institution as some sort of influence operation or to indoctrinate citizens.

The situation with private universities is different. The leaders of a private university are not politicians. They are not public servants. The leaders of these private universities are nothing more than themselves private citizens as are the adult students who choose to attend. Thus, while I do not personally approve of an educational telling people WHAT to believe, I am not going to spend as much energy critiquing such institutions since these are private arrangements (albeit, with some public consequences).

Now, you can talk about public funding going to such institutions. And then you might start having a point. If a public university controlled by tenured faculty really public, or is it de facto property of the faculty? Is a private university that gets so much funding from the public really truly private? These are valid questions. But on the whole, I do not believe that receipt of public funds should be considered a basis to rule over individuals or excessively limit their autonomy. The reason that I don't believe that is because I in fact do prefer a welfare state. That is, I approve of the government helping people in need. But if government then uses the help as a basis to control curriculum or other intellectual endeavors, this could flip things around such that politicians (public servants, you will recall) start becoming more and more like masters. That said, I do approve of accreditation requirements and think that a the government can require private universities to teach chemistry in a chemistry class. But it can't rightly micromanage the university. If the professor teaching such chemistry class wants to discuss the theory of intelligent design versus evolution ALONG WITH all the basics of chemistry, the government has no business micromanaging such decisions.

At the end of the day, the principle is this. The government can rightly require that private universities who receive public funds to teach students HOW to think independently. A private university whose science graduates didn't know anything about the scientific method (whether they agreed with all the particulars or not) would not deserve to be called a university or receive public funds for its educational mission. But if that same university required its chemistry professors to believe in intelligent design, while I wouldn't personally approve, the distinction between public and private (while itself not completely satisfactory) is a basis for making a pragmatic distinction.

That is probably a much more complete answer than you deserve. You are, after all, a troll. But I am in a talkative mood today.

[Savagely Average]

I agree with most of that but this being the internet I'll latch on to the one random point I disagreed with -

School are not ranked by how much you learn at them - like you say, you can learn as much at any random state school or at no school at all as you can at Harvard. They're ranked by how hard they are to get into. It does take a certain type of person to get into Harvard. Seen that way, putting schools in tiers makes sense.

That said, school pedigree is still an imperfect proxy for competence. We all know people who went to random state schools who are rock stars in their professions, and folks who went to fancy Ivies who are duds.

[David Welker]

Savagely Average:

Why four tiers? Why not five tiers?

The idea of tiers is completely arbitrary. In general, rankings are also arbitrary, since there is no objective way to weigh all the variables that make up a school in an objective way. An attribute that is important to you in a school might be less important to me and vice-versa. There is no non-subjective objective function by which schools can be ranked.

Schools like Harvard have a lot of legacy admits. But if you look at the socioeconomics of the situation, even beyond the legacy admits, the students it admits tend to overwhelming come from families that have upper middle class or better situations.

Maybe there is a reason that Harvard is OK with racial preferences and hasn't really moved to recruit very much from other economic classes. Academic accomplishment (which is very different than academic talent or potential) comes much easier to children who come from stable families who can concentrate on academics. Getting into Harvard undergraduate means that you likely had a very stable upbringing and not too many distractions during high school and most likely not before then either.

I did not go to Harvard undergrad, so I can't fully speak about the abilities of the students there. But as a Harvard Law graduate, I recognize that at least at the law school, the students are indeed top quality. I do not recall anyone at the law school that I thought was anything other than well above average in both intellect and academic accomplishment. That said, law school is ultimately what you make it. You generally get out what you put in. And there are a lot of people from more chaotic backgrounds who don't have the nearly perfect transcripts that many of us who got admitted to Harvard have.

For these reasons, I refuse to take ideas like rankings seriously. I am not interested in taking cognitive short-cuts in evaluating people. I can tell very quickly just by having a short conversation with someone what level they generally are academically or intellectually. Intellectual differences in people are real (and those differences also can be narrowed through hard work), but they exist very much independently of things like the reputation of the school a person happened to attend.

Long story short. If we can evaluate someone through conversation, why rely on the crutch of relying on the reputation of the school they happened to attend? Also, there are people like Kirkland who don't give a good impression in conversation who seem like they want to use the reputation of whatever school they attended as a sort of crutch to support their otherwise fragile egos.

I am very much AGAINST over-reliance on external opinion-based validation to test ideas. I much prefer more objective criteria. For example, recall that the doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, who first observed the link between hand-washing and more safely delivering babies was savagely mocked by his "prestigious" colleagues. When he suffered a nervous breakdown, he was confined by those same colleagues to an asylum, where he died. Overall, in my view, when we rely on something as superficial as the reputation of the school a person attended to evaluate them, we aren't on a firm foundation. The main method of getting into prestigious universities may be to be highly conformant, which may or may not be a positive attribute depending on the situation. When it came to big leaps in human progress, the tendency to defer to academic authority is not helpful. (Of course, despite this, plenty of academic progress HAS come from universities with good reputations. I am not trying to overgeneralize. I happen to very much like pretty much all of the universities, I just don't like the prestige games people play.)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis)

A further problem. The entire process of getting into these prestigious schools may actually partially ruin people by making them excessively risk adverse. You have young people at these schools who imagine that they have so much to lose from risk, when, in fact, the main way they can lose is by not taking enough risk.

And a final problem. Ultimately, these prestige games are as much or more really about dominance than they are about true merit. Recall that the socioeconomics of these schools. They are populated with the highly conformant children of those who are already considered successful by society. They. may be acting as nothing more than a justification for perpetuating certain status quo conditions which should not be perpetuated.

A final point. The reason that Mr. Kirkland constantly mentions rankings or tiers is definitely to demean people. This, typically as a substitute for actually making an argument. And even if you thought that schools should be sorted into arbitrary rankings or tiers, it would be an invalid argument from authority to assert that a SPECIFIC ARGUMENT or SPECIFIC PERSPECTIVE is right or wrong merely based on the prestige of an institution that a person happened to attend in theirs 20s. How is the argument right or wrong? Based on whose perspective? Whose interests are served by the argument? Can the argument be empirically tested?

Ultimately, I dislike rankings for the same reason I dislike DEI. It encourages superficial thinking. And superficial thinking ultimately leads to bad outcomes in life.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

A shitty school is a shitty school, public or private.

Conservatives tend to operate shitty schools. Mostly because they favor the teaching of nonsense, suppression of science, enforcement of silly dogma, promotion and defense of bigotry, and strenuous censorship.

Our strongest schools are operated by and for the liberal-libertarian mainstream.

It would be inexplicable for those associated with our strongest research and teaching institutions to be interested in pointers from conservatives on operation of schools, or to wish to emulate our shittiest schools (by hiring more movement conservatives as instructors or administrators). Conservatives who figure they are positioned to offer tips in this context are daft.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“our strongest research and teaching institutions”

I doubt you think community colleges are in this category – though the concept of community colleges is a very good one for people with jobs – commuters who want to get extra training but without the excitements of dorm and frat life.

Shouldn’t community colleges (as a policy not a constitutional matter) imitate the policies articulated in the past by our strongest institutions, like the Woodward Report at Yale, the Chicago Principles, etc? Or are those policies currently inoperative?

[Savagely Average]

Of course I agree with all you say about not prejudging people based on what school they went to - it's a lousy measure of ability.

Funny story, though: A buddy of mine went to a highfalutin' Ivy and taught English in Korea for a couple of years. Over there, whenever he initiated a conversation with a stranger around his age, within the first minute the person would ask him where he went to school. Why? The Korean language has seven different forms of address based on familiarity and social rank. So, you have to know a person's social status so you know how to talk to them. For a foreigner, they'd basically use what school you went to as a stand-in for your social class.

[y81]

It has generally been considered, and there is some judicial support for the proposition, that the principle of academic freedom provides more support for freedom of expression than would general free speech principles, so that professors have more right to free expression than do policemen or lottery department employees--or public school teachers, in particular. That as I understand is why FIRE is challenging laws in Florida restricting college professors but not those restricting high school teachers.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I suspect the courts make those distinctions because judges are university graduates and many of them used to be university professors. They believe faculty autonomy (on certain issues at least) is a good thing, and if it’s a good thing then of course it *must* be in the Constitution!

[y81]

As ever, I generally base my legal analyses on what the courts actually do, (This approach separates me from some of the Conspirators and many of the commenters.) You may be right about the sociological reasons why courts rule the way they do, but that isn't too relevant to my analysis.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Courts are capable of being wrong. Consider this table of overruled Supreme Court decisions:

https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overruled/

If the Court overrules a decision, we know at the very least that the court was wrong once (either the first time, or the second time). Multiply this by all the times the Court overruled itself and we get a lot of wrong decisions.

Of course, if you're in court you invoke the more recent decision and don't mention the overruled decision. You act as if the Court has always been at war with Eastasia. This polite fiction is necessary if you want to win cases in court.

So I guess it all depends on your audience - the court itself or the general public.

[RTL212]

DEI and anti-racism movements/curricula are like an intellectual venereal disease that is spreading faster than treatments to cure them.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah this sucks. It reifies all the right wing nonsense about CRT/DEI. Still nonsense, but now they have a big nut to pick.

This is also a problem with California politics. Single party state makes for a hothouse dedicated to the cultivation of rarified hot takes.

[David Welker]

Is a so-called mainstream Democratic politician like Gavin Newsom really unable to resist this? If so, what is the use of being mainstream?

And it turns out all that "right wing nonsense" about CRT/DEI isn't necessarily nonsense. This is the path that this sort of thinking naturally leads. Believing that you are ALWAYS the "oppressed" and the "victim" naturally leads one to seek power and dominance. Initially, perhaps partially as a method of self-protection. But you know the old saying about power corrupting.

It becomes critical that EVERYONE accepts basic tenants of your ideology. Communism can't just be an idea. It must be an idea that EVERYONE believes and that NO ONE dares to question. The same with "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion."

Funny thing, but I don't think the intellectual dominance that is sought over the individual in these circumstances is in anyway consistent with individual equality. So, like the communists used to say, the diversity, equity, and inclusion people say that they are "just" fighting for equality. But as George Orwell put it, they end up embracing this idea that "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" in the process.

Of course THEY would say that they are merely trying to be equal. In theory. But they just have a "special" and "temporary" responsibility to force EVERYONE to get on board with their special project until the utopia is achieved.

In Communist China, the "temporary" responsibility of the Communist Party to ensure that everyone is equal has no extended beyond 100 years. And the members of the Chinese Communist Party are in reality a class of nobility and everyone else has the status of a serf.

Visionaries like this imagine themselves as moving capitalism to something better. But what they instead doing instead is moving society back to feudalism. You can't give any group of people special privileges in society to censor others and have it turn out well. But that is precisely what is happening in California. And it is much more sinister than moving books from school libraries (where such books otherwise remain widely available), but it is actually personal and in your face requiring individuals to conform to the ideology and the acronym of the moment.

[Sarcastr0]

It’s right wing nonsense because they make it a blanket generality, and claim it’s happening in all our schools from HS on up, that DEI as an institution is always bad, and that this requires harsh anti speech measures if not closing schools.

None of this has any evidence.

DEI should not be about who is the victim. It should be about how inclusion and diversity are good.

You can do all the pop psychology you want but if your axioms are wrong it’s nonsense. Actually in general it’s a fools game to spin out the under motives of what is really going on like this.

It’s just you bringing your priors in over and over.

[David Welker]

Well, I welcome intellectual debate about CRT/DEI at universities.

In class. Not as something that is promoted at an administrative level.

I do not have a problem with people trying to persuade others that racial diversity and other sorts of diversity is a good thing in some or most or all situations (whatever they want to argue) although I think it can get rather stupid; if you have rich black people admitted to Harvard over poor whites and poor blacks and poor Hispanics and poor Asians, LIKE ACTUALLY HAPPENS, I just don't think this sort of diversity is actually meaningful. I think it is superficial. I think it pleases stupid people who think a rich immigrant from Nigeria who lived a privileged existence there and has migrated to America to live a privileged existence here is in the same boat as a poor African-American or poor white person who grew up right here in America and faced many personal hardships due to their poverty and their relationships with others in their community. And I think it is literally STUPID to promote superficial sorts of diversity at the expense of more meaningful class-based and experience-based diversity that looks critically at the obstacles that people have ACTUALLY faced rather than the obstacles that they are ASSUMED to have faced solely on the basis of race. And I also believe that even people from one would superficially put in the same social class are often, in fact, quite different from each other and that when it comes to learning from different perspectives, there is no end to it.

I don't have a problem with people trying to persuade people to be in favor of equity. But I also recognize that different people mean different things when they use the word equity. And, I also recognize that the concept of equity (the way that I tend to use it) is quite complicated and OFTEN not achieved and perhaps unfortunately, actually also unachievable. I also believe that an obsession with trying to correct the injustices of the past can further harm the victim by distracting them from the opportunities of the present and the future.

I do not have a problem with people trying to persuade others that it is logical to include people (although, I think that some people, for example, certain sex offenders or violent offenders, should be excluded from campus, especially if they have a pattern of habitually offending). So, while I support inclusion in most cases, there are others where I do, in fact, support exclusion.

Overall, I believe that when it comes to public education, these are decisions for us to make as citizens.

Overall, I would say I am against DEI. Why? Not because I disagree with every idea that a person who advocates for it believes it. But instead, I oppose DEI because it is nothing more than a trendy slogan. As such, it is superficial.

I take committing to ideas very seriously. I believe in challenging every idea. Including and especially my own current beliefs. (No one cares as much about the correctness of my beliefs as I do.) I don't care about the latest slogan of the moment. And I see DEI as exactly what it is. And that is superficial marketing that has become trendy and gone viral. I am opposed to it in the same way that I am opposed to all things that encourage superficial thinking.

To me, universities have no real purpose other than overcoming superficial thinking. That is, teaching students how to think rather than what to think. And the biggest lesson of all is to think more, to examine every assumption, and to avoid superficial thinking.

To me, DEI is anti-intellectual. It encompasses three letters that could be the beginning of a conversation, but is hardly the only way to start a conversation. To me, if you are starting a conversation by beginning with a superficial marketing slogan, I feel like you are trying to sell me something. That doesn't mean I won't have an open mind, but it does mean that you have already lost quite a few points in my assessment of your thinking (points that can be regained by pleasantly surprising me). If you start with a marketing slogan, I will wonder if you are yet another person who lives and thinks superficially. To generalize (with all the caveats that generalization implies), the use of a slogan is the sign of an intellectual follower rather than a leader. A mere parrot.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

What do you think of Regent, Franciscan, Grove City, Liberty, Hillsdale, Wheaton, Calvin, Ave Maria, and every other shit-rate, censorship-bound right-wing campus in America, Mr. Welker? And of the gullible gape-jaws who attend, administer, teach at, contribute to, and admire those affronts to legitimate education?

[David Welker]

See my response to your above comment.

But briefly, these are (1) private institution that, (2) receive public funding through Pell Grants and federal student loans, (3) at the direction of adult students who typically volunteer to attend such institutions.

Feel free to incorporate these three relevant factors (and any other factors you can think of) into an analysis and I will tell you if I agree or disagree.

[David Welker]

I should say, I MIGHT tell you if I agree or disagree.

Because if I perceive you to be trolling, I might just ignore your comment. Nothing personal. When I am in the mood, I might go onto Twitter and troll people. But, this just isn't my so much my thing nowadays. Been there, done that.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Conservatives turn essentially every campus they get their hands on into a shitty school that teaches nonsense and flatters bigots.

You focus, however, on criticizing reason-based, liberal-libertarian mainstream schools, giving the censors and low-grade (conservative) schools a pass.

Why?

[David Welker]

Did you read my comment above? I have already answered your why question. In much depth.

I don't think it takes a genius to guess why PUBLIC universities might have somewhat different concerns attached to them than PRIVATE universities.

Overall, perhaps you just want everyone to discuss the precise topics you are most interested in constantly?

Guess what, I am actually happy to discuss such topics, assuming I feel like making the time. But the way you ask questions is actually annoying. It is just so entitled.

[Sarcastr0]

You again define what DEI is (in a way different than you did above above) and are not in general correct.

It is no more a slogan than any other discipline like originalism is a slogan.

[David Welker]

I think you are incorrectly conflating DEI and CRT perhaps?

DEI is very much a slogan ands use by corporations is very much a superficial PR move. Research has also shown that the mandatory training that sometimes accompanies DEI programming is the opposite of effective, actually increasing misunderstanding rather than bringing people together.

CRT, in contrast, is a whole area of scholarship that has been around for quite a while.

The CONCEPTS of diversity, and equity, and inclusion obviously have been around for a long time. But the grouping of these three ideas into a trendy acronym? That is pure marketing and pure sloganeering.

That people resist things that are "trendy" is good. I am glad to talk about any of these topics in great depth. But the discussion should not be reduced to a mere acronym.

[Sarcastr0]

CRT is an academic discipline. DEI are programs and offices designed to enhance the diversity, equity, and inclusion of their parent institution. Simple as.

Are said offices sometimes corporate eyewash? Sure, same as any other employee facing office.

It is a broad and incorrect generalization to say that this name becoming the popular term means it’s a mere slogan.

[Brett Bellmore]

They're both totally harmless so long as you accept everything their advocates say as the absolute truth. Where else do you follow that principle?

[Cheerio]

Seems like major disputes in the culture wars tends to be about competing perceptions of *prevalence* -- which probably involves various cognitive biases we all have, as well as different experiences. It's also tied to the notion that we all tend to give a bit more grace to people who overplay their hand when we feel like their hearts are in the right place...

As for evidence: We could each play the montage-game of rattling off various excesses of the other side. Bottom line: To me, the wokeness is the greater danger/injustice; to you, it's the historical problems that led to wokeness. Neither POV is really a matter of evidence, as sufficiently smart and motivated people on each side have plenty of evidence to work with. (Most argumentation is a snarled blend of fact and opinion, after all...)

[David Welker]

Cheerio:

This is probably right. A lot of the disputes in the cultural wars are about perceptions and misperceptions.

A good amount of it is also people from each side assuming that people from the "other side" are more different than they actually are.

As to your last point, though, which sounds a little bit like throwing your hand up in the error, I have a strong and somewhat contrary opinion. I believe that people need to focus their agencies on their opportunities in the present and future rather than living in the past and thinking about the injustices their ancestors experienced. After all, there are plenty of people of all races who have had parents that are less than ideal. A white person with meth addicted parents is likely to have a weaker initial opportunity set than a black person with middle class parents. The simplistic generalizations that many on the left seem inclined to make nowadays are not an intellectually sound basis for public policy. The insistence of focusing on race rather than individual experiences is not only lazy, it further perpetuates the sort of injustice that people on the left claim to be most concerned with.

So, while I think that you are correct that differences in opinion around the cultural wars are largely driven by perspective, I also believe that some perspectives are more useful for certain purposes than others. In particular, I believe that the victim-oriented identity politics that so many Democrats have fallen in love with is a toxic zero sum game that drains energy. And I further believe that it is the identity politics game itself, rather than past injustices, that is most responsible for perpetuating past inequalities. To the extent that people have a psychological "scape goat" in life such that they do not take control when they are capable of taking control, people lose their sense of agency and then experience worse life outcomes as a result.

Overall, the approach of "playing the victim" is only going to work for a small elite that claims to "represent" the larger group, but it won't work for the larger group itself. That is because the energy devoted to playing the victim doesn't actually produce anything besides grievance, and the possibilities arising from redistribution based on grievance are much less lucrative than the possibilities arising from value generation. Another way to put that is that while "playing the victim" or "actually being a victim" can be lucrative for a few (but especially those who claim to represent said victims), it actually isn't SCALABLE. In other words, being a victim positively sucks and one should avoid identifying as such if at all possible (while not denying discrete instances where one is, in fact, victimized and should be compensated as such). Overall, grievance politics / identity politics does NOT SCALE and cannot bring really substantial economic gains to the entire group other than a tiny elite that fans the flame for its own ultimately selfish purposes.

It is objectively true that our parents positions in life influence our own experiences and perspectives and initial opportunity set. But we don't have to be slaves of the past. And when it comes to disadvantages related to "starting positions" people of all races experience them. There seems to be a cottage industry out there of people who want to claim that the disadvantages that people in their particular group experience are "uniquely bad," but that is not true. There is also the claim that "other groups" have historically been worse than "their group," but I think that is blind to the fact that humans generally are very nasty to each other in the presence of scarcity, no matter what group they belong to. The only thing that really makes humans civilized is their belief (and the objective reality supporting that belief) that they can meet their own needs without taking from others.

Some may say that is a misanthropic view. But I don't think that at all. I like humans. But I also know how humans can be when they are in situations that they perceive to be or are actually threatening. I also know how humans can be when they are just selfish and every group has people with sociopathic tendencies.

[Drewski]

I'm enjoying your back-and-forth in this thread, but for Heaven's sake please learn the difference between a "tenant" and a "tenet."

[David Welker]

A quick search for "tenant" shows that you are referring to me since no one else has misused this term.

Thank you for the feedback. I will probably pay more attention to this in the future.

[RTL212]

Concern over a warped, grossly inaccurate view of American and world history being taught to the next generation is hardly nonsense.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yeah this sucks. It reifies all the right wing nonsense about CRT/DEI. Still nonsense, but now they have a big nut to pick.

How, exactly, is it "still nonsense", given that it's policy throughout the California Community College system?

You always pride yourself on admitting when you are wrong. Maybe now's the time.

[Brett Bellmore]

" It reifies all the right wing nonsense about CRT/DEI."

You're like somebody who finds out their liver is riddled with tumors, and is mad at their liver for reifying all the oncologist nonsense about that swollen lymph node their doctor found a couple years earlier.

This isn't reification, it's confirmation. The right were right about CRT/DIE. You were wrong.

[David Welker]

“The right were right about CRT/DEI. You were wrong.”

Not so fast. CRT and DEI are very distinct things.

CRT is a line of scholarship with a significant history. DEI is a modern superficial marketing slogan that has been advanced with a tad bit of self-righteousness by profit-oriented corporations pretending to be woke and used in a more sincere (but still superficial) way by certain non-profits.

Since CRT involves many scholars who make many competing claims, one should be more careful about generalizing it than you are. I am fine with any approach to academic argument, as long it is (1) based on logic, and (2) relies on evidence capable of public evaluation, whether it is superficially labeled CRT or not by either its advocates or detractors.

DEI is superficial sloganeering. CRT has the capacity to be deep (even if wrong or not). These two things deserve to be distinguished.

[Brett Bellmore]

CRT is both a motte AND a bailey. The "line of scholarship with a significant history" is the motte, it's application is the bailey.

DIE is just bailey. I'll give you that much. They haven't built the motte yet.

But they're not as distinct as you're making them out to be. They're more like different fronts in the same war, or maybe two ends of the same front.

[Sarcastr0]

You are one of the no evidence crisis means let’s get authoritarian ones. You support censorship based on a crisis exiting in your mind.

Not really sure your ipse dixit nuh-uh when I work with these people and you just a smolder with white resentment is gonna convince anyone.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"You are one of the no evidence crisis means let’s get authoritarian ones."

This is Orwellian definition of authoritarian, where it's authoritarian for elected representatives to control the government.

[Michael P]

It's also an Orwellian definition of evidence, but S_0 does that all the time.

[Sarcastr0]

All the time.

[David Welker]

Sarcastr0:

Is white resentment different than other types of resentment???

Resentment is an emotion that people of all races can feel. It is not an emotion that is unique to white people. Resentment can be a reasonable response to a situation, but sometimes it is based on misunderstanding. Whether resentment is based on an accurate understanding of the situation or not has NOTHING to do with the race of the person who feels the resentment.

You are proving my point about DEI being superficial. You are inappropriately using race here. Do you REALLY think that labeling resentment as "white resentment" is a meaningful distinction???

The adjective "white" before the word "resentment" adds absolutely nothing. If it tells us anything, it tells us something about your state of mind rather than the subject you appear to address. And it is just as superficial as the DEI programs that you have incorrectly (and perhaps ignorantly) conflated with CRT.

[Sarcastr0]

Racially based resentment is in general going to be reductive. But let us not pretend they are symmetrical - whites fearing a change in their status as the default demographic is a broad fuel for the right.

It’s not facts based - look at all the no evidence of this as a general trend.

[bevis the lumberjack]

White resentment is made up bullshit. If DEI types are making decisions based on the concept of white resentment then it's no wonder their efforts so frequently lead to a clusterfuck.

What is it that whites are supposed to resenting?

The number of whites that are resentful of anything to do with race is a very, very small proportion of whites. Yet, look at you taking the bleating of a tiny minority of a group and applying that character flaw to everyone in it. I thought you were opposed to bigotry, but looks to me as if you savor it.

[Ben_]

"…reifies all the right wing nonsense…"

Yeah, in other words we were right all along. And you were wrong. Turns out they were who they sounded like. They mean what they say, not some pretend version that you wish they might have said.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, no. The widespread stuff you describe and rage against remains fictional.

Your book banning shit on the other hand is evident and multistate.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Yeah, no. The widespread stuff you describe and rage against remains fictional."

The California Community College system is fictional?

[bevis the lumberjack]

This stuff is popping up all over, including this case that affects every CC In California, but he’s saying it’s not widespread. His definition and my definition of “widespread” clearly aren’t the same.

[David Welker]

To be fair, he is likely hoping that it isn't widespread.

We can cut him a little break, because these things aren't easy to objectively ascertain. Still, that this is happening in the California Community College system, the biggest college system in the United States, is pretty significant.

[Sarcastr0]

No - I visit campuses for my job and can tell you it’s not widespread. I also note the lack of evidence.

It’s not hope, it’s a lack of proof by those pushing the narrative. California as anecdote is not proof of the general trend that Ben really wants to believe.

[Brett Bellmore]

California enacting a state-wide law is an ANECDOTE? 12 percent of the freaking county is just an ANECDOTE?

You just don't want anybody fighting this until the freaks have won, that's what it apparently comes down to.

[Ed Grinberg]

You just don’t want anybody fighting this until the freaks have won

At which point he'll switch from "That's not happening!" to "It's good that it is!"
https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-good-that-it-is/

[Sarcastr0]

The right wing claim is that this is the default on campuses and even high schools nationwide.

You yourself make vastly wider claims than this system.

This anecdote does not support those wider claims by itself.

You can get as mad as you want, that is how proof works, no matter how much you want to believe.

[Brett Bellmore]

You can't call 12% of the country "an anecdote", and expect people to take you seriously. Really, you can't.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Read the goddam newspaper. Watch the news. There are stories about this shit once a week.

I'd go look some up but I'm not going to waste my time because when anybody provides you the proof you demand you either ignore it or simply repeat the "it's not happening" mantra.

You should tell your school DEI friends that they're reducing the impact of their own movement with their overkill and suggest that they try to normalize it and make it seem less extreme.

[Sarcastr0]

Waive your hands. Cite to general it’s totally there.

The level of ipse dixit in this area is really a sign that reality is second to the narrative.

[Brett Bellmore]

I swear, at one time you used to be better than this.

We're discussing this in a thread commenting on the most populous state in the country rolling this crap out state-wide. It's a bit late for denial at this point, Sarcastr0. It's not just a school here, a department there, my "lymph nodes". It's stage 4 now, whole states adopting it.

And you're STILL in denial? Unreal!

[Brett Bellmore]

Back to my cancer analogy: Conservatives were complaining when it was just a swollen lymph node, he was all "Lymph nodes swelling is no big deal, stop fantasizing that it's cancer!" Now tumors are popping up all over, and is he admitting, "Yeah, it's cancer"?

No, he's mad at the tumors for making the cancer diagnosis look plausible.

[Sarcastr0]

Fuck your cancer analogy. It’s very nature assumes your conclusion, and my colleagues are not cancer.

If someone said let’s start assuming the Jews are cancer you would know they were a bigot without more. Same here.

[Cheerio]

I think the analogy was to wokeness (or whatever we should call it), rather than any people themselves. It's not uncommon to analogize toxic ideologies (left or right) to a cancer.

[David Welker]

I hate to get technical, but moving books out of school libraries and banning them are two very different things. Especially in an era where the same books are often available at the public library and where the same concepts as are in the books are readily available to be explored on the Internet by anyone who is interested.

In fact, the move to move these books from school libraries, if anything, most likely just makes people MORE INTERESTED in them.

That I am distinguishing these situations doesn't mean that I support (or oppose) moving such books. But to equate the "loyalty pledge" type behavior that leftists are currently engaged in, where they expect individuals to express their support of DEI concepts or suffer career consequences goes WAY beyond merely making it slightly more inconvenient to access certain otherwise publicly subsidized literature.

Further, even I were wrong and moving the books was equally bad, that doesn't actually constitute a defense. Two bad things don't make a good. (Except in rare circumstances where one bad can be effectively leveraged against the other... but that doesn't seem to be the case here and isn't the case generally.)

Finally, the stuff that he is raging against is not fictional. Cancel culture is real. People trying to leverage their influence over corporations to force ideas on the employees of corporations is real. Intolerance towards dissent regarding certain "sacred" identity concepts is real.

You can try gaslighting, but it won't work.

That doesn't mean, however, that this problem isn't exaggerated to some degree. As another commenter put it, the prevalence of these problems is difficult to pin down. But here, we have the largest college system in the country, the California Community College system, going off the rails. I don't know exactly how prevalent the problem of certain leftist ideologues trying to find leverage to force their ideas on people is, but that it is a substantial problem seems evident.

[Sarcastr0]

Gaslighting? Learn what that term means, eh?

Anyhow, your generalized invocation of what leftists are doing has no proof. In contrast, the actual broad real stuff conservatives is open and clear.

I don’t know if the speculative and unsupported stories being told about liberals out of control re comparable to the laws getting passed. The laws are concrete things, the stories about leftist purity tests are everchanging.

[I Callahan]

How about an example of the "stuff we describe against" that is actually fictional? Because when I read the info in the main post, it looks to me that this is EXACTLY what we told you would happen.

[Sarcastr0]

That’s not how the burden works. You dint get to say some widespread thing is happening based in anecdotes and say it’s in me to show it is not.

I have personal experience from on campus site visits, but that is also anecdotal.

[I Callahan]

I will be you hard cash that over 75% of all American colleges have some kind of commitment to DEI written into their mission statements or addendums to them.

[Sarcastr0]

DEI is fine. The right wing strawman version is where the made up nonsense lies.

[I Callahan]

Yeah this sucks. It reifies all the right wing nonsense about CRT/DEI. Still nonsense, but now they have a big nut to pick.

Maybe because there wasn't any "right wing nonsense" about this subject in the first place? The left wing laughed whenever the right wing suggested that CRT/DEI would push these EXACT measures, and it turns out we were completely right about it.

How about a Mea Culpa?

[mydisplayname]

I am certainly no supporter of so-called diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) initiatives or of loyalty oaths in general. To the extent that FIRE’s objections seek to prohibit loyalty oaths, I support it; however, both on the left (California) and right (Florida) coasts, FIRE’s argument goes far beyond such simple objection.

FIRE sees a distinction between a public employee whose peers have deemed him a faculty member and a public employee who has not been so deemed: the distinction is based upon the fact that the thinking of un-deemed public employees might be colored by political beliefs whereas the thinking of the favored public employees would no be so colored. For simplicity when discussing the FIRE position, we can describe the two groups as the Whites and the Coloreds and, in doing so, find that FIRE’s argument, while at times in our history having been tried and been found valid, is not currently one which finds significant support.

As FIRE states, Whites have the burden of educating our youth and that is justly so, as Whites have educational capabilities that Coloreds lack. Only Whites can determine who are fellow Whites: Coloreds have no role in determining who are Whites. Whites take pride in their work worldwide and such white pride worldwide demonstrates proper thinking: almost half of all Whites agree that they are superior to Coloreds! [Similar pride was expressed during the American (and subsequent German) eugenics eras and similar pluralities within the academy thought that defectives should be eliminated, so Whites have an honored record to behold!] When the opinions of Coloreds are expressed through the voting booth and through elected officials, such opinions must be set aside by the Courts, as the opinions of Coloreds obviously cannot be allowed to stymie the proper education of our youth by Whites.

Do I agree with FIRE’s position that Whites, be they in California or Florida, must retain perpetual power over Coloreds? No, I do not.

[David Welker]

"Do I agree with FIRE’s position that Whites, be they in California or Florida, must retain perpetual power over Coloreds? No, I do not."

Your assertion that FIRE has a position that those with lower me melatonin levels in their skin (what you call Whites with a capital W, I presume) must exercise perpetual power over those with higher levels (what you call Coloreds with a capital C, I presume) does not appear to be supported by any evidence.

That is something you should consider fixing, in my opinion. Otherwise, you may be (and in this case, I believe you are) inaccurately describing the position of a group of people you otherwise do not know.

[Brett Bellmore]

He's not mistaken, he's just lying.

[mydisplayname]

I'z sorry massa. If you have direct refutations of the points I have offered, I'z be welcome to hear 'em. Otherwise, STFU.

[Brett Bellmore]

Since nothing after "As FIRE states," was an actual quote, there's not really anything to refute. You're just making shit up.

[Bwaaah]

There are many who would say we have race problems. It is clear we do.

But you *are* a race problem, the product, propagator and progenitor of more. Your mocking voice, and your actual voice, reflect the intersectionality of the contents of the sewage that has become your awareness. Your analysis, your drippingly contemptuous analysis, is as useless as mine.

Thank god we die, or there would be no hope for people who might draw on greater sense than the mangled baggage we call "truth."

[bevis the lumberjack]

You make a ridiculous raw assertion about the racial attitude of an advocacy group that doesn’t involve themselves in racial issues. You offer no proof as to your ridiculous assertion. A couple of people reply that your assertion is silly, and instead of offering any rational basis for your assertion you tell them to STFU.

Everyone but you is racist, yet you’re the only person around that uses the word Colored, although I guess it’s nice that you respect them Coloreds enough to capitalize it. I could almost convince myself that you’re trying to be a ridiculous troll.

[Sarcastr0]

Whatever you are trying here, you fell short.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I hope I’m misinterpreting this post. Certainly I am and if so I apologize in advance for being dense.

But are you defending the original statement that “FIRE’s position (is that) Whites, be they in California or Florida, must retain perpetual power over Coloreds”? You’re not and I’m just not getting your point, right?

[mydisplayname]

You are, perhaps, getting my point. Both in California and Florida, FIRE is asserting that a portion of the voting public is somehow more competent to decide the future of the nation. Rest assures. It is not: the public academy has a horrible track record, one which has resulted in millions of deaths.

[bevis the lumberjack]

That’s a ridiculous thing to think. Please point to something that even comes close to proving it.

BTW, this policy itself states that “persons who state that they are ‘not a racist’ are in denial.” So anyone who supports this policy is supporting a policy written by a bunch of racists.

These people are to zealous to realize how much harm stuff like this does to their objectives by making their ideas a joke filled with illogical statements.

[y81]

As ever, I generally base my legal analyses on what the courts actually do, (This approach separates me from some of the Conspirators and many of the commenters.) You may be right about the sociological reasons why courts rule the way they do, but that isn't too relevant to my analysis.

[Publius_2020]

"What's the 'anti-racist' perspective on the atomic mass of boron?"

Quote of the day.

[Brett Bellmore]

The anti-racist perspective on it is, "Simply asking that question demonstrated that your loyalty to the party is insufficient, comrade."

If you were anti-racist you'd FIND some way to integrate it into your course.

[Michael P]

The anti-racist perspective is that assuming that something like "atomic mass" is relevant to science is an example of white supremacy, because suggesting that it's outside the question of racism is itself a racist act. To perform anti-racism, an educator must support alternative ways of knowing and recognize that not all students will come equipped with previous teachings aligned to the prerequisites of the class. The anti-racist professor must deconstruct the classroom that is insensitive to students who are threatened by "the atomic mass of boron" because less-liberated people previously told them they were bores, and facilitate an effort-based evaluation of their achievement that is not based on historically oppressive approaches and standards in an academic environment or in praxis.

[Sarcastr0]

Strawmem aplenty! None of this shit is going on in physics courses, so quit making it up.

[Brett Bellmore]

Statement and Actions on Anti-Racism
UCF Department of Physics

Plenty of time wasters there if all the students want is for you to teach them the damned physics.

[Sarcastr0]

Not much on the atomic mass of boron there.

No new goalposts.

[Michael P]

"No new goalposts", says the person suddenly adding a restriction to the atomic mass of boron after earlier saying "none of this shit is going on".

[Bwaaah]

You see it going on. And you just have to wonder how much of it is performative, and how much of it is real? The answer, I think in your defense, is that almost all of it is just performative...just testamentary to the good intentions. And it only becomes real if you disagree and don't STFU when they call on you to testify about your own beliefs. It *almost* ALWAYS becomes real if you disagree and don't STFU when they call on you to testify. So it's not a big problem, like you say, because they know where you live, they know who your boss is, you know their expectations, and that's all *you* (i.e. any would-be dissenter) need to know. So it's a big STFU, with real teeth to it, and by the sounds of the silence, it's working quite nicely. Nothing important to see? Not a big problem? It's nice to be on the side of the oppressor, isn't it?

[CindyF]

Several years ago universities started requiring faculty job applicants submit "diversity" statements along with the usual cv and research agenda. Hiring committees then began looking first to that statement to assure the applicant was sufficiently on board with D.I.E. requirements before reviewing their education, publishing, and teaching experience. That is how universities ended up with "social justice" advocates in positions previously filled by competent and knowledgeable scholars.

Next, universities began creating numerous administrative positions to assure that race and victim-hood was the first consideration in all admissions, student activities, groups, and honors. Millions have been spent on DIE goals while students have become less and less educated with regards to their chose career field. And college costs continue to sky-rocket.

Hundreds of colleges across this nation provide nothing of substance or value. Hundreds of college across this nation should be closed and their endowments paid out to the students they have scammed. Their vacant buildings can then be turned into housing for the homeless, with veterans having first dibs on the college President's housing.

[Sarcastr0]

“Hundreds of colleges across this nation provide nothing of substance or value. Hundreds of college across this nation should be closed and their endowments paid out to the students they have scammed.”

This is ideology, and a great example of how facts are not involved in the right wing narrative of academia.

[RedDawg]

Demanding that professors at our public colleges and universities treat all students with respect is one thing - and should be expected; requiring (or forbidding) a certain vocabulary is quite another.

This is a compelled speech matter.

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." West Virginia v Barnette