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Black Student Upset That Exam Question on Segregation Offended White People

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A law professor is offering to strike an exam question after students freaked out when he asked them to argue in favor of segregation.

University of Texas at Austin law professor Richard Albert, who is black, administered an exam asking students to argue in favor of school segregation in a memo of 1,000 words or less, according to Misrule of Law.

“No one should have been forced to write an essay defending segregation,” one unnamed white student wrote to the class in an email.

He said that the question made him “shocked and disgusted” and urged students to complain to the UT law administration.

A black student expressed displeasure with the white student’s reaction, but not because she was a fan of the question. (Read more from “Black Student Upset That Exam Question on Segregation Offended White People” HERE)

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How Politically Biased Are Universities? New Study Finds It’s Far Worse Than Anybody Thought.

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It’s no secret that the majority of the faculty at our colleges and universities lean heavily to the left and generally support the Democratic Party’s agenda, and study after study over the last few decades has shown that ideological and political imbalance to be growing increasingly more dramatic. A new study has produced perhaps the most eye-opening findings yet.

An extensive study of 8,688 tenure-track professors at 51 of the 66 top-ranked liberal arts colleges in the U.S. published by the National Association of Scholars found that the ratio of faculty members registered as Democrats compared to those registered Republican is now a stunning 10.4 to 1. If two military colleges that are technically described as “liberal arts colleges” are removed from the calculations, the ratio is 12.7 to 1. . .

Here’s how Langbert leads into his study of what he describes as the “troubling” political homogeneity of faculty at our leading liberal arts colleges:

In this article I offer new evidence about something readers of Academic Questions already know: The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free—having zero Republicans. The political registration in most of the remaining 61 percent, with a few important exceptions, is slightly more than zero percent but nevertheless absurdly skewed against Republican affiliation and in favor of Democratic affiliation. Thus, 78.2 percent of the academic departments in my sample have either zero Republicans, or so few as to make no difference.

My sample of 8,688 tenure track, Ph.D.–holding professors from fifty-one of the sixty-six top ranked liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News 2017 report consists of 5,197, or 59.8 percent, who are registered either Republican or Democrat. The mean Democratic-to-Republican ratio (D:R) across the sample is 10.4:1, but because of an anomaly in the definition of what constitutes a liberal arts college in the U.S. News survey, I include two military colleges, West Point and Annapolis. If these are excluded, the D:R ratio is a whopping 12.7:1.

(Read more from “How Politically Biased Are Universities? New Study Finds It’s Far Worse Than Anybody Thought.” HERE)

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College Proudly Awards Students Who Attend White-Only ‘Guilt and Shame’ Conference

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By The Daily Caller. A Colorado college is awarding students who attend a white-only “guilt and shame” conference in July with three academic credits.

The University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) will award the credits to attendees of the “Unmasking Whiteness” conference, which aims to investigate “how being white shapes our lives” and “our role as white people in struggle for social justice,” reported Campus Reform.

UCCS students who attend the conference must pay $486 for the conference and will be able to apply the credits towards the school’s graduate certificate program in diversity, social justice and inclusion.

Mount Saint Mary’s University professor Shelly Tochluk and the nonprofit Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere (AWARE-LA) are organizing and hosting the conference. The event’s brochure lists topics like “guilt and shame,” “white privilege,” “economic benefits” of whiteness, and “what it means to be white in today’s society.”

“U.S. society does not usually ask white people to explore how race affects our lives,” says the brochure. “When we honestly grapple with this question we become able to recognize the various ways we receive social and economic benefits based on being seen as part of the white group.” (Read more from “College Proudly Awards Students Who Attend White-Only ‘Guilt and Shame’ Conference” HERE)

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Colorado Students Earn Credit for ‘Unmasking Whiteness’

By Campus Reform. . .Only open to self-identifying white people, the four-day conference is co-organized by Shelly Tochluk, a professor at Mount Saint Mary’s University (MSMU) in Los Angeles, and is offered by the nonprofit AWARE-LA (Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere).

The recently-released conference brochure explains that attendees will learn about topics including “white privilege,” “guilt and shame,” “what it means to be white in today’s society,” and the “economic benefits” of whiteness.

“U.S. society does not usually ask white people to explore how race affects our lives,” the brochure states. “When we honestly grapple with this question we become able to recognize the various ways we receive social and economic benefits based on being seen as part of the white group.”

The brochure also notes that while deconstructing whiteness can release feelings of “guilt and shame,” working through these emotions is crucial because they “often lead to paralysis and an inability to effectively participate in movements for change.”

“Working through these negative emotions is essential to building a solid anti-racist practice,” the brochure tells students. (Read more from “Colorado Students Earn Credit for ‘Unmasking Whiteness’” HERE)

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Students Acquiring Massive Debt for ‘Risky’ College Degrees, More Than $25 Billion in Federal Loans

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Noël Flynn is spending more than 80 percent of her income to pay back tens of thousands of dollars in debt for her Art Therapy degree. In 2016 alone, the Department of Education loaned $25.9 billion to students who, like Flynn, chose degrees under the umbrella of the liberal arts and humanities, an analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation found.

A significant portion of those students are unlikely to have the means to pay back their debt after graduating.

“I find myself struggling financially, and the biggest reason why is student loans,” said Flynn, 23, who says she was told the loans “wouldn’t be overwhelming” once she graduated.

Most federal student loan programs do not require a credit check, nor do they require a cosigner. Rather, the loans are backed by nothing more than the borrower’s future earnings with a college degree, but the kind of degree isn’t a consideration in the loan process.

“What you make depends on what you take,” Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, wrote in a 2016 report. “A major in social work pays $30,000 a year compared to $120,000 a year for a major in petroleum engineering.” Business, vocational, and STEM majors all have significantly better chances of paying off their loans, TheDCNF’s analysis of federal data shows. (Read more from “Students Acquiring Massive Debt for ‘Risky’ College Degrees, More Than $25 Billion in Federal Loans” HERE)

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Pro-Palestinian Student Group Wants College to Ban Hummus Brand Over Israel Ties. Yes, Hummus.

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A pro-Palestinian student group at Swarthmore College wants the president of the elite Pennsylvania school to ban Sabra Hummus from campus — over what the group said is the brand’s ties to Israel.

Students for Justice in Palestine created a petition that says, “Sabra Hummus is owned by the Strauss Group, a multinational corporation that invests in, financially supports, and even sends care packages to the Golani Brigade of the Israeli armed forces.” . . .

It is morally unacceptable that Swarthmore should continue to support the international human rights violations of the Golani Brigade and Israeli Apartheid at large. By selling Sabra, Swarthmore is an accessory to the occupation of Palestine.

We call upon President [Valerie] Smith to affirm the dignity of Palestinian life, recognize the illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and deshelve all current Sabra products and end their future sale at Swarthmore College.

Campus Reform reported that the call for the Sabra Hummus ban is gaining strong support on the suburban Philadelphia campus, with more than 350 Swarthmore community members having signed the petition, according to a Swarthmore SJP tweet. (Read more from “Pro-Palestinian Student Group Wants College to Ban Hummus Brand Over Israel Ties. Yes, Hummus.” HERE)

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One Question in a Poll of College Students Crystallizes the Debate Over Free Speech

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Free speech just isn’t as cool as it used to be, according to a Gallup and the Knight Foundation study of college students’ views on the subject.

The news isn’t great for this bedrock principle in America’s higher-learning institutions. College students overwhelmingly support free speech in the abstract, but when it comes to the real world, they are accepting of restrictions on it, which is in effect, not very supportive of free speech. And the numbers have gotten worse for speech on a lot of fronts since 2016.

Almost 90 percent of students say protection of free speech is extremely or very important to American democracy, but two-thirds also believe hate speech shouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment, and 83 percent support free-speech zones on campus, to contain pre-approved protests and distribution of messages. Not exactly the open inquiry we used to love.

There is some good news. In question after question, it appears the forces that are found shouting down speakers like Christina Hoff Sommers or burning Berkeley or attacking Charles Murray at Middlebury are a very loud minority. “Nine in 10 students say violence is ‘never acceptable’” to counter speech and a solid majority of 62 percent believe shouting down speakers is “never acceptable.” This leaves too-large percentages who think violence and shouting down are fine, but the vast majority of college students are in favor of traditional forms of protest without shutting down speech. (Read more from “One Question in a Poll of College Students Crystallizes the Debate Over Free Speech” HERE)

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College Accidentally Sends out 11,000 Acceptance Emails

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A high school student in Aurora waiting to hear back from colleges says his family was one of those that received an erroneous email from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs this week implying he was accepted . . .

The email from university said “Welcome to the UCCS Mountain Lion Family” and went on to provide resources for the parents of future students . . .

Then, after a few hours, Ireland learned he had not been accepted. At least not yet . . .

The emails went out accidentally to more than 11,000 people. In addition to applicants like Ireland who are still waiting for the final word on acceptance, the university confirmed they also went to more than 500 people who had already been denied acceptance to the college . . .

The university said they believed the error was a result of their process of filing emails into their system. (Read more from “College Accidentally Sends out 11,000 Acceptance Emails” HERE)

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100% of This College Donations Go to Democrats

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Since 2009, only two Williams College employees have donated money to Republicans, but Democrats have raked in thousands from faculty and staff members over the same period.

The Williams Record originally reported that faculty and staff at the New England liberal arts college donated a total of $20,325.22 to candidates and committees in federal elections in 2017, with every contribution going to Democrats.

Individual employees’ total contributions in 2017 ranged from $5,264 to $2, averaging $267 per employee. The various donations went to fundraisers and PACs such as MoveOn.org PAC, ActBlue, and Emily’s List.

Campus Reform verified the paper’s findings through the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) Individual Contributor Search, finding that not only was The Record correct in its assertion, but that only two employees have made political contributions to a right-leaning individual or organization since the FEC began its digital database. (Read more from “100% of This College Donations Go to Democrats” HERE)

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College Course Reprimands White Heterosexual Masculinity

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A class taught this spring at Ohio State University will review a parade of reasons why white heterosexual masculinity is allegedly problematic, tackling the topic from the constructs of racial issues, bullying, pop culture, societal expectations and much more, according to its syllabus.

The course, “Be a Man! Masculinities, Race and Nation,” includes a variety of readings to that end, including its required textbook “Dude, You’re a Fag!” by C.J. Pascoe, which analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process, but sexual one, its Amazon description states.

Other assigned reading excerpts include: “Masculinity as Homophobia” by Michael Kimmel; “Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity” by Jackson Katz; “Dude Sex: Dudes Who Have Sex with Dudes” by Jane Ward; “Looking for My Penis” by Richard Fung; “Sodomy in the New World” by Jonathan Goldberg; and “Teaching Men’s Anal Pleasure” by Susan Stiritz.

The class is also expected to screen “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” the dashcam footage of Philando Castile’s murder, Key & Peele’s “Hoodie Skit,” and an episode of “The New Normal.”

The course is ultimately presented as a study in “feminist masculinity” that seeks to explain how ideas about masculinity “simultaneously harm yet privilege” men, the syllabus states. It also aims to explain how “beliefs regarding masculinity serve to justify certain kinds of violence by men against others, and violence against particular groups of men.” (Read more from “College Course Reprimands White Heterosexual Masculinity” HERE)

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College Paper Fires Writer Who Called White DNA ‘an Abomination’

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A college paper fired a writer who called the DNA of white people “an abomination,” according to a Monday report.

Texas State University student journalist Rudy Martinez said that “white death will mean liberation for all” in the November column and The University Star fired him after previously retracting and apologizing for the column, reported The College Fix.

“The author of this column has jeopardized the atmosphere of inclusivity at this university and will no longer be published in The University Star,” read a correction from the paper’s editorial board.

Along with constructive criticism, the editorial board said that the paper has received death threats and “hate mail,” as well as threats to defund The University Star.

Conservative students at Texas State have started a petition to defund the publication; it has over 1,500 signatures at the time of publication. (Read more from “College Paper Fires Writer Who Called White DNA ‘an Abomination'” HERE)

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