Category Archives: Education (higher ed)

Keffiyehs, Yarmulkes and “Belonging” at UVA

Posted on April 18, 2024 by | 47 comments

by James A. Bacon

It’s “Palestinian Liberation Week” at the University of Virginia this week, and the Students for Justice in Palestine have organized loads of activities for antizionists, culminating with a “Die-In for Gaza” Friday.

“Wear your keffiyeh,” urges UVA’s Students for Justice in Palestine on its Instagram page. Keffiyehs are traditional Arab scarfs, which students wear to signal their solidarity with Palestinians seeking to combat “settler colonialism” in Israel.

Meanwhile, Jewish students have stopped wearing yarmulkes, Stars of David or other ornamentation that would identify them as Jews.

What does that dichotomy say about the sense of “belonging” — the holy grail of the Ryan administration — experienced by Arabs and Jews respectively at UVA? Continue reading →

47 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

Tagged

UVA Report Finds No Pay Inequity for Black, Hispanic Profs

Posted on April 11, 2024 by | 14 comments

Adjusted salary differentials for tenure/tenure track faculty.

by James A. Bacon

The Racial Equity Task Force, a 2020 document that transformed governance at the University of Virginia, listed 12 top priorities for addressing the legacy of historical racism. One was to address “serious challenges to racial equity in staff hiring, wages, retention, promotion, and procurement” by auditing where policies and procedures might be “reinforcing entrenched inequities.”

The report cited no actual evidence of disparities in pay, and the authors did not assert that they existed. In a report that lambasted UVA as “an inaccessible, rich, ‘white’ institution,” pay inequities were just assumed to occur and needed to be documented.

Well, last year the Ryan administration hired the DCI Consulting Group to evaluate “pay equity” for UVA faculty based on gender and race. The results, based on 2022 compensation, were made available to UVA January 5 and, sure enough, pay inequities were found…. for non-tenured Asian-American faculty.

Remarkably, adjusted for their level in the academic hierarchy, seniority and other variables affecting compensation, Black professors who are tenured or on the tenure track were f0und to earn 3% more than their peers, Hispanic professors 3.4% more, and Whites 1.6% less — although DCI did not deem the differences to be “statistically significant.” Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in DEI, Education (higher ed), Race and race relations

Tagged ,

Jewish Parents Decry Double Standards at UVA

Posted on April 4, 2024 by | 99 comments

by James A. Bacon

A half year after Hamas terrorists assaulted Israel, hostility at the University of Virginia toward Israel and Jews is unrelenting, according to parents of Jewish students there. In collaboration with other parents, Julie Pearl complained in a letter Tuesday to Rector Robert Hardie that a “blatant double standard against Jewish students persists at UVA.”

Pearl’s letter was prompted in part by the administration’s response to a recent incident in which a truck with digital billboards rolled through the University displaying messages critical of Hardie. One screen said, “Rector Robert Hardie won’t confront antisemitism” while another said Hardie is “unfit to lead U.Va.” The administration’s reaction was to criticize the slogans and investigate who was behind the stunt, Pearl said.

“How does the billboard incident directed at you merit outrage, an immediate statement of condemnation, and investigative action … while the ongoing harassment and intimidation faced by Jewish students receive no such response?” she asked. Continue reading →

99 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

Tagged ,

VMI Eschews Standards of Excellence, Devalues Diploma

Posted on March 27, 2024 by | 52 comments

by Joseph D. Elie

As an alumnus living in Florida, I have a dearth of information about what is happening at the Virginia Military Institute on a day-to-day basis.

I see the superficial social media postings from the public relations department, the Superintendent, and the Commandant; but I crave the scuttlebutt that tells the truer story.

The recent editorial, “Class of 25: The Elephant in the Room,” in The Cadet was very enlightening, provided much-needed insight and served, in effect, as a detailed report on the Institute.

The editorial also revealed why the administration didn’t want a student newspaper committing acts of journalism – as it validated my own suspicion that Breakout and the entire Rat Line itself have been rendered much less difficult.

From this year’s Breakout videos, the Rats seemed to merely be going through the motions when compared with videos from past Breakouts. The energy, enthusiasm, and the spirit were gone.

The Cadet editorial outlines how VMI’s core standards have been made less rigorous for the sake of maintaining the enrollment retention rate, particularly with regard to the nature and rigor of the Rat Line.

The Rat Line energizes the entire Corps of Cadets. It is an annual rite of passage that the upper classes have historically zealously preserved.

The Rat Line was once extremely difficult to complete and doing so resulted in justifiable pride and a tremendous boost of self-confidence.

Continue reading →

52 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

Tagged ,

The Use and Misuse of a UVA Lecture Series

Posted on March 21, 2024 by | 75 comments

by James A. Bacon

The “fixation” of modern-day Israelis on the Holocaust has become a “vast and ugly fig leaf” hiding oppression of Palestinians and giving Israelis license to brush aside moral qualms about their response to the October 7 terror attacks, Brown University historian Omer Bartov told an audience of 60 or so people Tuesday at the University of Virginia.

In vowing to “never again” let Jews fall prey to genocidal extermination, Israelis indulge in “self-victimization,” “self pity,” and “self righteousness,” said Bartov, an Israeli-born Jew who has built his academic career around the study of the Holocaust and genocide. “It’s not a condition conducive to understanding, toleration, and reconciliation.”

The lecture, entitled, “The Never Again Syndrome: Uses and Misuses of Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Global Politics,” was one in a series of events billed by UVA leadership as broadening understanding of the Middle East conflict. The lecture series is an outgrowth of the tension between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups at UVA. Jewish students have complained of a hostile environment that leaves them afraid to speak out or even openly identify as Jews. In a parallel initiative, the Ryan administration created a religious diversity task force to understand how Jewish and Muslim students, faculty and staff “experience life on Grounds.” Continue reading →

75 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

Tagged

Marriage Promotes ‘White Supremacy,’ George Mason Professor Says

Posted on March 18, 2024 by | 116 comments

by Jerome Woehrle

“Marriage fundamentalism” promotes “white supremacy,” according to a professor at Virginia’s largest university.

“Marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy,” wrote George Mason University Professor Bethany Letiecq in the Journal of Marriage and Family. “Marriage fundamentalism can be understood as an ideological and cultural phenomenon, where adherents espouse the superiority of the two-parent married family.”

Letiecq, an official of the American Association of University Professors, says she employs “critical family theorizing … to delineate an overarching orientation to structural oppression and unequal power relations that advantages [white heteropatriarchal nuclear families] and marginalizes others as a function of marriage fundamentalism.”

Letiecq says the government has coerced “its citizens to enter into an institution built upon White heteropatriarchal supremacy.” Letiecq says marriage as an institution has allowed white heterosexual couples “to gain access to benefits, rights, and protections.”

She lives with her partner and their children in what she describes as “a committed heterosexual union outside the institution of marriage.” Letiecq claims that only White heterosexual couples reap the social and financial benefits of marriage subsidized by the government while minority Americans do not gain any such benefits.
Continue reading →

116 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

Tagged

University of Virginia Spends $20 Million On 235 DEI Employees, With Some Making $587,340 Per Year

Posted on March 5, 2024 by | 119 comments

It takes tuition payments from nearly 1,000 undergraduates just to pay their base salaries!


Bacon’s Rebellion is reposting this article published by Open the Books, a nonprofit group dedicated to transparency in government spending, and republished on the Jefferson Council blog. Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski will speak at the Jefferson Council 3rd annual meeting April 9. Register now to attend. — JAB

The University of Virginia (UVA) has at least 235 employees under its “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)” banner — including 82 students — whose total cost of employment is estimated at $20 million. That’s $15 million in cash compensation plus an additional 30 percent for the annual cost of their benefits.

In contrast, last Friday, the University of Florida dismissed its DEI bureaucracy, saving students and taxpayers $5 million per year. The university terminated 13 full-time DEI positions and 15 administrative faculty appointments. Those funds have been re-programmed into a “faculty recruitment fund” to attract better people who actually teach students.

No such luck for learning at Virginia’s flagship university – founded by Thomas Jefferson no less. UVA has a much deeper DEI infrastructure. Continue reading →

119 Comments

Posted in DEI, Education (higher ed), Efficiency in government, Race and race relations

Tagged

A True Community Hospital

Posted on March 3, 2024 by | 20 comments

by Jon Baliles

Virginia Union University announced recently that it would utilize several parcels it owns just north of the main campus to build a new $40 million development with up to 200 apartments (some market and some lower income) and possibly some homes and commercial space for students or the public, which would create a revenue stream for the school and shared profits with the New York developer.

But the development project would come with the cost of demolishing the old Richmond Community Hospital (RCH), first opened in Jackson Ward in 1902 at the dawn of Jim Crow by black physicians to treat Richmonders who were not allowed to be treated in white hospitals. The building that now sits on VUU property on Overbrook Road was purchased and opened in 1932.

Eric Kolenich wrote in the Times-Dispatch that “across the street was a neighborhood of prominent black residents, called Frederick Douglass Court, that later was home to civil rights attorney and federal judge Spotswood Robinson.” The hospital moved to Church Hill in 1980 and the building has been vacant ever since. A VUU spokesperson said the school determined there was no way to save the building. But the local preservation nonprofit Historic Richmond weighed in and has suggested that because of its historical significance, it could be incorporated into a larger project and still produce revenue for the university.

Michael Paul Williams wrote an excellent piece noting that “We live in a city chock-full of adaptive reuses, including of the former Westhampton School building by Bon Secours. Shouldn’t we be as passionate about preserving our  bricks-and-mortar black history while it’s still above ground?”

That is why a group of Richmonders dedicated to preserving the derelict structure have organized to try and save the building. They are asking VUU to incorporate the structure into its plans. VUU needs the revenue stream that the project would bring, but the group and others believe there are ways to do it and preserve the building and its history. Continue reading →

20 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed), Virginia history

Tagged

UVA Leadership Squelches Debate About University’s Antisemitism Problem

Posted on March 3, 2024 by | 87 comments

Provost Ian Baucom and Academic & Student Affairs Chair Elizabeth Cranwell: Antisemitism issues best addressed “in another setting.”

by James A. Bacon

During the University of Virginia Board of Visitors meeting Thursday, Provost Ian Baucom briefed board members on what the administration was doing to defuse tensions in the UVA community between Jews and the vocal pro-Palestinian faction over the Israel-Gaza war.

He mentioned “sustained academic programming” to illuminate sources of the decades-long conflict. He took note of the mental health services provided those experiencing mental anguish. He assured the Board that the University was working to bring opposing parties together in dialogue and to understand “the reality of Jewish, Muslim and other religious minorities.” UVA, he said, was committed to “deep engagement” and “freedom of expression.”

The Provost reiterated the administration’s support for free speech. UVA, he said, was a place where “people are free to disagree” but where “everyone belongs.” “We need to listen to people we disagree with,” he added, and concluded by thanking the Board for its “help and wisdom.”

But when board members began addressing the hostile environment for Jewish students at UVA, there was no sign that the Provost, President Jim Ryan, or Rector Robert Hardie were interested in “listening” to anyone who disagreed with them, much less in “engaging” with them on the most contentious issue to afflict the University in recent years. Continue reading →

87 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Individual liberties

Tagged ,

In Their Own Words: Lanice Avery

Posted on February 19, 2024 by | 51 comments

Editor’s Note: To document the spread of “wokeness” — short-hand to describe the philosophy of intersectional oppression — The Jefferson Council has begun publishing profiles of University of Virginia faculty members in their own words. Not our words. Not our spin. Not our interpretation. Their words. — JAB 

Assistant Professor Lanice Avery has a joint appointment to the departments of Psychology and Women, Gender & Sexuality at the University of Virginia. Her research interests, she says on her university profile page, lie at “the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and media.” In her LinkedIn page, she describes herself as a “board-certified sexologist.” This semester she is teaching one course, on Black feminist theory.

In this post we highlight her work in her own words, both in writing and on video. (We have highlighted key phrases to show how her work conforms to the intersectional-oppression paradigm, commonly referred to as wokeness, that is increasingly prevalent at UVA.) From Avery’s university web profile:

She is interested in Black women’s intersectional identity development and how the negotiation of dominant gender ideologies and gendered racial stereotypes are associated with adverse psychological and sexual health outcomes…. Her work examines how exposure to gendered racism impacts Black women’s psycho-social development, and the contributing role of media (mainstream, digital, and social) use on Black women’s identity, self-esteem, victimization experiences, and mental health outcomes.

Continue reading →

51 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

Tagged ,

We’re Doctors. Implicit Bias Training Has No Place in Medicine.

Posted on February 19, 2024 by | 28 comments

by Martin Caplan, MD, and Kenneth Lipstock, MD

Apparently, Virginia’s doctors and nurses are racist.

This is the message of two bills that are moving through the state legislature. The bills would force medical professionals to take ongoing “implicit bias training” to get and keep their license. The problem is that such training is insulting, dangerous, and scientifically indefensible. It’s grounded in the false idea that people mistreat and even oppress others, especially those of a different race.

It’s a popular narrative, but there is no sound evidence to support it. What is clear is that if our lawmakers pass these bills, they’ll encourage racial division and tribalism, while undermining the medical profession and hurting patients who need our help. Continue reading →

28 Comments

Posted in DEI, Education (higher ed), Health Care, Race and race relations, Virginia Law

Tagged ,

Dartmouth Reinstated the SAT. Will Virginia Universities Follow Suit?

Posted on February 16, 2024 by | 13 comments

by Nancy Almasi

Dartmouth College is making news regarding its return to using the SAT/ACT scores once again as a part of its admissions process. The policy will become effective in 2025 for the incoming class of 2029.

Many colleges and universities decided to make the SAT/ACT test optional during the COVID-19 pandemic when health protocols made taking these tests more difficult for students. This came on the heels of many years of pressure from those who believe that SAT and ACT tests are biased towards those who are wealthy and/or white, arguing that those who can afford SAT prep classes, tutoring, and books have an unfair advantage.

Dartmouth’s policy reversal came as the result of a faculty study prepared by three economists and one sociologist. The professors compared the admissions data from the years when the standardized tests were optional with the data when the tests were required. They concluded that the scores were helpful in finding well-rounded, academically prepared students from diverse backgrounds.

Dartmouth President Sian Leah Birlock wrote the following in her email to the Dartmouth campus about the policy change.

SAT and ACT scores reflect inequality in society and in educational systems across the nation. The research does not dispute that. Crucially, though, the research shows that standardized test scores can be an important predictor of academic success at a place like Dartmouth and beyond—more so even than just grades or recommendations, for example—and with a test-optional policy, prompted by the pandemic, we were unintentionally overlooking applicants from less-resourced backgrounds who could thrive here.

Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed)

Tagged

What Do We Make of the VCU-Qatar Connection?

Posted on February 13, 2024 by | 54 comments

A new report from the National Association of Scholars explores the entanglements between American universities and Qatar, a small state on the Persian Gulf known as the home of the Al Jazeera news network and a haven for Hamas leadership and other assorted radical Islamists. Qatar has emerged as a top foreign funder of American universities, investing more than $4 billion between 2001 and 2021. Virginia Commonwealth University, the first American university to establish an overseas campus in the country, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries, receiving more than $103 million.

University leaders say their Qatari campuses help spread Western values in the conservative Middle Eastern country, which is ruled by an authoritarian, semi-constitutional monarchy, according to the NAS paper. But one might ask the reverse: what influence, if any, does Qatari money exert on VCU? Continue reading →

54 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed)

Tagged

The Purge Comes for Edwin Alderman

Posted on February 13, 2024 by | 40 comments

by James A. Bacon

As President of the University of Virginia between 1904 and 1931, Edwin Anderson Alderman led Thomas Jefferson’s university into the 20th century. A self-proclaimed “progressive” of the Woodrow Wilson stamp, he advocated higher taxes to support public education, admitted the first women into UVA graduate programs, boosted enrollment and faculty hiring, established the university’s endowment, reformed governance and gave UVA its modern organizational structure. Most memorably to Wahoos of the current era, he built a state-of-the-art facility, named Alderman Library in his honor, to further the pursuit of knowledge.

Like many other “progressives” of the era, Alderman also promoted the science (now known to be a pseudo-science) of eugenics, and he held racist views that  have been roundly rejected in the 21st century.

A movement has burgeoned at UVA to remove Alderman’s name from the library. The Ryan administration was poised in December to ask for Board of Visitors approval to take that step by renaming the newly-renovated facility after former President Edgar Shannon. The administration withdrew the proposal after determining it did not have a majority vote. But Team Ryan could resurrect the name change at the February/March meeting of the Board, as suggested in the flier seen above. Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Virginia history

Tagged ,

The Return of Compulsory Chapel: George Mason Will Require Students to Take ‘Social Justice’ Courses

Posted on February 12, 2024 by | 29 comments

by the staff of Liberty Unyielding

It’s the “return of compulsory chapel: George Mason University, a Virginia public institution, will require students to take two social justice courses,” notes Walter Olson of the Cato Institute. A student taking such courses will have “to demonstrate” “competencies” in “diversity,” “equity.” and “inclusion.” George Mason University is Virginia’s largest university.

Last month, George Mason University announced:

Students entering Mason in Fall 2024 or later will be required to take two Mason Core courses that have the Just Societies flag….

Courses with a Just Societies flag must meet both of these outcomes, in addition to other required course outcomes related to the primary Mason Core Exploration category. Upon completing a Just Societies course, students will be able to demonstrate the following two competencies:

  1. a) Define key terms related to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as related to this course’s field/discipline and
    b) Use those terms to engage meaningfully with peers about course issues …
  1. Articulate obstacles to justice and equity, and strategies for addressing them, in response to local, national, and/or global issues in the field/discipline

The National Review says that “the classes no doubt will be grievance-dominated and utopian.”

There is a course approval process for faculty wishing to teach these required courses. But as a practical matter, only courses with a left-leaning ideological slant are likely to be approved. “What do you suppose would happen if a GMU professor proposed a course on the theme that the most just society would be one with a minimal government?,” asks George Leef of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Continue reading →

29 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)