Tag: James A. Bacon
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Senate Subcommittee Nixes DEI Transparency
by James A. Bacon A General Assembly senate subcommittee has voted down a bill that would require public Virginia colleges and universities to report the number and salaries of employees in the field of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Spotsylvania, had sponsored the bill, SB 1197, which also called for disclosure of sums…
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Why Did Youngkin Spurn a $3.5 Billion Investment?
by James A. Bacon When you nix what might have been a $3.5 billion investment creating a reported 2,500 jobs in one of Virginia’s most depressed regions, you’d better have a good explanation. But when mammoth economic development deals are wrapped in secrecy backed by non-disclosure agreements, it’s difficult providing that explanation. That’s the pickle…
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Youngkin Wants to Jump-Start Economic Growth
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin addressed many topics in his State of the Commonwealth address last week, ranging from the meltdown in K-12 education to the surge in suicides, drug overdoses, and homicides. But he spent the most time talking about Virginia’s declining economic competitiveness. Once upon a time, making the Commonwealth economically…
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The Alumni Rebellion Spreads to JMU
by James A. Bacon A group of James Madison University alumni has organized a new group, the Madison Cabinet for Free Speech and Accountability, to promote “freedom of expression, intellectual diversity, and academic freedom on campus.” The JMU group marks the fourth university in Virginia to organize in protest of the takeover of an institution…
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Note to Subscribers
For reasons too tedious to explain, I accidentally published some notes I had written to myself regarding comments on a previous post. I have to assume that the notes were broadcast to our subscribers. I did not mean to make them public. My apologies.
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UVa Student Council Peddles Its Character Assassination to the General Assembly
by James A. Bacon The executive board of the University of Virginia Student Council has asked the Virginia General Assembly to reject Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointment of Bert Ellis to the Board of Visitors. The letter was addressed to Democratic Party leaders of the state Senate. The Senate is comprised of 22 Democrats and 18…
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Teaching History the Right Way
by James A. Bacon Broadly speaking, there are two interpretive frameworks for viewing the history of the United States. The traditional framework sees the glass as half full: the U.S. was founded on the ideal that all men were entitled to equal rights that provided for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Although those…
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Freitas Introduces Higher-Ed Transparency Bill
by James A. Bacon Delegate Nicholas J. Freitas, R-Culpeper, has introduced a bill, HB 1800, that would bring much needed transparency to the governance of Virginia’s public higher-ed institutions. The bill was cited in a list of priority legislation backed by Attorney General Jason Miyares. The bill contains several elements: Governing boards of public colleges…
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UVa Grade Inflation Has Accelerated Since 2018
In the spring of 1992, the cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA) of University of Virginia undergraduate students was 3.1, according to data maintained by the office of Institutional Research and Analysis. By 2021, the average GPA had soared to 3.6. Grade inflation is a national phenomenon in U.S. higher education, so there may be nothing…
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The Hidden Costs of DEI
by James A. Bacon According to a new report by the Virginia Association of Scholars, the University of Virginia in 2021 employed 77 people as part of the a vast and growing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy at a cost of nearly $7 million a year. Many questions arise from this revelation. What do…
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UVa’s DEI Bureaucracy: the Details
Here is the breakdown of DEI positions and salaries at the University of Virginia identified in the Virginia Association of Scholars report, “Should Virginians Pay for University ‘Diversity’ Leftism?” In 2020, UVa spent more money than any other public Virginia university on DEI staff and salaries. In 2021, UVa doubled the number of administrators and…
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$15 Million+ and Growing Fast
The Jefferson Council released the following press release at 1:00 p.m. today. The cost of Virginia’s higher-ed DEI bureaucracy is spinning out of control. CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., January 6, 2023 – Virginia’s 15 public four-year universities paid its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion administrators more than $15 million in salaries in 2020, according to a new report, “Should Virginians…
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Things Fall Apart: Workforce Edition
by James A. Bacon A friend of mine, a Richmond-area attorney, received this message from his accountant explaining the increasingly difficult conditions in which his business was operating: Increasingly, we’ve experienced extreme disruption with our US Postal Service as well as the handling of payments by government agencies, regardless if they have confirmed delivery. This…
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You’ll Have to Pry My Steering Wheel from My Cold, Dead Fingers
The latest from the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy…. I don’t have any philosophical objections to electric vehicles. If they offer better performance for the price than combustion-powered cars, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy one. I do have public-policy reservations about government subsidies for EVs and EV infrastructure, and I do have concerns about…