Heterodoxy isn't for the faint of heart
By Rich Kozlovich / Tags: Academia, Education, Education in America Has Become a Snare and a Racket,
Fixing Education in America is Job One
For years I've stated the two groups mostly considered to be leaders are Ph.D.'s and military officers. But the fact is both got to the top by being part of the go along to get along crowd, and to the vast majority of them rowing against the tide, or being a rock in the current is totally alien to their thinking, or their character. But there are exceptions, and they pay a price. I've added her to the John Boyd Legion of Honor.
In 2019 I posted a link to this article, In Defense of Penn Law Professor Amy Wax, and to my surprise I got thousands of hits on this piece, saying:
The hard left doesn’t want to nominate another white male for president in 2020, or in the words of Politico, “a candidate that looks like Bernie or Joe.” In fact, according to most liberals, police departments would be better off with more nonwhites and fewer whites, as would fire departments, school districts, small businesses, Hollywood,Major League Baseball, U.S. Congress, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, to name a few places.
Whether this is ultimately true is debatable. What’s not is the fact
that it’s perfectly okay to call for more diversity in America -- to
publicly state things would be better off with more nonwhites and less whites.
Then back in 2022 this article appeared, Edunomics, which I thought was a great article with a really dumb title, discussing how academia has been totally corrupted with leftist dogma totally destroying free speech. Amy Wax is at the heart of that discussion saying:
The law school currently has her under review with the hope, it would
appear, of taking away her tenure and then her job. Why is this
occurring? Dr. Wax is doing what lawyers are taught to do: ask simple
but hard questions, relying on facts that result in hard truths and more
difficult questions. Dr. Wax has had the audacity to ask if bourgeois
culture, which includes hard work, studiousness, delayed gratification,
work, marriage, and having children in, rather than out of wedlock might
be a good thing.
She has questioned if it is problematic that most
black students in the Penn law school are at the bottom of their
classes. She has had the nerve to suggest that some cultures might be
superior to others. For asking these impertinent questions, the dean of
the law school has her under review. Apparently, the principle of freedom of expression at Penn is good
for me but not for thee. Wax has apparently crossed a “line,”
transgressed “appropriate expression,” is a “racist” and a “white
supremacist,” and she has yet to receive a “comprehensive and complete
statement of all the charges lodged against her.” One can only describe
the situation as Kafkaesque.
I published that piece and tagged these articles thinking her plight wouldn't be much of an issue down the road. That was a serious error in judgement, and since I had so many hits on the first piece, I should have known better!
Here we are again, The Amy Wax Inflection Point for 'Elite' Higher Education, saying:
Higher education has been a cesspool of anti-Americanism, censorious
leftism and cultural radicalism for longer than I have been alive. The
moral rot is, and always has been, particularly acute at Ivy League or
otherwise putatively "elite" institutions. The pro-Hamas "protests" that
have rocked university campuses since Oct. 7 are indicative.....
......there was
the triumvirate of "elite" university presidents who testified before
Congress last December that the permissibility of campus calls for the
genocide of the Jewish people "depends on the context."......But perhaps the single biggest disgrace to
rock academia in recent years has been the University of Pennsylvania's
years long crusade against its own tenured law professor, Amy Wax.
It appears it's perfectly acceptable to promote the genocide of Jews in Academia, but to declare mass immigration and multiculturalism is destructive to America and state factually that "black students rarely finish in the top half of graduating
law school classes" is totally unacceptable. Facts and history are anathema to leftists.
When you consider that in one New York university it's been claimed about 90% of the student freshmen needed remedial reading classes, it's clear questions need to be raised. How does someone graduate from high school and be incapable of reading? That alone justifies questioning a lot about what's going on in education in America, including academia, and make no mistake, culture is king, and if that's true, and it was when Herodotus said it 2500 years ago, and it's still true today, then the culture that molded these kid's performance, activity, and attitude, must also be brought into question.
There's one thing
abundantly clear, America's schools are failing to teach students
fundamental skills. They can't read, they can't write, they can't work
basic math. Then it must also be clear no matter how much money we're
told to keep throwing at the teachers - teachers are failing to do their
jobs. Ergo-----they're overpaid, underworked and need to be fired,
starting at the administration level! If kids never learn to read why
in the world would we think they're learning how to think? The socialist
goal of making sure the apple falls as far away from the tree as
possible is now a leftist success story - students are now too stupid to
resist any stupidity the leftists promote.
In Chicago teachers are being told to pass migrant children irrespective of their performance. That's an outrageous abuse of these children. If they can't do the basics how are they be expected to succeed in society? Turn to crime? That's not a long term success story.
Here's what's acceptable to this corrupt cabal of so-called educators these days:
But for Amy Wax who calls into "question the academic ability of Black students" question the culture they represent, and invite Jared Taylor to speak in her classroom, who is being classified as a "white supremacist" saying, .... the country would be better off with fewer Asians and less
Asian immigration, is unacceptable, and she must be punished.
Whether you agree with his views or not, that's not the issue. If academia can spew out all kinds of vile speech about Jews, whites, Christians, and traditional values in America, why should this be prohibited? Why should she be punished and none of these other academics vile views be found acceptable? Well, it's simple. Statistics are racist, and so for "two and a half years, a
period spanning successive Penn Law deanships, Wax has been subject to a
probe into her alleged wrongthink and misdeeds.", which as "made Penn a pariah among academic freedom
advocates."
The judgment finally came this week: Penn Law
suspended Wax for a year, reduced her pay for that year by 50%,
permanently stripped her of her endowed chair and summer pay, and
publicly reprimanded her. Interestingly.......Penn Law
had previously offered Wax a settlement that would have lessened her
penalty on the condition that she not "disparage the University," not
sue Penn and not publicly disclose the exculpatory evidence she had
presented during the years long probe. Translation: Shut your mouth and
this problem will go away quickly.
Two things are clear, Amy Wax is one tough cookie, and I've no doubt there will be an lawsuit in the near future, and I've no doubt she will win, and there will be another article about this here in P&D. And secondly, universities are vile breeding grounds for breeding evil: "If you send your child to college, you are playing Russian
Roulette with his or her values."
Update 11:15 AM: This College Just Got an Anonymous $100 Million for Defending Free Speech. - A whopping $100 million donation from an anonymous benefactor
found its way into the coffers of the University of Chicago this week,
intended to help the university bolster free speech on campus following a case in which a student claims an academic tried to get him expelled over controversial remarks..........The gift comes after a high-profile case involving student Daniel Schmidt, who stated last year that a professor at the University
of Chicago was trying to get him expelled for highlighting an
anti-white class called “the problem of whiteness.” The professor
claimed the student, who has tens of thousands of social media
followers, was bullying her. Earlier this week, the president of the university said Schmidt was free to talk about controversial topics like race and IQ, as Schmidt has previously claimed low IQs are the reason "black people are murdering and mugging my classmates."
Update 9/29/24: Penn offered Amy Wax $50K to be quiet - ANALYSIS: After years of investigating Wax and impugning her character, the university wanted her to be quiet. The University of Pennsylvania offered Professor Amy Wax $50,000 and
reduced penalties if she would promise not to publicly criticize it
ahead of tougher sanctions. Wax is a conservative law professor who has faced years
of investigations and criticism from university leaders and activists
because of her comments on immigration, race, and IQ. The university
announced earlier this week Wax will be suspended next year and only
receive half of her salary during that time.............“This case is about free expression,” Wax told the Free Beacon. “Penn wanted absolute silence. The big question is: Why do they want to hide what they’re doing?”.............
Penn Professor Amy Wax Punished for ‘Inconvenient Facts’- The beginning of the end of law professor Amy Wax’s career came on
August 9, 2017. That’s when Wax and another law professor, Larry
Alexander, published an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer declaring that “all cultures are not equal.”.........The thesis of the 827-word piece was that some people—“working-class
whites” with “antisocial habits”; “inner-city blacks” with their
“anti-‘acting white’ rap culture”; and Hispanic immigrants who resist
assimilation—are at a profound disadvantage in the game of life. This,
they argued, is why we should all embrace a 1950s-style “bourgeois
culture” that smooths over differences, paving the way for greater
national cohesiveness.......
Amy Wax Is Academic Freedom’s Canary in the Coal Mine - Yesterday, (9/24/24) the University of Pennsylvania completed its years-long
end run around academic freedom to punish law professor Amy Wax...........Penn is a private school that nonetheless makes First Amendment-like
promises to respect its students’ and faculty members’ right to free
expression. Whether on a contractual or moral basis, Penn should have
kept those promises. Instead, it abandoned principle for the sake of
expediency. While it remains to be seen whether Wax will keep her promise to sue Penn if she’s punished, I told The New York Times
yesterday that the university’s decision “should send a chill down the
spine of every faculty member, not just at Penn but at every private
institution around the country.”......
