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Penn Law’s Inflection Point for ‘Elite’ Higher Education’s Intolerance


By: Josh Hammer | September 27, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/27/amy-wax-inflection-point-elite-higher-education/

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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: One cannot help but realize that the jihadi anarchy on display at Harvard Yard hasn’t been replicated at red-state public schools, such as Alabama or Ole Miss.

But every so often, something happens at an “elite” university that manages to shock our already jaded consciences. For instance, 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.”

There was also Judge Kyle Duncan’s March 2023 struggle session at Stanford Law School, where a baying left-wing mob—egged on by then-“DEI” Dean Tirien Steinbach—prevented the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals jurist from delivering his remarks.

But perhaps the single biggest disgrace to rock academia in recent years has been the University of Pennsylvania’s yearslong crusade against one of its own tenured law professors, Amy Wax.

In 2017, Wax coauthored an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer that lamented the decline of traditional bourgeoisie values across American society and suggested this decline is blameworthy for many of America’s present social maladies. Almost immediately, 4,000 people signed a petition calling for Wax’s ouster; 33 of her Penn Law colleagues also condemned her instantaneously. Wax, a vocal critic of mass migration and skeptic of multiculturalism, admirably refused to be silenced. She ruffled more feathers when she observed that, in her two decades of teaching experience, Black students rarely finish in the top half of graduating law school classes.

Statistics, it seems, are racist.

For 2-1/2 years, a period spanning successive Penn Law deanships, Wax has been subject to a probe into her alleged “wrongthink” and misdeeds. The investigation has depleted valuable funds that Penn Law could have used to foster free speech or—how’s this for an idea? —actually train students to practice law.

The probe has been exorbitantly expensive, forcing Wax to retain counsel; thankfully, a GoFundMe legal defense fund for the embattled professor has raised nearly $200,000 since its July 2022 launch. The witch hunt, as Aaron Sibarium observed for the Washington Free Beacon, has also “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, as Sibarium scooped, 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 yearslong probe. Translation: Shut your mouth, and this problem will go away quickly.

Chairman Mao would have nodded right along.

Penn Law, in the most recent version of the oft-cited U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, is tied for fourth place. High-achieving law school applicants (rightly or wrongly) seek to enroll there, and high-end law firms (rightly or wrongly) seek to recruit from there. When such an institution allocates immense time and resources to punish and humiliate one of its own faculty members, the goal is clear: to send a message. In this particular case, the message could not be clearer: You must bend the knee. Wokeism, unlike the liberalism of old, brooks no dissent. Free inquiry must yield to the stifling intellectual conformity that leftists delude themselves into thinking is “progress.” On the substance of Wax’s comments, to merely speak of race-based outcomes and speculate as to the underlying social phenomena that might have affected those outcomes is verboten.

Anyone who does not toe the line, condemn America as a bastion of “systemic racism,” and endorse everything from reparations to race-conscious admissions practices is, in turn, deemed a racist him/herself. To call this spectacle “Orwellian” would risk understatement.

The Amy Wax struggle session ought to be an inflection point in our higher education wars. College students should stop applying to Penn Law. Employers—from law firms to individual judges—should stop hiring from there as well.

And Congress should pass a new law placing a hard condition on the disbursement of higher education funding: No private university that punishes a tenured professor for engaging in First Amendment-protected speech will receive a single penny in public funding.

Wax is vowing to fight on. Perhaps she will sue Penn Law. Perhaps she will prevail in that suit. But as is so often the case, the process is the real punishment. And the indignity is the whole point.

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Biden’s Student Loan Bailout Sends Taxpayer Funds to On-Campus Mobs


BY: CHRISTOPHER JACOBS | MAY 07, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/07/bidens-loan-forgiveness-plan-makes-taxpayers-fund-on-campus-mobs/

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In remarks regarding the growing unrest on college campuses nationwide last Thursday, President Biden denounced the violent acts associated with many of the demonstrations and the growing wave of antisemitism on college campuses.

But, as the saying goes, talk is cheap. There’s one simple way to give his position teeth: Congress should enact legislation prohibiting the Department of Education from making taxpayers assume or otherwise modifying student loans for any student found responsible by his university or a court of law for acts of antisemitism, trespassing, property damage, intimidation, or violence.

Loan Giveaways Encourage Campus Chaos

Biden might be loath to admit it, but in many ways the campaign for mass student loan forgiveness has helped cause the current campus debacle. This year’s seniors entered college during the 2020 election campaign, meaning that most students currently on campus spent their college career hearing promises that much if not all of their debt would be forgiven.

This leftist movement to make American taxpayers pay off other people’s college debt has further weakened the already-tenuous link between a degree and its earning potential. If they believe the government will ultimately forgive the cost of their education, students have no reason not to major in Grievance Studies, or some similar Marxist-adjacent course of study. Assuming their loan debts will get nationalized also makes students less concerned about potential employers refusing to hire them due to their participation in on-campus riots.

With less incentive for students to choose practical degrees, and officials prioritizing woke nostrums over intellectual rigor, colleges have given up all pretense of ideological balance. As a result, some institutions have become less like universities and more like madrassas, places that inculcate and radicalize youths rather than educate them.

The way Biden has continued to pursue loan forgiveness, despite a rebuke of his unconstitutional plan by the Supreme Court, set an example that demonstrators have replicated. The president may now deprecate the mob’s actions, and call for respect for the rule of law, but when he publicly brags that the nation’s highest court “didn’t stop me” from pursuing his objectives, can anyone blame the would-be jihadis on campus for thinking themselves entitled to take the law into their own hands?

Restore Sanity to Campuses

Congress can and should take a stand, by cutting off the financial spigot for participants in the bedlam. If Biden opposes the chaos on campus so strongly, he should be willing to take a break from buying votes via taxpayer loan payoffs to cut off access for those creating mayhem. And if Democrats on the left like Rep. Ilhan Omar wish to exclude from loan payoffs any participants in Islamophobic or other offensive acts, few Republicans — who oppose Biden’s forgiveness proposals outright — will object.

Some might fear this proposal would encourage already-timid university administrators to take a weaker line against the demonstrators because individuals held responsible could face significant financial repercussions. But in some cases, civil authorities may be able to act irrespective of whether the higher education institutions in question do. More importantly, this measure should deter students as much as university officials, if not more so.

Another potential concern, that Congress prohibiting loan bailouts for a narrow sliver of the population might be viewed as lawmakers permitting Biden’s power grab for other students, doesn’t appear to pass muster, either. The House passed a bill last spring disapproving Biden’s original student loan payoff plan, but the fact that the measure didn’t get enacted into law didn’t stop the Supreme Court from striking the plan down as an unconstitutional power grab.

Finally, this proposal focuses solely on actions, not speech. Like all other Americans, students can and should have the right to protest, and to express their views, however offensive others may find them. But when speech crosses into intimidation, or encampments that create safety and health concerns, let alone breaking into buildings, those actions should bring consequences — in this case, financial ones.

A Practical Solution

Prohibiting student loan payoffs is less expensive and more practical than the other alternative: giving demonstrators a one-way ticket to the Gaza Strip. It would also send a message in clear and uncertain terms about what the American people, through their elected representatives, think of the mayhem that has unfolded in recent weeks.

In the longer term, the recent campus chaos should prompt Congress to consider repealing the student loan program entirely, a reform that would incentivize students and universities to prioritize college affordability, while saving taxpayers at least $300 billion over the coming decade. But at minimum, lawmakers should act now to ensure that hard-working taxpayers are not subsidizing participants in violent demonstrations on campuses nationwide.

Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book “The Case Against Single Payer.” He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.

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Left-Wing Dark Money Groups Are Bankrolling Anti-Israel Demonstrations


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MAY 01, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/01/left-wing-dark-money-groups-are-bankrolling-anti-israel-demonstrations/

Encampment

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Left-wing dark money networks are funding the outbreak of anti-Israel protests spreading at college campuses across the country.

Last week, Fox News reported the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), “a national organization affiliated with around 200 independent chapters” including Columbia University, raked in “a six-figure donation from a nonprofit bankrolled by the George Soros network.”

According to Influence Watch, the group orchestrates student activism on university campuses, accuses Israel of committing genocide, and compares Palestinians to black Americans under the Jim Crow era.

“In addition to Columbia, NSJP has been protesting and setting up encampments at other universities across the country, including UCLA and USC in California and at the University of Texas in Austin, where over 50 people were arrested this week,” Fox News reported.

The University of Texas said in a statement Tuesday that 45 of the 79 people arrested on the school’s Austin campus Monday “had no affiliation with UT Austin.”

“These numbers validate our concern that much of the disruption on campus over the past week has been orchestrated by people from outside the University, including groups with ties to escalating protests at other universities around the country,” the university said.

The New York Post reported Tuesday that police have arrested more than 1,000 demonstrators across more than 25 U.S. campuses. At Columbia University in Manhattan, which became the epicenter of anti-Israeli encampments when school leadership testified about antisemitism to Congress, police arrested nearly 300 protestors Tuesday night.

According to Fox News, “Another group active at Columbia, Jewish Voice for Peace, has brought in at least $650,000 from Soros-linked groups since 2016. JVP has also taken in hundreds of thousands from the billionaire-fueled Rockefeller Fund, which is boosted by millions of dollars from a dark money funding network.”

“Another Soros-backed group, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, has paid what it calls ‘fellows’ to organize and attend anti-Israel protests across the country,” Fox also said, citing New York Post reporting.

On Wednesday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the People’s Forum, another non-profit in New York that “received more than $12 million from Goldman Sachs’ charitable arm[,] encouraged anti-Israel activists to re-create the violent protests of ‘the summer of 2020.’”

The sustained demonstrations breaking out across American campuses have led some schools to cancel in-person classes and have jeopardized graduation ceremonies. Columbia University has shifted to a hybrid model for the remainder of the semester and announced final exams will be held remotely.

At the University of Southern California (USC), officials announced the school’s primary graduation ceremony will be canceled. The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) also canceled classes Wednesday after fighting erupted on campus.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Bates College Faculty Subjected To ‘Toxic’ DEI Struggle Sessions By Administrators


BY: ROY MATTHEWS | DECEMBER 28, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/28/bates-college-faculty-subjected-to-toxic-dei-struggle-sessions-by-administrators/

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College students attending universities with restrictive speech codes are used to walking on eggshells and keeping their heads down on campus out of fear of committing social suicide or experiencing violence. In the disordered world of contemporary higher education, Jewish students receive limited, if any, support from school administrators amid explicit calls for violence against them, while other students face punishment for banal infractions like rolling a “free speech ball” around campus.

But if you are shocked at how students are subject to hypocritical double standards and draconian speech codes, what goes on behind the closed doors of faculty lounges and administrative offices will surely horrify you. Militant students can restrict the speech of other students, but often, faculty find themselves subjected to even stricter rules that embolden this militancy in the first place.

This has proven true at Bates College, my alma mater, ranked 213 out of 250 schools nationwide for free speech. Emails obtained from several former Bates College professors show just how limited faculty freedoms are. In the past, faculty were reported to the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for questioning students’ assertions in class or asking students to think more critically. The environment created by this policy has left some professors fearful that a student will use a simple classroom lecture or assignment to terminate their jobs.

In the wake of Bates’ latest round of antisemitic controversy — where a swastika was drawn in a dormitory bathroom amid a bevy of pro-Hamas activity at Bates — I reached out to several former and current professors at Bates to see if this DEI reporting system was still in place. After communicating with members of Bates faculty, staff, and former students, it’s clear that not only is the DEI reporting system still in operation, but it has been used to intimidate faculty into maintaining leftist orthodoxy in their classrooms.

This policy bared its teeth in the firing of Keith Taylor, a lecturer in Bates’ geology department. Taylor was fired earlier this year for asking a student to provide examples defending their assertion that Bates College was a bastion of white supremacy. Taylor was browbeaten by Dean of Faculty Malcolm Hill and ordered to apologize to his class for his supposed racial insensitivity, but instead, he denounced the school. One student recorded the exchange and shared it with me at the time. 

Taylor provided several emails from a fellow professor, Loring Danforth, who feared for his termination. Danforth expressed fear at Taylor’s firing, saying he felt “trapped in an alternate reality” due to his fear of being targeted by students for speaking on race, a topic he studied, wrote, and lectured on for several decades at Bates and other institutions.

This nightmarish “alternate reality” soon became real for Danforth. A classroom discussion quickly became a struggle session after a student asserted Bates College was on stolen Penobscot land. Danforth, being a seasoned teacher, asked the student to explain what she meant. “Do you mean legally? Technically? Morally? Historically? Traditionally?” Danforth asked. In an attempt to further discussion, he followed up with the question: “Do Native Americans own the land your parents’ house in Connecticut is on, or do your parents own it?”

But instead of engaging in the discussion or thinking critically about her assertion, the student reported Danforth to the DEI office for opposing Native American land claims. That led to another reprimand by the DEI office and the dean of faculty. Ironically, Danforth is a proud supporter of Native Americans, as was shown in his email with Keith Taylor; “I’d argue it’s my right to oppose them [Native American land claims]. But in fact I support them.” Professor Danforth refused to provide comment.

That same email between Taylor and Danforth described an incident over text where Dean of Faculty Malcolm Hill reprimanded Danforth for supposedly perpetuating racism on campus. That was after Danforth was again reported to the DEI office for stating that “race was a social construction” to the offense of a black staff member. As a result, Danforth, who correctly pointed out that the social construction of race is “a fundamental concept and expression” in anthropology, was again reprimanded by Hill. Only after Bates President Clayton Spencer stepped in did Hill back down and apologize to Danforth.

Over a series of emails and text messages, several professors discussed potential punishments for DEI infractions, including being forced to “absorb literature about racism” or even be subjected to mandatory sensitivity training, which, if refused, could lead to further punishment.

Bates’s DEI reporting system has significantly cowed professors in the liberal arts. Several students I interviewed believe free speech at Bates was already nonexistent but think professors are largely responsible for allowing this toxic culture to take its current form.

One such student, a 2018 Bates graduate, James Erwin, recalled portions of emails that appeared scripted when professors corresponded with students about “sensitive” topics. “After Trump was elected in 2016, there were demonstrations around campus,” Erwin explained. “All the faculty emails for my classes and campus resources contained the same ‘I understand and support you,’ directed towards students who wanted to skip class to protest the election.”

Erwin also suggested professors had only themselves to blame for the campus climate, saying, “Many Bates professors can’t speak up because this is the bed they made … they teach this performative emotional fragility in class, so, of course, they can’t object to it now that the outrage is directed at them.”

An email I have had since my own time at Bates proves James correct. One economics professor expressed doubts that teachers at Bates could adequately instruct students, only to refuse to elaborate on his comments. Economics professor Paul Shea said, “Things like this make me fear for the future of Bates. More and more departments seem comfortable infusing their curricula with specific forms of activism and ideology and those that do not are met with hostility or, in some cases, a loss of resources. It is hard for me to see how this fits with the mission of the college.” 

Shea refused to comment when asked to elaborate on the “hostility” or “loss of resources” and departures from the economics department.

Taylor’s emails and the various professors with whom I spoke expressed the same feeling: Bates no longer resembles an academic institution committed to free speech. T. Glen Lawson, who taught in the Bates Chemistry Department for over 30 years and is now retired, said, “It is true that the [Bates] environment is toxic and freedom of expression and academic freedom have both been suppressed in the past few years, so I was happy to leave. I don’t really care about what goes on there now.” Jenna Berens, a 2023 graduate of Bates, agreed. “The culture is definitely toxic in the context of the classroom. I can imagine that culture extends to the faculty, too.” 

Bates’s DEI system has successfully made almost every professor at the college terrified of his or her own students. With fees to attend Bates set at over $81,000 for the 2023-2024 academic year, parents and students are footing the bill for DEI enforcers alongside the collaborating programs within the college that act as speech police and reporting systems.

It is obvious that antisemitic students control Harvard University’s campus, and they have the freedom to spew their poison with no accountability from the administration. It took a congressional hearing, alums withdrawing millions of dollars, and leading companies pledging not to hire Harvard graduates for the school even to notice its antisemitism problem. Legacy institutions with larger budgets often overshadow Bates. However, the toxic, illiberal behavior that has consumed Bates is a glimpse of higher education’s future. Across the country, there are thousands of smaller colleges like Bates, where free speech has been destroyed and its defenders driven underground.

Bates and its faculty preach the college’s commitment to academic excellence, egalitarianism, and freedom. Those words ring hollow when the academics tasked with passing those values on cannot defend them.

Roy Mathews is a writer for Young Voices. He is a graduate of Bates College and a 2023 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Law & Liberty, and the Boston Herald.

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From Woke Walkouts To Dumping Selective Enrollment, Illinois Schools Are Melting Down


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | DECEMBER 15, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/15/from-woke-walkouts-to-dumping-selective-enrollment-illinois-schools-are-melting-down/

IMSA school lab
Democrats’ Marxist takeover of America’s education system is rearing its ugly head on an almost daily basis, and the latest stories out of Illinois are further proof of it.

On Thursday, Parents Defending Education reported that students attending the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) orchestrated a protest and walkout on Dec. 8 demanding harsh punishments for individuals who have “bias incident reports” filed against them. According to the academy’s website, anyone from IMSA students to alumni and visitors can file on-the-record or anonymous reports alleging incidents of “bias” committed by other IMSA community members. The reports are then investigated by school staff such as the chief human resources/equity officer and/or the director of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

IMSA students who participated in the Dec. 8 demonstration, however, are demanding the university take its leftist policies even further. Included in their list of demands are requests for the school to publicize a list of “possible consequences for students following a bias incident report,” including “detentions, removal from leadership positions, suspensions, expulsions, and notification to parents.”

But the students who chanted “Silence is complacence!” and “Why are our pronouns not used?” during the Dec. 8 demonstration didn’t stop there. They also want the university to notify any “potential future colleges” that offending students may consider transferring to or attending in the future, after they are presumably expelled for their supposed transgressions. In essence, the demonstrators want to destroy possible offenders’ future educational and career prospects based on potentially-anonymous reporting of “incidents” like not using a person’s preferred pronouns.

The list also includes a demand that possible consequences for offending faculty members be publicized, recommending punishments that “include, but go beyond only educational conversations and required training.”

Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a far-left Democrat, announced plans this week to cripple the city’s “high-achieving selective-enrollment schools” in the name of so-called “equity.” During his mayoral campaign earlier this year, Johnson explicitly promised city residents his administration “would not end selective enrollment” at Chicago public schools.

According to The Daily Mail, the proposal put forward by Johnson’s education board would effectively “stop gifted children from lower income backgrounds from academically competing to get into high-performing schools.” Some of these schools are among the nation’s highest ranking high schools and offer children who grow up in difficult circumstances opportunities to further their academic careers.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Academic Whose Work Was Cited As Proof Of ‘Systemic Racism’ Is Fired For Falsifying Research


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/13/academic-whose-work-was-cited-as-proof-of-systemic-racism-is-fired-for-falsifying-research/

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A Florida State University professor whose work was foundational to perpetuating the false narrative that there is widespread “systemic racism” infecting American society has been fired for falsifying data in his academic research on the subject.

In a recently resurfaced report from last month, the New York Post revealed that Eric Stewart, an FSU criminology professor, had been fired by the university “on account of ‘extreme negligence’ in his research,” as well as “incompetence” and producing “false results” in his nearly 20 years of work.

“I do not see how you can teach our students to be ethical researchers or how the results of future research projects conducted by you could be deemed as trustworthy,” FSU Provost James Clark wrote in a July 13 letter formally notifying Stewart of his firing.

According to the Post, Stewart has had six studies published in major academic journals between 2003 and 2019 that were “fully retracted,” including a 2019 study claiming the historical legacy of lynchings “made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives.”

Stewart’s retracted research also included claims that racial disparities in criminal sentencing are racially motivated. In a 2015 study, for instance, Stewart suggested Americans supported tougher sentencing for Hispanics because they feared an increase in the U.S. Latino population and Latinos’ potential economic success.

Other retracted studies include a 2018 analysis which “suggested that white Americans view black and Latino people as ‘criminal threats,’ and suggested that perceived threat could lead to ‘state-sponsored social control,’” the Post added.

Clark indicated in his letter that Stewart’s other published works are “in doubt.”

Rather than own up to his actions, Stewart has since attempted to play the victim card and attacked Justin Pickett, a former FSU graduate student who reported Stewart for his unethical conduct. Following the launch of the investigation into his work in 2020, Stewart, who is black, claimed that by raising concerns about his faulty research, Pickett had “essentially lynched [him] and [his] academic character.”

In addition to his $190,000 annual salary at FSU, Stewart’s projects received millions in research grants from major groups and government agencies. According to the Post, the National Institute of Mental Health — which falls under the National Institute of Health — reportedly gave Stewart $3.2 million to research “how African Americans transition into adulthood.”

Stewart also reportedly received funds from the National Science Foundation, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, and the National Institute of Justice, a subsidiary of the Department of Justice.

The discovery of Stewart’s falsified research and his subsequent firing is significant to understanding the left’s ongoing war on American police officers. As noted by Wilfred Reilly, an associate professor at Kentucky State University, Stewart is “[p]robably THE academic [figure] responsible” for the debunked narrative that so-called “systemic racism” plagues U.S. police departments throughout the country.

According to Google Scholar, for instance, Stewart’s questionable — and in several cases, categorically false — works have garnered more than 8,500 citations by other researchers. Stewart’s “research” has been used as a pretext by other academics, regime-approved media, and Democrat politicians to smear America’s on-the-ground law enforcement officers as inherently “racist” towards non-white Americans.

“The point [of this story] is that one of the [main] guys who built up the entire narrative of ‘wokeness’ just made it up,” Reilly told The Federalist. “Throughout the entire kind of racial reckoning, one of the things that I and others … have noticed is that these stories [about police brutality against black Americans] keep collapsing. The narrative of police genocide of African Americans turned out … to be complete nonsense.”

Reilly also referenced research conducted by the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, whose analyses of publicly available data have debunked leftists’ narrative that there is an epidemic of police killing unarmed black Americans. In a USA Today article published a few months after George Floyd’s death, for instance, Mac Donald noted how even data from The Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings dispels such claims and predicted that “[r]educing police resources will ultimately result in poorer service to the law-abiding residents of high-crime areas.”

Mac Donald’s forecast ultimately came true. While the rise of Black Lives Matter and Democrat-generated attacks on police began under the Obama administration, it was Floyd’s death that ushered in a new era of the left’s war on America’s police. Democrat politicos and their legacy media allies quickly hijacked Floyd’s death to normalize street violence committed by their communist foot soldiers. The left’s perpetuation of the false “systemic racism in policing” narrative and their subsequent actions not only killed people such as David Dorn, but countless others who suffered because their Democrat-run cities defunded local law enforcement.

Following Floyd’s death and the anti-police back it launched, there was a significant spike in overall murders, especially affecting black victims. According to Reilly, such statistics don’t interest groups like Black Lives Matter because “a focus on things that might actually correlate with a high loss of black life … [is] not what the movement was about.”

BLM “was about using outlier conflict between blacks and whites to get money,” Reilly said. “The whole idea was to take these very isolated, white cop or white vigilantes on black male cases and present them as normal. They did that for a while. It turned out not to be real and they’ve pulled back from the scene, now as the owners of some nice properties. And now we’re left to clean up the mess.”

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Money Pit

A.F. BRANCO | on March 9, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-money-pit/

High salaries of university Faculty are contributing to outrageously high tuition loans.

Hight Cost of Education
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.

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Texas Tech Suspends Head Basketball Coach for Quoting the Bible


BY: JORDAN BOYD | MARCH 06, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/06/texas-tech-suspends-head-basketball-coach-for-quoting-the-bible/

Texas Tech men's basketball coach Mark Adams

Less than one month after Texas Tech University was busted for using race-based ideology as a litmus test for hiring candidates in the school’s biology department, the four-year university suspended head men’s basketball coach Mark Adams for quoting the Bible to a student-athlete.

TTU Director of Athletics Kirby Hocutt suspended Adams on Sunday after learning that the coach encouraged one of his basketball players “to be more receptive to coaching and referenced Bible verses about workers, teachers, parents, and slaves serving their masters.”

The comment, according to the university, was “inappropriate, unacceptable, and racially insensitive” and deserved a formal written reprimand from Hocutt, suspension, and an investigation into Adams’ previous “interactions with his players and staff.”

TTU claimed that when confronted with offense over the comments, Adams “immediately addressed this with the team and apologized.” Adams, however, said that was not the case.

“One of my coaches said it bothered the player,” Adams told Stadium. “I explained to them. I didn’t apologize.” 

The controversial exchange, Adams said, was supposed to be “a private conversation about coaching and when you have a job, and being coachable.”

“I said that in the Bible that Jesus talks about how we all have bosses, and we all are servants,” Adams added. “I was quoting the Bible about that.”

TTU first hired Adams as head coach in April of 2021 to replace Chris Beard. In Adams’ first year leading the team, he secured the most wins, 27, of any first-year head coach in TTU basketball history. He also led the Red Raiders to the Big 12 finals and the Sweet 16.

Adams’ impressive debut record, however, quickly dwindled earlier this year. One week before the 2023 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, TTU’s men’s team is only 5-13 in the Big 12 and 16-15 overall.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Watching Phones Instead of Reading Good Books Is Starving Kids’ Souls


BY: KATIE SCHUERMANN | OCTOBER 11, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/11/watching-phones-instead-of-reading-good-books-is-starving-kids-souls/

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Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education 2022 conference. It is excerpted here with CCLE permission.

My husband pastors a campus church at a Big Ten university, and we live amongst college students. It is a blessed life, one in which our evenings are longer and our mornings shorter, all because we have the privilege of fostering 50-plus Gen Z-ers in the faith.

What passion and curiosity reside in the hearts and heads of our young people! But do you know what else resides there? Fear and distrust of most everything coming out of the mouth of anyone older than them.

For so many of these students grew up reading, hearing, watching, and absorbing stories that assert that they are omniscient, that no outside source is as trustworthy as their own feelings. They are certain they know what is best for themselves, and anyone who asserts otherwise is an indoctrinated false prophet of the dead past who simply refuses to sing along with Elsa, “Let it go.”

How did these young people come to trust their own corrupted gut more than the wisdom of their parents? I suspect it has something to do with Cinderella, Ariel, Elsa, and Anna; as well as Monica, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, and Chandler; and “Modern Family,” “Sex and the City,” “Parks and Recreation,” Marvel movies, and even “Veggie Tales,” for many of our present college students were raised in homes dominated by screens.

Much of their free time was spent absorbing serial television, and while not every televised program, movie, and YouTube channel necessarily tells false stories, much of modern programming follows a storytelling formula that ensures the pet social agendas of screenwriters are always being covered in the plot and in ways that narrate lies surrounding sexual identity, the sanctity of life, the good order of creation and marriage, the strength of men, and the reality of absolutes.

Stories have always been a part of how we pass down what is good and beautiful and true to our children, but depending on the storyteller, this practice can corrupt as easily as benefit. As more and more families turn over the care of their children to institutions, programs, clubs, teams, and devices, parents are no longer controlling the narrative of the stories being passed down to their children.

The loudest, most powerful propagandist holds the bullhorn, and he makes sure the story’s plot fits his personal agenda, no matter if it is evil and ugly and false. This proves especially dangerous in the classroom, where most children spend the greater part of everyday away from their parents.

We now have generations of children raised by bullhorns, and it is commonplace for a child to be occupied by some sort of program every moment of every day, whether it is a daycare program, school program, televised program, sports program, or an arts program — you name it. Many of today’s college students have had few opportunities in life to grow bored, to daydream, and to experience what happens to their bodies and minds and emotions when not occupied. They seem to have missed out on what used to be standard human experiences such as unregulated play, relating to peers of all shapes, sizes, and maturity levels, and making messy, wonderful, formative relationships with imperfect people.

I have observed that when young people are denied the opportunity to share experiences with other real people, they bond with the fake experiences and fake people they see on a screen instead. It is not uncommon for conversations amongst college students to be centered around Disney or “Game of Thrones” or the show “Friends” or countless other streamed programs. Sadly, those Hollywood-scripted shows are the memories peers share, and those designed-to-disorder plots are the common experiences with which they relate to each other.

So, what do we do about it? How do we reclaim the hearts and minds — the attention — of our children? We have to turn off the television, certainly, and power down our devices and pick out the books to be read before bedtime as well as model chastity and charity and temperance and kindness and patience in our own lives.

As Rod Dreher suggests in “The Benedict Option,” “Christians are going to have to become better tellers of our own story,” for the screenwriters are already pitching a relentless campaign for that position, programming our children into an understanding of humanity and of God that is false, an understanding that fools’ men, born free, into living as slaves to bullhorns.

Bo Giertz, the most celebrated storyteller in my own tradition of Lutheranism, writes: “People often think they are free when they put themselves above God’s commands and don’t do what He wants. Actually, they only stop serving one power and begin serving another. Jesus tells us there is only one way to find true freedom: to remain in His Word, listening, receiving, and understanding. Then we perceive truth, and the truth sets us free, truly free.” (“Wednesday after the Third Sunday in Lent,” To Live with Christ, Bo Giertz, 224.)

We need more of this truth that “sets us free” in the stories our children are consuming. We need to read and discuss books with them that teach toward virtue and away from vice, so our youth can recognize tyranny and slavery to sin when they see it.

And they need to know they are not alone. When the time of persecution inevitably comes — when their character and endurance are put to the ultimate test — it is helpful for them to know that they are in good company. They stand with Jesus and the Apostle Paul and Samwise Gamgee and Josip Lasta and Charles Wallace and Katniss and the Rev. John Ames and Robbie Jones and saints and angels and hundreds of years of fictional heroes who have been tested and tried and even triumphed.

Think of it this way. A child is born having no formative memories of virtues and vices. At least, we hope he doesn’t, for firsthand knowledge of tyranny and sloth and intemperance would suggest that the child has been abandoned or deceived by a parent or abused by an adult or has endured some unthinkable suffering.

But a child can still know that patience is a virtue, that joy accompanies charity, that self-sacrifice has its rewards, and that chastity is a beautiful, worthy aspiration, because he has heard the story of Joseph in Egypt and Isaac on the altar and Stephen in Jerusalem and Frodo in Mordor and Bigwig in “Watership Down” and Anne in Avonlea. These characters and stories — fiction or nonfiction — give children memories of virtues before they experience them themselves. These stories teach children into a thought pattern and into a mindset and behavior that is virtuous, that is free.

As Wendell Berry writes in his essay “A Native Hill”: “It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.” Our children need us to keep telling them good, true stories — especially the true story of their forefathers, both in the family and in the faith — so they can learn to be better than they are. For we have already seen that, if left to the world and its false stories, our children will learn to be worse than they are.

Katie Schuermann is a full-time homemaker, a part-time musician, and a seasonal writer. Find her books and more at katieschuermann.com.

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Crazed Left-Wing Course Listings at the University of Chicago Signify the Downfall of the American Mind


Reported BY: EVITA DUFFY | JANUARY 27, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/27/crazed-left-wing-course-listings-at-the-university-of-chicago-signify-the-downfall-of-the-american-mind/

“Marxism, Anarchism, and the Black Radical Tradition,” “Witchcraft and the Cultural Imagination,” “Trans-bodies in Horror Cinema,” “The Problem of Whiteness,” and “Transnational Queer Politics and Practices” are not course titles invented by “The Babylon Bee” to mock the state of America’s universities. Rather, they are real classes I came across this year while scrolling through the course listings for the University of Chicago’s winter quarter. 

As a senior, I had flexibility in my schedule to take a class simply for the joy of learning, irrespective of whether it fulfilled a graduation requirement. This should have been an enjoyable experience. Instead, the process left me fearful of the close-minded young people being inculcated by my school and so many other academic institutions. 

As a politically conservative student, I am accustomed to being in the classroom minority. To be clear, I was not looking for a course that would reinforce my conservative beliefs (even if I was, “conservative” classes simply do not exist). All I wanted was to take a class that was not explicitly partisan by its very title or course description. I desired to be in a class where I would actually learn, with the help of a fair and open-minded professor who is intellectually confident enough to include multiple perspectives in his assigned readings. Unfortunately, it was incredibly easy to find swaths of leftist courses but quite difficult to come across classes aimed at genuine intellectual exploration.

There is a reason explicitly leftist courses like “The Problem of Whiteness” are prevalent, but it is impossible to take “conservative” classes and hard to even find open-minded ones. In recent years, conservative or middle-of-the-road professors have been weeded out or forced into self-censorship by a rigid, punitive academic culture. If a professor does not agree with the majority of his colleagues or dares to depart from left-wing orthodoxy, he is threatened and punished by fellow educators and students (even in the STEM fields).

While it is demoralizing for conservative students to never have our views and ideas discussed, much less validated, we at least have the advantage of constantly being intellectually challenged. Sadly, I cannot say the same for my leftist peers, who can fill their entire course schedule with classes that reaffirm their preconceived worldviews. 

Graduating after being virtually unchallenged for four years is not only a disservice to students; it’s dangerous for our country. A 2017 study by P. J. Henry and Jaime Napier showed that “education is related to greater ideological prejudice,” finding that the higher one’s education level, the stronger his political intolerance. This is the obvious byproduct of leftist thought saturating the academy—more time spent there necessarily fosters a one-sided sense of intellectual superiority. A more recent 2021 study done by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education found that 66 percent of students said they supported shouting down speakers. Shockingly, 23 percent of student respondents support using violence to stop a speaker. Both numbers have spiked since 2020. 

By indoctrinating and coddling young people, American universities are breeding intolerance. We are already seeing the effects of this indoctrination. Young leftists have disavowed our founding documents and fathers, and they censor, fire, harass, and publicly slander anyone who dares think differently from them.

Consider that our federal bureaucracies, the chambers of Congress, and the boardrooms of America’s most powerful corporations have only received the first wave of woke young people. Subsequent waves will be even more intolerant. Thanks to their immersion in the left-wing academic monoculture, the next generation will undoubtedly cement the downfall of the American mind and limit frighteningly more liberty in their wake.

This story was originally published in the Chicago Thinker. 

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Evita Duffy is a senior contributor to The Federalist, co-founder of the Chicago Thinker, and a senior at the University of Chicago, where she studies American History. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, & her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evitapduffy@uchicago.eduEVITA DUFFYVISIT ON TWITTER@EVITADUFFY_1MORE ARTICLES

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco (((Past Blast))) – Defund Propaganda

A.F. BRANCO | on

This cartoon is truer today than when first drawn. Lower and higher education is nothing more than Marxist re-education camps and we’re reaping their propaganda harvest. STOP SENDING YOUR KIDS THERE!

Higher PropagandaPolitical cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2017.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – National Emergency

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Where are the Republicans in this fight? It’s time to stand up and stop looking for others to carry the ball before it’s too late.

Enemy of FreedomPolitical cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2020.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated –  $1.00 –  $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 –  it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. – THANK YOU!… Venmo – @AFBranco

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Teacher’s Pet

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Why is the cost of higher education so high? Professors like Elizabeth Warren earning $400,000 for teaching one class.
Warren College TuitionPolitical cartoon by A.F. Branco 92019.
More A.F. Branco Cartoons at The Daily Torch.

Branco’s Faux Children’s Book “APOCALI” ORDER  HERE

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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, the great El Rushbo, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.

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