Campus Rot 12/13/23
Have you heard enough about Harvard in the news lately? I've reached my threshold. Whether it was that disappointing Congressional testimony, or the decidedly unfunny SNL sketch that skewered the wrong parties, my once proud association feels tarnished. After three grueling years, I'm done after my dissertation submission on Dec 18th. Phew! I'm cooling my heels until Spring Commencement, until the anticlimactic pomp and circumstance of cap and gown. I don't want to receive my degree from the morally vacuous President Gay. The smug opportunism of her short tenure has tarnished America's oldest university. The failure to combat campus antisemitism proved a boon to haters and Harvard became a superspreader. While Harvard Corp continues to publicly support Gay, the not-so-private chatter is that it's afraid of firing its first Black President, while also appearing to kowtow to bigwigs like Ackman.
Let's be clear: Gay and her ilk should be fired, not allowed to resign. Her latest drama centers on plagiarism, and I'm hopeful that it will finally embarrass Harvard into doing the right thing. The big-P is deadly serious in the academic world, and you have to be lazy, arrogant or a total fool to do it. Harvard purposely makes it a tough row to hoe: each semester, students and faculty reaffirm strict rules of conduct, check a dozen online boxes, and then verbally reaffirm their adherence in-class. A shocking amount of time is devoted to the tedium of MLA and proper citation. Harvard is supposedly unequivocal in its expectations for moral and academic integrity, yet as of today, it's attempting to redefine plagiarism to protect President Gay. Even the Student Handbook, and the direct link to the section on Academic Honesty, has been taken offline. Changes are clearly afoot! Why? I'll let Professor Swain, a Black, female, former Poly-Sci professor from Vanderbilt, answer that question. She is the primary target of Gay's academic theft and does not mince words to Harvard: "you don't get to redefine what is plagiarism"...that Gay is a getting a "free pass" because of DEI, which is "demeaning to every person, not just racial and ethnic minorities, but anyone who has worked in school, written papers, who's tried to follow the guidelines."
Yes, woke-Harvard is scared, despite the undeniable fact that Gay copied entire paragraphs, not just random words or sentences. The plagiarism goes back decades, to her doctoral dissertation, and even includes language stolen from Harvard colleagues. It's a big deal, but it almost feels like we'll be getting her on a technicality, in light of her dodging the bigger issue. I liken it to nabbing Al Capone for tax evasion - not as satisfying, but it will suffice. We've got other campuses to look at.
The rise of radical ideologies on campus stems from thought-leaders like Harvard, MIT, UPenn and Columbia. Over the course of my reading, I’ve cobbled together five drivers of our academic decline. These are not new ideas. And they are only five vertebrae in the spine of antisemitism, but they bolster an entire body of rot and should be dismantled. Be mindful of the hyperlinks! If you start clicking, be prepared to go down the rabbit hole. I've been spelunking for the past two weeks.
1. Reinstate the “Pursuit of Truth" as the Goal of Higher Education. To do so, we must end the focus on ideologies. The solution to our present problem with discrimination is not to invite more restrictions. President Gay's opportunism in transforming Harvard during the uncertainty of COVID, lays bare her own biases and hypocrisy: she wanted the fringe to become the mainstream! Study whatever you want, change society for the better, but don't upend the entire educational matrix to focus so narrowly on antiracism or indigeneity. When you do that, schools and grading become about the acceptance of this ideology. Almost 80% of Harvard students have received A grades since COVID, when her agenda came into play. That's ridiculous. It should be statistically impossible. If grading is no longer a measure of excellence or learning, rather of political adherence, then we've undermined our education system. Throwing SAT and ACT scores out the window only hides this pervasive deterioration. Further, we also must dismantle DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). Yes, I'm going there, but hear me out. We're consolidating power and wasting countless funds on a movement that not only hurts Jews, but all Americans. Jews don't need protected status or to further limit speech beyond the current law-we just need our laws enforced. The nebulous nature of Jewish identity - are we a people, a race, a religion? - does not fit into the progressive framework of DEI protection, which means we're forever outcasts. And it's not just schools, it's museums, nonprofits and most corporations - DEI has taken over. It's become the norm. Merit and excellence are almost points of embarrassment and beg the question: who did you steal that success from? We need to stop telling achievers, implicitly or explicitly, that they're somehow oppressors for their success. We need to stop pushing people outside the confines of some new ideological inner-circle.
2. End Double Standards on Speech. At Harvard, we can chant about the Intifada, but are accused of verbal assault if we use the wrong pronouns? We need space to teach and learn, as well as make mistakes. The environment is so fraught with social landmines that it cripples the academic process. At best, we've created a generation hesitant to speak up, for fear of offending, and at worst, we've created a precedent for a subjective code of conduct that can be wielded to oppress in the name of personal expression. It's the antithesis of freedom. This new vernacular has been codified, and permeates our campuses. Terms like social self-view, internalized racism, microinequity, othering, and positionality make it impossible to have a discussion, let alone a true academic debate, without someone waving the oppression-flag. The one that spins my head is privilege. I understand the potential negative connotations, but growing up a poor girl in rural Washington State, I aspired to privilege: my own house, my own car, the financial safety of a career (that I hopefully liked) and the ability to help my family. Americans should want the privilege of pursuing their interests, the privilege of taking care of their families. I honestly don't know how we reclaim much of this language, it's been so firmly redefined as discriminatory.
3. Hire Professors with Conflicting Ideologies. Academia has become politically uniform, which does not lend itself to debate, or diversity of opinion. At Harvard, 82% of the faculty self-identify at Liberal, 1% as Conservative and the other 17% undisclosed. That is shockingly one-sided and they are not alone. US schools have moved sharply to the left, which has pushed independents and conservatives solidly to the right. Our Universities should not be a source of societal division, yet that is the trend. Studies have shown that political diversity among professors and researchers leads to better truth-seeking across all fields, not just political ones. We must stop using the academic platform for ideological dogma, rather for teaching. Our kids could certainly use a massive boost in math, science and reading, per the latest nosedive in PISA and OECD data. Partisan divide devalues higher education. It casts doubt on the entire educational process, from admission decisions to the ROI aftermath of an expensive degree. American are actually asking themselves whether or not a degree is worth it? Yes! The US cannot afford to alienate any strata of society from entering the University fold, but it's already happening. Admissions and attendance are down and this is a horrible trend: we want more Americans educated, not less.
4. Stop Foreign Funding: The Network Contagion Research Institute report is the one everyone is screaming about. Bring your water and a power bar because it's overflowing with data. In short, our upper educational system was infiltrated by Middle Eastern money and the problem is so insidious, forensic accountants won't definitively find the end of the money trail. These countries got their expected ROI: when forked over big checks, they received tenured faculty and chairman positions, filling the halls with lifetime appointees to rubber stamp their agenda. We sold foreign powers a platform to spread their agenda: classes, degree programs, degree candidates, student clubs, and all other tangential means of bolstering pro-Arab, pro-Muslim agendas proliferated en masse. We have at least one full generation of citizens that was produced under this indoctrination-funding and are now permeating our society and professional world. Are they even aware that their education was bias-funded (and likely filled), or is that the new-normal? The report says that "correlation is not causation" but found that antisemitism was predictable by the amount of undisclosed funds received. It also caused some schools to dance dangerously around the line of support to collusion of foreign agendas. The US has been in a similar dance with Qatar post-9/11, which holds our Al Udeid Air Base and helps us out of debacles like our horrendous Afghan "withdrawal." They have frenemy status: we must not forget that their real buddies are the Islamic Jihadist movements of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar also holds the $6 billion in Iranian oil reserves that the US refroze post-October 7th. Sticky.
At least 200 American Universities and colleges illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undisclosed contributions from foreign powers, many of whom are authoritarian governments.
Those schools reported 250% more antisemitic incidents than schools that didn't receive funding.
Campuses that received funds were 85% more likely to see campaigns that targeted scholars for sanction, "including campaigns to investigate, censor, demote, suspend, or terminate."
Qatar, where Hamas leadership resides, is by far the largest donor, contributing $4.7 billion from 2001 to 2021.
The funding targets Ivy League schools, schools with regional clout, and thematic leaders in topics like Journalism (Northwestern), Politics/Foreign Policy (Georgetown) or Engineering (Texas A&M).
5. Stop Dubious National Funding. I'm mainly referring to our homegrown, Uber-wealthy Marxists. Yes, this oxymoron is real and makes me nostalgic for the Cold War days when ideologies were less murky. I'll give you two examples. Ferige Chambers is an heir to the Cox fortune, the 8th richest family in the US. He's the General Secretary of theBerkshire Communists, a rabid revolutionary group he supports with his $250 million piggy bank. Estranged from his family and committed to the Communist Revolution, he is a prolific agitator and funder of disturbing social media content and campus protests. His November posts state that he wants to "make Zionists afraid...We need to start making people who support Israel actually afraid to go out in public. We need to make all of white America afraid that everything they have stolen is going to be burned to the ground. That’s what makes them listen.”." Dude, you got me there. You're pretty scary. The second is entrepreneurNeville Roy Singham, whom the FBI has been watching since he was a teen in the 1970's, and his wife Jodie Evans. They fundThe People's Forum with nearly a billion dollars from the sale ofThoughtworks. They now live in Shanghai and are acknowledged Chinese sympathizers, with open ties to the Party. Their wealth and tech-savvy have made them formidable advocates of Chinese Communism, backing things like the pro-Chinese website Newsclick that “provides unique progressive coverage of China that has been sadly missing.” Oy vey. If they love the oppressed so much, why not ask their Chinese buddies about the concentration camps they're using on theUyghur Muslims? I guess the Muslim cause is only worthy if Israel is the counterpart. As US Rep Mike Gallager, Chairman of the House Select Committee said: the “The Chinese Communist Party uses tools like Confucius Institutes on college campuses, TikTok’s addictive algorithm, and organizations like those that Mr. Singham funds to divide and weaken America." It's the one-two punch against our youth: campus ideology, supported by untrustworthy social media.