Tag Archives: education

A Proposal for Harvard University

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Given the blatant antisemitic bigotry of Harvard’s President Claudine Gay, as well as her dishonesty, demonstrated by her plagiarism—She plagiarized her acknowledgments—and the antisemitism demonstrated by the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body, and its open condonement of Gay’s bigotry and dishonesty, when that body unanimously supported retaining her as President, it’s clear that drastic changes to Harvard University’s governance is badly needed.

A Harvard professor has suggested a pathway to that.

One faculty member, citing a carve-out in the Massachusetts Constitution that reserves authority over Harvard to the state legislature, has urged Massachusetts lawmakers to install a government official on the board to provide more transparency and public accountability.

Here is the relevant section of that constitution, from Chapter V, Section I, Article III:

…it is declared, that the governor, lieutenant governor, council and senate of this commonwealth, are and shall be deemed, their successors, who with the president of Harvard College, for the time being, together with the ministers of the congregational churches in the towns of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester, mentioned in the said act, shall be, and hereby are, vested with all the powers and authority belonging, or in any way appertaining to the overseers of Harvard College; provided, that] nothing herein shall be construed to prevent the legislature of this commonwealth from making such alterations in the government of the said university, as shall be conducive to its advantage and the interest of the republic of letters….

The professor is on the right track, but one government rep on a board of 13 or 14 won’t accomplish anything. The State needs to revamp the Corporation board altogether—maybe put on the board reps from the ministers of the congregational churches in the towns of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester in sufficient number that their aggregation outnumbers the remaining members, if they’re not, instead, to replace the incumbents. Additionally—these are Critical Items—the State needs to remove the President’s sole authority over the board’s agenda and to eliminate the board’s authority to select their own replacements.

 

Massachusetts’ constitution can be read in its entirety here.

A Brief Note

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The Wharton Board of Advisors—the Wharton is the business school of UPenn—is demanding leadership change at UPenn in light of UPenn President Liz Magill’s House of Representatives testimony in which Magill refused to say whether calling for genocide of Jews violated any of UPenn’s codes of conduct.

So far, so good. But then the Board wrote this in its demand:

In light of your testimony yesterday before Congress, we demand the University clarify its position regarding any call for harm to any group of people immediately, change any policies that allow such conduct with immediate effect, and discipline any offenders expeditiously.

But—if there are no current policies barring such conduct, what offenders can there be?

The failure of UPenn seems goes far beyond the university’s front office.

Federal Intimidation

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The Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden now is trying to cow school districts into pushing Progressive-Democratic Party gender identity and sexual orientation ideology by threatening to withhold Federal funding from the districts’ free and reduced-price school lunch programs.

This is Party using children as hostage in its push for that destructive claptrap. Those programs often provide the only healthy meal those children get in a school day, and denying those children is a blatant attempt to intimidate those districts into compliance with Party ideology. Party’s ransom demand is the surrender of those children to Party diktat.

Aside from that deep immorality, the move also is illegal. South Dakota v Dole made clear that the Federal government cannot use threats of withholding funding in order to coerce compliance with Federal diktats regarding intra-State, or local, behaviors. Dole was a case in which the Federal government withheld a percentage of Federal highway funding from South Dakota over its refusal to comply with a then-recently enacted alcohol drinking age limit, and South Dakota objected to the withholding. The ruling held that the Feds could, indeed, withhold a percentage of Federal funding, but it could not do withhold a high enough fraction to be coercive. Withholding all of the school lunch funding is plainly coercive, and it’s intended to be so.

Not Radicalized

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Recall the…incident…a few days ago in which a Hillcrest High School teacher was terrorized, solely for her support of Israel during the current Hamas-instigated war against Israel, and driven into a locked room for her own protection when 400 of the high school’s students rioted and targeted her, threatening to kill her, while waving Palestinian flags.

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks is vociferously denying that those students were radicalized; he’s insisting, instead, that

This is a really good school with wonderful young people. And I’m so taken aback by this notion that these kids are terrorists…or radicalized.

Say Banks’ claim is true, and these antisemitic, terrorist-supporting, rioting students aren’t radicalized. What does that say about what is going on in Hillcrest High, one of the NYCSchools for which Banks is responsible, that their antisemitism, their support for terrorism, their rioting actually is their normal behavior?

What does that say about Banks that he considers their behavior to be unradicalized?

Who Needs Knowledge?

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Plainly not teachers union teachers, at least according to the union. The New Jersey Progressive-Democratic Party-run State legislature agrees with them, too, which says volumes about the contempt Party has for ordinary Americans.

A major New Jersey education union is pushing Democratic Governor Phil Murphy to sign a bill into law that would eliminate the basic skills test requirement to become a teacher in the state.
The New Jersey Senate and state Assembly passed a bill in June that would allow the State Education Board to issue an alternative certificate to a teacher candidate who meets all eligibility requirements except for the requirement to achieve a minimum basic reading, writing and math skills test score.

The New Jersey Education Association union, via its political arm, the New Jersey Education Association Action Center makes the claim explicit.

[T]he basic skills test was an “unnecessary requirement” and it “created an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession.”

The only qualification a person needs to teach our children is a union membership certificate.

It’s not necessary to be able to cipher in order to teach arithmetic.

It’s not necessary to be literate in order to teach reading or writing.

It’s not fair to require these things.