And 35,000 employee pay raises!
There is some irony in the presidents of Harvard and Penn defending campus free speech when that speech calls for the destruction of Israel and, by implication, the extermination of Jews. Given that conservative speakers espousing traditional values have been run off our supposedly most enlightened campuses.
The school presidents did such a poor job when subpoenaed before the Republican House of Reps this week that their jobs are in jeopardy, especially at Penn.
What did you expect? The “Universities” of Wisconsin hired $32 million worth of hate-speech monitors with the power to hire and, by denying tenure, fire. To penalize students and ban their clubs. Result? A 42-ton glacial boulder is accused or racism and escorted off campus (via a flatbed truck).
Reaction to moving Chamberlin Rock
correspondence addressed to the UW-Madison chancellor
(obtained thanks to an FOI demand made by Peter Anderson)
“Thank you for removing the offensive Chamberlin Rock from Observatory Hill. All these years I had walked or driven by this rock, thinking it was an inanimate geological formation. Instead I now know that it was a living, breathing relic of racism.”
“There is no denying it. You people are idiots.” — John Sinz, August 8, 2021
“Keep the damn rock where it is.” — James R Fortier, Class of 1970
→ Read all the correspondence:
Identity politics czars and their clampdown on dissent is a big reason why higher education ranks high among American institutions losing trust.
The Atlantic gives as an examples a Harvard evolutionary biologist who posited a binary world of two genders. Her departmental Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging task force bullied her off the faculty. A researcher was refused a podium at MIT to lecture on climate change because she had argued against affirmative action.
Throughout the hearing, the three presidents perfectly encapsulated the broader malaise of America’s most elite universities, which excel at avoiding lawsuits and increasing their endowments but seem to have little sense of why they were founded or what justifies the lavish taxpayer subsidies they receive.
— “The universities that don’t understand academic freedom”
The compromise worked out by Republican legislative leaders and system President Jay Rothman would have addressed that — starting with a freeze on hiring all those DEI bean counters. Speaker Robin Vos had wanted their immediate dismissal. The Werkes called for the rollback before Vos did.
The Board of Regents quashed that compromise this morning by a 9 to 8 vote. Once again jeopardizing construction of a new engineering building and putting on hold pay raises for 35,000 systemwide employees.
But almost the bigger loss was the creating a single endowed professorship at UW-Madison focused on conservative thought, classical economic theory, or classical liberalism. Imagine that! The chair to be endowed from private, voluntary donations! Someone familiar with John Locke, Adam Smith, Burke and Voltaire!
Amounts to “allowing far-right policy to be enshrined in the public university system,” Assembly Democrats said of the now-scuttled Vos/Roth deal.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: As if far-left policy isn’t taught at freshman orientation. Which it is.
23 responses to “UW regents choose DEI over engineering, free thought”
What you subsidize you get more of. And by the way how many administrators are on the payroll and how many students are there?
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/12/09/uw-regents-choose-dei-over-engineering-free-thought/ […]
Exactly. Not sure when I last quoted Andrew Sullivan (prior decade? century?), but my streak is now broken, https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-day-the-empress-clothes-fell-ffa:
“In the hearings, President Gay actually said, with a straight face, that “we embrace a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.” This is the president whose university mandates all students attend a Title IX training session where they are told that “fatphobia” and “cisheterosexism” are forms of “violence,” and that “using the wrong pronouns” constitutes “abuse.” This is the same president who engineered the ouster of a law professor, Ronald Sullivan, simply because he represented a client, of whom Gay and students (rightly but irrelevantly) disapproved, Harvey Weinstein.
This is the same president who watched a brilliant and popular professor, Carole Hooven, be effectively hounded out of her position after a public shaming campaign by one of her department’s DEI enforcers, and a mob of teaching fellows, because Hooven dared to state on television that biological sex is binary. This is the president of a university where a grand total of 1.46 percent of faculty call themselves “conservative” and 82 percent call themselves “liberal” or “very liberal.” This is the president of a university which ranked 248th out of 248 colleges this year on free speech (and Penn was the 247th), according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Harvard is a place where free expression goes to die. …
There should be one standard and it should be free speech. But there can be no free speech and no guarantee of it until the toxins of critical theory, and the architecture of its enforcement, DEI, are excised from the university altogether. Asking the current leadership to correct these lost institutions is an exercise in futility.
End DEI in its entirety. Fire all the administrators whose only job is to enforce its toxic orthodoxy. Admit students on academic merit alone. Save standardized testing — which in fact helps minorities, and it’s “the best way to distinguish smart poor kids from stupid rich kids,” as Steven Pinker said this week. Restore grading so that it actually means something again. Expel students who shut or shout down speech or deplatform speakers. Pay no attention to the race or sex or orientation or gender identity of your students, and see them as free human beings with open minds. Treat them equally as individuals seeking to learn, if you can remember such a concept.”
1. It is vital not to confuse the issue raised by the 3 presidents in Congress as a free speech issue. It is not. It is exactly what Dave says here, an issue about the politicized takeover of academia by a cancerous DEI bureaucracy that has metastasized into the bloodstream of the entire system of thought that is supposed to produce enlightened and educated citizens. Keep it up, Dave.
2. A question. Do you know where they took that rock? Is the rock still intact? Is so, I believe Madisonians and UW grads should organize annual pilgrimages to it, at which some key warrior in the battle I call for in No. 1 above, could speak and everyone else could picnic and party. Bari Weiss might be a good keynoter. Or John McWhorter (who wrote a great piece on the rock.) Or YOU for that matter. I’d fire up my good old 2007 Toyota and tool over to Mad Town myself from Michigan if such a party could be held. What do you say?
The Lefty darling DIE worm is turning; it can no longer deny it isn’t firmly within the despicable clutches of the Hate Industrial Complex
Michael Tomaskey (no Righty, he!) left no doubt in The Republic, (no Righty Rag, that!):
The Real Problem With Those College Presidents? Gross Incompetence.
Money Quote: “(Y)ou show up to Capitol Hill SO UNSPEAKABLY ILL PREPARED that you—and your coterie of almost-certainly overpaid handlers—HAVEN’T PREPPED FOR EXACTLY the line of questioning that Stefanik pressed upon you? INDEFENSIBLE” (bolds/caps/italics added)
THAT’LL leave a mark, am I right?
Anywho, it gets better:
Penn President Resigns After Antisemitism Hearing Backlash
Some well-heeled Lefty alum threatens to yank $100 mill unless they fire the X-Chromosomal Unit?
Priceless!
Think the Presidents’ (MIT [Claudine Gay] and Harvard [Sally Kornbuth]) sphincters aren’t tightening…?
The Gotch
As Stefanik said, “One down, two to go.”
1. It is vital not to confuse the issue raised by the 3 presidents in Congress as a free speech issue. It is not. It is exactly what Dave says here, an issue about the politicized takeover of academia by a cancerous DEI bureaucracy that has metastasized into the bloodstream of the entire system of thought that is supposed to produce enlightened and educated citizens. Keep it up, Dave.
2. A question. Do you know where they took that rock? Is the rock still intact? Is so, I believe Madisonians and UW grads should organize annual pilgrimages to it, at which some key warrior in the battle I call for in No. 1 above, could speak and everyone else could picnic and party. Bari Weiss might be a good keynoter. Or John McWhorter (who wrote a great piece on the rock.) Or YOU for that matter. I’d fire up my good old 2007 Toyota and tool over to Mad Town myself from Michigan if such a party could be held. What do you say?
Jon, I did some digging and learned that the glacial boulder was transported intact to university-owned land southeast of Madison. The geology department wanted it preserved for teaching purposes.
“the glacial boulder was transported intact to university-owned land southeast of Madison.”
That it arrived in its previous location gratis?
Priceless!
The Gotch
Sounds accessible. Seriously, think of the fun of an annual “rock” festival. It could have a nation-wide or worldwide draw, like Stonehenge. Or Woodstock. Or Wall Drug Store.
It appears that the Democrat Governor, the Republican Assembly leader and the non-partisan Chair of the Regents all favored the compromise. Who are the 9 Regents who torpedoed it, and why? (Don’t expect the answer to come from the hapless hacks that fancy themselves as local news reporters. ).
“Who are the 9 Regents who torpedoed it, and why?”
Bravo Idigo November
Golf Oscar!
The Gotch
Magill at Penn is toast as President, though she will remain on the faculty, as Professor of Gutless Equivocation.
“The nine who voted to reject the deal were all Evers appointees, including Board President Karen Walsh.”
Can’t help but think Evers is doing his best Alec Guinness from Bridge on the River Kwai:
“What have I done?”
The legislature should’ve included a demand for return of the Chamberlin rock to its original spot as part of the bargaining process with the Regents. Poor boulder. I hope it’s not smashed to pieces in a quarry somewhere. The annual pilgrimage idea is interesting.
I don’t know what a migraine feels like, but I imagine I’d find out if I kept reading the letters from insufferably woke students supporting removal of the rock and Honest Abe. I wonder if there is any way to expose their blanked-out names so I and other like-thinking people know who not to hire. There is a movement of alumni from other universities who are already doing this—it needs to be done here as well before this institution is damaged any further.
Funny to watch all this handwringing while Blinken has to do an end run around congress to get Israel ammo because congress has their head up their asses. More fake outrage while leaving them high and dry.
Got to respect the Woke crowd for falling on their sword and scream where their true intentions lie…and its not with the students, the 36k employees and certainty not the school of engineering.
If they would have any sense they would have done an LBJ, who said “a slice of bread is better than no bread” But no.
That stubbornness is not working so well for Hamas these days either.
Long tweet here but crucial to understand that we have to end DEI entirely. Vos must stand firm.
https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1734209119689544069
Plus 1 for referencing Dr. Jonathan Haidt, deft skewerer of despicable Lefty idiocy AND author of the seminal The Coddling of the American Mind How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure.
The Gotch
The good Doctor was on C-SPAN this morning discussing this very topic, as well as the rise of Jewish hate on campuses and how we need to hold administrators’ faces to the fire for it. It was refreshing that most callers, even a lot of Dems, were agreeing with him. Perhaps there is hope.
[…] regents of the Universities of Wisconsin get a do-over tomorrow. A make-up test, if you will. Saturday 12-09-23 they flunked basic math and forgot whatever history they ever […]