Niall Ferguson Explains Why He is Helping to Create a New College

Niall Ferguson's article at Bloomberg is titled, "I'm Helping to Start a New College Because Higher Ed Is Broken: Institutions dedicated to the search for truth have ossified into havens for liberal intolerance and administrative overreach."

In Heterodox Academy’s 2020 Campus Expression Survey, 62% of sampled college students agreed that the climate on their campus prevented them from saying things they believed, up from 55% in 2019, while 41% were reluctant to discuss politics in a classroom, up from 32% in 2019. Some 60% of students said they were reluctant to speak up in class because they were concerned other students would criticize their views as being offensive.

Such anxieties are far from groundless. According to a nationwide survey of a thousand undergraduates by the Challey Institute for Global Innovation, 85% of self-described liberal students would report a professor to the university if the professor said something that they found offensive, while 76% would report another student.

. . . . The number of scholars targeted for their speech has risen dramatically since 2015, according to research by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. FIRE has logged 426 incidents since 2015. Just under three-quarters of them resulted in some kind of sanction — including an investigation alone or voluntary resignation — against the scholar. Such efforts to restrict free speech usually originate with “progressive” student groups, but often find support from left-leaning faculty members and are encouraged by college administrators, who tend (as Sam Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College demonstrated, and as his own subsequent experience confirmed) to be even further to the left than professors. There are also attacks on academic freedom from the right, which FIRE challenges.

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Teaching Tolerance is Not Enough for Many Activist Teachers

I'm full-in for teaching students to be tolerant of each other. As I see it, the most important lessons are A) not to bully anyone, especially because they are seen as different and B) not to judge others because of how they look.

This is not enough for many teachers based on information Abigail Shrier has gathered. With regard to information relating to sexual relationships many middle school teachers are being encouraged to send one message to students, yet send another message to parents. Even more worrisome, many "lessons" about sexual relationships are turning into unauthorized therapy imposed on children without the knowledge of their parents. It is not surprising that many parents are outraged upon learning of these strategies. See here here and here.

Here's a dichotomy that works for me: Public schools should teach students how to think, not what to think. That boundary is not being respected in many schools, according to Shrier's recent article: "How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids: Leaked Documents and Audio from the California Teachers Association Conference Reveal Efforts to Subvert Parents on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation." Here's an excerpt:

Incensed parents now make news almost daily, objecting to radical material taught in their children’s public schools. But little insight has been provided into the mindset and tactics of activist teachers themselves. That may now be changing, thanks to leaked audio from a meeting of California’s largest teacher’s union.

Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents.

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The Consequences of Not Belonging to any Political Tribe

What is it like to not feel part of any political tribe? Mostly, it is to be dismayed to hear lies from the right and then lies of the left. It is to have a seat near the net of the tennis court, looking to the left, then the right, over and over, as lies are zinged back and forth. The party in power now, the Democrats, are certainly doing their part, whether it be immigration, COVID, Russia-Trump, abolishing the police will keep cities safer. And now there is the Democrat claim about Biden's economic package:

They are insisting that their plans, which are still in flux but amount to a call for some $4 trillion in spending over two bills, have no real costs at all—or that the costs should not be factored in, because they are "unfair and absurd."

As if $4 trillion will not risk massive inflation. As if $4 trillion will be completely paid for.

I'm not taking a position on whether parts of these packages make sense for the U.S. My concern is that the risks of these packages are being actively suppressed. I have very little respect for Joe Manchin, but I think he's correct when he claims that the current proposal amounts to "fiscal insanity." We are not having any meaningful national conversation about what is really in these bills and the extent of economic risk of committing $3.5 trillion to those things.  This, from the remorseless political party that threw the working class overboard decades ago.

This is simply the most recent example of a system that is completely broken with no hope of repair. It's a system where big corrupt campaign money and ideology drive the decisions, where inconvenient truths are ignored and suppressed and where most voters line up in ignorance to cheer their respective teams.

In four years, we might see the Republicans taken over, with their own brand of fiscal and ideological insanity. I truly see no end in sight.

This is the sort of thing that led George Carlin to indicate that he no longer had "a stake in the outcome."  I wish I could claim that everything is going well for our country, but I can't.

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Teachers Suing Woke Springfield Missouri Public School District

I keep hearing people claim that people like me are trying to prevent schools from "teaching history." Take a look at this federal complaint and the documents leaked to Christopher Rufo. Then ask whether these claimants are trying to prevent the schools from "teaching history"

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