Category Archives: Leftist orthodoxy

No CRT to See Here. Move Along Now.

Posted on February 9, 2022 by | 2 comments

Click to view more legible image.

The University of Virginia paid $32,500 to Critical Race Theory popularizer Ibram Kendi to discuss “racial equity” for an hour. The university contracted with Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau, according to an agreement obtained by The Daily Wire through the Freedom of Information Act.

The virtual event took place April 21 last year, and 876 people attended.

“The University of Virginia welcomes speakers from a broad array of perspectives to our Grounds every academic year and we often do pay speakers fees or other compensation,” UVA spokesperson Brian Coy told The Daily Wire. “Offering our community access to a diverse set of speakers and points of view is an important part of our academic mission.”

Oh, really? Continue reading →

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Posted in Leftist orthodoxy

UVa at the Intersection

Posted on January 27, 2022 by | 4 comments

Credit: UVA Today

by James C. Sherlock

UVA has forged yet another academic/political merger and named it, with characteristic modesty, the Karsh (major donors) “Institute of Democracy”.

To those who say the university has more “institutes” and “centers” than bricks, I say give this one a chance until a closer look.

The executive director is Ms. Melody Barnes. Ms. Barnes’ biography and CV reveal her to have an impressive education and to be well left of center politically. Like nearly every member of the UVa faculty.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

But let’s leave her to it. There is more to assess. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Leftist orthodoxy, Speakers, Panels and Events

The Memory (Hole) Project

Posted on December 8, 2021 by | 2 comments

by Walter Smith

“And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.” — George Orwell, “1984”

Charlottesville City Council recently voted to give the city’s Robert E. Lee statue to The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. The “Jefferson Center” (a deceptive name for a school that hates Jefferson) proposes to melt the statue and remold it into a new piece of public art that “expresses the city’s values of inclusivity and racial justice. … Our hope … is to create something that transforms what was once toxic in our public spaces into something beautiful and more reflective of our entire community’s social values.”

According to WINA News Radio, The Memory Project of the Democracy Initiative of the University of Virginia and other persons and entities, including the George Soros Open Society Foundations are listed as the first sponsor of this initiative. Continue reading →

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Posted in Leftist orthodoxy, Race, Equity and Diversity

UVa to Fund Woke Community Activism

Posted on November 27, 2021 by | 2 comments

It’s not enough for the University of Virginia to become an incubator of wokeness and let its ideas seep into the broader community. Now it is proactively exporting its leftist ideology. The latest initiative is the Equity Cohort, a shared project of the Virginia Institute of Government (VIG) and the School of Data Science.

“The core of local government is public service, of course, but there’s also the question of service for what?” said Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Siri Russell. “The fact of the matter is, I’ve never lived in an equitable community. I’ve never been able to see it. It’s almost like a thing that you’re aspiring to. This dream where your race, your ethnicity, your age, your gender, your income does not define your outcomes.”

And what does Russell propose? WVIR News says this: “She wants to see more governments creating and staffing equity offices, as well as implementing more equitable policies.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Leftist orthodoxy

How Not to Create a Diverse, Welcoming Workplace

Posted on September 27, 2021 by | 5 comments

Michelle Vermillion

by James A. Bacon

Michelle Vermillion was raised an old-fashioned liberal. She grew up thinking that people should be treated as individuals, judged, as Martin Luther King once dreamed, by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. She supports civil rights causes and endorses diversity in the workplace. Getting to know people of different backgrounds at work, she believes, is key for America to move beyond its racist past. When you get to know your coworkers as fellow humans, she says, you learn they want basically the same things you do.

But as a library staffer working at the University of Virginia Library, Vermillion felt increasingly increasingly ill at ease in the past few years. Rather than seeing a person’s race as an incidental part of his or her identity, the UVa Library administration began putting racial identity front and center. Town hall meetings and training programs made race a person’s defining characteristic.

“I’m not the one who changed,” Vermillion says. UVa changed. The traumatizing 2017 Unite the Right Rally in which white supremacists (almost all from out of town) clashed with counter-protestors, precipitated a bout of introspection about the role of slavery and segregation in the institution’s past. The Ryan administration doubled down on a commitment to recruit more Black students and faculty with its “Inclusive Excellence” program. The end result: library administrators today are fixated on race, and they are dedicated to imposing their ideological framework derived from Critical Race Theory upon library staff. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in Freedom of speech and expression, Leftist orthodoxy

Intellectual Enslavement at UVa

Posted on September 27, 2021 by | 1 comment

UVa memorial to enslaved laborers

by Jock Yellott

“This year, members of the Class of 2025 are required to attend a historical tour and debrief discussion centered around the history of enslaved
laborers at the University.”
— Sydney Hertzog, Cavalier Daily, Sept. 22, 2021.

Why does this rankle? The University of Virginia, after all, has many mandates:

• Social Sciences – 6 credits from two different departments
• Humanities – 6 credits from two different categories
• Historical Studies – one 3 or more credit course
• Non-western Perspectives – one 3 or more credit course
• Natural Science and Mathematics – 12 credits from two different
departments

Why shouldn’t 1st years also be forced to “learn about the University’s
history of white supremacy and enslavement that has been suppressed for
many years”?

If any students objected, they were smart enough not to say so. To the contrary, according to the Cavalier Daily. Students “really enjoyed going on the tour because it has given them context of where they go to school.”

This is not Woke faculty indoctrination, or at least not directly. Says the Cavalier Daily: “This program was built purely by students.”

Why should it bother us? Continue reading →

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Posted in Leftist orthodoxy

A Small Victory for Pluralism

Posted on September 18, 2021 by | 1 comment

UVA President Jim Ryan (left) poses with members of the Young Americans for Freedom at the 9/11 commemoration ceremony.

by James A. Bacon

I’m beginning to have a smidgeon of sympathy for University of Virginia President Jim Ryan.

On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Ryan attended an event sponsored by the Virginia branch of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) to commemorate the lives lost in the terrorist attacks. YAF is an avowedly conservative group, and the keynote speaker, retired Col. Dan Moy, is a UVa lecturer but also chairman of the Republican Party of Charlottesville. Nevertheless, the ceremony, which featured 2,977 miniature flags in the grounds, one for each American live lost — was not overtly partisan. Unless you happen to think that remembering lives lost to terrorism is itself partisan.

Ryan tweeted his appreciation to YAF. “Many thanks to YAF @ UVA for organizing this morning’s moving event commemorating the lives lost on September 11th,” he wrote.

The tweet immediately generated blowback. As the Cavalier Daily student newspaper reports, “students and other social media users” critiqued Ryan’s choice to thank YAF. On Instagram, his post generated 52 comments, most condemning the recognition of YAF. On Twitter, Ryan’s post received mostly negative 27 replies. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Freedom of speech and expression, Leftist orthodoxy

Another Free Speech Fiasco

Posted on July 19, 2021 by | 2 comments

Charlottesville attorney Charles L. Weber Jr., represented University of Virginia student Morgan Bettinger in legal proceedings involving the University Judiciary Committee, which condemned her for words that allegedly constituted a “risk” to other students. This incident is a case study in how leftist, “anti-racist” students at UVa wield processes and procedures, with the complicity of the administration, to repress free speech and chastise those who offend them. I republish here a letter from Weber to UVa President Jim Ryan asking for redress. We’ll soon find out how sincere Ryan is in his commitment to free speech and expression. — JAB

Dear President Ryan,

I am writing to urge you to correct a grave injustice perpetrated by
the University of Virginia (the University) against a student during this
past academic year.

Morgan Bettinger was unfairly punished by the University
Judiciary Committee (UJC) for speaking words protected by the
Constitution. However, because UJC appeals are limited to process, not
substance, the Judicial Review Board (JRB) concluded that the UJC
decision whether erroneous or not was unreviewable. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in Freedom of speech and expression, Leftist orthodoxy

Tagged

UVa Offers Social Warrior Lesson Plans to Virginia Kindergarten Teachers

Posted on July 14, 2021 by | Leave a comment

by James C. Sherlock

In case anyone thinks the left ever rests, the University of Virginia ed school has struck another blow to educate children as social warriors through its ”Educating for Democracy” project.  

“Democracy is not a spectator sport; it requires our participation, and this participation must be oriented toward justice. To create a more just democracy, citizens must be able to critically assess systems of inequity and work collaboratively to redress inequity and create lasting change. Dialogue is central to the process and can be transformative. Frequent and effective dialogue can engender equity and inclusion for everyone.” 

“We believe that K-12 students across the country have the power to embody these principles and shape America into the just democracy we all desire and deserve.”

So, since “we all desire” America to be shaped into a “just democracy” from it’s current, presumptively pitiful status, the Educating for Democracy project offers teachers free online lesson plans designed to create social justice warriors.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Leftist orthodoxy

Larry Sabato Is Not the Problem at UVa

Posted on July 12, 2021 by | 1 comment

Larry Sabato

by James A. Bacon

Rich Anderson, Virginia GOP chairman, is unhappy with the partisan bias of University of Virginia political-science icon Larry Sabato, whose tweets have turned bitingly anti-Trump. Anderson contends that eight of Sabato’s tweets from the past year appear to violate the university’s mission statement and faculty code of ethics.

“A reasonable taxpaying citizen can readily conclude that Dr. Sabato is demonstrating the rankest form of bitter partisanship,” Anderson wrote in a letter to University of Virginia President Jim Ryan. “In order to have faith in our institutions, it is essential that Virginians hold accountable those public employees and officials who violate institutional values, codes of conduct, and other guidelines of professional behavior.”

Anderson is entitled to his opinions, of course, as is Sabato. The question is whether the answer to Sabato’s bias is suppression of his viewpoint. Continue reading →

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Posted in Intellectual diversity, Leftist orthodoxy