The claim here is that a school superintendent was forced to resign because he promoted critical race theory. The anti-CRT people are claiming it as a victory for parents. Whats most striking is just how little evidence there is his claimed wrongdoing. 1/
From different reports it is clear that some parents were really angry about a mask mandate in school, and some previous school board meetings turned into massless melees. 2/
The Superintendent had also delayed and then stopped an anti-racism presentation that explained BLM. Some students were angry about this. But this hardly seems like the action of someone avidly pushing racial theories about race in his schools. 3/ lohud.com/story/news/edu…
Parents had accused him of promoting CRT, but its hard to see any evidence of that from news reports. He proposed a taskforce to consider issues of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which is not remotely the same thing, and a pretty middle of the road solution. 4/
Maybe there is more here than is being reported, but Rufo asserts an outcome without offering any evidence. The Superintendent sounds like someone trying to managing competing views on race and student safety, and was forced out as a result, which is disturbing. 5/
There is a 1990 book that argues that some public administration roles are "impossible jobs": administrators are tasked with reconciling conflicting imperatives and warring stakeholders. Classic example are regulators. 6/
But part of what has happened in the last 10 years is that more and more public management jobs have been moved into the realm of impossible. Conspiracism has expanded the range of conflict for the job of the education, public health or election official for example. 7/
Public officials know that there is a stakeholder groups that a) are motivated by new (or newly framed) items of conflict, many of which are not-reality based and b) will make their lives a living hell, and c) many elected officials will side with the conspiracists. 8/
Real research with hard statistics across policy areas would be very helpful here. Students/faculty looking to study public organizations: this is a great topic. Donors interested about good governance: think about the damage conspiracism is doing here. 9/
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The connections are pretty clear. Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society helped bankroll the work of Ginni Thomas. He also arranged for Clarence Thomas to attend Koch fundraisers. propublica.org/article/claren…
The shared purpose of Leonard Leo, Ginni Thomas, Clarence Thomas and the Koch network was to put right-wing judges on the court. And Clarence Thomas used his public position on the court to raise money for that.
Clarence Thomas used to support the Chevron doctrine, which allows delegation to administrative expertise. But the people who fund the Koch network can't buy off administrators, so they want to remove their influence from the process. Now Thomas agrees with the donors.
Also this guy: young people today can't afford a house because they occasionally buy new clothes
If the people @FinancialReview care for free speech at all, they will do the decent thing and allow replies to this tweet, allowing a full and frank exchange of views.
America has 22 times the firearm homicide rates as the European Union.
We are less safe and less free because of how available guns are in this country. healthdata.org/news-events/in…
America makes up about 15% of gun homicides, and together with five other countries constitutes half of gun homicides in the world. vox.com/2018/8/29/1779…
The reason more people in America are dying from guns is because there are more guns in America.
America is the only country with more guns than people. cnn.com/2021/11/26/wor…
New, from me: I wrote about how the emerging debacle at New College (one-third of faculty gone, students can't find classes, housed in airport hotels) reflects the incompetence of populists like DeSantis.
Competence, the ability to perform organizational core tasks, is an underrated quality. It is an especially overlooked quality by people who value other things, like ideological goals, or believe that existing institutions are corrupt, or who have never actually run things.
Fuck Around (left, celebrating the firing of a faculty who criticized the Regents)
and
Find Out: (right, soliciting faculty applications because you don't have enough to teach classes - one-third have left for some reason).
The DeSantis takeover of New College was meant to offer a model of a conservative-run higher ed.
The result is chaos, which is what happens when incompetent people who don't actually care about organizational mission take over public services. insidehighered.com/news/students/…
The NY Times recently featured Chris Rufo to explain how DEI was undermining liberal education.
You know what actually undermines a liberal education?
Losing one-third of faculty.
Not offering core classes to students.
Raging incompetence and blind indifference.
Rufo is seeking to personally recruit replacements. Which is completely at odds with what university trustees are supposed to do. No way that could go wrong, right?
From the internal Texas A&M reports: it was A&M Regents who signaled their opposition to McElroy, at which point the university figured out they would not tenure her.
Seems like the Regents cost A&M $1M. Nice job.
: ... tamus.edu/wp-content/up
Not great when a university President is saying "I'm assuming all texts were deleted" and then tells faculty she was not involved in hiring process. (She has since resigned).