-Reduce the flow of federal funds to universities
-Privatize the student loan market and make colleges partially responsible for student defaults
-Abolish DEI bureaucracies
-Wind down activist pseudo-disciplines
-Reform faculty hiring to restore ideological balance
-Punish universities that discriminate on the basis of race
-Tie federal funding to upholding standards of civil discourse and debate
–Break the accreditation cartel
–Turn a limited number of state universities into classical liberal arts academies
–Set up recruiting pipelines and employment opportunities for classically-minded scholars
–Establish new academic journals outside the existing left-wing circles
–Eliminate the requirement to have a master's in education for teaching in K-12 public schools, which will gut the state graduate schools of education
–Require state universities to sign the Kalven Statement and refrain from taking political positions as a corporate entity
–Require all universities that receive federal funds to provide annual summary statistics for race, sex, GPA, and SAT scores
–Enforce standards of civil discourse so that physical violence, intimidation, vandalism, and heckler's vetoes earn immediate suspension or expulsion
–Fund internal watchdogs to hunt for academic fraud
–Require state-affiliated researchers to preregister research hypotheses and make all data available to the public
–Reduce funding for scientific and social-scientific fields that consistently fail to replicate
–Legalize intelligence tests for admissions and hiring
–Provide high-prestige test-out options for individuals to demonstrate domain knowledge without having to earn a bachelor's degree
–Work with employers to screen for capacity, not degrees (an expensive substitute)
–Over time, reduce the overall number of placements at four-year universities—which should cater to the top 10% of the most academically gifted—and shift resources to lower-cost trade programs, community colleges, and professional training that provide a better ROI for society
–Wind down the repressive Title IX bureaucracy
–Significantly reduce the number of administrators and pseudo-therapeutic bureaucracies on campus
–Reward colleges financially for a low admin-to-faculty ratio
–Give tenured faculty raises as the number of admins is reduced
–Allow universities that have been relying on unlimited state loan subsidies (and predatory marketing to high school students) to go bankrupt and then restructure or shut down
–Submit the entire sector to greater market discipline
–Persuade alumni donors to stop giving
Can anyone help me figure out which of these ideas are "the demon of reactionary authoritarianism"?
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The Left is making a tactical blunder trying to turn "Free Palestine" into a George Floyd moment. Little upside: there is no proposed policy they can achieve. And huge downside: we can tether them to terror and start alienating affluent, high-capacity groups from their coalition.
Notice that capital is already beginning to shift: Donors are forcing changes at Ivy League universities and rerouting hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropic support. The organized Right must accelerate this process and capture some of the largesse.
The shift among Jewish Americans is also significant: many left-leaning Jews now see that campus antisemitism is part of the grand ideological project of the Left, and that bureaucracies of "diversity and inclusion" categorize them as oppressors, not worthy of protection.
Last week, Vox's Zach Beauchamp published a spectacularly dishonest review of my book. It's worth debunking for its own sake, but also in order to expose the emptiness, manipulation, and fraud that constitutes "explanatory journalism."
Let me show you how the media lies. 🧵
Beauchamp's basic argument is that left-wing ideologies haven't conquered America's cultural institutions because there haven't been "accompanying radical shifts in policy." This is absurd: the institutionalization of CRT, BLM, DEI, and trans ideology are well-documented.
The second argument is even more ridiculous. Beauchamp claims that left-wing violence was "wiped out" after the 1980s. But this is brazenly and obviously manipulative: he completely ignores the carnage of 2020, the most destructive left-wing riots in American history!
The SPLC and the ADL do not command the kind of power they once did. The SPLC tried to destroy Moms for Liberty by labeling it an "extremist group" and the ADL tried to buckle Elon Musk using its typical pressure tactics—both campaigns failed.
Time to counter-attack.
Both organizations are going through a "boy who cried wolf" moment. They subordinated legitimate work to partisan smear campaigns and have abused the moral authority associated with the fight against racism and anti-semitism to advance unrelated, left-wing ideologies.
They are forfeiting decades of reputation-building and exposing themselves as partisan agents, rather than trusted authorities on moral causes. Greenblatt, in particular, has been nakedly partisan and heavy-handed in his tactics, coming across as an ideological bully.
The ADL, like the SPLC, uses the frame of identity and public goodwill to defame opponents of left-wing ideologies as a whole. The organization falsely marked me an "extremist" for the very obvious and factually accurate claims that queer theorists seek to disrupt "heteronormativity" and that DEI bureaucrats seek to replace words such as "man," "woman," "mom," and "dad" with vague, genderless terms such as "parent," "caregiver," "partner," and "adult."
This has nothing to do with fighting anti-semitism. The people who publish these baseless hit pieces are left-wing bullies, plain and simple. Their opinions on such matters should be assessed in the same category as Media Matters and other partisan oppo organizations.
They know that they're smearing and lying. They once published the false claim that I had accused "LGBTQ+ people" of "'grooming' children." After I pointed out that this was defamatory and considered filing a lawsuit, they quickly issued an evasive correction.
As I told the ADL: "I have never accused 'LGBTQ+ people' of 'grooming' children, nor called anyone a 'groomer.' I've been careful in my language—and explicitly stated that 'grooming' is a term that captures a spectrum of behavior and has nothing to do with sexual orientation—and I believe you have made an error." They could not substantiate their smear, so they tried to protect their legal liability while still attacking my reputation.
That's part of the game. They make wild accusations and attempt to destroy reputations. Luckily, because this tactic has been abused so flagrantly, it is not working as it once did. The public is increasingly seeing these outrageous enemies lists for what they are: politically motivated smear campaigns to protect left-wing ideologies as a whole, under the guise of fighting against discrimination, in this case, anti-semitism.
The SPLC runs the same playbook. They ran this absolutely vile smear piece attempting to somehow link my reporting on radical gender theory in public schools to the horrific shooting in Colorado.
They didn't substantiate any link whatsoever—obviously, as there was none—and neglected to mention crucial facts about the alleged perpetrator's psychology and potential motivation: he was arrested after threatening to kill his own grandparents the previous year; his parents divorced when he was a toddler; his father was a porn star, MMA fighter, and drug addict; his mother was an arsonist and petty criminal; he identified himself as "nonbinary" (which may or may not be authentic).
Needless to say, this also does not have anything to do with the South, with poverty, with race, or with law—the supposed rationale for the "Southern Poverty Law Center." It's just a left-wing smear machine ramping up against perceived enemies. Totally dishonest.
MSNBC released an 11-minute propaganda film about the reforms at New College of Florida that was filled with false and misleading statements. The left-wing network promoted two outright lies that must be corrected.
Let's debunk them one by one. 🧵
First, MSNBC claimed that New College recruited a large baseball team but "doesn’t have a baseball field for them to play on." This is false. The college has negotiated a deal for a Division I-level field. The MSNBC producers knew this and lied anyway.
Second, MSNBC advanced the narrative that there was "not one class for marine bio[logy] that was being offered" for a student, who then dropped out. This is false. There are multiple classes in marine biology offered this semester, as well as additional tutorial opportunities.
The Guardian accidentally reveals the stunning ignorance of its writers and editors, who think that "logos," one of the richest concepts in the history of the West, carries only the plain meaning of "word."
"It's unclear what these words are supposed to signify." 😭
She didn't even Google it. Neither did her editors. It's all right there.