Academics whose work was stolen by a top diversity, equity, and inclusion official at the UCLA School of Medicine say the scale of plagiarism is both “unheard of” and “unbelievable,” raising questions about how the California university’s failure to take action. 
An <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dei-official-at-ucla-school-of-medicine-massively-plagiarized-her-dissertation-on-dei">investigation</a> by The Daily Wire and City Journal found that Natalie J. Perry, who leads a DEI program at the medical school and is tasked with shaping the school’s “culture,” had stolen thousands of words without attribution for a doctoral thesis on the benefits of DEI. 
On April 12, The Daily Wire and City Journal provided the UCLA School of Medicine with a 14-page document containing<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dei-official-at-ucla-school-of-medicine-massively-plagiarized-her-dissertation-on-dei"> overwhelming evidence</a> of academic malfeasance. The school has not responded and there is no indication that it has taken any action, with Perry still<a href="https://medschool.ucla.edu/people/natalie-j-perry-phd"> listed</a> on its website.
Perry stole extensively from at least 10 different papers, at least four of whose authors she never even mentioned. The Daily Wire and City Journal shared passages she stole from each author with those victims, and asked what should be done.
Angelo Kinicki, an Arizona State University business school professor from whom Perry stole 1,000 continuous words, said that the findings, and the subsequent reaction, raise concerns about the institutions.
“That’s unheard of. It’s unbelievable,” he said after viewing evidence that pages 32 to 35 of Perry’s dissertation are virtually identical to a paper by Kinicki and two other authors, Chad Hartnell and Amy Ou. “Who would copy that many things, does this person have any original thoughts?”
“If she&#8217;s supposed to be the carrier of the culture and she steals people&#8217;s work, what does that tell you? What kind of culture are we creating here? And then for the institution to not want to respond? That’s the wrong kind of culture,” Kinicki said, adding that universities lose all value if their degrees and hiring processes do not amount to an assurance that the person is qualified.
The University of Virginia, which granted Perry a doctorate in education based on the plagiarized dissertation and famously has a strict “honor code” shaped by the ideas of founder Thomas Jefferson, said it would investigate the claims after it was sent the same information shared with UCLA.
“We are initiating an investigation according to our process,” said university spokesman Brian Coy, who added that “the University does have the ability to revoke degrees in cases where plagiarism or other qualifying forms of misconduct are identified and proven.&#8221;
Though the university’s Honor Committee said it is only able to accept reports on alleged violations within two years of when they occurred — Perry’s paper was published in 2014 — Research Integrity Officer David J. Hudson said he would examine the claims.
“When they hire this person, they’re trusting the pedigree of UVA. UVA cheated them by not enforcing standards. And then students trust that the person is qualified because they&#8217;re at UCLA, but they&#8217;re cheating the students,” Kinicki said. 
“If I was sitting on a tribunal I’d say revoke her PhD,” he said. “It degrades other degrees. If UCLA doesn’t, that’s an abdication of their responsibility.”
Perry also stole from<a href="https://psychology.msu.edu/directory/schmitt-neal.html"> Neal Schmitt</a>, a professor of organizational psychology at Michigan State University who is an expert on &#8220;personnel and selection and academic admissions.&#8221;
&#8220;It appears to be plagiarism to me,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire after reviewing a side-by-side of his paper and hers, though not the other examples. &#8220;If it is plagiarism, I do not believe the person should continue to hold an administrative role at UCLA.&#8221;
Many of the academics she stole from were left-wing ideologues writing about race, and have declined to publicly call out Perry, raising questions about whether it is acceptable in their field. Kinicki, the organizational culture expert, said that speaks volumes. 
“If those people who are victims won’t speak up or say something, they&#8217;re contributing to it, they&#8217;re condoning it,” Kinicki said. 
Perry stole four paragraphs from racial scholar Rubén Martinez, for example, but Martinez declined to comment on the findings. 
“Best approach is to bring it to the attention of her supervisor (is it a Dean?), and that person can then contact us,” Martinez said.
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-726421" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/Aguerre_Perry1.gif" alt="" width="906" height="790" /></div>
His co-author on the paper, Adalberto Aguirre Jr., is the editor of the journal Radical Pedagogy and a professor at the University of California Riverside. Aguirre Jr. said he would respond in the next few days, but failed to follow through. 
Among the other victims who have stayed silent is <a href="https://seis.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty-directory/sylvia-hurtado" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sylvia Hurtado</a>, a professor at Perry&#8217;s own institution of UCLA. Just like Perry, her credentials are nominally in the field of education, but in reality, she writes about race.
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-726417" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/Locks_Perry3.gif" alt="" width="1108" height="652" /></div>
Barron Sawyer, who manages an unofficial Bruin Alumni Group, said he wrote to Perry asking for an explanation, but received no response. He told The Daily Wire that the failure of other academics to speak up is “disheartening.”
“As the founder of a UCLA alumni network and a proud alumnus, I find the lack of action disheartening, especially as it involves a faculty member, Professor Sylvia Hurtado, who is herself a victim,” Sawyer said. “I urge the university to take immediate, transparent steps to investigate and address these claims to restore and uphold the high ethical standards expected at UCLA.” 
Aside from Perry’s plagiarism, high-profile academics have raised concerns about the competence of the people behind UCLA’s DEI programs, which have dangerously veered the school away from scientific rigor.
After the school required all first-year medical students to read an essay that stated concern about obesity is &#8220;violence on&#8230; Black, disabled, trans, poor fat people,&#8221; Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, said that the course was promoting &#8220;dangerous misinformation&#8221; and that the medical school had substituted &#8220;Marxist ideology&#8221; for medicine.
Flier<a href="https://freebeacon.com/campus/pedagogical-malpractice-inside-ucla-medical-schools-mandatory-health-equity-class/"> said</a> that anyone involved in approving the course was unqualified for medicine, and that the school&#8217;s dean, Steven Dubinett, should &#8220;change its leadership&#8221; to remove anyone who supported it.
Sawyer, the alum, added that the administration should remember its commitment to the principles espoused by legendary basketball coach John Wooden: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation.”

UCLA diversity official Natalie J. Perry (Credit: UCLA). At right, a UCLA flag (Credit: Icon Sportswire / Contributor via Getty Images)

‘Unheard Of’: Plagiarism Victims Sound Off As UCLA Remains Silent On Academic Scandal

Academia

California

At least sixteen universities are promoting the book “How to Blow Up A Pipeline,” which outlines for readers how to commit eco-terrorism — oftentimes making it required reading, a Daily Wire investigation found.
The book was published in 2021 by Swedish professor Andreas Malm and calls for terrorism and overthrowing capitalism, acknowledging that people will be killed as a result. “Demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed,” the book <a href="https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/22691428/vox-conversations-climate-change-andreas-malm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a>.
Now multiple state-funded universities took classes that were nominally on unrelated topics, and contorted them into courses that read just four books, including the pipeline manifesto and a communist manifesto. At the <a href="https://ib.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/syllabus/1530/INTEGBI/C165">University of California-Berkeley</a>, for example, students of Geography &amp; Interactive Biology were required to read the book. Instructors Jake Kosek and Paul Fine took what was ostensibly a biology course and transformed it into one on “decolonization.” The syllabus states that the “class focuses on the scientific practice of modern botanical taxonomy as a colonial formation that conditions our modern relations” and how the names of plants “were often forged to be of service to empire-building.”
The lessons across the country suggest that universities’ support for terrorism extends beyond the students supporting Hamas on many campuses. In fact, the book looks to Palestinian terrorists for inspiration, advising that, “As part of the mass resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip in the spring of 2018, Palestinians invented techniques for sending kites and helium-inflated condoms carrying incendiary materials across the wall to burn Israeli property.”
U.S. intelligence identified the book as a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/03/new-yorker-podcast-andreas-malm-523705" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“developing threat”</a> and security risk because “Malm encourages pipeline sabotage and property destruction.” Twenty-three government agencies, including the FBI, warned that the film adaptation of the book, released in 2023, could <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-fbi-alerts-warnings-terrorism/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">spark terrorism</a>.
A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/14/magazine/andreas-malm-interview.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times interviewer</a> was taken aback at Malm’s willingness to cause death. “It’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage,” the interviewer said.
“Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately,” Malm answered.
“Don’t say ‘unfortunately,’” the interviewer interjected.
“Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents,” Malm replied.
Malm said he hasn’t had the opportunity to blow up a pipeline personally but that he would &#8220;gladly participate&#8221; if given the opportunity.
“If I were part of a group where something like blowing up a pipeline was perceived as a tactic that could be useful for our struggle, then I would gladly participate,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I have engaged in as much militant climate activism as I have had access to” and “I’ve done things that I can’t tell you or that I wouldn’t tell others publicly.&#8221;
He said he trained his four-year-old son to “be on the lookout for S.U.V.s&#8221; because the child &#8220;knows these are the bad cars&#8221; and has &#8220;an awareness of the tactic of deflating S.U.V. tires.”
His own children were not the only youth being inculcated with an ideology of destruction.
In Spring 2022, <a href="https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&amp;context=le_oers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">City University of New York</a> professor Joseph Mohorcich required students to read the book as part of a course called Politics and Human Survival, which persuaded students that without radical action, “everyone could die a terrible death.” Students were also required to read “Revolutionary Suicide” by Black Panthers member Huey Newton, who was accused of murder and rape. Mohorcich wrote a paper called “What level of resistance to air pollution is justified? On violence and self-defense.”
<a href="https://webapp4.asu.edu/bookstore/viewsyllabus/2221/34503" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Arizona State University</a>, a public university, required students of Professor Mina Suk’s “Are Humans Special? Environmental Theory” to read &#8220;How to Blow Up a Pipeline&#8221; that same semester.
The <a href="https://courses.complex-systems-laboratory.org/cgs110" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of California, San Diego</a> required it in a class taught by Professor of Environmental Physics Brad Werner called “CGS 110 Intersectional Struggles for Environmental Justice.” The course says it focuses on “Colonial, capitalist and imperialist exploitation of and damage to the environment” and how “resistance developed,” using “Critical Gender Studies Frameworks.” It includes “role-play exercises and simulations of exploitive/extractive-resistance movement systems.” Werner once argued for “sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups” because the <a href="https://qz.com/154196/the-only-way-to-stop-climate-change-now-may-be-revolution" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Earth was “f**ked</a>.”
The <a href="https://lsj.washington.edu/courses/2023/winter/lsj/491/b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Washington</a> required it in “Special Topics in Rights,” where Professor of Political Science Jamie Mayerfeld asks, “Does capitalism help or hinder responsible climate policy? Is socialism a better way?” On the syllabus under the heading “What Should Activists Do?” is &#8220;How to Blow Up a Pipeline.&#8221; Only four other books are required; one is How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century and another is A Planet to Win: The Case for a Green New Deal.
At <a href="https://coursefinder.illinoisstate.edu/eng/384/#22451" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Illinois State University</a>, students in an English class are required to read only four books, one of which is &#8220;How To Blow Up a Pipeline.&#8221; Another is a book on Marxism by Friedrich Engels, whom Vladimir Lenin called “the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat.” Professor Christopher Breu describes capitalism as “cancerous” and “violence.”
Next semester, <a href="https://ascnet.osu.edu/storage/request_documents/5748/GEOG%203597.03%20Course%20Change.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ohio State University</a> may change the title of “Environmental Citizenship” to “Climate Justice,” and require students to read the book as one of only four required readings. Another of the four is “Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards The Idea of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/sociology/social-theory/marx-anthropocene-towards-idea-degrowth-communism?format=HB&amp;isbn=9781108844154" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Degrowth Communism</a>.” That book, sold for $110, argues for making Western countries poorer.
The course will no longer focus on “interdisciplinary perspectives on the environment,” but instead on “political strategies for climate change” and “capitalism.” Professor Joel Wainwright warns ominously that “The carbon profiteers hope you fail to connect the dots,” and argues for overthrowing not only capitalism, but also the concept of sovereign rule.
Wainwright, a geography professor, is the author of <a href="https://geography.osu.edu/people/wainwright.11" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rethinking Palestine and Israel: Marxist Perspectives.</a> In his book “Climate Leviathan,” he praised “the most radical strategies of the climate justice movement” and called for “revolutionary events” overthrowing the U.S. government as well as that of China, because China is too “capitalist.”
A spokesman for Ohio State said the course “is not listed for summer or autumn 2024,” though the change request form says “Autumn semester 2023 Tuesday &amp; Thursday, 9:35-10:55 A.M.” and is listed as having been approved at every level except one, with the final one pending.
None of the other universities responded to requests for comment.
The Department of Homeland Security defines terrorism as any act that &#8220;is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources.”

Environmental Activists Call On Biden Administration To Cancel Oil Pipeline Projects

State Universities Are Teaching Students To Blow Up Oil Pipelines, Records Show

Climate Change

College

Terrorism

The U.S. State Department paid for censorship practitioners from Germany, which does not enjoy the same freedoms as Americans do from the First Amendment, to train teachers in the United States how to police so-called &#8220;disinformation,&#8221; records show.
The records unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act by the Media Research Center (MRC) found that the State Department paid for trainings that were created mostly by German “disinformation” activists, and that that program was organized by an advocacy group that promotes similar laws in the United States, while sharing top officials and finances with a for-profit anti-disinformation firm that could profit from such laws.
The <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/FINAL%20REPORT%2C%20Medialogues%20on%20Propaganda-3-5.pdf-1704380591904.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Medialogues on Propaganda”</a> training sessions, funded by a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, consisted of 11 online meetings from June 2021 to April 2022, with an audience of 700 schoolteachers. The intent was to train teachers to “inoculate” students against disinformation and train them in “media literacy,” a nebulous term that shifted between claiming that media sources that questioned the government or caused offense to liberals were not trustworthy, and that schoolchildren should create their own media parroting progressive activism.
The <a href="https://www.mrc.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MRC</a> investigation, shared exclusively with The Daily Wire, found that a group at the University of Rhode Island, an activist nonprofit, and a for-profit censorship firm all shared top officials and projects. The three entities propped each other up to give a veneer of credibility to behaviors that were otherwise partisan or profit-seeking, MRC said.
The anti-disinformation officials also allegedly violated their own purported tenets — misleading about their financial connections; promoting misinformation like the Trump-Russia hoax and censoring likely true information like the lab-leak theory; and opposing efforts to squash misinformation when it applied to leftist errors like the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/survivor-of-maos-china-cultural-revolution-debates-american-exceptionalism-with-1619-project-nyt-journalist">1619 Project</a>.
The State Department sessions were used by its activist organizers to promote products from their for-profit “partner,” Ad Fontes, as well as NewsGuard. The Daily Wire is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-and-the-federalist-sue-biden-state-department-over-censorship-effort" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suing the State Department</a> for promoting the latter tool, which has been used to economically punish domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions.
A Three-Headed “Media Literacy” Monster
The seminars were conducted by a team of three entities including Germany’s University of Würzburg’s Media Education &amp; Educational Technology Lab and the University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab, both government entities.
The Rhode Island Media Education Lab has for years served as a center of liberal censorship efforts. It held a seminar for teachers on “how to teach students about the limits of freedom of expression.” It tried to confront the “white supremacy” of “digital blackface,” or when white people use images featuring black people.
But there was also the third entity in charge of the project: the nonprofit Media Literacy Now (MLN), which as the <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/FINAL%20REPORT%2C%20Medialogues%20on%20Propaganda-20-28.pdf-1704380742768.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“fiscal sponsor”</a> played a central role. The Rhode Island Lab is arguably a front for the activist group with which it has frequently partnered, providing an academic veneer to a something that&#8217;s closer to partisanship, the Media Research Center report said.
MLN lobbies for mandatory training in schools to fight “misinformation” and “online radicalization,” boasting that it has helped <a href="https://medialiteracynow.org/impact/current-policy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">convince 18 states</a> to make laws on media literacy training. And while the Rhode Island Lab wrote an entire report on the importance of “media literacy” without ever defining it, MLN had spoken more clearly, calling it a “tool to create the society we all deserve: one that nurtures racial equity, social justice, and true democracy. Media literacy equals cultural change.”
That missive came below the tagline “Justice now. Equality now. Democracy now,” and a graphic of the MLN logo superimposed over a picture of a protest with signs such as <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Media%20Literacy%20Now%20community%20fighting%20for%20democ...-1-2.pdf-1704380791281.pdf">“ACAB,”</a> the antifa slogan standing for All Cops Are Bastards.
MLN promotes a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231218105356/https://www.who.int/news/item/23-09-2020-managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting-healthy-behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">World Health Organization</a> statement that said that “An infodemic is an overabundance of information, both online and offline. It includes deliberate attempts to disseminate wrong information” and must be addressed by “the UN system, with Member States and with each other, and to… prevent the spread of  mis- and disinformation.” Continuing with the virus metaphor, MLN said it intends to “inoculate” children against “misinformation.”
The founder of the Rhode Island Lab and advisory board member of MLN is University of Rhode Island communications professor Renee Hobbs, who attempted to push federal legislation creating <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2240/">$60 million</a> in subsidies for anti-disinformation work like hers — legislation whose momentum rested on the idea that Russians caused Trump to win in 2016, itself a conspiracy theory.
Hobbs hosted the State Department-funded seminars while she also chaired a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) group that argued that English teachers should “move beyond” teaching children to write, and instead “disrupt classroom hierarchies” and focus on “consumerism, and economic injustice.” (True to form, Hobbs&#8217; Rhode Island Lab showcased an image of a <a href="https://mediaeducationlab.com/index.php/events/teaching-capitol-siege" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lego</a> set to push teachers to talk with children about the &#8220;Capital Siege,&#8221; a misspelled reference to the January 6 protest at the Capitol. It does not appear that Lego actually made the set in the image.)
Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews <a href="https://washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/01/national-council-english-teachers-change-position/">wrote</a> that the group in charge of training 35,000 English teachers had lost “its grip on reality&#8221; with its statement that &#8220;the time has come to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education” in favor of turning children into “change agents.”
MLN immediately called for a reeducation camp for the Washington Post columnist. Hobbs called Mathews <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/01/national-council-english-teachers-change-position/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“smug” and “whiny.”</a> Emails obtained by MRC show that MLN&#8217;s president, Erin McNeill, wrote that by not approving of Hobbs’ activities, Mathews — one of the most experienced journalists at one of America’s largest newspapers — had shown himself to be “desperately in need of media literacy.”
McNeill also coached Hobbs to be more discreet, saying NCTE should “steer away” from saying that English should be replaced with “critical pedagogies” like Critical Race Theory because it makes it <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Re_%20In%20the%20news_%20National%20English-teaching%20grou...-1.pdf-1704381013264.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“evident”</a> that they “have an agenda beyond literacy.”
MLN advocated for Texas to mandate media literacy in schools, but when Texas lawmakers did just that but included the 1619 Project as an example of disinformation, it turned against the law. “Although it mandates media literacy within a teacher training program on civics education, it also takes some <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/It%27s%20never%20been%20more%20important%20to%20act%20for%20Media...-3.pdf-1704381060513.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">anti-free speech steps</a>,” said the group, whose mission is devoted to suppressing speech that, like the 1619 Project, is factually flawed.
When asked why the State Department would fund a propaganda seminar aimed at Americans, the State Department told The Daily Wire that with its <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/e76523fa-f221-13aa-a815-6d9081ee37de-R/latest?section=transactions-over-time" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$30,000 grant</a> to Media Literacy Now, “the U.S. Embassy in Germany supported the participation of German participants in the media literacy program you are inquiring about.”
But that doesn’t change who the target audience was. German “experts” were lecturing to an audience of mostly Americans, with the intent that they would carry the lessons back to their school districts. The conference organizers also didn’t recognize any such distinction in their <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Full+FINAL+REPORT%2C+Medialogues+on+Propaganda.pdf-1704381599402.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">final report</a>. They wrote, “Thanks to a grant from the Public Affairs Section of the Berlin Embassy, we invited German, American, and global educators to gather online,” though “our total number of German participants was smaller than we had hoped.”
Ad Fontes
The third head of the three-headed monster of interconnected “disinformation” groups is the for-profit media monitor, Ad Fontes. The company assigns purported <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/media-ratings-firm-trying-to-influence-what-news-sites-you-visit-heavily-favors-left-leaning-outlets-over-conservative-journalism">“bias” ratings to news sources</a>, rating conservative media as twice as unreliable as liberal sources. Then it charges tech firms for the list, and the firms use it to steer viewers away from supposedly unreliable content.
MLN acknowledges that it has a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231225164609/https://medialiteracynow.org/about/partners/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“strategic affiliation”</a> with Ad Fontes: the media monitor directs a <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/ISD000001MRC%20-%20ISD000354MRC-part-2.pdf-1704381072149.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">portion of its income to MLN</a>, which in turn advocates for laws that would steer millions of dollars to the for-profit firm and its peers. The president of MLN’s board, Jen Furlong, is the director of communications for Ad Fontes.
Ad Fontes CEO Vanessa Otero is also on the advisory board of MLN. Otero was a speaker at the State Department seminars and used them as a platform for a sales pitch for her firm. She also said media literacy training should be “required for everyone from a very young age.”
MRC interviewed Furlong and Otero, who denied that Al Fontes had ties to the government. Furlong said on her podcast, “Ad Fontes Media has <a href="https://www.communicationtwentyfourseven.com/podcast/episode/7cc24a54/no-i-am-not-a-super-secret-analyst-spy-set-to-crush-conservative-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener">zero ties</a> to the federal government!”
MRC concluded that “these statements are verifiably false.&#8221;
&#8220;Furlong is president of Media Literacy Now’s board of directors, and Media Literacy Now organized the State Department-funded seminar,&#8221; the group found. &#8220;Otero — in her official capacity as Ad Fontes CEO — was the featured speaker at said State Department-funded seminar, hosted by the State Department-funded Rhode Island Lab. Otero was celebrated by the seminar host Hobbs, who serves with Otero on Media Literacy Now’s board. Otero then proceeded to give a lengthy sales pitch for Ad Fontes products, all while concealing any of these facts from the audience.”
<table border="0" cellspacing="0">
<colgroup width="113"></colgroup>
<colgroup width="161"></colgroup>
<colgroup width="174"></colgroup>
<colgroup width="113"></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="left" height="23">Entity</td>
<td align="left">URI (Academic)</td>
<td align="left">MLN (Advocacy)</td>
<td align="left">Ad Fontes (Profit)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" height="23">Jennifer Furlong</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="left">Board president</td>
<td align="left">Director of Communications</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" height="23">Erin Otero</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="left">Advisory Board</td>
<td align="left">CEO</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" height="23">Renee Hobbs</td>
<td align="left">CEO</td>
<td align="left">Advisory Board</td>
<td align="left"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" height="23">State Department conferences</td>
<td align="left">Project Partner</td>
<td align="left">Project Partner</td>
<td align="left">Product promoted at</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Germany
The seminars pushed a “Data Detox Kit,” which instructs teachers to install NewsGuard, a similar product to Ad Fontes. NewsGuard is a for-profit firm that rates news outlets — red-flagging conservative news outlets while rubber-stamping liberal ones — and then sells the lists to advertisers with the threat that they could face boycotts if they place advertisements on a disreputable media outlet.
Aside from the MLN speakers, most of the State Department speakers were European. The speaker who pushed the “Data Detox Kit” was Daisy Kidd, a self-proclaimed activist whose group, Tactical Tech, is partnered with George Soros-funded, left-wing groups as well as the Goeth Institute, which MRC calls “a propaganda wing of the German government.”
The so-called kit trains kids to reject misinformation by using left-leaning factcheckers like Snopes and PolitiFact—which have repeatedly “debunked” factual articles that were critical of liberals — but tells them <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230610165827/https://datadetoxkit.org/en/misinformation/fakenews/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not to use</a> the term “fake news,” a colloquialism popularized by Trump.
Kidd also used the sessions to promote a United Nations-funded curriculum called “The Glass Room,” a game designed to train kids what to believe&#8211;including that it is “false or misleading” that “China was responsible for releasing the coronavirus.”
Another speaker at the State Department seminars worked for a European group called MEET Tolerance. It lamented that on the internet, “it is not just progressive voices which are being spread,” but also “ideologies which are based on hatred.” That group promotes a book called, “The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe.”
The disinformation experts seem to believe that while media that does not serve their aims inherently lacks credibility — like the Washington Post article — media produced by young children would be credible. MEET teaches how to turn children into “media producers” who advocate “intercultural values and social justice.”
Part of the curriculum was developed by socialist German politician Konstantin von Notz, who helps oversee Germany’s intelligence agencies and has given away balloons and stickers to recruit children to create the impression of support for an international censorship law to block “haters” and “right wing extremism,” MRC said.
The Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
In Germany, tech platforms are punished with steep fines for not censoring users’ content, and those who opposed the censorship measures were placed under government surveillance. Those efforts have been “horrifyingly effective” in Germany, and the U.S. State Department is now importing Europe’s most Orwellian techniques directly from the source, MRC said.
American teachers were, in turn, paid to transform what they learned at the State Department sessions into lesson plans for children. For example, April Leach, a Florida schoolteacher, attended the sessions and used what she heard to create a “social emotional learning” lesson plan that promoted Ad Fontes. A left-wing foundation paid her <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Full+FINAL+REPORT%2C+Medialogues+on+Propaganda.pdf-1704381599402.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$8,000</a> through an “SEL in Action Award,” according to the MRC report.
Another attendee, a Washington State educator named Lauren McClanahan, illustrated the circular nature of the disinformation ecosystem. She attended the State Department seminar, and then created a curriculum that relied on NCTE’s call to pursue social justice instead of reading and writing to justify having students create “public service announcements (PSAs) about a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357491535_Seeking_Justice_in_Your_Own_Backyard_Creating_PSAs_for_Social_Change" target="_blank" rel="noopener">social justice topic</a>.”
The videos featured children pleading with people to donate to leftist groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, whose subsidiary is a Rhode Island Lab “partner,” MRC found. McClanahan was named an &#8220;affiliated faculty&#8221; of the Lab.
The documents obtained under FOIA by the Media Research Center show how Hobbs, the Lab&#8217;s founder, often blurs the line between “media literary” and <a href="https://www.washingtoninformer.com/u-s-residents-brace-for-violence-particularly-if-trump-loses/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">progressive politics</a> that has nothing to do with disinformation. Her groups’ final report on the training sessions boasts that she used the State Department seminar to bring “media literary” to Austin, Texas’s police academy. That included making sure videos didn&#8217;t promote stereotypes and warning them not to raise an American flag for slain police officers because it might be offensive, MRC said.
Furlong and Hobbs did not return requests for comment.
MRC said that parents should ask their school board if Ad Fontes or NewsGuard are used in their schools, state legislatures must ban them from receiving funding, and attorneys general should investigate whether “activist” groups pushing “disinformation” laws are receiving kickbacks from censorship firms who would stand to profit off of such laws.
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The U-RI’s Media Education Lab trained teachers how to discuss what it called the “Capital Seige.” Its founder advocated for English teachers to turn from topics like spelling to social justice. / University of Rhode Island Media Education Lab

State Department Paid Germans To Bring Censorship And Propaganda To U.S. Schools

Censorship

NewsGuard

Rhode Island

State Department

An analysis of twenty years of academic literature found that there is little or no evidence that minorities are mistreated by the criminal justice system when it comes to punishment, despite assertions to the contrary by policymakers, media, and academics.
“In recent years it has become common belief within the scholarly community as well as the general public that the criminal justice system is biased due to race and class issues. We sought to examine this with meta-analysis. Our results suggest that for most crimes, criminal adjudication in the US is not substantially biased on race or class lines,” professors <a href="https://www.stetson.edu/other/faculty/christopher-ferguson.php">Christopher J. Ferguson</a> and Sven Smith of Stetson University found in a study to be published in the criminology journal Aggression and Violent Behavior and obtained by The Daily Wire.
“Overall, this is a cause for optimism,” researchers concluded—though their findings also called into question the honesty and rigor of the work conducted by race-fueled scholars, whose weaknesses were highlighted this month in former <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ap-blasted-for-article-labeling-plagiarism-as-new-conservative-weapon-in-wake-of-claudine-gay-resignation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Harvard president Claudine Gay</a>.
As a meta-analysis, the study did not create a new dataset on criminal sentencing and race, but rather examined 51 studies conducted by others looking at the question since 2005. The numbers suggesting no or marginal racial bias in punishment were therefore collected by the existing studies, but those authors often claimed to have found racial bias in their writings, even when their numbers did not back it up.
“We express the concern that evidence for racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system has been consistently weak, and that scholarly narratives have too often ignored this in favor of the systemic racism narrative,” Ferguson and Smith wrote.
Some of the studies found no evidence of racism in criminal sentencing and said so clearly, but their findings were simply ignored by the media, politicians, and other academics, who at times did not acknowledge a single paper dissenting from their hypothesis in their citations.
“At present, we believe that the evidence on racial bias in criminal justice adjudication has been poorly communicated to the general public and policymakers. In many cases, it appears that data calling into question beliefs in structural racism in the criminal justice system are simply being ignored, both by scholars in the field and by policy makers,” the new paper said.
When combining the 51 studies, the numbers “did not reach evidentiary standards to support the hypothesis that race or class are predictive of criminal adjudication” when it comes to all crime types, violent crimes, or juvenile crimes. For drug crimes, “small disparities were found… suggesting that race/ethnicity is associated with between 1.6 to 1.8% of the variance in criminal adjudication” among blacks and Hispanics facing drug charges, versus whites&#8211;a percentage so small that policy discussions focused on it are unlikely to solve any problems.
“There was no evidence of a class effect, and Asians actually received more favorable treatment during criminal adjudication than Whites, albeit not at a level that met our evidentiary standard,” the paper said.
Scholars determined to find racial bias were often able to claim to have made a statistically significant finding because court records allow for studies to include tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of cases. In science, the threshold for “statistical significance” is a balance between how big the effect is and how many examples were included in the study. In studies with huge amounts of criminal cases, even the most minute differences in criminal sentences can technically be called “significant.” But in the common meaning of the word, a years-long prison term being a few days shorter or longer, on average, for different race or class groups is not actually significant, and is essentially “noise” in the data set, the paper said.
Among other signs of biased or poorly done science, race researchers often did not “pre-register” their studies by laying out in advance their hypothesis and what they would do to determine if it was true or not. That meant that if their initial methodology found no evidence of racism, they could simply slice and dice the data in different ways until they found some way in which they could claim vindication. (Ferguson and Smith’s meta-analysis was pre-registered.)
Such researchers also did not set out in advance what kind of numbers would be required to show that the criminal justice system is racist. “Put simply: it is helpful to know what data we’d expect to see if the theory is wrong and what the threshold for rejecting the theory might be. Without such clear guidelines, theories may persist endlessly despite having weak evidence,” Ferguson and Smith wrote.
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A prior meta-study looking for racial bias in juvenile criminal sentences, for example, also found no statistically significant evidence of racism. Yet the Northeastern University professor who was its lead author, writing in the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004723521630023X" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Criminal Justice</a>, did not make that finding the paper’s takeaway. Instead, he disputed his own evidence, writing: “However, simple claims that race does not matter are also not supported by existing knowledge,” concluding the situation was “nuanced,” because, in certain sub-categories, the numbers differed slightly by race—even though if racism were actually to blame, such factors would be across the board, and all in one direction.
“Overall, the criminal justice system appears to be remarkably neutral, at least as relates to these issues, either when compared to the historical US criminal justice system, or historical systems throughout history,” the authors of the new study found.
They said that progressive academics who misrepresent their own data — whether due to incompetence, the prioritization of ideology over social science, or the desire to publish a paper with a dramatic finding — may be causing real harm to society.
“We note the possibility that overstating the case for sentencing disparities may itself cause harm to minority communities through increasing racial discord, creating fear and mistrust, and reducing community cooperation with criminal justice authorities, which may lead to the experiencing of more crime,” the paper said.

African American in Prison

Mega-Study Finds That Minorities Don’t Receive Harsher Criminal Punishments, But That Academics Said So Anyway

Crime

Critical Race Theory

With Harvard University President Claudine Gay <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/anti-semitism-plagiarism-harvard-s-dual-crisis-saturday-extra" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mired in controversy</a> over anti-Semitism on campus and mounting evidence that she engaged in serial plagiarism, donors to the institution have responded differently to the controversies.
The list of donors who’ve pledged to pull their funding has steadily grown, with billionaire Len Blavatnik emerging late this year as the latest to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-21/harvard-s-financial-strain-grows-as-blavatnik-joins-donor-revolt?sref=xhJDrP3t" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announce</a> that he would be pausing all contributions to Harvard over its treatment of anti-Semitism. Blavatnik’s family foundation had previously given the university at least $270 million.
Blavatnik’s decision to pull donations comes as one Wall Street executive said that “half of Wall Street” will be <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/02/wall-street-titans-help-to-fuel-ivy-league-donor-revolt-.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">halting donations</a> to some of America’s most powerful universities to protest how the institutions have responded to anti-Semitism and pro-Palestinian protests in the wake of the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel.
The Wexner Foundation, chaired by family members of ex-Victoria&#8217;s Secret CEO Les Wexner, <a href="https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/10/16/harvard-suffers-major-loss-as-stunned-wexner-foundation-pulls-support/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pulled about $2 million</a> in support from Harvard, saying that it was stunned and sickened at the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians by terrorists.”
Bill Ackman, the billionaire founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, <a href="https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1738030293435502919" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called</a> the board&#8217;s continued support of Gay &#8220;enormously damaging to Harvard&#8221; and &#8220;incredibly destructive to their own reputations.&#8221; Ackman says that the university has lost an <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12852405/Harvard-donor-lost-antisemitism-Palestine-Israel-protests.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">astonishing $1 billion</a> amid the scandals, though the sum was reported before Blatvik’s decision to pull donations.
But some high-profile donors to the university have not, at least publicly, responded to the controversies, and appear to be set to continue their donations to Harvard. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, for example, previously pledged a whopping <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/12/8/chan-zuckerberg-donates-500-million/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$500 million</a> to the university to establish an artificial intelligence lab. Neither the initiative nor Mark Zuckerberg have publicly commented on the scandals.
There’s also John and Laura Arnold, who through their philanthropic organization Arnold Ventures have contributed roughly <a href="https://www.arnoldventures.org/grantees" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$67 million</a> to the Harvard President and Fellows in the past decade. Arnold did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
Swiss entrepreneur and billionaire philanthropist Ernesto Bertarelli <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/2/13/hms-bertarelli-gift/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> a $75 million gift to Harvard Medical school earlier this year while Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire who has emerged as a major political donor to Democrats in the United States, gave <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/10/hansjorg-wyss-gives-4th-transformational-gift-to-support-wyss-institute/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$350 million</a> to the university in 2022. Neither the Bertarelli Foundation nor the Wyss Foundation responded to a request for comment.
Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies <a href="https://www.bloomberg.org/government-innovation/supporting-city-leaders/bloomberg-center-cities-harvard-university/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">invested</a> an undisclosed amount to Harvard University for the creation of the Bloomberg Center for Cities, an institute aimed at supporting a “new generation of public servants as they encounter unprecedented challenges” and producing “new research and instructional materials that will help city leaders.”
Bloomberg, who is Jewish and attended Harvard Business School, has been an outspoken supporter of Israel. In the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack against Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people, including women and children, Bloomberg Philanthropies pledged to donate $44 million to Magen David Adom, an Israeli nonprofit organization. But Bloomberg has remained silent on Harvard president Gay’s response to anti-Semitism on campus or the mounting evidence that she repeatedly engaged in plagiarism.
His foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
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The response, and lack thereof, from Harvard donors comes as Gay has faced scrutiny over both her response to anti Semitism on campus and findings that she has serially engaged in plagiarism in her academic work.
Harvard University has been especially embroiled in controversy since Gay, who assumed office in July 2023, equivocated in a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism when asked whether or not calling for genocide against Jews constituted a violation of the university’s code of conduct.
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At today’s hearing, Harvard’s President shamefully refused to say whether the calling for the mass violence and genocide of the Jewish people is considered harassment or bullying according to Harvard’s own code of conduct. 
Claudine Gay should resign immediately. <a href="https://t.co/gjzmTHUcec">pic.twitter.com/gjzmTHUcec</a>
&mdash; Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepStefanik/status/1732089534345601317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2023</a></blockquote>
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But Gay was met with public repute yet again when conservative journalist and activist Chris Rufo and investigative journalist Christopher Brunet <a href="https://christopherrufo.com/p/is-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that she had plagiarized portions of her Ph.D dissertation, pulling directly from other texts without referencing the original authors.
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WINNING: According to the Harvard Crimson, Claudine Gay will &quot;request three corrections to her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation,&quot; vindicating my original story about her plagiarism. Gay has now asked for six total corrections related to plagiarism—a stunning admission of guilt. <a href="https://t.co/uSWUh7tH9G">pic.twitter.com/uSWUh7tH9G</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1737674947768848809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 21, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Rufo and Brunet pointed out that the use of direct quotes from other academics is in direct violation of the university’s standards of academic integrity.

Claudine Gay

2023 In Review: The Donors That Ditched Harvard — And Those Who Haven’t

antisemitism

Harvard University

A battle has broken out in Texas between academic historians and hobbyist history buffs — with the hobbyists advocating for exploring history through primary source material, and the &#8220;experts&#8221; opting to push modern far-Left politics.
It came to a head this month after a veteran publisher of Texas history books wrote to a member of the Texas Historical Commission, a government body that runs historical sites, with a list of all the books sold at the gift shop of the Levi Jordan plantation outside of Houston. Of the 23 books sold, few had to do with the plantation, Texas history, or slavery in Texas. Instead, many were modern leftist political screeds or unrelated lamentations about black victimhood in other times and places.
They included books about Malcolm X, an &#8220;Afro-Vegan Cookbook,&#8221; a novel about a black man in Harlem, a book about Chicago&#8217;s black slums, and book by radical black feminist author &#8220;bell hooks&#8221; tackling &#8220;racism among feminists.&#8221; They also included a book from Frantz Fanon, who posits that violence is necessary for &#8220;decolonization,&#8221; about &#8220;revolutionary struggle, and a continuing influence on movements from Black Lives Matter to decolonization.&#8221;
The situation was similar at the nearby Varner-Hogg plantation, where &#8220;White Rage&#8221; and books by Ibram X. Kendi about diversity, equity, and inclusion were being sold.
Michelle Haas, a veteran publisher of Texas history books who chairs a nonprofit called the Texas History Trust, sent this inventory of the books to the Texas Historical Commission. “I attach a list of the books available with the publisher’s description of each,” she wrote. “You may assess for yourselves how relevant they are to the history of Brazoria County.”
&#8220;Why is the State of Texas selling an afro-vegan cookbook at a state historic site? Or fiction about people living in Chicago in the 1890s? What do books written and edited by Ibram X. Kendi have to do with the Varners, Pattons or Hoggs?&#8221; Haas asked in another email, referring to the plantations.
In an internal email, a member of the commission, David Gravelle, agreed that some of the materials &#8220;are not about accurate Texas history, but seem to wander off into present social issues.&#8221; The Commission later pared the inventory at its historic sites — it says for unrelated reasons.
But on December 7, <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-historical-commission-book-removal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Texas Monthly</a> magazine posted an article with Haas as its main subject. It caused an uproar by twisting the story from one about a woman advocating for more books about Texas slavery at Texas plantations, to one about a white woman who wanted books about slavery banned.
Texas Monthly, writing based on an interview with Haas and a collection of Gravelle&#8217;s emails, said that Gravelle falsely stated that “there is no question these books are not about Texas history.” The outlet attempted to dunk on the official by saying that a whopping one of the 23 actually was: “That description wasn’t accurate: one of the 23 titles on the list, for example, was &#8216;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Days-Sorrow-Texas-Narratives/dp/1933337478" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Remembering</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Days-Sorrow-Texas-Narratives/dp/1933337478" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the</a><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Days-Sorrow-Texas-Narratives/dp/1933337478" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Days of Sorrow</a>,&#8217; which features testimony from numerous Texan slaves,” it wrote.
The article’s crux — that Haas and conservatives wanted slavery books banned — rested on the statement that, &#8220;When asked if it was her intention that historical books about slavery be removed from sites, Haas demurred.&#8221;
But that statement was invented out of thin air. The author of the Texas Monthly article, Steven Monacelli, is a <a href="https://thepostmillennial.com/socialist-journalist-sued-by-texas-newspaper-for-defamation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported socialist</a> who was fired from another Texas paper after making <a href="https://dallasweekly.com/2021/02/formerly-black-owned-dallas-express-resurrected-as-right-wing-propaganda-site/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">false</a> accusations against conservatives. Haas recorded her interview with Haas and shared it with The Daily Wire, and the audio shows that he never asked her if she wanted to remove books about slavery — likely because it was obvious from the conversation that she did not. Haas&#8217; entire point, after all, was that books like Ibram X. Kendi&#8217;s are not about slavery.
Monacelli had actually asked her: “Is it possible that the response to your raising these concerns could have unintended effects?” Haas said it was possible, and suggested that as a way to avoid the risk, if they removed a book like &#8220;Roots,&#8221; they should replace it with a book like one about Britt Johnson, a former Texas slave.
The journalist then asked if there were “books that were included on that list that you found to be good representations of the sorts of literature that [Texas Historical Commission] should carry.” Her number-one example was &#8220;Remembering the Days of Sorrow.&#8221; “That absolutely should be there,” Haas told Monacelli.
“Okay. Because I wanted to make sure I wasn&#8217;t getting the wrong impression regarding this list,” he replied. His article, however, did give his readers the wrong impression.
After Haas confronted Texas Monthly editor Dan Goodgame with the audio, the publication made <a href="https://www.diffchecker.com/PyIpgiHR/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">numerous changes</a>, including removing the sentence alleging that Haas refused to say if she wanted to ban slavery books. But the correction appended to the article concealed the actual changes, instead making it seem like a pedantic issue. The correction itself introduced an equally inflammatory charge against Haas that reinforced the article’s central false narrative. The correction itself, which remains at the bottom of the published piece and can be read in full below, states that “Haas emailed a list of books that she objected to.”
<blockquote>“Correction, December 12, 2023: A prior version of this story reported Michelle Haas emailed a list of books that she objected to that were available for purchase at the Levi Jordan historical plantation to Texas Historical Commission Chairman John Nau III. She addressed the email to him and other commissioners, but did not include him as a direct recipient.”</blockquote>
Throughout the interview, as in her email to officials, Haas described how her list was simply a list of all books available for sale, and that she did not object to all of the books. “Here&#8217;s a complete list of the books that are for sale at these particular sites&#8230; here&#8217;s the list of everything that&#8217;s for sale, make of it. Use your judgment to decide if these titles are relevant to Texas history,&#8221; she told Monacelli.
In fact, Haas warned Texas Monthly in advance about getting that fact wrong. “It’s certainly not how certain professors want to portray me as someone who just doesn&#8217;t &#8230; want any bad stuff there. No, I do want bad stuff there,” she said.
Texas Monthly did not return a request for comment, and did not provide The Daily Wire with the public records underlying the story, which Monacelli initially concealed from Haas in their interview before alluding to a list he had received that he wasn’t sure how to interpret. He also said some books the Texas Historical Commission apparently removed were not on Haas’ list, which tended to back up the Commission’s assertion that the books were removed as part of a general inventory reduction. The Texas Historical Commission did not return a request for comment.
Texas Monthly’s article was picked up by other outlets who distorted it even further, leading to a firestorm of threats against Haas.
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&#8220;Those books include: ‘Roots,’ by Alex Haley; ‘Invisible Man,’ by Ralph Ellison; ‘White Rage,’ by Carol Anderson; and ‘Stamped from the Beginning,’ by Ibram X. Kendi. See a pattern?” <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/8/2210546/-Texas-Historical-Commission-removes-dozens-of-books-on-slavery-from-plantation-gift-shops" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Daily Kos</a> wrote. “It seems that ‘amateur historian’ and graphic designer Michelle Haas is the source of the movement to remove mentions of historical slavery at Texas’s historic sites,&#8221; it added — a non-sequitur since only one of those books, Roots, is about slavery, and none are about Texas slavery.
Falsehoods poured in from otherworldly places, with the Star Trek actor-turned-activist George Takei morphing it to the claim that books &#8220;written by slaves&#8221; were removed &#8220;after white woman complains.&#8221;
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Texas Commission Removes Books From Plantation Written By Slaves After White Woman Complains <a href="https://t.co/s7U0SJtBVQ">https://t.co/s7U0SJtBVQ</a>
&mdash; George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) <a href="https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1736588126473052487?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 18, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Books like Ibram Kendi&#8217;s are not written by slaves, and the audio showed that Haas explicitly advocated for adding a book about a slave, Britt Johnson, and for keeping one based on interviews with former slaves, &#8220;Remembering the Days of Sorrow.&#8221;
Texas State Historical Association
The smear on Haas appeared to be retribution from a larger battle between citizen historians dedicated to researching their state, and academics who are more likely to use history as a vehicle for contemporary leftist politics, and to jealously guard the domain.
The Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), which has been in existence since 1897, is designed to be split between academic historians and laypeople. But in recent years, the board was packed with academics.
Its chief historian, Walter Buenger, used the group to promote racial conspiracy theories,<a href="https://thetexan.news/issues/social-issues-life-family/prominent-texas-historian-says-alamo-represents-what-it-meant-to-be-white/article_56c09758-8fa4-561f-b0ee-2a360db90bd2.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> claiming in 2021</a> that, “The Alamo became this symbol of what it meant to be white&#8230;. It is again tapping into a defense of white privilege.”
TSHA is a private group, but likely the most important history group in Texas, according to Haas.
“Since they need their articles peer reviewed and published, the academics need to control who the peers are doing the review. TSHA has the most important scholarly history journal in the state. They need it, but require full ideological capture and can&#8217;t tolerate differing points of view,” Haas told The Daily Wire.
A businessman, J.P. Bryan, stepped in as executive director to bail out the TSHA after declining membership, perhaps due to the fact that most Texas history buffs aren’t keen on constant denigration of Texas. “We are disenfranchising our non-academic members, who make up 90% of our membership, because they’re not properly represented on the board,” Bryan once <a href="https://thecannononline.com/amateur-historians-turn-the-tide-against-woke-academics/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. But Nancy Baker Jones, the association president and an academic, appeared to want to use Bryan for his financial expertise, then cast him aside.
In March, TSHA attempted to install yet another academic, and became outraged when Bryan suggested that to comply with their bylaws, they should install a layman, the first black chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, instead. Professor Jeffrey Littlejohn, the co-chair of Sam Houston State University&#8217;s diversity committee, stood up and shouted his displeasure at the prospect of a black conservative history buff instead of a leftist academic, Haas <a href="https://www.texashistorytrust.org/texas-history-news-and-opinion/tsha-illegal-board">wrote</a>.
In May, Judge Kerry Neves <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6174b6bf19cf4223cc28a1d8/t/64877e52d145f22a1f39bcf5/1686601298461/23-CV-0679+-+Order+Granting+Temporary+Injunction.pdfhttps://budgetbook.heritage.org/administration-of-justice/reduce-funding-five-programs-in-department-justice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blocked</a> the academic packing, writing, “The Bylaws require that the membership of the Board of Directors be balanced substantially between academic and non-academic members. The present Board is not substantially balanced because the makeup is presently 12 academic members compared to 8 non-academic members.”
The two professors behind pushing the media smear of Haas were angry at her for her role in stopping the Texas-history coup by academics. On Facebook, a former junior college professor named Michael Phillips indicated that he and another academic historian, Ben Johnson, were behind the Texas Monthly article, and that, “People who think you can work with Haas and company regarding the TSHA are delusional.”
Phillips was the only academic quoted by Texas Monthly&#8217;s Monacelli, who last year wrote a lengthy article in <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/texas-education-maga-trump-book-bans-1310603/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rolling Stone</a> about how Phillips was let go by a junior college and was suing it alleging that it was in retaliation for pushing leftist politics. On Instagram, the socialist journalist labeled Phillips as &#8220;legendary.&#8221;
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-673247" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/12/monacelli-phillips-918x576.png" alt="Steven Monacelli and Michael Phillips / Facebook" width="918" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/12/monacelli-phillips-918x576.png 918w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/12/monacelli-phillips-300x188.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/12/monacelli-phillips-768x482.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/12/monacelli-phillips-1360x855.png 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/12/monacelli-phillips.png 1363w" sizes="(max-width: 918px) 100vw, 918px" /></div>
Though Haas spent a career in Texas book publishing, the outlet called her a mere &#8220;graphic designer,&#8221; implying that because she did not have a Ph.D. in history, she could not ascertain what books were related to a Texas plantation and what weren&#8217;t. That characterization was removed by Texas Monthly after she confronted the editor with the audio.
Haas said that degree-based attack was the modus operandi of leftist academics who chafed because she knew enough about history to offer critiques when they relied on their credentials to push biased information. For example, she said, when Johnson alleged that low voter turnout in 1918 was because of racist voter suppression, she reminded him that the Spanish flu “shut everything down a week before the primaries” that year. “If you&#8217;re such a professional, why do you omit that? And instead of answering, the answer is always: &#8216;Well, you&#8217;re just a white supremacist.&#8217;”
In August, the lawsuit was settled and Baker Jones, the association president, and another academic agreed to <a href="https://www.texashistorytrust.org/texas-history-news-and-opinion/tsha-settlement-battleship-texas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resign</a>. The <a href="https://www.texaspolicy.com/in-galveston-a-win-for-history-and-against-wokeness/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Texas Public Policy Foundation</a> called the outcome “a win for history — and against wokeness.”
Since then, leftist academics have been in a tailspin at the idea of opposing views, Haas said. “The historians started resigning because they didn’t know what to do. For the past decades or so they’ve just appointed their grievance studies people to the committees and enveloped the whole organization,” she said.
Haas said that history is the domain of all Americans and that activist academics have squandered their credibility by subjugating facts to ideology. She said primary source documents have more to teach people about slavery than contemporary ideologues like Kendi do, saying “we have their words … that’s moving stuff.”
Her <a href="https://www.texashistorytrust.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Texas History Trust</a> has “digitized about 30,000 pages of primary source material so that the public, teachers and scholars can go direct to the source on their phone, for free.&#8221;
&#8220;I put a $25,000 research library in people&#8217;s pockets,” she said. “When I announced the digitization project, the activist historian crew objected. ‘You need an archivist with a Ph.D. to do that!’ No, I really don&#8217;t.”

Celebrities Visit Build – March 10, 2020

Civil War Rages In Texas As Historians Peddle Leftism Instead Of History

American History

History

Houston

Media Bias

Texas

Embattled <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/their-statements-were-abhorrent-backlash-to-harvard-penn-mit-presidents-on-anti-semitism-continues-even-after-they-backtrack" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Harvard University President Claudine Gay</a> responded Monday to mounting allegations of plagiarism, saying she stands by her work.
Journalist Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, published a report on Sunday outlining what he indicated to be three instances of Gay plagiarizing, per Harvard standards, in the dissertation, “<a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/304343028?pq-origsite=gscholar&amp;fromopenview=true&amp;sourcetype=Dissertations%20&amp;%20Theses" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Taking Charge: Black Electoral Success and the Redefinition of American Policies</a>.”
Notably, Gay is already facing mounting pressure to be removed since her shocking testimony during a Congressional hearing on anti-Semitism in colleges and universities.
“I stand by the integrity of my scholarship,&#8221; Gay <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/11/metro/harvard-president-testimony/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the Boston Globe, regarding the plagiarism allegations. &#8220;Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.”
In addition to other questionable instances, Gay is accused of lifting “nearly verbatim” work from Lawrence Bobo and Franklin Gilliam in their paper called “Race, Sociopolitical Participation, and Black Empowerment.”
Rufo cited Harvard’s own policy on paraphrasing and plagiarism to underscore his point: “When you paraphrase, your task is to distill the source’s ideas in your own words,” the guidelines <a href="https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what-constitutes-plagiarism-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">state</a>. “It’s not enough to change a few words here and there and leave the rest; instead, you must completely restate the ideas in the passage in your own words. If your own language is too close to the original, then you are plagiarizing, even if you do provide a citation.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
First, Gay lifts an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from a paper by Lawrence Bobo and Franklin Gilliam’s, while passing it off as her own paraphrase and language. 
This is a direct violation of Harvard&#39;s policy: &quot;When you paraphrase, your task is to distill the source’s ideas… <a href="https://t.co/t6enHp3dN9">pic.twitter.com/t6enHp3dN9</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1733977126020481266?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard alum, said a university faculty member called Rufo&#8217;s allegations &#8220;credible.&#8221;
&#8220;I asked a senior member of the [Harvard] faculty to examine the below allegations of plagiarism against President Gay,&#8221; Ackman posted to X. &#8220;The faculty member found them to be credible.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I asked a senior member of the <a href="https://twitter.com/Harvard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Harvard</a> faculty to examine the below allegations of plagiarism against President Gay. 
The faculty member found them to be credible. <a href="https://t.co/Y7LdeuxODR">https://t.co/Y7LdeuxODR</a>
&mdash; Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) <a href="https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1734028287112892589?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 11, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Since the report, The National Association of Scholars has come out calling for Gay&#8217;s removal as president. &#8220;The esteemed group notes Gay&#8217;s &#8216;shoddy professional work,&#8217; &#8216;record of plagiarism,&#8217; and &#8216;promotion of racist policies,'&#8221; Rufo posted. &#8220;Momentum is building.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: The National Association of Scholars calls on Harvard to remove Claudine Gay as president of the university. The esteemed group notes Gay&#39;s &quot;shoddy professional work,&quot; &quot;record of plagiarism,&quot; and &quot;promotion of racist policies.&quot; Momentum is building. <a href="https://t.co/F3Nz6hUex6">pic.twitter.com/F3Nz6hUex6</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1734329121885626606?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 11, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Further, reports of Gay&#8217;s alleged plagiarism have only compounded:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: The Free Beacon&#39;s <a href="https://twitter.com/aaronsibarium?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@aaronsibarium</a> has revealed that Harvard president Claudine Gay plagiarized multiple sections of at least three additional publications between 1993 and 2017, according to Harvard&#39;s own standard on academic integrity.<a href="https://t.co/GRBRvWYWcn">https://t.co/GRBRvWYWcn</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1734343041715191858?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 11, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks against Israel, Gay has been under fire for her response to Harvard students&#8217; pro-Hamas protesting, which has at times included calls for genocide of Jews in Israel.
During a Congressional hearing last week, Gay was directly asked about whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s codes of conduct, and the president <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/their-statements-were-abhorrent-backlash-to-harvard-penn-mit-presidents-on-anti-semitism-continues-even-after-they-backtrack" target="_blank" rel="noopener">responded</a> that it depends “on the context.” She added that calling for genocide is “at odds with the values of Harvard” and that when that kind of “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-new-low-snl-wrecked-for-skit-mocking-elise-stefanik-in-college-anti-semitism-hearing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘A New Low’: SNL Wrecked For Skit Mocking Elise Stefanik In College Anti-Semitism Hearing</a>

University Presidents Testify In House Hearing On Campus Antisemitism

Harvard President Claudine Gay Responds To Mounting Plagiarism Allegations As Calls For Ouster Intensify

Christopher Rufo

Plagiarism

A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/united-kingdom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">British museum</a> has decided that an infamous Roman emperor was transgender, and will refer to him using female pronouns in the name of sensitivity.
The North Hertfordshire Museum told the Telegraph that going forward, it will refer to Elagabalus, who ruled the Roman empire from 218-222 AD, as a woman, based on the work of contemporary historian Cassius Dio, who said that Elagabalus was “termed wife, mistress and queen.”
 “Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady.” Elagabalus supposedly <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/cassius_dio/80*.html">told</a> a male lover.
“We know that Elagabalus identified as a woman and was explicit about which pronouns to use, which shows that pronouns are not a new thing,” <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/11/21/news/uk-museum-says-roman-emperor-was-a-trans-woman/?utm_campaign=nypost&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social">said</a> Keith Hoskins, executive member for Enterprise and Arts at North Herts Council. “We try to be sensitive to identifying pronouns for people in the past, as we are for people in the present.”
However, later historians have debated how seriously some of these descriptions should be taken. Rome was an unapologetically patriarchal society and lacked the modern conceptions of “gender” as something independent of biological sex. While some “gender fluid” characters existed in myth, such as Hermaphroditus, from whom we get the term “hermaphrodite,” and the blind prophet Tiresius, who was transformed into a woman for seven years as a divine punishment, after which he was transformed back into a man, such ambiguity wasn’t transferred over to flesh and blood people.
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Allegations of sexual impropriety or effeminate behavior were stock insults in the Roman political lexicon. Surviving histories of the era are often fragmentary and biased, with some unpopular emperors being exclusively remembered by the descriptions of their enemies.
&#8220;There are many examples in Roman literature of times where effeminate language and words were used as a way of criticising or weakening a political figure,” Dr Shushma Malik, a classics professor at Cambridge University, told the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67484645">BBC</a>. &#8220;References to Elagabalus wearing makeup, wigs and removing body hair may have been written in order to undermine the unpopular emperor.&#8221;
Elagabalus, who is widely considered to be one of the worst emperors Rome ever had, ascended to the throne at the age of 14 at the end of a bloody civil war, and was himself assassinated four years later to be replaced by his younger cousin, Alexander Severus. Aside from his reported sexual exploits (Dio tells us that he was “married” at various points to four women and one man and had many extramarital affairs), Elagabalus is also remembered for his promotion of the Syrian sun-god of the same name and his unpopular religious reforms, which were rescinded after his death.
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Cassius Dio lived through Elagabalus’ reign and was a close political ally of his replacement. While he is still respected as a valuable ancient source, Dio has often been regarded as less reliable than other Roman historians and his descriptions of the late Emperor were far from neutral.
“[Elagabulus] both married and was bestowed in marriage; for he appeared both as man and as woman, and in both relations conducted himself in the most licentious fashion,” Dio <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/cassius_dio/80*.html">wrote</a>.
In the same account, Dio repeatedly refers to Elagabalus as a pretender to the throne (“the False Antoninus”), and accuses him, among other things, of defiling a virgin priestess, dressing and acting like a female prostitute, planning to “cut off his [own] genitals” seeking out a primitive vaginoplasty, and says that “He ought to have been scourged in the Forum, thrown into prison, and then put to death.”
That being said, the <a href="https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/kim-jonguns-vile-pleasure-squad-where-virgin-schoolgirls-are-selected-to-entertain-north-korean-rulers/news-story/62559264441661586a826f20865eca4e">well</a> documented <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2474533/The-terrible-truth-Gaddafis-harem.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sexual</a> behavior of some <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ex-gambian-dictator-yahya-jammeh-handpicked-women-for-rape-2059736" target="_blank" rel="noopener">modern</a> dictators often mirrors ancient allegations of impropriety, which has led some historians to re-evaluate claims that had previously been dismissed as &#8220;fantastical.&#8221;
The claims made about Elagabalus in the historical record stand out as particularly extreme, even when compared to other Roman invective, which has led some historians to believe that he may have genuinely suffered from gender dysphoria, although others remain skeptical.

Rome

Woke Museum Claims Notorious Roman Emperor Was Transgender, Will Use Female Pronouns

General

LGBTQ

Woke Culture

Wokeness

World

A top scientist revealed he intentionally left out key information disputing the climate change narrative pushed by the Left so that his paper would get published.
Patrick T. Brown, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and doctor of earth and climate sciences, published an article titled, “<a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/i-overhyped-climate-change-to-get-published" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published</a>.”
“I just got published in Nature because I stuck to a narrative I knew the editors would like,” he commenced the article. “That’s not the way science should work.”
Brown pointed out that news articles about wildfires across the world this summer declared they were the result of climate change. He surmised that the media parrots that narrative because “it fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it.”
Citing his paper “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06444-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California</a>,” he added, “I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.”
“The biases of the editors (and the reviewers they call upon to evaluate submissions) exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields,” Brown attested. “They select what gets published from a large pool of entries, and in doing so, they also shape how research is conducted more broadly. Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted.”
Brown listed ways in which a researcher should tailor their piece in order to get published: ignore practical adaptation measures, ignore other factors that could cause wildfires, such as poor forest management; ignore statistics that might run counter to the climate change narrative, such as the fact that over 80 percent of wildfires in the US are started by people.
Brown also explained how using metrics that “will generate the most eye-popping numbers” was also advantageous in getting a paper published.
“Another way to get the kind of big numbers that will justify the importance of your research—and impress editors, reviewers, and the media—is to always assess the magnitude of climate change over centuries, even if that timescale is irrelevant to the impact you are studying,” he noted.
“When I began the research for this paper in 2020, I was a new assistant professor needing to maximize my prospects for a successful career,” Brown recalled. “When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula, my papers were rejected out of hand by the editors of distinguished journals, and I had to settle for <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239520" target="_blank" rel="noopener">less prestigious outlets</a>. To put it another way, I sacrificed contributing the most valuable knowledge for society in order for the research to be compatible with the confirmation bias of the editors and reviewers of the journals I was targeting.”
After revealing he left academia over a year ago, he stated, “Climate scientists shouldn’t have to exile themselves from academia to publish the most useful versions of their research. We need a culture change across academia and elite media that allows for a much broader conversation on societal resilience to climate.”
He turned to the media: “The media, for instance, should stop accepting these papers at face value and do some digging on what’s been left out. The editors of the prominent journals need to expand beyond a narrow focus that pushes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And the researchers themselves need to start standing up to editors, or find other places to publish.”

US-FIRE-HAWAII

‘That’s Not The Way Science Should Work’: Scientist Bashes Academia For Suppressing Anti-Climate Change Narrative

Environment

Science

Florida State University has reportedly fired a professor who had five studies on racism retracted, bringing an end to a years-long, acrimonious conflict over allegations of academic fraud.
Dr. Eric Stewart, Ph.D., was fired on July 13, <a href="https://retractionwatch.com/2023/07/20/florida-university-fires-criminology-professor-blemished-by-retractions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to a termination <a href="https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Final-Termination-Letter-7.13.23.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> obtained by Retraction Watch.
Stewart was terminated for his behavior and his &#8220;extreme negligence and incompetence&#8221; in &#8220;basic data management&#8221; that has resulted in an &#8220;unprecedented&#8221; number of retracted articles and others now in question, wrote James Clark, the school&#8217;s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
“Decades of research that were once thought to be at the forefront of the criminology discipline have been shown to contain numerous erroneous and false narratives,&#8221; Clark wrote, adding that the retractions have “negatively affected the discipline on a national level.”
The issues with Stewart&#8217;s research have also affected Florida State&#8217;s recruitment of students and faculty and have made the school&#8217;s other researchers worry about being able to get their papers into top journals, the letter said.
“The damage to the standing of the University and, in particular, the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice and its faculty approaches the catastrophic and may be unalterable,” Clark wrote.
Clark said he made the decision to fire Stewart after reviewing the evidence gathered during the school&#8217;s investigation. He also mentioned that Stewart was given the opportunity to defend himself to a &#8220;peer panel.&#8221;
Stewart abruptly disappeared from his position in March after his peers accused him of committing academic fraud in studies to make racism appear much more prevalent in the criminal justice system than it actually is, The Florida Standard <a href="https://www.theflstandard.com/fsu-criminology-professor-abruptly-leaves-after-accusations-of-cooking-race-data/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Stewart, who is black, was an <a href="https://nij.ojp.gov/bio/eric-stewart" target="_blank" rel="noopener">associate professor</a> at FSU’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, as well as a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and had been employed at the school for 16 years.
Six of Stewart&#8217;s studies from 2006 to 2015 have now been retracted, a stain on FSU’s prestigious criminology department. Five of those studies dealt with race.
Stewart was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/lynched-me-florida-state-prof-leaves-after-accusations-he-faked-race-data" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first accused</a> of falsifying data in 2019 by Justin Pickett, a professor at the State University of New York at Albany. Stewart and Pickett co-authored one of the now-retracted <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00225.x?ref=theflstandard.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">studies</a> published in 2011.
That particular retracted study claimed to find that as black and Hispanic populations grew, so did the public’s desire for harsher, discriminatory criminal sentences for them. However, the original data showed that there was no relationship between growing black and Hispanic populations and the public’s desire for harsher sentences.
Pickett found that if anything, the conclusion was the opposite.
Also, the sample size increased from 500 to more than 1,000 people, and the number of counties polled slipped from 326 to 91. The data had “mathematical impossibilities,” Pickett <a href="https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1139/PickettMar2020.pdf?mimetype=pdf&amp;ref=theflstandard.com">said</a>.
“Scientific fraud occurs all too frequently — approximately 1 in 50 scientists admit to fabricating or falsifying data — and I believe it is the most likely explanation for the data irregularities in the five retracted articles,” Pickett wrote in an <a href="https://econjwatch.org/articles/the-stewart-retractions-a-quantitative-and-qualitative-analysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">analysis</a> for Econ Journal Watch.
When Pickett pointed out the issues with the study to Stewart, he refused to give Pickett a copy of the original data for four months, Pickett <a href="https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1139/PickettMar2020.pdf?mimetype=pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
Stewart <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/14/florida-state-university-under-fire-eric-stewart-a/?ref=theflstandard.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> FSU administrators in an email that Pickett “essentially lynched me and my academic character.”
He also complained about feeling targeted in texts to colleagues that were made public.
“For some reason, data thugs are after me. It seems very personal,” Stewart said in one of the texts. “All of the blame is being directed at me.”
Two of the other studies examined whether white people who live in areas where lynchings occurred were more likely to view black people as criminals and favor harsher criminal punishments.
Initially, FSU did not react with much of a response to the bombshell allegations that Stewart committed academic fraud repeatedly. The university opened a small inquiry that <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/14/florida-state-university-under-fire-eric-stewart-a/?ref=theflstandard.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">concluded</a> there was no need for a full-scale investigation. However, when the sixth study was challenged in 2020, FSU finally launched an investigation.

Florida State University

Florida State University Fires Professor Behind Retracted Racism Studies: Report

Education

Florida

Courses involving &#8220;Critical Whiteness Studies,&#8221; an offshoot of Critical Race Theory, will be available to students at several colleges across the country during the upcoming 2023-2024 school year.
The University of New Mexico’s Department of English Language and Literature will host a &#8220;Critical Whiteness Studies&#8221; <a href="https://english.unm.edu/grad/current-students/courses/upcoming-fall.html">course</a> in Fall 2023, where students “will learn about whiteness as an ideology of supremacy and domination.”
“Our goal in this course is to learn how to identify and challenge whiteness as part of an antiracist practice,” the course description says.
A <a href="https://catalog.ucdenver.edu/cu-denver/undergraduate/courses-a-z/edfn/edfn.pdf">course</a> titled “Problematizing Whiteness: Educating for Racial Justice” at the University of Colorado, Denver, asserts that “Critical Whiteness Studies provides a deeper analysis of race that accounts for both sides … the plight of people of color and how white people are complicit.
The University of Oregon also <a href="https://catalog.uoregon.edu/courses/crs-es/">hosts</a> a class titled “Critical Whiteness Studies,” which “explores the social construction of race by investigating and historicizing ‘whiteness’ as a racial category in the U.S.” The University of Oregon also hosts courses on “Environmental Racism” and “Feminist Theories of Race.”
One <a href="https://catalog.usfca.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=38&amp;poid=36311">course</a> at the University of San Francisco&#8217;s School of Education, called &#8220;<a href="https://catalog.usfca.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=38&amp;poid=36086&amp;hl=ime+644&amp;returnto=search">Whiteness, Power and Privilege</a>,&#8221; will explore &#8220;racialization and racism through the lens of Critical Whiteness Studies.&#8221; It also offers an &#8220;examination of whiteness as the driving force behind &#8230; oppression.&#8221;
The University of Puget Sound hosted a <a href="https://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/english/courses#:~:text=Critical%20Whiteness%20Studies,society%20it%20influences%20and%20reflects.">course</a> on &#8220;Critical Whiteness Studies&#8221; through the English Department in the 2022-2023 school year. The course &#8220;engages with &#8216;whiteness&#8217; as a category of identification in order to develop a theoretically informed understanding of the history, function, and effects of racial encoding within literature.&#8221;
A <a href="https://african.wisc.edu/courses/african-405-the-problem-of-whiteness/">now-deleted</a> course listing from the University of Wisconsin Madison’s African Cultural Studies, which is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210116185706/https://african.wisc.edu/courses/african-405-the-problem-of-whiteness/">archived here</a>, was titled “The Problem of Whiteness.” The course description explained that “Critical Whiteness Studies aims to understand how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy.”
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It added “Our class will break away from the standard US-centric frame, and consider how whiteness is constructed globally.” The course also discussed how white people “consciously and unconsciously perpetuate institutional racism.”
Johnathan Butcher, a Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy for the Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Wire that &#8220;Any &#8216;critical studies&#8217; are applications or extensions of critical theory, the neo-Marxist worldview developed by Max Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School in the 1930s.&#8221;
While Butcher said that there is &#8220;little to distinguish&#8221; Critical Race Theory from &#8220;Critical Whiteness Studies,&#8221; he contended that &#8220;the &#8216;whiteness&#8217; studies claim that whiteness is &#8216;an ideology of supremacy&#8217; and not just a skin color,&#8221; a claim that regurgitates &#8220;the same concepts from critical race theory, in a very pointed fashion.&#8221;
&#8220;The theories — critical legal theory, race theory, queer theory, etc.—are based on the idea that the world can only be explained in terms of power struggles between different identity groups and any existing laws or customs were designed by white individuals to maintain their power,&#8221; he went on to explain.
Butcher, who authored a <a href="https://www.heritage.org/splintered">book</a> on Critical Race Theory, also added that these theories &#8220;reject the idea of equality under the law and individual responsibility,&#8221; instead positing that &#8220;identity groups are victims of structural oppression caused by (white) ruling authorities.&#8221;
The courses come amidst a <a href="https://criticalrace.org">sustained effort</a> to embed Critical Race Theory in both K-12 education and higher education.
Hobart and Williams College’s “Perspectives on Ballet” class will focus on the overlap of race and dance. The <a href="https://www.hws.edu/catalogue/danc.aspx">course</a> will examine “the ways in which ballet represents a Eurocentric perspective on dance, and how the history of ballet has centered whiteness.”
The description goes on to allege that “Ballet … has developed in connection with dominant social, artistic, and political belief systems, many of which contain racist, sexist, ableist, and discriminatory ideologies.”
Butcher <a href="https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/arizona-state-university-and-offerings-the-temple-the-woke">pointed out</a> that Arizona State University School of Music, Dance, and Theater previously <a href="https://news.asu.edu/20210721-critical-race-theory-scholar-joins-asu-school-music-dance-and-theatre">hired a Critical Race Theorist</a> to teach music education courses.
A social work <a href="https://catalog.louisville.edu/undergraduate/courses/bsw/">course</a> at the University of Louisville called “Historical and Contemporary Abolitionism and Anti-Racism” boasted that students will learn “strategies for engaging in anti-racism and de-centering Whiteness including re-education about the history of race and racism.”
The Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology offers an <a href="https://ehe.osu.edu/academics/curriculum/anti-racism-certificate">Anti-Racism Certificate</a>, which includes classes based on the tenets of Critical Race Theory. Courses include “Anti-racist, Culturally Responsive Education,” “Multicultural and Social Justice Issues in Counseling,” “Critical Race Theory in Education,” and “Exploring Whiteness,” among others.
There&#8217;s also a “Black Queer Studies” <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=23374">course</a> at the University of Maryland that seeks to “center Blackness to meditate upon the overlapping and interwoven categories of race, gender, and sexuality with the goal of decoupling whiteness from LGBTQ+ studies and decoupling heterosexuality from Black studies.”

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Universities Around The Country Will Host ‘Critical Whiteness Studies’ Courses

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Eli Lilly gave $500,000 to four different organizations that provide college scholarships to illegal immigrants in Indiana who are covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
The pharmaceutical company, which is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, <a href="https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lilly-provides-500000-grants-support-equitable-access-education">stated</a> that the donation seeks to “remove barriers and create more equitable, affordable post-high school education opportunities for Indiana&#8217;s growing immigrant population.”
“Lilly strongly supports the rights of immigrants, including a pathway to citizenship in the United States for Dreamers,” as well as “sensible immigration reforms that cultivate and support a diverse and skilled workforce,” the press release noted.
One of the organizations that received funding from Eli Lilly was the Indiana Undocumented Youth Alliance, whose <a href="https://www.iuya.org/">mission</a> is to “empower young immigrants to achieve higher education and engage in the community to demand more just and humane policies that affect undocumented families.”
The organization provides <a href="https://www.iuya.org/scholarship/">scholarships</a> to those who are in the United States illegally, listing undocumented status as a requirement for receiving a scholarship. Their site stipulates “The scholarship is only available to undocumented students with or without Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Temporary Protected Status.”
The organization also <a href="https://www.iuya.org/about-us/">seeks</a> to “influence the design of public policy at the local, state and federal levels to radically improve the status of undocumented individuals.”
Eli Lilly also provided financial support to the Indiana Latino Institute, a nonprofit organization that <a href="https://indianalatinoinstitute.org/">works</a> to “advance Latino educational attainment and workforce preparedness statewide through advocacy, leadership development, and culturally responsive programming.”
The organization <a href="https://indianalatinoinstitute.org/advocacy/">describes</a> itself as the “convener of Latino networks and organizations statewide,” which is “positioned to be the leader in all policy relevant to the issues impacting Latino communities throughout Indiana.”
The Indiana Latino Institute also has a <a href="https://indianalatinoinstitute.formstack.com/forms/ili_scholarship">scholarship program</a>, which gives preference to “Latino students residing in Indiana who are first generation college students,” though it does not require recipients to be in the country illegally.
The <a href="https://sadcoindy.org/#scholarship-open">Society and Friends of Colombia</a> also received financial support from Eli Lilly. The organization “focuses on Latino education advancement, Latino youth enrichment, serving as health resource partners, and promoting the cultural values of Latinos in Indiana.” The pharmaceutical giant also listed <a href="https://www.laplazaindy.org/scholarship-fund/">La Plaza</a>, another nonprofit organization, as a grant recipient.
Eli Lilly did not respond to a request for comment.

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Eli Lilly Gives $500K For Scholarships For Illegal Immigrants In Indiana

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