Ideological dogmatism comes to California’s Community colleges
Six professors required to embrace DEI agenda
The headline above is actually just the tip of the iceberg. It is bad enough that, as a condition of employment, college teachers are forced to adhere to a questionable ideology that puts citizens at war with each other. But, the truth is that academic corruption is far advanced, as three more examples below will make clear.
As reported by Fire Quarterly, a publication of theFoundation for Individual Rights in Education, six professors who teach at one of three Fresno-area community colleges within the State Center Community College District, were required to “incorporate contested ideological viewpoints into classroom teaching. If they do not, they may be penalized in performance and tenure evaluations.” This refers to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion agenda of our “woke” citizens.
This requirement is applicable not only to teachers in the Fresno-area district but to the 54,000 others at 116 campuses in the entire state. So far, the six filing lawsuits backed by FIRE are the only ones who have done so. Of course, it takes courage to take on such as massive institution as the California community colleges, but only half a dozen?
According to FIRE, “California’s regulations explicitly required professors to ‘acknowledge’ that ‘cultural and racial identifies are diverse, fluid and intersectional,’ and to develop ‘knowledge of the intersectionality of racial identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face.’
“The state also mandates,” according to FIRE, “’anti-racist’ views, and it defines ‘anti-racism’ in a highly ideological manner. It states that ‘persons that say they are ‘not a racist’ are ‘in denial’ and declares that ‘color-blindness’—the belief that ‘the best way to end prejudice and discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture or ethnicity’—is a problem because it ‘perpetuates existing racial inequities and denies systematic racism.’”
For those who are not acquainted with the hyperventilated jargon of the so-called “anti-racist” movement, those two paragraphs are quite a mouthful. Shucks, even for those of us who have been fighting the various phases of the nearly 60-year corruption of civil rights, they are certainly unilluminating. But let us proceed. First, “anti-racism” is at best a misnomer and at worst an outright lie. For it is clear, upon critical examination, that its advocates, nay, its prosecutors, are not merely describing racism but demanding it. In plain English, they are countering the little of what’s left of white racism with non-white racism, albeit adulterated by its marking out Asians not less than Caucasians for abuse.
As a three-decades plus community college instructor (before the term “professor” replaced it), I would certainly support an investigation of “anti-racism” but certainly not an imposition of it. But the latter is exactly what we are talking about. The academic world exists precisely to inquire into the truth of all statements, arguments, theories, doctrines and what have you. But that world is under attack.
The advocates of “anti-racism,” of course, have anticipated this objection. According to Fire, “freedom in California’s model framework frames it an inconvenience, warning professors not to “weaponize academic freedom’ and to ‘inflict curricular trauma on our students.’”
In practical terms, FIRE points out that this means that “[o]ur clients…have been forced to change their syllabi and teaching materials, lest they face repercussions.” One of those clients, Loren Palsgaard, an English professor, said, “Hearing uncomfortable ideas is not ‘curricular trauma’ and teaching all sides of an issue is not ‘weaponizing academic freedom’…That’s just called ‘education.’”
In the words of FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner, “These regulations are a totalitarian triple-whammy. The government is forcing professors to teach and preach a politicized viewpoint they do not share, imposing incomprehensible guidelines (Boy, is that the truth!), and threatening to punish professors when they cross an arbitrary, indiscernible line.”
Above, I said that this latest outrage is just the tip of the iceberg. It has been implicit from the beginning in the misnamed “affirmative action” that became the cover for the reverse discrimination that the federal government and many colleges and universities imposed in the 1960s to make civil rights “actual” and not merely “formal.” This impatience with the deliberate processes of the law had a pernicious effect on the content on higher education in the demand for “multiculturalism” in course syllabi just over 20 years ago when I retired from teaching.
I argued to my colleagues then, but to no avail, that requiring the inclusion of women’s and minorities’ contributions even before they were free to make them was but the prelude to rewriting history to fit an ideological narrative. Too many simply believed they were being asked to be considerate, even libertarians who ought to be have been suspicious of this academic trojan horse. Now it has reached the level of dogma to which teachers must genuflect to gain or retain employment. This is not education; it is indoctrination.
To reinforce the corruption, and therefore the dilution, of higher education, this year the California Community College System abolished reading, writing and mathematical requirements as prerequisites to college-level courses, as both unnecessary and costly. Now somehow the real shortcomings of students who are still lacking in vital learning skills will be overcome by a massive commitment to tutoring them as they struggle in college-level courses the readings and other requirements of which are as challenging as ever.
Community colleges have no significant entrance requirements, so their leaders long ago sought to remedy academic deficiencies with courses aimed at overcoming them. But, while this is never admitted, abolishing pre-requisites is part of the misbegotten idea that standards are ‘racist,” as they have a “disproportionate effect” on racial minorities aka “underserved communities.”
And now Oregon, our neighbor to the north, just decided to abolish minimal high school graduation requirements. According The Hill, “In public education’s latest blunder, the Oregon Department of Education has just decided that basic reading, writing and math skills are not required for students to graduate with a high school diploma.
“Citing the effects of COVID-19 school closures, however, SB 744 required the state to review ‘requirements for high school diploma options.’ To address learning-loss throughout the pandemic, the bill led to the suspension of Oregon’s essential skills proficiency requirement through the 2023-24 school year.
“Last month, Oregon’s State Board of Education voted unanimously to adopt an additional extension of this suspension through the 2027-28 school year. Board members, alongside Oregon Department of Education leadership, argued that requiring students to complete standardized tests both presented a ‘harmful hurdle for historically marginalized students’ and represents a misuse of state tests. “
Notice how in these cases that low or non-existent academic standards are in such complete harmony with ideological conformity. This means that schools and colleges don’t exist to enable students to learn the truth about the created world around us and the people living in it, but rather to impose a rigid dogma that all must accept without question.
Bless those Fresno-area professors as they press their case for academic freedom. But pray also that the educators demonstrating confusion, if not, mean-spiritedness, will see the error of their ways and let students be students and teachers be teachers.