Friday, May 03, 2013



Georgetown University, a cover-up?

ATTENTION. CRITICAL ELEMENTS OF THIS STORY, INCLUDING THE IDENTITY OF THE STORY’S SUBJECT HAVE BEEN REDACTED AND RETRACTED.

At the time I am writing this a scandal is erupting across the internet involving  prestigious Georgetown University and tied to one of their former employees, [redacted], a Georgetown grad student who says she was hired to read and process applications for admissions to the school.

She claims she had a very interesting system for screening applicants. The applications from white males were trashed, regardless of qualifications.

And now it appears that Georgetown University may be trying to cover it up.

The background of this story is pretty disturbing. [redacted], who clearly has issues with sexual and racial bigotry, decided she would not only trash the applications of white males on sight, she also decided to blog about her activities under what she assumed was anonymous conditions. Writing for a web blog called The Feminist Conservative, [redacted] laid out precisely what she was doing in very clear terms:

…I can’t tell you how many applications I saw that were just dripping with white male privelege[sic].  Any of those that I saw basically went straight to the garbage can regardless of how good their qualifactions [sic] were.  If I saw an application from a white male that basically was just good test scores, and activities like chess club or math club or what not then it shows me this person is not interested in a diverse environment.  Obviously he made no effort in integrating with minorities or to sympathize with them and is counting on male privilege to get in.  So that kind of application should get ignored.  In their place I admitted a female student.  This goes double especially for math/science majors.

Apparently the prejudicial screening criteria she employed were not limited to just white males who played chess and were interested in mathematics.  She also targeted a man of Arab descent because of his stand on Israel.

Another time this I had an application for what sounded like an arab male who wanted to study computer science.  On paper he looked good enough, decent above average scores, and such.  But I checked facebook and sure enough on his wall I came came [sic] upon a particularly hateful post about Israel supposedly not having a right to exist.  I promptly trashed the application and sent out a rejection letter.

She followed these statements with another; a bizarrely contradictory explanation for her actions. First, she says:

We can’t boil people down to numbers or statistics, or reject people based on the color of their skin.

But then she follows that statement immediately with this:

I’m happy to say that I approved nearly 90% of all female minority and 80% of all (white female applicants especially if the girls want to study math or science) while rejecting over 50% of  white males this week and hope this trend holds out.

Clearly this is a person not only warped by ideology, but who also holds deep seated prejudices that guided her unscrupulous actions. Her targets were selected by sex, race, political beliefs and perhaps even religion. Her identity was traced after she referenced the subject of her master’s thesis at Georgetown in some of her writing, including the “about” page at the Feminist Conservative.

Here are three of the main documents that led to her being identified.

About Feminist Conservative

Thesis defense is TODAY! feministconservative

My first week of work — feministconservative

It is unknown precisely how many qualified applicants were sabotaged by this woman, and it may be difficult to find out as it now appears almost certain that individuals at Georgetown, perhaps even university officials, are purging their online records of that thesis, and her identity, in order to protect the interest of the school against what will almost certainly result in a massive amount of litigation.

AVFM has obtained copies, a before and after record of Georgetown’s list of master’s theses from 2012. If you had examined their website before this scandal broke, you would have found [redacted]name on the list with a link to her thesis. You can download the previous version of the page

[redacted]

However now, if you go to the page you will find no trace of her name, and naturally no link to her thesis.

[redacted]

We have a copy of that thesis available for download.

[redacted]

There has been much in the news lately, particularly in Canada at the University of Toronto, about the illegal, even violent actions of feminist ideologues in the university setting. Events intended to address issues concerning men and boys have been met with virulent hostility.

It appears that [redacted] plan was even simpler. Just rid the school of males, particularly white ones, to begin with. And as we see this blow up into a full-fledged scandal and embarrassment to Georgetown University, it appears that a person or persons at the school are going to compound those problems with a cover-up.

One would assume that they will be depending on a complete denial from [redacted], who is now reportedly in [redacted].  Without any evidence tying that blog to [redacted] identity, namely the reference to her thesis, it may make it more difficult for plaintiffs to prove their case against the school.

If this proves to have university officials behind it, it would be a very, very bad move.

SOURCE





Unschooling

Unschooling has a following across the ideological spectrum. It is a range of educational philosophies and practices surrounding the primary belief that education is a greater undertaking than schooling. Unschooling places little emphasis on traditional school curriculum and encourages children to learn through their natural life experiences including play, game play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves  -- JR, with help from Wikipedia

Over the last 12 months, I've read a total of 57 fiction books, and I'm on the premier of another 7-book series. I've also read approximately 15 non-fiction books within that same time span, and a countless number of columns, essays, and journal articles. Why am I reading so much? For starters, because I have a thirst for knowledge, which from both types of books I get more than I can retain. But more importantly, I believe that the moment we stop seeking the unknown, our lives become routine and boring. And that's neither what I want for myself, nor what I want to model for my wife and children.

Life Learning

Many prefer to refer to the unschooling lifestyle as "life learning." I personally don't care either way, but I really like the idea of life-long and life-centered learning. I taught myself to use computers at 12, when my parents bought our family's first computer. Using a computer is now my career, literally. I test software and predict the user's experience. I'm paid well enough for a simple and stressless job. Many aren't so lucky. In fact, had I not met a certain friend when I did, who knows where I'd be today. I might still be testing software, but in any event, I found a passion and stuck with it, and now I'm reaping the benefits.

I remember when the movie Jurassic Park came out. I was so excited that I got a hold of several books on dinosaurs and studied like crazy. Paleontology was one of my earliest passions, years before computers. My children really like dinosaurs now, and I can still remember quite a few names and other "fun facts."

After I got my driver's license, I, like all young men, became passionate about cars. My first car was a '93 Tracer, which I had a blast driving off-road rally-style. After that came a '95 Civic Coupe. It was already lowered, with rims, a tint, and a stereo system, so that I immediately jumped into the Honda scene. I became on expert on Hondas. Every model, trim, engine, technology, and the thousands of aftermarkets parts. I ended up crashing the '95 Civic, and then bought a '00 Civic Sedan. I've put 110k miles on it (175k total) driving it as far as Chicago (from Salt Lake). I  just can't see myself buying any other make of car, and I fully expect to pass this one on to my children.

I've written before on economics, another passion of mine. I've studied several economics books, blogs, and journals. This passion created another passion, the libertarian political philosophy, which in turn led to another passion, voluntaryism. But it hasn't stopped there. Voluntaryism forced me to confront my personal life, meaning, my family, and how I was raising my children. Thus was I led to the philosophies of peaceful parenting and radical unschooling.

Religion, too, has been a passion. I should say that this front has cooled a bit in recent years though by no means quenched. In fact, I think it's blaring up again. I've got more questions that need answering, and damned if that isn't the kind of thing to get me into trouble. My time is more valuable than it used to be, as an unschooling father of two (at the moment). I just wish I had more of it right now. So much to learn!

Final Thoughts

I hope your life has been as passion- and learning-filled as mine has been. I hope you've taken the time to study the things that you have wanted to study. My time was wasted with a lot of meaningless forgotten drivel, as I was raised by public schools, but looking back I see that I was still able find time for myself. That's when my learning was the most meaningful and unforgettable. I have no idea what I'll be studying in the coming years, but I know that quite a bit of it will be alongside my children.

SOURCE




Is Thinking Obsolete?

Thomas Sowell

While it is not possible to answer all the e-mails and letters from readers, many are thought-provoking, whether those thoughts are positive or negative.

An e-mail from one young man simply asked for the sources of some facts about gun control that were mentioned in a recent column. It is good to check out the facts -- especially if you check out the facts on both sides of an issue.

By contrast, another man simply denounced me because of what was said in that column. He did not ask for my sources but simply made contrary assertions, as if his assertions must be correct and therefore mine must be wrong.

He identified himself as a physician, and the claims that he made about guns were claims that had been made years ago in a medical journal -- and thoroughly discredited since then. He might have learned that, if we had engaged in a back and forth discussion, but it was clear from his letter that his goal was not debate but denunciation. That is often the case these days.

It is always amazing how many serious issues are not discussed seriously, but instead simply generate assertions and counter-assertions. On television talk shows, people on opposite sides often just try to shout each other down.

There is a remarkable range of ways of seeming to argue without actually producing any coherent argument.

Decades of dumbed-down education no doubt have something to do with this, but there is more to it than that. Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination. Moreover, it is largely indoctrination based on the same set of underlying and unexamined assumptions among teachers and institutions.

If our educational institutions -- from the schools to the universities -- were as interested in a diversity of ideas as they are obsessed with racial diversity, students would at least gain experience in seeing the assumptions behind different visions and the role of logic and evidence in debating those differences.

Instead, a student can go all the way from elementary school to a Ph.D. without encountering any fundamentally different vision of the world from that of the prevailing political correctness.

Moreover, the moral perspective that goes with this prevailing ideological view is all too often that of people who see themselves as being on the side of the angels against the forces of evil -- whether the particular issue at hand is gun control, environmentalism, race or whatever.

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas. One sign of this sense of moral monopoly among the left intelligentsia is that the institutions most under their control -- the schools, colleges and universities -- have far less freedom of speech than the rest of American society.

While advocacy of homosexuality, for example, is common on college campuses, and listening to this advocacy is often obligatory during freshman orientation, criticism of homosexuality is called "hate speech" that is subject to punishment.

While spokesmen for various racial or ethnic groups are free to vehemently denounce whites as a group for their past or present sins, real or otherwise, any white student who similarly denounces the sins or shortcomings of non-white groups can be virtually guaranteed to be punished, if not expelled.

Even students who do not advocate anything can have to pay a price if they do not go along with classroom brainwashing. The student at Florida Atlantic University who recently declined to stomp on a paper with the word "Jesus" on it, as ordered by the professor, was scheduled for punishment by the university until the story became public and provoked an outcry from outside academia.

This professor's action might be dismissed as an isolated extreme, but the university establishment's initial solid backing for him, and its coming down hard on the student, shows that the moral dry rot goes far deeper than one brainwashing professor.

The failure of our educational system goes beyond what they fail to teach. It includes what they do teach, or rather indoctrinate, and the graduates they send out into the world, incapable of seriously weighing alternatives for themselves or for American society.

SOURCE


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