04 Culture

DEI Hangs on At NASA. Plus, Harvard in Trump Admin’s Crosshairs.– freebeacon.com
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Equity in space: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory let go nearly 900 workers last year due to budget cuts. The layoffs impacted both technical and support staff at the lab, which creates land rovers that have reached Mars. They did not impact the lab’s chief inclusion officer, Neela Rajendra.

She is best known for arguing that “extreme deadline[s]” are an “obstacle to inclusion.” While NASA closed its central diversity office earlier this year in response to a Trump executive order, Rajendra survived because “the lab created a new role for her—one with many of the same duties as the old one,” our Aaron Sibarium reports.

“Instead of chief inclusion officer, the lab explained in a March 10 email, Rajendra would henceforth serve as the ‘Chief of the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success,'” writes Sibarium. “The title change provides one of the most clear cut examples yet of how institutions are seeking to circumvent Trump’s ban on DEI by renaming diversity offices and shuffling staff.”

Racial Grievance Theater Is About Humiliation, Not History– thefederalist.com
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The White House on March 27 issued an executive order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which prohibits public expenditure on any Smithsonian Institution exhibits or programs that attack core American values or “divide Americans based on race.” The interior secretary will also investigate whether any public monuments, memorials, or properties have been removed or altered to advance racialist ideology.

Cue media and liberal historians’ outrage, with one Georgetown professor telling The Washington Post that it amounted to an “ideological purity test,” while others argued it would result in removing or downplaying narratives of underrepresented communities. Yet as racialist ideologues keep demonstrating, it is their own hypocritical ideology that seeks to demonize and silence American traditions in service of a radical new political agenda.

Indeed, the very day before the executive order, NPR CEO Katherine Maher was confronted in a House subcommittee hearing with the uncomfortable fact that in January 2020 she had claimed America suffered from “our original collective sin and unpaid debt,” and affirmed the need for racial reparations. (She also called the current president a “deranged racist sociopath.”) Maher declared her regret over these tweets and claimed her opinions had changed. But Americans should rightly be wary of all historical and political narratives that leverage racial grievance and victimhood, even when presented as benign attempts to simply “tell everyone’s story.”

Columbia University’s new pres said congressional antisemitism hearings led by Elise Stefanik were ‘Capitol Hill nonsense’ | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com
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Columbia University’s newly appointed president previously dismissed the congressional hearings on antisemitism on college campuses as “Capitol Hill nonsense.”

Columbia University’s newly appointed president previously dismissed the congressional hearings on antisemitism on college campuses as “Capitol Hill nonsense,” according to leaked messages.

Claire Shipman who was named Columbia’s president on Friday, had been serving as co-chair of the university’s board of trustees. Shipman is a former CNN White House correspondent who was previously married to Jay Carney, the former Obama administration press secretary.

In December 2023, Shopman wrote in a text message to then-President Minouche Shafik that she thought Columbia would be spared from the “Capitol Hill nonsense.” The remark was in reference to the Rep. Elise Stefanik-led Congressional hearings that focused on antisemitic campus protests following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

George Washington Law Prof. Testimony Brutally Implodes As Senators Question Her Tweets And Writings– legalinsurrection.com
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Earlier this week on Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “The Censorship Industrial Complex,” focusing on issues of free speech and censorship. When it came time for the Democrats’ witness to testify, many Republicans raised concerns about her past statements—both in tweets and published writings—on free speech and the Constitution, questioning her claims of impartiality.

During the hearing, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) referenced several of the witnesses, Professor Mary Anne Franks’, past statements and pressed the George Washington law professor in a tense exchange. He challenged her ability to remain impartial on censorship issues under Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, particularly after she defended her claim that President Biden was better for the First Amendment than Trump.

Watch the full exchange here:

 

Naval Academy Will No Longer Use Race in Admissions Decisions, So Legal Fight Put On Hold– legalinsurrection.com
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On June 29, 2023, the United States Supreme Court outlawed the use of race in university admissions, as we reported: Supreme Court: Harvard and UNC Affirmative Action “invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”:

The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a blow to race-based affirmative action in college admissions and by implication elsewhere, putting to an end a narrow carve-out for higher education that had permitted colleges and universities to engage in otherwise unlawful conduct in the name of promoting diversity.

As Chief Justice John Roberts stated:

the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.

But, as we covered here: The Supreme Court Should Apply Its Affirmative Action Ruling to Military Academies, there is an innocuous footnote near the beginning of the Court’s Affirmative Action opinion, stating that the opinion does not apply to the military academies:

The United States as amicus curiae contends that race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s military academies. No military academy is a party to these cases, however, and none of the courts below addressed the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context. This opinion also does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.

Tax reckoning coming for besieged universities– www.washingtonexaminer.com
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Universities thrown into turmoil by Trump administration funding cuts are now facing a new and possibly larger threat in the form of tax hikes from the Republican congressional majorities.

Republicans are weighing a major increase in the tax on big university endowments, as well as a raft of other measures to raise revenues from higher education.

The GOP is motivated to raise taxes on universities because it needs to find revenues to offset the major tax cuts it aims to enact in a sweeping fiscal overhaul. However, higher education is also a prime target because Republicans view it as overrun by left-wing radicalism.

“I love it. We should do it,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner when asked about raising taxes on college endowments.