Category: Culture wars
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A Project 2025 Revolution at GMU?
by James A. Bacon Lefty professors are fearful that a new Board of Visitors, now comprised of a majority of Youngkin appointees, is about to unleash a right-wing revolution at George Mason University, Virginia’s largest public university. Six of the 12 Youngkin-appointed board members are, or have been, affiliated with the conservative Heritage Foundation think…
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Not a Healthy Development
by James A. Bacon As conservative as I am, right-wing “militias” make me nervous. I’m sympathetic to some of what these citizen groups say they want to accomplish — keep neighborhoods safe, provide backup to local law enforcement in emergencies — but I don’t see why they need to parade around with guns to do…
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DEI at UVA Astronomy: The Stars Are Not Aligned
by James A. Bacon Back in 2020, the University of Virginia Astronomy Department jumped on the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) bandwagon. Ashamed of its history of attracting so few Blacks and Hispanics, the Department formed a DEI committee to advance the goal of making the department more demographically diverse. The committee quickly resolved to…
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Conspiratorial Thinking at UVA
by James A. Bacon In the fall of 2023, 54 new professors joined the faculty of the University of Virginia College of Arts & Sciences. Dean Christa Acampora hailed the “extraordinary talent” of the new wave of scholars. One of the new hires was Sethunya Mokoko, a native of the southern Africa country of Lesotho…
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Keep Politics Out of University Investment Decisions
by James A. Bacon I didn’t see this one coming, but I’m delighted to hear of it: Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera and Secretary of Finance Stephen Cummings have written the presidents of Virginia’s public universities asking them to verify that their endowment investments are not influenced by political considerations. The state wants to ensure…
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A Diversity Director for Every Department
by James A. Bacon John McLaren is a full professor in the Economics Department of the University of Virginia. He has written dozens of papers and journal articles in his specialty fields of globalization and international trade, and has given keynote speeches in conferences around the world. He also serves as the departmental Director of…
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UVA Arts & Sciences to Conduct “Belonging” Survey
by James A. Bacon The College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia is undertaking a campus climate survey to gauge the extent to which students, faculty and staff in the college’s many departments feel a sense of “belonging.” The priority at the moment is choosing among 16 themes to be explored in…
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Down the Memory Hole
by James A. Bacon “How do you squeeze the essence of Wahoowa into 90 seconds?” So asks an article in UVA Today. Here’s what UVA’s video producers came up with: What’s missing from the video? There are 50 scenes, including shots of the Rotunda and the Lawn, but no mention of their designer. Apparently,…
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A Playpen for Social-Justice Activists
by James A. Bacon Jim Ryan’s vision for the University of Virginia is to build an institution that is both “great and good,” an institution that strives for excellence while also advancing the common welfare. There are many paths to achieving the common good — entrepreneurship, economic development, effective government, strong families, vibrant civic life,…
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Lies, Damn Lies, and Presidential Debates
by James A. Bacon Virginia played prominently in the disinformation spewed by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in their first 2024 presidential debate last night. Biden brought up the seemingly unkillable canard that Trump referred to the White supremacists in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville as “good people.” Meanwhile,…
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Virginia Dems Find Enemies to the Left
BREAKING: The Virginia Democratic Convention has been disrupted by protesters advocating for Palestine. “Democrats, Democrats, can’t you see. Genocide is your legacy.” pic.twitter.com/A7T6zTkCW7 — Stu (@thestustustudio) June 22, 2024 by James A. Bacon At Virginia’s Democratic Party convention three days ago, Senator Tim Kaine wrapped up the proceedings with a good old-fashioned bashing of the…
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The Battle Over African-American History
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is working on revisions to an advanced-placement course on African-American history, and the forces of wokeness are agitating to preserve the ideological framework they wrote into the course…
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Keeping Up with Wokeness: “Indigiqueer”
by James A. Bacon In the thought bubble of intersectional oppression, language mutates faster than COVID-19. It’s almost impossible for us normies to keep up. I consider it a point of professional pride to stay up to speed, but even I find it astonishing at how rapidly the woke mind virus is evolving. Delving into…
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EOCR: the Enforcement Arm of DEI
by James A. Bacon How many Diversity, Equity & Inclusion employees work at the University of Virginia, and how much do they cost? Those are important questions, but they miss the big picture. Employees classified as “DEI” are only part of a large bureaucratic apparatus designed to transform the University in line with a social-justice…
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Is Something Wrong at UVA Health?
by James A. Bacon An anonymous group of Charlottesville residents has organized to bring attention to issues troubling the $3.3 billion UVA Health division of the University of Virginia. Calling itself Parrhesia — Greek for speaking candidly and freely — the group of “concerned citizens of Charlottesville and patients of UVA Health” portrays the healthcare…