posted June 03, 2017 08:51 AM            

June 3, 2017
Legislator introduces bill to cut state funding and privatize Evergreen State University
Thomas Lifson

Evergreen State University in Olympia, Washington has emerged as ground zero for physical intimidation and neo-segregation, as leftists exercise totalitarian control. As most readers already know, when a leftist professor, Bret Weinstein, objected to a neo-segregationist event in which all white people were top leave campus, he was viciously threatened with physical violence, and was advised to leave campus because his safety could not be protected.

Even worse, the president of the university, George Bridges, disgraced himself by caving in to ridiculous demands, and praising the students who abused Weinstein and even himself. Shades of Maoist thought-reform in China under the Red Guards! Watch as he agrees to cut academic homework assignments to enable the demonstrators to focus on their disruptions:

“All of us are students and have homework and projects and things due. Have you sent an email out to your faculty letting them know?” one student protester asks, saying “what’s been done about that” and noting that she and her peers were participating in the meeting “on [their] own time.”

“It’s the first thing I’ll do. I have not done it yet, I will do it right now,” Bridges replies while one protester declares that professors “need to be told that these assignments won’t be done on time and we don’t need to be penalized for that.”

Clearly, the university has lost its academic thrust and substituted a leftist political agenda for the academic work that the state of Washington is paying for. So GOP state Representative Matt Manwiller introduced legislation on Thursday to cut state support, and eventually privatize Evergreen. MyNorthwest.com reports:

As racial tensions escalate at Evergreen State College, one state legislator is attempting to cut the college off from public support.

“At the end of the day, we the Legislature and the people have to speak up and say, ‘We are not going to contribute our taxpayer dollars to a college that wants to re-institute a Jim Crow approach to education and segregation,” Representative Matt Manweller told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

Manweller — who teaches political science at Central Washington University — introduced a bill Thursday aimed at getting the state to ditch Evergreen. The bill, if passed, would phase out Evergreen over five years. After that, it would be a private college.

“When you cross the line and start attacking a Jewish professor when you cross the line and you start telling white people or anybody based on their skin color that they can’t come to school, that violates our anti-discrimination laws,” he said.

The traditional tactic of leftists would be to paint the GOP as anti-intellectual know-nothings. But this bill would merely transfer state finds to another institution, focused on hard sciences and engineering - a much better investment for tech-heavy Washington State.

The GOP lacks a majority and the state’s Democrat Governor would veto the bill if passed. So Manwiller followed a second strategy, invoking the state’s Human Rights Commission. The Tacoma News-Tribune report:

He also sent a letter Thursday to the state Human Rights Commission asking executive director Sharon Ortiz to “take action to correct discriminatory practices or policies” at the college.

His bill has little chance of passing, especially as lawmakers are embroiled in their second special session over a court-ordered fix to public schools. The commission will review the letter but is not launching any investigation at the moment, Ortiz said Wednesday.

But Manweller called the moves a “figurative shot across the bow” to school administration and protesters “that says, ‘Hey, the people that are funding you are watching and they’re not happy.’”

Even though the state is unlikely to cut funding for the moment, I would think that civil rights violations would be sufficient to cut off federal funding, which might be in prospect. Higher education has drifted off into far left hysteria floating on a sea of taxpayers’ money. That financial flow is the leverage the rest of us have to rein in the little totalitarians of thee progressive movement. It is time to use that leverage.

posted June 03, 2017 09:02 AM            

June 3, 2017
Harvard historian beclowns self over Paris Climate Accord
Thomas Lifson

Donald Trump’s presidency has already caused a wave of self-destructive behavior to be born of blind fury. Kathy Griffin is the most public example of this, but she is far from alone in allowing her ager at Trump to cause her to lose sight of basic standards that should undergird her professional activities. We can now add a distinguished Harvard historian, the holder of an endowed chair, to the list of public figures inflicting damage in their reputations, blinded by fury at President Trump.

As President Trump announced American withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, the apocalyptic themes continually harped upon (but never realized so far) by Warmists may have added extra desperation to the reactions to President Trump. Jay Cost reports at the Weekly Standard:

Twitter has a remarkable power to make well-credentialed people look like fools. Case in point: Joyce Chaplin, who is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University.

In response to President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accords, Chaplin tweeted, "The USA, created by int'l community in Treaty of Paris in 1783, betrays int'l community by withdrawing from #parisclimateagreement today."

Senator Ted Cruz would have none of this, and responded, "Just sad. Tenured chair at Harvard, doesn't seem to know how USA was created. Not a treaty. Declaration+Revolutionary War+Constitution=USA." Chaplin, apparently forgetting that discretion is the better part of valor, responded, "Sad. US Senator, Harvard Law degree. Doesn't know that national statehood requires international recognition."

Chaplin is not just wrong, but embarrassingly wrong. A 17-year-old high school student should know better.

Cost lists the six reasons she is wrong. They are all points that are familiar to anyone who graduated from an American high school before the bottom fell out of public education. For example:

- First, the Treaty of 1783 was not a multinational accord. It was a bilateral agreement between the United States and Great Britain.

- Second, the Treaty was a recognition of the facts on the ground, which were that, after their defeat at Yorktown, the British had no chance of reclaiming their American colonies.