It's a Trump shite storm in Academia! —Trump says he'll push for 'pro-American' history in schools; he nixes diversity training; Princeton sucker-punched!

✅Trump says he will create national commission to push more ‘pro-American’ history

Trump alleges ‘left-wing indoctrination’ in schools, says he will create national commission to push more ‘pro-American’ history 

—WASHPO 

     President Trump characterized demonstrations against racial injustice as “left-wing rioting and mayhem” that are the result of decades of indoctrination in schools. The federal government has no power over the curriculum taught in local schools. 

✅UC national labs suspend diversity training after Trump administration order -- The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, managed by the University of California but federally funded, has suspended its employees’ diversity training program by order of the Trump administration, which recently called such programs “divisive, anti-American propaganda,” The Chronicle has learned. Nanette Asimov in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/17/20 

✅C.D.C. Testing Guidance Was Published Against Scientists’ Objections 

—NYT 

A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month about who should be tested for the coronavirus was not written by C.D.C. scientists and was posted to the agency’s website despite their serious objections, according to several people familiar with the matter as well as internal documents obtained by The New York Times. 

✅Trump blames blue states for the coronavirus death toll — but most recent deaths have been in red states -- For months, President Trump has been scrambling to deflect criticism for the breadth of the coronavirus pandemic toward whatever target might be available. During a news briefing Wednesday, he returned to one of his favorites: Democratic leaders. Philip Bump in the Washington Post$ -- 9/17/20

✅Princeton Admitted Past Racism. Now It Is Under Investigation. 

—NYT 

     The Trump administration opened a civil rights investigation into the university after its president acknowledged the role of systemic racism at the school.

9-17: How much worse off is America from COVID-19 than other rich nations? (Way!) Does Wearing Glasses Protect You From Coronavirus? UC Zooms until Fall 2021

✅10 days of distraction for Trump after early warning of virus threat
—WashPo
     The president told Bob Woodward he hid the true risk of the novel coronavirus to avoid public panic, but a key 10-day period shows he spent relatively little time on preparing the nation for its arrival.

✅Survey Sheds Light on Sexual Violence in Canadian Higher Ed
—Inside Higher Ed
     Eleven percent of women students and 4 percent of men enrolled in a Canadian postsecondary institution experienced a sexual assault “in a postsecondary setting” during the previous year, according to a 2019 survey by Statistics Canada that garnered almost 15,000 responses. A majority of students -- 71 percent -- said they had witnessed or experienced unwanted sexualized behaviors in their college setting in 2019, either on campus or in an off-campus setting involving students or others associated with their institution. Forty-five percent of women students and 32 percent of men said they personally experienced at least one such behavior in the context of their studies. The majority of women (80 percent) and men (86 percent) who experienced unwanted sexualized behaviors said the perpetrators were fellow students.

✅Trump’s Understanding of California Wildfires Is Way Off—Even for Him
—Mother Jones

     ...Experts who study climate change and wildfires say science, actually, does know, and the spike in wildfire prevalence is directly linked to global climate change. Earlier this week, Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Oakland-based think tank Breakthrough Institute, told the LA Times, “What we’ve been seeing in California are some of the clearest events where we can say this is climate change—that climate change has clearly made this worse.” ....

From Rough&Tumble: 

✅Hiltzik: How much worse off is America from COVID-19 than other rich nations? Much, much worse -- Mapping America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic compared with other countries hasn’t been a simple task, not least because of the densely obscuring smoke issuing from the Trump White House. But a new analysis points to an inescapable conclusion. Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/16/20

     Here’s Holzer’s bottom line: “Both employment and health outcomes for the U.S. during the pandemic have been worse than in almost any other high-income country in the world.”
     Had the U.S. merely matched the average unemployment rate changes among the richest members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, “at least 8.6 million more Americans would be employed today.” An equivalent record on COVID-19 deaths per capita would have resulted in the saving of 112,540 American lives.

✅Californians support COVID-19 restrictions and remain worried about outbreak, survey shows -- The survey by the Public Policy Institute of California showed 74% of respondents favor restrictions on public activity to mange the pandemic, or want more aggressive limitations. Lara Korte in the Sacramento Bee$ -- 9/17/20 

✅New poll finds shaky support for Proposition 16 to restore affirmative action in California -- The Public Policy Institute of California poll released Wednesday night found that just 31% of likely California voters surveyed said they would vote for the proposal, Proposition 16, while 47% said they oppose it. The remainder, 22%, were undecided. Phil Willon in the Los Angeles Times$ Katie Orr KQED Emily DeRuy in the San Jose Mercury$ John Fensterwald EdSource -- 9/17/20 

✅Does Wearing Glasses Protect You From Coronavirus? -- When researchers in China were analyzing hospital data of patients with Covid-19, they noticed an odd trend: Very few of the sick patients regularly wore glasses. Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times$ -- 9/17/20 

✅Coronavirus precautions at UC system likely until fall 2021 -- Zoom classes will need to stick around for at least another year at the University of California, according to the system’s top health official. Mikhail Zinshteyn CalMatters -- 9/17/20 

✅Trump contradicts his CDC director over masks, vaccine timeline -- President Donald Trump on Wednesday twice contradicted his own CDC director — on mask-wearing and vaccine distribution — saying the country’s top public health official misspoke while testifying under oath before a congressional committee earlier in the day. Robert Redfield told the Senate Appropriations Committee that wearing a mask could be more effective than a coronavirus vaccine at keeping the pandemic at bay. Brianna Ehley Politico -- 9/17/20

"I think he just made a mistake.”

Trump Again Scorns Science on Vaccine and Masks

—NYT

     President Trump slapped down Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC chief, saying his emphasis on masks and his projected vaccine timeline were wrong. It was perhaps the starkest example of Mr. Trump rejecting the advice of public health officials and the facts they provide.

     President Trump rebuked the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, saying that Dr. Robert R. Redfield offered “incorrect information” when he told a Senate panel earlier in the day that a coronavirus vaccine was unlikely to be widely available before the middle of next year.

     “I saw the statement — I called him,” Mr. Trump told reporters during a news briefing at the White House. “I said, ‘What did you mean by that?’ And I think he just made a mistake.”

     The president also said that Dr. Redfield was wrong to say that a mask is more effective than a vaccine.

     “The mask is not as important as the vaccine,” the president asserted, adding, “The mask, perhaps, helps.

     “When I called up Robert today, I said, ‘What’s with the mask?’” Mr. Trump said. “He said, ‘I think I answered that question incorrectly.’ I think maybe he had misunderstood it,” he added.

     Dr. Redfield had told senators that even if a vaccine were available now, vaccinating enough Americans for widespread immunity could take six to nine months. He estimated that one could be available for limited use by the end of the year, and for wider distribution by the middle of 2021, echoing a timeline that other top health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, had used in recent weeks.

. . .

     But Mr. Trump asserted several times that his C.D.C. chief was wrong. “I got the impression that he didn’t realize he said what he might have said,” the president said. Asked whether he still had “confidence” in Dr. Redfield, Mr. Trump said, “I do.”

     The president has repeatedly claimed that a vaccine could be available before Election Day, a timeline that most health experts say is unrealistic, prompting concerns that the Food and Drug Administration might give emergency authorization to a vaccine before it has been fully vetted for safety and effectiveness. Nine pharmaceutical companies have pledged to “stand with science” and to not push through any product that didn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.

. . .

     Mr. Trump said at a town-hall-style event on Tuesday night that a vaccine could be ready within “three weeks, four weeks.”....

9-16: "People will die"

✅ Is Academe Awash in Liberal Bias?

Most people think so. They’re wrong.

—CHE

     Is academe dominated by liberals? Most people think so. And why wouldn’t they? It’s what we hear all the time on social media, in newspaper and magazine articles, and even in academe itself. Conservatives routinely call out higher education’s “liberal bias,” and sometimes insist that something should be done to ensure that conservative voices are heard within the ivory tower.

     Some 59 percent of Republicans now say that colleges have a negative effect on the country. Recently, this complaint went all the way to the White House, as President Trump announced his intention to re-examine universities’ nonprofit status, claiming that they are all about “Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education.” Back in the 1970s, the famous Powell memo called upon conservatives to develop think tanks to counter the liberal bias of American universities.

     But is the claim true? Are conservatives underrepresented in academic life? The answer depends in part on how one defines “liberal.”

     The most comprehensive study to date of American faculty politics found a much more centrist professoriate than is alleged in conservative discourse. In that 2006 study, the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons found that some 44 percent of professors described themselves as “extremely liberal” (9 percent) or “liberal” (35 percent); 46 percent described themselves in centrist terms (18 percent as “slightly liberal,” 17 percent as “middle of the road,” and 11 percent as “slightly conservative”); 8 percent described themselves as “conservative” and 1 percent as “extremely conservative.” In other words, liberals outnumber conservatives, but the largest cohort of faculty — 46 percent — are moderates, spanning the terrain between center-left and center-right.

     Political views vary by discipline. Gross and Simmons found the highest concentrations of conservative faculty in business and health sciences (25 percent and 21 percent respectively). Computer science and engineering have a high proportion of moderates (78 percent) with a symmetrical split of liberals and conservatives (11 percent each).

     These disciplinary differences matter, because students are not uniformly distributed across the disciplines. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the two most popular majors are business and health sciences — the same fields with the highest concentrations of conservative faculty members….

✅ Wanted: Black Studies Scholars (Only)

—Inside Higher Ed

     University of Chicago English says it's only admitting Black studies Ph.D. candidates for 2021 admissions cycle, citing Black Lives Matter and the field's complicated history with regard to race.

     Departments have been having quiet conversations since the start of the pandemic about how graduate admissions will be affected: Will there be money to support new graduate students in COVID-19-reduced budgets? Even if there is money, is it ethical to admit new Ph.D. students amid widespread faculty hiring freezes?

     With the arrival of the 2021 graduate admissions cycle, these conversations are now becoming public. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s history department, for example, recently said that it is accepting no new graduate students for fall 2021.

     The English department at the University of Chicago made a similar decision, with a twist: the program will admit only those graduate students who plan to work in Black studies….

✅ The Nuances of the Free College Debate

—Inside Higher Ed

Some Democrats and some Republicans don't fit neatly into their expected boxes on the issue.

     Campaigning at Florida Memorial University last week, Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris emphasized the importance of going to college, including historically Black colleges and universities like the one where she was speaking.

     “It is the place where we nurture young people to see who they are and their role as part of leadership of our nation in whatever profession they choose,” she said.

     And she said that she and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would make going to college free for most students.

     That went over well, because what’s not to like about free, right?

     But less than two months before the election, one of the divisions between Biden and his Republican opponent, President Donald Trump, is over the Democratic plan to make attendance free at two-year colleges, as well as for those whose families make less than $125,000 at public four-year colleges, as well as public and private HBCUs....

From Rough& Tumble

✅ California’s Proposition 15 Would Raise Taxes On Businesses While Supporting Schools, Local Governments -- California voters will decide this fall whether to approve Proposition 15, a major change to the state’s historic property tax law that would raise taxes on large businesses, while providing up to $11.5 billion per year to fund public schools, community colleges and local governments. Chris Nichols Capital Public Radio -- 9/16/20

✅ COVID deaths among young people: Diverse communities hit hardest -- Although a small proportion of people under the age of 21 are dying from complications associated with COVID-19 in the U.S., a disproportionate number of these deaths are in communities of color, according to a new report issued by the CDC Tuesday. Al Saracevic in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 9/16/20

✅ Coronavirus: California jobless claims are “startlingly high,” researchers say -- California unemployment claims are at “startlingly high” levels and the brutal trends in jobless filings point to a “mixed” recovery for the state’s suddenly wobbly economy amid the coronavirus, a report Tuesday from University of California researchers has found. George Avalos in the San Jose Mercury$ -- 9/16/20

✅ LAPD Chief Moore points to pandemic as driving factor in increased gun violence, killings -- Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday that the COVID-19 pandemic has helped drive gun violence and increase killings in the city this year, including by spurring economic despair and interpersonal dramas while undercutting efforts to interrupt cycles of retaliation. Kevin Rector in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/16/20

✅ San Diego legislators want Gov. Newsom to sign high school ethnic studies bill -- San Diego legislators and others are calling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would require ethnic studies for high school students, a bill that has sat on his desk for two weeks.... Kristen Taketa in the San Diego Union-Tribune$ -- 9/16/20

✅ Biden campaign manager on Trump's return to rallies: 'People will die' -- Joe Biden’s campaign manager attacked President Donald Trump and his team for the packed rallies they've recently resumed, warning that "people will die" because of the acute risk of coronavirus transmission at the largely maskless events. Caitlin Oprysko Politico -- 9/16/20

✅ QAnon Followers Attack SF's Scott Wiener Over Sex Offender Law -- You might think the claim that California has legalized pedophilia wouldn’t pass the smell test with most people. Not in 2020, when certain Republican politicians have seized on the passage of a law regarding sex offenders as an opportunity to rally QAnon believers, a growing and active group of conspiracy theorists. Rachael Myrow KQED -- 9/15/20

✅ TODAY'S OC Covid numbers: 135 new cases; 6 new deaths.

Don Wagner is at it again!

Is Orange County Picking Another Coronavirus Mask Fight With Gov. Newsom?

—Voice of OC

     Orange County might be picking another fight with Gov. Gavin Newsom over the state’s coronavirus restrictions after Supervisor Don Wagner hinted that county officials might not enforce the guidelines. 

     The state’s reopening guidelines under a four-tiered system announced earlier this month allows numerous retailers to continue operating at limited capacities. 

     When OC moved to Tier Two last Tuesday, it allowed restaurants, gyms, churches and movie theaters to resume indoor operations at limited building capacities. 

     “This board, back in May, unanimously approved our business reopening — our business opening guidelines,” Wagner said at Tuesday’s public supervisors meeting. 

     “I raise that because we are hearing about other counties — San Diego county is considering whether it passes or not, but it’s considering a resolution today … to indicate there will not be enforcement in San Diego county of the state’s mask mandate,” Wagner said. 

     On Monday, San Diego Supervisor Jim Desmond said he’s going to push San Diego to not enforce any of the coronavirus guidelines, including masks. He said the guidelines shift too much and are too difficult to follow for struggling business owners. 

     Wagner said OC is pretty much there. 

     “I want to make sure our public knows that we essentially got there in May. Do what is in the guidelines and what the industry recommends in respect to protecting yourselves, your employees and your customers,” he said. 

     Yet, Wagner noted the state rules still apply. 

     “The state rules are still going to apply. There’s nothing we can do about those. Nevertheless those guidelines are there.” 

     The reopening guidelines adopted earlier in the year don’t specifically address the use of masks. Instead, the guidelines offer seven bullet points of general advice to businesses, like “have a plan in place” if a large number of workers get infected. 

     Instead of offering specifics, the guidelines point to a slew of documents from the California Department of Public Health, which spell out masks for workers and customers in nearly all businesses. 

     Wagner, along with Supervisor Chairwoman Michelle Steel criticized OC’s previous mask mandate from former health officer Dr. Nichole Quick, which was issued during the Memorial Day Weekend reopenings. 

     After receiving threats over the mask order, Quick abruptly resigned in early June.

     A few days later, Dr. Clayton Chau — now the permanent health officer — walked the order back. 

     Virus infections eventually soared after the mask mandate was repealed until another Gov. order closed down larger venues back in July. Deaths continue to steadily increase from those spikes.

. . .

     UC Irvine epidemiologist Andrew Noymer predicted there will be 2,000 virus deaths by the end of the year. [There's about 1100 now.]

     Hospitalizations remain plateaued around 200…. [continue reading]

9-15: “it’ll start getting cooler, just watch”—Trump's prediction ignores science

Georges Gaudy's poster shows us the logo of the
3 rifles held by an elegant woman on a bike. C. 1900

✅ Californians are testing positive for COVID-19 at the lowest rate on record -- As the Golden State faces a triple threat of respiratory risks — destructive wildfires, toxic air quality and a deadly pandemic — there is a faint glimmer of hope. Laura J. Nelson in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/15/20

✅ In California, Trump continues to deny climate change is real: ‘It will start getting cooler’ -- As wildfires raging through the West force millions of voters to confront the consequences of a warming planet, the presidential race became intensely focused Monday on climate change.... Evan Halper, Noah Bierman in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/15/20

✅ Climate Scientists Reject Trump’s Prediction “It’ll Start Getting Cooler” In California -- Scientists, and many Californians enduring this summer’s smoky and sweltering heat, wish President Donald Trump’s latest prediction — that “it’ll start getting cooler, just watch” — would come true. The problem? There’s nothing to back it up. Chris Nichols PolitiFact California via Capital Public Radio -- 9/15/20

✅ Trump visit punctuates growing divide over main cause of historic wildfires in Western states -- California seems helpless to break a cycle of catastrophic wildfires as it suffers another year of massive destruction, and the fault lines over climate change and forest management are growing as the fall campaign season gets underway. Colby Bermel Politico -- 9/15/20

✅ Jerry Brown on a California Exodus: ‘Tell Me: Where Are You Going to Go?’ -- Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, could barely make out the mountains in the distance from his ranch in the city of Williams on Sunday. Every few minutes, he picked up his phone to check the latest air quality reading. “Unhealthy,” he said. Mr. Brown, who served over 45 years in state government and politics, has been warning about this day for years. Adam Nagourney in the New York Times$ -- 9/15/20

✅ L.A. deputies tackled and arrested a reporter. Her videos contradict their claims about the incident -- As Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies tackled Josie Huang to the street on Saturday night, the reporter for NPR affiliate KPCC screamed repeatedly she was a journalist. Deputies arrested her anyway, leaving her with scrapes, bruises, a five-hour stay in custody — and an obstruction charge that carries up to a year in jail. Tim Elfrink in the Washington Post$ -- 9/15/20

✅ Appeals court says Trump can deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants; challenge certain -- A federal appeals court decided 2 to 1 Monday that the Trump administration may deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who previously received temporary protected status for humanitarian reasons. Maura Dolan in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/15/20

✅ Top Trump health appointee Michael Caputo warns of armed insurrection after election -- A top communications official for the administration’s coronavirus response urged President Trump’s supporters to prepare for an armed insurrection after a contested election and accused government scientists of “sedition” in a Facebook Live chat that he described in detail to The Washington Post on Monday. Yasmeen Abutaleb, Lena H. Sun, Josh Dawsey and Rosalind S. Helderman in the Washington Post$ Sharon LaFraniere in the New York Times$ -- 9/15/20

✅ Report: Guided Pathways Show Progress

—Inside Higher Ed

     Colleges need to engage faculty and incorporate experiential learning to continue improving guided pathways programs, report finds.

✅ U of Michigan Seeks Court Order to End Strike

—Inside Higher Ed

     …Graduate students have been refusing to teach classes, hold discussion sections and do some research since the strike began Sept. 8. The union has also asked faculty members and undergraduates to not hold or attend class in solidarity with the strike….

✅ Distracted Minds: Why Your Students Can’t Focus

—CHE

     Not only have we always been distracted; we have always been unhappy about it. Here’s Part 1 of a new series on distraction in the college classroom, and what to do about it.

✅ How One Word Led to an Uproar

—CHE

     …And it sounds a bit like the n-word. The resemblance isn’t exact: The first vowel is a long “a” rather than a short “i,” and there’s no “r” sound at the end. It’s more like “nay-ga.” But it’s similar enough that, when it’s said rapidly and repeatedly, and heard out of context, an English speaker could mistake it for the racist slur. That is how several of Patton’s students apparently heard it in a class on August 20, and they complained to the administration. The complaint led to Patton’s removal from the course.

     When a video of Patton saying the word was posted online, the general reaction wasn’t outrage at Patton but bafflement at how what he said could have prompted his ouster….

9-14: Trump's indoor, mask-free Nevada rally: "Shameful, dangerous and irresponsible," says Governor

Leonetto Cappiello, 1903

✅Skelton: How politics and police unions stopped bills to hold bad cops accountable -- It wasn’t good government. But it was probably good politics. George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/14/20

✅Warmer. Burning. Epidemic-challenged. Expensive. The California Dream has become the California Compromise -- California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place they have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived. Heather Kelly, Reed Albergotti, Brady Dennis and Scott Wilson in the Washington Post$ --

 

✅Trump’s California visit to spotlight political divides over climate change, coronavirus -- Ahead of President Trump’s visit to wildfire-ravaged California on Monday, Democrats charged over the weekend that his disregard for basic science had contributed to the worsening annual conflagrations, as well as to the still-uncontrolled spread of COVID-19. Laura King in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 9/14/20

 

✅‘Shameful, dangerous and irresponsible’: Nevada governor lashes Trump for indoor rally against state rules -- Shortly before President Trump took the stage on Sunday night in Henderson, Nev., for his first indoor rally in months, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak blasted the president for flouting the state’s coronavirus restrictions by packing hundreds of supporters, many without masks, into a building. Timothy Bella in the Washington Post$ -- 9/14/20

Leonetto Cappiello, 1902

✅In Visiting California, Trump Confronts a Scientific Reality He Denies

—NYT

✅WHO official: Europe headed for surge in deaths in October, November

—WashPo

 

✅Duquesne Suspends Professor Who Used N-Word in Class

—Inside Higher Ed

     … In one of the videos, the professor, Gary Shank, says, “I’m giving you permission to use the word, OK? Because we’re using the word in a pedagogical sense. What’s the one word about race that we’re not allowed to use?”

     “I’ll give you a hint. It starts with ‘N.’ … It’s even hard to say, OK? But, I’ll tell you the word, and again, I’m not using it any way other than to demonstrate a point. Fair enough?”….

     [Did he "use" the word? He did not. See.]

 

✅Spring Planning Has Begun. Here’s What Colleges Are Thinking So Far.

—CHE

     Colleges that have announced spring plans are mostly sticking to their strategies from the fall, be they in person, remote, or hybrid.