You spend years, decades even, in deep study of a complex topic, and you keep abreast of the current literature. You regularly attend meetings with fellow experts to compare information. You take this knowledge seriously and try to pass it on to the next generation of scholars.
Then some yahoo in shitkickers who teaches Sunday School and got voted into office tells you you’re wrong and puts a gag on your teaching.
That’s how I feel about the threats to higher education right now. Texas A&M led the way, with administrators clamping down and telling professors they had to reflect their bigoted ignorant views on race, gender and sexuality.
The professors are fighting back, though. They’re suing the regents.
The lawsuit asks the judge to rescind instructions requiring professors to remove particular readings or subjects and declare the policy unconstitutional. They allege the restrictions violate the professors’ First Amendment rights and are so vague that faculty cannot determine what they may teach without risking discipline.
Good for them. These are the heroes we need.
The American Association of University Professors brought the lawsuit alongside four professors: Texas A&M professors Leonard Bright, Vanita Reddy and Landon Sadler and Tarleton State University professor Aaron George. They are represented by the ACLU of Texas, the national ACLU and the Houston law firm Yetter Coleman. They sued the system’s regents in a federal court in Houston.
After they clean up the Board of Regents, it’s time for the citizens of Texas to step up and fire Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
It is not just Texas.
The current Federal government, or what is left of it after the Trump regime purges, also openly hates education.
My friend is a university professor in a nationally known department of Atmospheric Sciences. A climatologist.
She got all her funding cut off a year ago.
So did everyone else in her department.
That 25,000 scientists defunded or removed is just the number directly employed by the Federal government.
I couldn’t find an estimate for the number of scientists defunded or fired by the Trump regime at the University level. I’m sure it is in at least the 10s of thousands.
Texas is way underperforming in the War on College Educations.
The Federal government is going to stop issuing student loans to a huge number of programs, mostly in the humanities.
Ironically, this is also going to impact right wingnuts.
How much is a degree in missionary work or bible studies worth from a bible college somewhere?
It seems like there used to be breathless anticipation in the media every month waiting for the latest jobs report to come out. What happened to that? I think I’ve seen one or two since the toddler fired the head of the labor statistics agency because he didn’t like the numbers. Were the new people still unable to lie bigly enough to hide all the unemployment he’s caused so they stopped issuing reports, or did the media just decide it was pointless to keep parroting the lies?
“cosmetic certification”
Oh no, who are they going to find to keep up all the Mar a Lago faces?
Not just Texas but all of the Trumpists and their supporters and enablers in the USA – and they somehow need to be removed and prevented from dragging our whole planet into apocalypse if it is not already too late.
HG Well’s wrote* “Civilization** is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”.
Well, right not too many people think we live in a “Post Truth, alternative facts” world. It is getting ever harder to get the actual objective Truth and science is being muzzled, under-funded, denigrated and generally treated like shit.
Too many people think ignoring reality will make it go away and stop them being affected by it.
In that metaphorical Wellsian race Education has been tripped up and is being jumped on and bashed by bullies as catastrophe builds an ever bigger race lead.
Thanks to all those who didn’t unite behind and support Kamala Harris & undermined and attacked her instead when it mattered most for us all.
.* See among other places : https://wist.info/wells-hg/39924/ Scroll down there too. Pretty sure I’ve seen a few variations in exact wording.
.** Yeah, I know “”Civilization” is a somewhat problematic and subjective word. Survival of our species and world might be a better more accurate description.
@Ridana 3. I’m still seeing articles covering the jobs reports. Even when they just come out they’re not great (though the coverage claims they’re better than Biden despite not being half as high). Then there’s the revisions that come a couple months later which inevitably show the previous number was an outright lie.
I assume trustworthy news sources stopped covering the jobs reports because they’re pure propaganda. The less trustworthy sources are still publishing it though, so maybe you just don’t read them…
@2 raven – Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music, and cosmetic certification programs will be hit the hardest.
Ironically, this is also going to impact right wingnuts.
How much is a degree in missionary work or bible studies worth from a bible college somewhere?
Why do I think there will some sort of exception for that area of study?
Always remember the ‘lone star’ is their approval rating: 1 star out of 5. But, they are leaders in the war on education, the war on climate, the war on healthcare, and in many other areas.
I read that abbott used legal means to get millions for his disability and then shut those means all down so no legitimate cases could succeed. What an ahole!
re stuffin@7:
EXACTLY what I was thinking.
Texas requires the posting of the 10 commandments in all its public scool classrooms, so I’m going to do my part and donate a copy. At least a copy of what someone called god calls them in a poorly edited book. Currently, many of the copies being submitted are depicted as though they were written in stone, they were not, but mine were!
When I point out this fact, they(the folks who passed the bill) don’t like it. But mine were actually written “by the finger of god”, unfortunately, Moses had a hissy fit and smashed them to pieces when he returned and found his flock cheating on god with a golden statue.(god had warned him prior) Ex:32-19
So god found Moses at some point and ordered him to to hew some new stone tables so: “I will write upon the tables the words that were on the first tables, which you broke.” Ex34:1(he fibbed) Ex34:28, but this time he makes Moses write them, obviously he won’t break something that took 40 days and nights to write! He was also not allowed to eat or drink anything in those 40 days either. He wrote something like this: Ex34:14-28
I. Thou shalt worship no other god.
II. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
III. The feast of unleavened bread thou shalt keep.
IV. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.
V. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.
VI. Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the lord god.
VII. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.
VIII. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of passover be left unto the morning.
IX. The first of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the lord thy god.
X. Thou shalt not seethe a kid (young goat) in his mother’s milk.
“…And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”
They really don’t like that last part, wouldn’t surprise me if the trump bible edited it out. They hate it almost as much as Jesus’s love commandment, you’ll never see that in a Texas classroom.
If you want to donate a copy of the 10 commandments, these, not Hestons;
make sure that posters are at least 16 by 20 inches (406.4mm by 508mm) for those metrically inclined.
I do not quibble with the fact that god talked about Heston’s commandments, but he didn’t feel the need to write them with his own finger, nor did he call them the 10 commandments, nor were they written in Stone!
*I left scool, seemed appropriate
Raven — An acquaintance of mine was with a state wetlands agency with strong connections to the federal government. It came down the pipe within weeks of Trump moving in that terms like “climate change” could not be used in internal communications. They quickly — and according to her, smoothly — developed a loose in-house cryptolect so they could continue doing their jobs.
@12: That’s funny because I recall that “climate change” had some currency as a replacement for “global warming” because it didn’t explicitly claim that the world was heating up. It allows deniers to say “Well the climate has always been changing….”
@ ^ stevewatson : Yes that’s true and we do see that argument from the Denialists although both terms Global Warming and Climate Change have actually been used for decades.
Global Overheating is my preferred choice given “warming” has misleadingly mild connotations and , yeah, what you noted about Climate change. Its also true that not everywhere immediately automatically get warmer (or hotter) because global and averages how do they work eh?
What?
The actual scientific term in use is Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Your doomerism most certainly has misleadingly wild connotations, as opposed to the not improper Global Warming.
So, sure. We each have our pref. I prefer scientific speak.
—
Wow, you just dissed yourself.
Surely what you mean is ‘Global average Overheating’, no? ;)
(Earth is the globe at hand)
@ ^ John Morales : Er, what? Thought my sarcasm and target here was pretty obvs- those pretending that their local weather being cool in one spot or at one time somehow means Global Overheating isn’t real.
Also, yeah, there is the scentific term Anthropogenic Climate Change but that’s sound a bit long and clunky outside of scientific contexts. There’s times and places for using it but tend to use other ones in general conversation. Just my preference anyhow.
Also not especially a Doomerist personally but when you look at the graphs that are almost screaming at us and predictions and can see what’s already happening sometims much faster than predicted, well, that’s what I’m seeing and noting.
I could hardly have more specific, and my own sarcasm should have been no less clear.
“Your doomerism most certainly has misleadingly wild connotations, as opposed to the not improper Global Warming.”
(See the wordplay? mild::wild)
You were quite specific, and you claimed it was about terminology; you prefer ‘overheating’ to ‘warming’ or ‘change’.
Over-. You know, a prefix. Like super- or hyper- or ultra- or mega-.
You are hyping the opposite of the ‘mild’ version to which you object.
Maximising, not minimising.
(, is that like ‘aaaaaaaaaaarghing’?)
98 days until November 3, voting day. Slap the GOP hard.
Arizona, too. I created an endowment through the foundation of my alma mater to grant scholarships for Women in Chemistry. All was well until Mango Mussolini 2 and the DEI pogrom. We had to change the title and some of the qualification wording to avoid the pecksniffs in the legislature eager to cancel programs that do good for someone. It’s enough to make you say Grrrrrrrr!