Abigail Shrier, author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” will be speaking tonight (Oct. 11) at 7:00 p.m. at the University of Virginia. Register here.
If you can’t make it to Charlottesville, you can livestream the event by clicking here.
Posted in Speakers, Panels and Events
Kimberly J. Robinson, UVa Professor of Law. Official Photo
by James C. Sherlock
Fund it and they will come.
The Daily Progress reports that thanks to a $4.9 million gift from an anonymous philanthropist, a new “Institute” has been launched at UVa’s School of Law.
The new organization, the Education Rights Institute, plans to
“find ways to improve K-12 education and help educators address the obstacles that face disadvantaged students.”
Staff have been hired and the institute’s first projects are already in development. There will be a star-studded roll out on October 16th.
Excited?
Hold that thought while you read about the Institute’s leadership, goals and intentions. Continue reading
by James A. Bacon
It is gratifying to see the editors of The Cavalier Daily engage in an exchange of ideas, albeit indirectly through dueling editorials, with conservative proponents of free speech at The Jefferson Independent, the University of Virginia’s independent student publication, and The Jefferson Council.
It is even more gratifying to see that the CD editors embrace a principle in an editorial yesterday with which we whole-heartedly agree: “Free speech does not guarantee comfort” (even though we’re pretty sure that it’s our comfort that deserves no guarantee, not their own).
However, even as they tout the University of Virginia’s No. 6 ranking in the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) 2024 free speech survey, the authors argue that there are justifiable limits on speech — and that those limits should apply to people at UVa whose views they happen to dislike.
The event precipitating the editorial is the impending visit to UVa of Abigail Shrier, a journalist whose writings about the role of social contagion in the spread of transgender identity among adolescent girls has triggered trans activists across the country. “We must … recognize that certain types of speech simply should not be tolerated here on Grounds,” writes the editorial board, “even if this speech is technically permissible under the law.”
Shrier is scheduled to speak at 7:00 p.m., October 11, Room 125 of Minor Hall. You can register to attend the event here. Continue reading
Jason Miyares
by James A. Bacon
The primary duty of board members of Virginia’s public colleges and universities is to the commonwealth, not to the individual institutions, Attorney General Jason Miyares wrote Monday in response to an advisory opinion requested by Governor Glenn Younkin.
According to Miyares’ missive, Youngkin asked whether Virginia law imposes upon boards of visitors “a duty to serve the interests of the university or college only, or the Commonwealth more broadly.”
“Although they extend services to non-residents, Virginia’s institutions of higher education exist to fulfill the commonwealth’s commitment to provide education to the students of Virginia,” the AG answered. “It is clear that the boards of visitors serving them, as public officers of the state, have a duty to the Commonwealth as a whole.”
The letter does not elucidate the particular circumstances that led to the request for clarification, but the issue of board members’ primary duty did arise during the September 2023 meeting of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors meeting. Rector Robert Hardie had invited Clayton Rose, former president of Bowdoin College and currently a Harvard University professor, to lead a discussion of “best practices in board governance.” (See our coverage here.) Continue reading
Posted in Board of Visitors, Governance
Abigail Shrier
by James A. Bacon
Abigail Shrier deserves a Pulitzer Prize for her 2019 work of journalism, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.” She’ll never get the recognition she deserves from the literary establishment, though, because her conclusions transgress some of the holiest orthodoxies in the progressive canon. Despite the outcry that greeted her book, it became a best seller and transformed the way many people think about transgenderism. I am one of them.
Anyone reading the book, as opposed to imbibing the mischaracterizations of her critics, will readily see that Shrier is no “transphobe.” She is highly empathetic to the struggles that transgender people undergo, and she respectfully refers to them by their transgendered names and pronouns. She also acknowledges that gender dysphoria is a real (but exceedingly rare) phenomenon that occurs mainly among boys as young as three or four who believe that their minds and bodies are mismatched.
Shrier is reviled because she regards the unprecedented surge of transgender identity among adolescent girls as a cultural contagion, and she sees “affirmative” practices of hormonal treatment and breast removal as one step removed from medical malpractice. She criticizes teachers, psychiatrists and medical professionals who automatically “affirm” transgender identity rather than inquire about other potential explanations of emotional distress.
One critic described her work as “a fear-filled screed, full of misinformation, biological and medical inaccuracies, logical fallacies, and propaganda.” Perhaps. I’m no expert. But I found her credible.
Virginians can hear Shrier speak for herself when she appears at the University of Virginia October 11, Room 125 of Minor Hall, at 7:00 p.m. The event is sponsored by The Jefferson Council and the Common Sense Society as part of our ongoing effort to bring diverse voices to UVa. Register here Continue reading
Posted in Speakers, Panels and Events
Imagine what the University of Virginia would be like if the Jefferson Council wasn’t getting speakers like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to speak on the grounds. Here follows a list of offerings found on the UVA Today calendar of events for the current week. It’s very woke, though not uniformly so. The East Asia Center, founded in 1975 and not recognizably afflicted by progressivism, is putting on two lectures this week. And Jonathan Rauch, a pioneering advocate of gay marriage, describes himself as an admirer of James Madison and Edmund Burke and as a skeptic of utopian ideologies. I dare not predict the tenor of his remarks about Christianity’s broken promise. — JAB
New Frontiers in Black Placemaking
Panel discussion followed by a reception.
September 25
The notion of the Western frontier prompts recognition of the genocide and forced removal policies informed by notions of Manifest Destiny that dismembered Indigenous and Native communities. Native and Black landscapes of the West have historically lost population, been destroyed by development, and industry has extracted water and oil. Post-Emancipation, Black Western place makers sought a promised land in places like Nicodemus, Kansas, Blackdom, New Mexico, and Allensworth, California. During this event, descendant activists, planners, preservationists, and scholars from these towns will share their experiences preserving and planning in these emancipatory landscapes or Western Afrotopias. Continue reading
Posted in Speakers, Panels and Events
Photo credit: UVa Today
The Mike Pompeo speech Monday night to an audience of 400 at Alumni Hall was a great success. View the speech in the video above. And read an excellent account of it in UVA Today.
Many thanks to our collaborators in putting on this event: the Young America’s Foundation, the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and the College Republicans-UVa.
Posted in Speakers, Panels and Events
The Jefferson Council commends to readers’ attention two essays published in The Jefferson Independent, the University of Virginia’s alternative student publication of news and commentary. We are delighted to see students tackling the weighty issues of free speech and diversity in admissions. Please take a look. You’ll be impressed by the quality of writing and reasoning. — JAB
UVA’s FIRE Ranking Released: Grounds is alive with self-censorship, not civil discourse. Lauren Horan, president of the College Republicans, argues that UVa’s #6 free-speech by the Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reflects official policies, not real-world practice. Writes Lauren: “Grounds is alive with self-censorship, not civil discourse.”
Affirmative Action is Sugarcoated Discrimination. Mira Ramachandran examines the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on race in admissions from the perspective of an “Asian” student. “There is nothing moral about elite colleges penalizing Asian students on the SAT for performing too well,” she writes.
Posted in Admissions, Freedom of speech and expression
By Walter Smith
According to the most recent survey from The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the University of Virginia ranked 6th highest for free speech. Before you puff up with pride for the alma mater, please be aware that UVA’s score was 68 out of 100. Once upon a time, before grade inflation set in, that was known as an “F.”
And UVA’s score is really too generous. While FIRE gives UVa credit for its “unequivocal” support for free speech in formal written documents, the side quotes illustrating what students actually think they can say show quite the opposite. Talk is cheap.
In place of Jim Ryan’s quasi-religious manifesto (Great and Good), the Board of Visitors should set as a goal that UVA be recognized as the #1 school for free speech. How could any person who claims to love UVa and respect its Jeffersonian legacy object? Continue reading
Posted in Freedom of speech and expression
by James A. Bacon
Step aside California! Public universities in Virginia have built larger diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies than taxpayer-funded universities in any other state, concludes a new backgrounder by The Heritage Foundation. The DEI bureaucracy at the University of Virginia includes 94 employees listed on its website, says the report. Virginia Tech has 83 DEI personnel, while George Mason University has 69.
Expressed as a ratio of DEI bureaucrats to tenure-track faculty members, GMU earned the top spot as DEI top-heavy, with a ratio 0f 7.4 to 100. UVa was close behind with 6.5, while Tech was 5.6. In comparison, uber-woke Cal Berkeley has a 6.1 per 100 ratio.
(I’ll have to stop making quips about UVa being the Berkeley of the East Coast. From now on I’ll describe Berkeley as the UVa of the West Coast.) Continue reading
Posted in Administration, Race, Equity and Diversity
