UVa Lifetime Virtue Signaling

Posted on February 16, 2021 by | Leave a comment

by Walter Smith

“Lifetime learning” sounds pretty innocuous, right? Maybe even charitable and aspirational?

To be fair, the University of Virginia lifetime-learning program does offer some courses that provide an opportunity to learn something.  The two offerings by Professor Ragosta on Patrick Henry look interesting.

But there is a difference between “learning” and “indoctrination. And the “Governor’s Summit on Equitable Collaboration,” hosted by UVa’s lifetime learning program, is shaping up to be an embarrassment for an institution of higher learning whose purported goals are to be “good and great.”

The toolkit for “transforming community spaces” sounds more like the manual for a Red Guard reeducation camp than a lifetime learning experience. Continue reading →

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Posted in Race, Equity and Diversity, Speakers, Panels and Events

UVa Committee to Study Free Expression Issues

Posted on February 10, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Leslie Kendrick

by James A. Bacon

The University of Virginia has created two new committees: one to articulate the university’s commitment to free expression and inquiry, and another to examine naming and memorials on the grounds (as the UVa campus is referred to).

“We are working to give voice to our commitment as an educational institution to the free and open exchange of ideas, and to grapple with the complexities of our University’s history and the names that we honor,” Ryan said in making the ann0uncement. “These committees will help us forge a path forward as we continue to address these issues as a community and as a nation.”

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Posted in Freedom of speech and expression

Gerald Warburg and the Other “F” Word

Posted on February 10, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Gerald Warburg

by Walter Smith

UVA Today seems quit enamored with Gerald Warburg, a national security expert with the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. UVa’s official administrative mouthpiece profiled him yesterday and highlighted the publication in the Wilson Quarterly of his article discussing Congressional dysfunction in matters of war and peace.

UVA Today had featured the former Congressional aide just a few days previously in a post headlined, “Be Grateful, Build Community, Fight for Justice.” The nation is at a “pivot point,” he opined in reflecting upon the Jan. 6 storming of the nation’s Capitol. “The fever of fascism has broken.”

The fever of fascism? Continue reading →

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Posted in Leftist orthodoxy

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“This Is the cost of ignoring white supremacy”

Posted on January 23, 2021 by | Leave a comment

The University of Virginia’s Miller Center kicked off 2021 with a virtual discussion entitled, “Race Relations and Criminal Justice in the New Year.”

Kevin Gaines, African American and African Studies professor, was joined by Paul Butler, Georgetown University law professor and legal analyst on MSNBC, to discuss the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection and criminal justice reform, reports the Cavalier Daily.

The speakers used the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol building by right-wing extremists as a jumping off point to discuss systemic racism. Continue reading →

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Posted in Leftist orthodoxy, Speakers, Panels and Events

Positive Developments in Freedom of Expression at UVa

Posted on January 21, 2021 by | Leave a comment

University of Virginia Rector James B. Murray Jr.

by James C. Sherlock

I am an alumnus of the University of Virginia and have been one of the most prominent public critics for its drift into left-wing ideology at the expense of academic freedom and the best interests of its students.  

University of Chicago Principles

I have recommended both publicly and privately that my university adopt the University of Chicago Principles, or their equivalent.  Continue reading →

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Posted in Freedom of speech and expression

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Restructuring Higher Ed for Greater Produktivität

Posted on January 17, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Pre-COVID, the UVa Kaffeestunde met every week. German speakers of all levels hung out to sprechen deutsch.

by James A. Bacon

Last month the University of Virginia Board of Visitors approved a recommendation to eliminate the M.A. and PhD programs in the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures. While UVa students retained a healthy appetite for learning to read and speak in German, only a few showed an interest in plumbing the depths of German literature.

The scaling back of the German department, which offered advanced courses in such authors as Freud and Kafka last semester, was part of a larger restructuring of UVa’s graduate foreign-language program. The board also voted to eliminate the M.A. program in Italian and the B.A. in Comparative Literature. Continue reading →

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Posted in Academic programs, Restructuring

Another Higher-Ed Apologist Calls for More State Funding

Posted on January 4, 2021 by | Leave a comment

James Socas

by James A. Bacon

You’d think James Socas would know better. As an employee of the Blackstone Group, he invests in technology companies. He knows what it takes to run successful business enterprises. He has even served two terms on UVa’s alumni association board. But he’s willing to cut Virginia public universities plenty of slack when it comes to the way they run their enterprises.

In an op-ed he wrote for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Socas calls for greater state funding for Virginia’s public colleges and universities — with no strings attached and no calls for accountability. He should know better.

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Posted in State funding, Workforce development

UVa and Tech — Less Intolerant than Other Elite Universities

Posted on December 23, 2020 by | Leave a comment

by James A. Bacon

I have been critical of Virginia’s colleges and universities, especially the University of Virginia, for the intolerance of conservative political and cultural viewpoints. But there’s another side to the story, and I believe in presenting all the evidence, not just the facts that fit my narrative. By the standards of other elite U.S universities — admittedly an extraordinarily low bar — UVa and Virginia Tech are less intolerant of diverse viewpoints than most.

Indeed in the College Free Speech Rankings based on a survey of 20,000 college students at 55 top universities, the University of Virginia scored 6th and Virginia Tech scored 8th for freedom of speech and expression. Both fell far short of the University of Chicago, which sets the gold standard, but they far exceeded Ivy League institutions like Princeton, Harvard and Dartmouth.

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Posted in Intellectual diversity

How UVa Is Addressing the Online Challenge

Posted on December 19, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Alex Hernandez, dean of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at the University of Virginia.

by James A. Bacon

Eight years ago the forced resignation of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan embroiled Virginia’s flagship university in a controversy that played out nationally. Rector Helen E. Dragas saw an “existential threat to the greatness of UVa” from demographic, financial and technological forces reshaping the higher-education landscape. The most controversial of these was the emergence of online learning. Sullivan, Dragas said, had not moved aggressively enough to incorporate online learning into UVa’s strategic planning. In the turmoil that followed, Sullivan carried the day. She was reinstated as president and remained until replaced by Jim Ryan in 2018.

But the challenge of online learning did not go away. While change has not come as rapidly as some predicted, online learning has steadily gained higher-ed market share in the years since. Following Sullivan’s philosophy of incremental change, UVa remained committed to the traditional model of classroom teaching but experimented with online learning on the margins. Then, boom, along came the COVID-19 epidemic. Suddenly, every university in the country, including UVa, was compelled to convert in-person classes to an online format.

COVID has shifted the conversation dramatically. Continue reading →

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Posted in Curriculum

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A Glimpse into UVa’s Fund-Raising Juggernaut

Posted on December 18, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Bright shiny object: the proposed $48 million Data Science building.

by James A. Bacon

Alumni unhappy about recent developments at the niversity of Virginia claim to have withdrawn $150 million or more in pledged financial support for the institution. Money talks in academia as elsewhere. President Jim Ryan and Rector James Murray have engaged disgruntled grads in spoken and written communications and have given them the courtesy of thoughtful (albeit inadequate) responses.

But there is little indication that anything will change. In last week’s Board of Visitors meeting, not one of the issues raised by the insurgent alumni was discussed — not the “F— UVA” sign on the Lawn, not the purging of names from buildings and grounds of once-prominent figures now deemed racist, not the increasing intolerance of non-leftist viewpoints that is strangling intellectual diversity and leaving a majority of students reluctant to speak their opinions openly.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Endowments, Fund-raising and Philanthropy