First, before we find a cure for the Wuhan coronavirus, we have to establish politically acceptable names for it, lest we be accused of being racist against the Chinese who inflicted it on the rest of the world with their bat-eating and irresponsible government. Academia rises to this challenge:

Michigan State University is advising its students use only “acceptable” terminology when speaking about the Chinese virus, insisting that the Wuhan coronavirus must be referred to as the “novel coronavirus” or “COVID-19.”

“SARS CoV-2” is also deemed acceptable by the thought police.

Proclaims the university:

“No other names are acceptable.”

By controlling what words we use, they can control our thoughts, just like in 1984. That’s the idea, anyway.

Other schools that have officially denounced acknowledging that the virus came from China include University of Texas at Austin, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the University of California.

These sentiments echo propaganda touted by the Chinese Communist Party, imploring Americans to be careful about their words when speaking about the Chinese coronavirus.

The liberal media establishment also echoes this propaganda.

Chinese are not Caucasian and therefore can do no wrong according to the dogma of Cultural Marxism. To associate anything bad with them is racist.

Joe Biden’s handlers ought to write one of the approved names for the Wuhan coronavirus on his sleeve, so that he doesn’t make a fool of himself by calling it the “Kona virus” again — assuming Biden still remembers how to read.

On a tip from ABC of the ANC.

Now the Wuhan coronavirus crisis really is serious. It is exacerbating educational inequity. The New York Times frets that politically preferred students are not participating in attempts to teach them during the lockdown:

The absence rate appears particularly high in schools with many low-income students, whose access to home computers and internet connections can be spotty. Some teachers report that less than half their students are regularly participating. …

Cratering attendance in some districts contrasts with reports from several selective or affluent schools where close to 100 percent of students are participating in online learning. The dramatic split promises to further deepen the typical academic achievement gaps between poor, middle-class and wealthy students.

This is predictably spun as poor kids not being able to afford computers. But the percentage of young people without access to the Internet is negligible. Rich and poor kids spend about the same amount of time online; however, they spend that time differently.

Students at affluent schools and their parents tend to be more disciplined, responsible, and willing to make an effort. That’s why they are affluent. It is also why they can be taught at home when others can’t.

Their effort may prove to be futile:

The trend is leading to widespread concern among educators, with talk of a potential need for summer sessions, an early start in the fall, or perhaps having some or even all students repeat a grade once Americans are able to return to classrooms.

Everyone must be held down to the level of the least motivated, else we will have inequity. This could mean the responsible kids having to go through all the lessons twice.

On a tip from Henry B.

After September 11, the chimerical backlash against Muslims allowed them to throw their weight around as newly validated members of The Oppressed. The economic devastation caused by the Chinese-caused Wuhan coronavirus will accomplish the same for Asians, if the victim studies priesthood has its way.

From Inside Higher Ed:

Jason Chang, an associate professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Connecticut, started putting together a crowdsourced document with resources on teaching about coronavirus-related racism back in January.

Moonbats are never slow to capitalize on current events, as we know from the screeching about gun control that occurs before the bodies have cooled after each mass shooting.

“The way that I’ve begun to teach about this is to put the racist response to the pandemic in the context of an Asian American history of ‘yellow peril,’” Chang said.

You may well ask, What racist response? The answer is that, just as the Spanish flu is often referred to as the “Spanish flu,”

Trump and some other prominent figures have described [COVID-19, as we are now supposed to call it] as the “Chinese virus” despite warnings from experts who say such terminology fuels xenophobia.

Did you really think they would let go of the phony problems they exploit just because we have a real problem now?

If there is no racism, Cultural Marxists invent it — or invite others to do so:

Russell Jeung, a professor and chair of the Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University, started a new online reporting center for bias incidents against Asian Americans in collaboration with two civil rights and advocacy organizations. Jeung said the reporting center is receiving 100 bias reports daily and has collected more than 1,200 reports total since it was launched March 19.

Whimpers Jeung,

“People aren’t just being yelled at; they’re being yelled at with a vehemence and a virulence that is scary.”

People are dying by the thousands and losing their jobs by the millions. Meanwhile, academics fret about Asians supposedly being yelled at.

The form for harvesting alleged microaggressions may not provide any verification, but it is now available in eight languages. Jeung also has other means of collecting racism:

“Now we have 12 students and two other faculty working with me on just gathering data on coronavirus discrimination. We’re doing news content analysis, we’re doing these daily incident reports and we’re looking at social media.” Jeung said researchers are monitoring social media sites for viral racist memes and tracking how the term #Chinesevirus gets tweeted, and its impact.

It isn’t just students who finance this divisive idiocy. Every taxpayer does. This is particularly true at state universities like Jeung’s. He takes our money and uses it to prove that we are racist so as to advance an agenda that does not benefit society.

Hat tips: College Fix, Legal Insurrection.

Due to the Wuhan virus, students have been attending lectures online. This is bad news for leftist professors, who fret that the public will see first-hand what sort of poison they have been injecting into young minds.

Via Reclaim the Net:

These discussions started when Texas Christian University Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Farris tweeted: “If you are recording a lecture on anything controversial, be prepared for right wing sites to ask students to share it.”

History professor Rachel Michelle Gunter proposes a partial solution:

“Instead of posting videos direct to LMS [Learning Management System] (which would then own them) I’m posting links to the videos on youtube. The videos themselves are “unlisted” meaning you can’t find them in a search or if you go to my page-only if you have the direct link. Doesn’t stop link sharing though.”

The nutty professors are right to be worried. The more people are aware of the noxiousness of the leftist indoctrination that takes place in college classrooms, the sooner their heavily taxpayer-subsidized gravy train goes off the tracks.

If people get sufficiently outraged, they may even insist that public money only support useful education and research grounded in reality.

On a tip from Dave F.

If you want to see where the country is heading barring a dramatic reversal, look to college campuses, where the next generation is emerging. Looks like the term “thought police” won’t be a figure of speech for long; a student actually called the cops on Will Witt for having incorrect thoughts:

Fortunately, the police are still the good guys. They won’t always be if they have to take orders from the wrong people.

No doubt Google/YouTube concurs that the PragerU faculty should be incarcerated for making such effective arguments in favor of countermoonbattery.

On a tip from KirklesWorth.

Democrats are serious about never letting a crisis go to waste. It seems every item on their agenda can be justified by the Wuhan virus (e.g., restricting gun rights, letting criminals run loose). Liberal senators have proposed advancing their free college objective by offering relief on student loans.

Forbes lists features of the proposal, which include not only suspending loan payments, garnishments, and interest capitalization, but forgiving $10,000 for every borrower.

Knocking $10,000 off a long-term loan has nothing to do with this short-term crisis. The ultimate objective, clearly spelled out by the more overt radicals like Bernie Sanders, is for these loans not to be paid back at all. Ideally, people will spend an extended adolescence wallowing in leftist indoctrination rather than starting productive jobs and families. The student loan industry was nationalized as part of the ObamaCare power grab, so taxpayers can pick up the tab.

Leftists are called “progressives” because they move toward their goals incrementally, seizing whatever ground they can whenever an opportunity presents itself.

On a tip from Steve T.

Last week Maryville College hosted as a guest lecturer Skidmore College Professor of Religious Studies Lucia Hulsether. The purpose of the lecture series was to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a person of faith in the world?” Hulsether told students what it means to be a person of faith in the world of academia by subjecting them to hardcore Marxist agitprop.

Via The College Fix:

Hulsether said the country is “drenched” in capitalism’s blood. There is “no nonviolent action” in capitalism, she said. …

In two lectures totaling almost two hours, Professor Hulsether did not bring up Jesus once.

She focused her attention on worship of a very different person: Karl Marx.

Marx, Hulsether said, believed the capitalist system is like a vampire sucking blood and is “tantamount to a horror film.” In contrast to this, she said, Marx offers a world of cooperative and creative work.

As part of her sermon, Hulsether denounced students for letting themselves be “turned into a commodity” by working for pay in the dining hall.

“That for Marx, and for those who have continued to reformulate his thinking, is what is violent and terrifying about capitalism,” she said.

Working for an hourly wage in the dining hall passes for violence when you are talking about capitalism. When you are talking about Marxism, violence is 100 million people killed by their own Marxist governments in the course of the 20th century. Progressives’ new god is not a gentle one.

Some background:

Maryville College … was originally founded by Presbyterians as the Southern and Western Theological Seminary. It now has a “connection” to the Presbyterian Church and hosts chapel once a week with talks by professors and students.

Having been thoroughly subverted by progressives, the Presbyterian Church has degenerated into a blasphemous farce.

Hulsether obtained her theological credentials from a box of Cracker Jack. No wait, it’s worse than that:

Hulsether earned her Master of Divinity from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from Yale University.

Stalin’s attempt to destroy Christianity by throwing clergy into gulags was a fool’s errands. Progressives have developed a much more effective approach.

On a tip from Frances J.

One symptom of coronavirus is the chaos unleashed on college campuses when students realize that they won’t have to sit in class for a while. From the student paper of Middlebury College in Vermont:

Faced with the sudden reality that their semesters would likely be ending, many Middlebury students spent their nights before the mandatory Covid-19-related evacuation partying, drinking and vandalizing the campus and town in abundance. Damage has included broken glass, stolen signs, strewn garbage, smashed furniture and windows, and items thrown into trees. …

One worker said he has seen items like fans and microwaves thrown out of windows, and that at least 10 to 15 soap dispensers have been ripped off the walls in residential halls and smashed. …

Some landscapers had to wrestle bikes, bike racks and other large items down from trees. Government traffic signs, weighing several hundred pounds and buried three feet into the ground, were torn out of the earth and discarded, or are missing entirely.

Other damage included smashed windows, a shattered glass door, smashed scaffolding, broken lights, a hole smashed into a wall, and discharged fire extinguishers.

The surrounding community has suffered:

Two Brothers Tavern, a restaurant and bar located a short walk from campus, was hosting its weekly Thursday College Night when its sign was partially pulled off and its American flag torn down.

Tuition at Middlebury College is over $56,000 per year. That is a lot to pay if it turns out to be primarily a babysitting service for extended adolescents. Online education makes ever more sense.

Hat tips: Campus Reform, Maggie’s Farm.

Thanks, socialists, for proving Evita Duffy’s point.

Evita Duffy is the daughter of former Republican US Rep Sean Duffy and a student at the University of Chicago. Via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The Hayward, Wisconsin, native was featured in a campaign by the university’s Institute of Politics (IOP) showcasing students and why they vote.

She held a whiteboard reading, “I vote because the coronavirus won’t destroy America, but socialism will.” Reaction from legendarily tolerant leftists was ferocious.

She reports on her treatment in the college paper, the Chicago Maroon:

Fellow students attacked my character, my intellect, my family, my appearance, and even threatened me with physical violence, using foul and offensive language. I was called a racist [she’s Hispanic] and a xenophobe. Some compared me to animals. Others declared that they would personally stop me from voting, and many defended the personal attacks, saying I deserved to be bullied and that I don’t belong at the University of Chicago on account of my beliefs. I was told by many that I was the most hated person on campus. It was frightening. It was also hurtful, since some of the attacks came from people I considered friends.

As she observes, the coronavirus has killed 3,000 globally. This is a small number for a round of the flu. In contrast, socialism/communism has killed over 100 million and counting. The vicious reaction to opposition suggests that collectivists in the USA are not very different from the ones who stacked up tens of millions of corpses under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al.

Confirming this, one fellow student even suggested that she deserves “a brick wall” — i.e., to be executed — for not embracing socialism.

At least educrats came to her defense, upholding the freedom of thought that makes universities worthwhile. Ha ha, I’m kidding of course.

As of writing this opinion, the administration and the IOP have not come to my defense, nor have they condemned the intolerance and violence students have directed toward me. It is not hard to imagine what sort of actions they would be taking if an LGBTQ+ or Muslim student faced similar threats or experienced this sort of intolerance on campus. When a young Hispanic woman joins a fun “get out and vote” initiative and receives this level of social shaming, deeply personal attacks, and threats of violence, conservative students get the message: There is a price to pay for daring to speak your mind or questioning the liberal orthodoxy on campus. This University-endorsed intolerance is why so many students self-censor and some, sadly, simply give up questioning and thinking for themselves.

Creating this climate of fear to exploit people’s herd instinct is a key aspect of indoctrination.

They aren’t universities anymore. They are reeducation camps.

Evita Duffy is wise to fear socialism. What socialists have done to higher education, they will do to the whole country when they achieve the power. Whether they achieve it in large increments through maniacs like Bernie Sanders or smaller increments through Fabian socialists like Joe Biden makes no difference in the long run.

On tips from Ellen O and R F.

College education is more expensive than ever before, forcing students into decades of debt to pay for the modern equivalent of a high school diploma. But at least they are learning things that students never did before. For example, at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut, sociology professor Johnny Williams teaches that whiteness is “mental and physical terrorism” and that calls for civility only serve to “uphold white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalist power.”

Pushing the envelope of antiwhite racism even by college standards has gotten the nutty professor in a little trouble — but not much trouble, so he is doubling down:

In an end-of-February op-ed in the Hartford Courant, Williams says white people preside over an “oppressive system,” and when people of color “refuse to abide” by this system, they’re accused of “inciting hatred and violence.”

He is referring to the controversy he created with a piece he wrote in the aftermath of Steve Scalise getting shot by a Bernie Bro; Williams used the hashtag “#LetThemF***ingDie” and denounced Caucasians as “inhuman ***holes.”

Too bad a white professor would never say something that outrageously awful about blacks. It would knock coronavirus out of the news, putting an end to the dangerous panic.

The professor was suspended for his comments, but cleared of wrongdoing shortly thereafter.

If educrats can clear Michael Mann of wrongdoing, they can do it for anyone — anyone on the left, that is.

He’s since gone on to say calls for “civility” merely serve to “uphold white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalist power” …

Fortunately, we don’t have to pay Trinity’s annual $56,380 undergraduate tuition to become enlightened by Professor Williams’ wisdom. We can just read what he writes in the Hartford Courant:

Whiteness is a shared conglomeration of fabricated meanings and ideas about biologically insignificant human differences. Whiteness only exists in relation or opposition to blackness and other fictitious racial categories created by whiteness adherents for the purpose of cementing a higher status and material advantage over other people that are excluded from being white.

Part of the problem is individualism:

People immersed in individualism claim innocence or refuse to consider how the cultural environment of white supremacy we inhabit shapes our racial identities and world views and further informs how we perceive and interact with others within a hierarchical racial order.

Cultural Marxists are heavily into hierarchical racial orders. Bizarrely, those who don’t share this obsession are denounced as “racists.”

Whiteness by its very definition and operation as a key element of white supremacy kills; it is mental and physical terrorism.

Therefore, it is critical that whiteness be destroyed. That’s why sociology professors get the big bucks, especially when they chair the department like Williams.

On a tip from Kate P.

The theory of evolution makes sense to a certain point. Militant nihilists have extended it far beyond that point, insisting that we believe that the origin of life and its development are explained entirely by random chance and natural selection, despite the absence of direct evidence that any species originated in this way. People submit to this not so much because it makes sense, as out of obedience to the prevailing ideology, according to which the mere suggestion that intuitively obvious intelligent design might be possible is regarded as blasphemously politically incorrect.

A biology teacher in the town of Holland Patent, New York found out what happens to those who so much as approach the fence of the intellectual boundaries. From the Utica Observer-Dispatch:

Phil Lucason told students that “evolution only goes so far” and that passing the Regents Exam in biology requires students to “play the evolution game where evolution is the answer to everything,” according to a letter sent to the Holland Patent Central School District by the Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation earlier this month.

Freedom From Religion Foundation is a group of militantly intolerant atheist busybodies who have imposed their rigid belief in meaninglessness throughout the country.

Those comments, and others Lucason allegedly said, violate federal law, which does not allow for the undermining of evolution or the promotion of creationism or any other religious theory of creation, according to the foundation.

No need to notify the FBI about this alleged violation of federal law. Lucason is contrite. From his statement of repentance:

“Having taught about evolution for 20 years, I know that our students hear various theories on the origins of species. I enumerated some of them by way of example. My mention of those other theories led to the concerns that have been articulated. In the future, I will not refer to other, non-scientific explanations and will clearly teach the science and theory of evolution as the explanation for the development of life on earth as provided by the New York State standards.”

So much for freedom of thought.

Lucason is alleged to have said,

“So yeah, there is all kinds of different scenarios and in reality, we don’t know. We don’t know. There’s no proof. And everything we thought we knew, we are finding out we know less and less of.”

Science is never settled. True science challenges old assumptions in an attempt to find a more accurate way of explaining how reality works.

Like climate “science,” evolution is not science but dogma. In contrast to science, dogma is by definition settled. It is set in cement and must not be challenged:

“This issue has been pretty well settled by the courts,” Chris Line, staff attorney for the Freedom from Religion Foundation. “We probably — a few times a year — get something along these lines. Usually it’s school-handled pretty well.”

That’s why teachers do not dare question official ideology. So long as this climate of fear exists, we will make no meaningful progress toward understanding how life began and how it develops.

If Lucason really made the statements reported by the foundation, then it would be a violation of the law, said Jay Worona, deputy executive director and general counsel for the New York State School Boards Association. …

Providing a personal opinion is one thing, Worona noted. But telling “impressionable” students that there are holes in the theory of evolution is different, he said.

“And yet it moves,” as Galileo Galilei would have responded.

On a tip from ABC of the ANC.

On a tip from Jester.

The LGBT agenda, heavily promoted by the media and the courts, has opened the door to perverts exploiting public schools to access children. Some would open the door wider still.

A guy named Mark Busenbark teaches science at Frank Allis Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin. Busenbark has taken to calling himself “Vica Steel.” He says he is a transgender woman and also nonbinary. As Busenbark explained in a video presented to the entire student body, “I am not a boy. I am not just a girl. I am both!” However, more recently he has proclaimed himself to be female. He wants students to call him Mx Steel.

Busenbark is allowed to use the ladies’ room. Not good enough. He wants to do his business in front of young schoolgirls. Staff and students are supposed to use separate restrooms. Busenbark declares that this policy is “transphobic.” That’s the magic word that usually grants sexually deviant crybullies their every wish.

He squeals that “there has never been a case of a transgender woman endangering or attacking” children in the restroom. This is not true, as noted at the feminist website 4W:

Although school district teachers must pass strict background checks, there have, in fact, been multiple cases of trans-identified male adults who have sexually preyed on girls in public bathrooms. It is unclear if Steel is unaware of these cases, or does not consider them “endangering or attacking”.

On behalf of enraged and disgusted parents, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has already filed a lawsuit against the school for inflicting the depraved transsexual agenda on their children. Now the school it getting hit from the other side. The union Madison Teachers Inc has declared its support for Busenbark’s sick demand.

The immortal quote by former President of United Federation of Teachers and American Federation of Teachers Albert Shanker comes to mind once again:

“When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”

Public schools are no place for innocent little kids.

On a tip from ABC of the ANC.

A degree from Harvard is pricey, but it is worth a lot on the job market — unless you are black or Hispanic. Then it’s worth less, thanks to Affirmative Action. You might have deserved that degree as much as anyone else, but how are employers going to know that, when 45% of blacks and Hispanics are accepted for their race rather than merit?

PJ Media reports on a brief filed by the Justice Department:

The brief says Harvard “considers applicants’ race at virtually every step, from rating applicants to winnowing the field of applicants when attempting to avoid an oversubscribed class.” It notes that forty-five percent of African-Americans and Hispanics at Harvard are there because of racial preferences given to them during the admissions process.

Whites aren’t the only ones who are systematically discriminated against in favor of politically preferred groups. Admissions officers keep Asians out by giving them low subjective personal ratings.

The Justice Department brief also noted that Harvard employs a consistent racial quota to admit applicants to the class in essentially the same percentages, year after year.

Harvard’s racist quotas — which educrats no doubt justify with Orwellian rhetoric about combatting racism — are illegal.

Federal law, Title VI, forbids schools that receive federal assistance from discriminating based on race. Harvard expressly agreed to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a civil-rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs and activities that receive any federal financial assistance.

Despite being private institutions with a combined endowment of $119 billion, Ivy League schools like Harvard rake in $billions per year from the federal government.

On tips from Mr. Freemarket and R F. Hat tip: American Thinker.