Universities Secretly Take Billions in Foreign ‘Ghost Dollars’: Report

College Students

American colleges and universities are accepting billions of dollars in foreign money without reporting it, according to a new report.

The National Association of Scholars released the report, which says that taking money from foreign governments and organizations without reporting it has become commonplace among American universities.

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Ivy League School Suspends Conservative Professor Amy Wax for a Year on ‘Zero Evidence’ of Discrimination

Six years after the University of Pennsylvania sanctioned a tenured law professor for allegedly lying about the academic performance of black students but never itself providing the supposedly correct figures, the Ivy League school seems to be daring another one to quit or sue.

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Commentary: Diversity Is a False Religion to Destroy America

A group of college students stuying

This week, the National Association of Scholars (“NAS”) and the Heritage Foundation are sponsoring a panel discussion on diversity ideology in higher education. A number of reports have recently been published on the topic, with most documenting monies spent by state universities on “diversity, equity and inclusion” (“DEI“). The Maryland affiliate of the National Association of Scholars released the most recent such report this summer, but the Virginia affiliate issued one last year, while Idaho, North Carolina, Maine, and Tennessee produced similar documents before that.

The Maryland report reminds state officials that “diversity” is usually a cover for race-based practices that are now likely illegal under the 2023 United States Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (or “SFFA”). That opinion found that racial preferences in university admissions were a violation of federal civil rights laws and also the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. SFFA means that any race-based practice in college is presumptively unlawful. As the Court said, “Eliminating discrimination means eliminating all of it … distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their nature odious.”

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Harvard’s ‘Diversity’ Chief Accused of over 40 Instances of Plagiarism

Sherri Charleston

Harvard University’s chief diversity and inclusion officer allegedly plagiarized some of her academic works, according to a complaint filed Monday with the university.

The complaint alleged that Sherri Charleston plagiarized 40 passages throughout her works, including in her 2009 dissertation and her single peer-reviewed paper, The Washington Free Beacon first reported. Charleston allegedly did not properly cite almost a dozen scholars when quoting or paraphrasing in her dissertation, and she is accused of re-using a portion of a 2012 study published by her husband, LaVar Charleston, in the peer-reviewed article, which was coauthored by LaVar, according to the complaint.

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Academic Groups Wary of UC San Diego’s Climate Change Grad Requirement

UCSD Campus

The University of California San Diego does not require students to take courses in literature, foreign language, economics or U.S. government and history, receiving a “C” rating from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni for its general education requirements.

Students haven’t been able to graduate for 10 years now without a diversity, equity and inclusion course, however, and next fall’s incoming class will have another arguably ideological obligation to fulfill: climate change.

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Critics Blast DOJ Funding for Projects Tailored to Gender, Sexuality Politics

A taxpayer-funded grant from the Department of Justice distributed $150,000 to “amplify the voices” of transgender people in New Orleans who are accusing the police of discrimination.

Based on the assumption that LGBT people of color are discriminated against by police, Rutgers University researchers pledged to find 25 subjects and “conduct narrative interviews” to document their experiences. This study is one of many examples of taxpayer-funded federal research dollars going to projects tailored to progressive gender and sexuality politics.

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Commentary: The Problematic Rise of ‘Media Literacy Education’

New Jersey is enlisting public-school teachers and librarians to show children how to combat what it calls the grave threat of disinformation.

“Our democracy remains under sustained attack through the proliferation of disinformation,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in signing the nation’s first law mandating “information literacy” instruction for all K-12 students. The law, which aims to provide students with the “critical thinking” skills necessary to differentiate between “facts, points of view, and opinions” will, Murphy proclaimed, ensure “that our kids … possess the skills needed to discern fact from fiction.”

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Teachers’ Union Boss Backs GOP Sen. John Cornyn’s Controversial ‘Civics’ Bill

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten announced her endorsement of a federal “civics education” bill sponsored by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), one that the National Association of Scholars (NAS) observed “is more an attempt to smuggle activist training into American K-12 classrooms than it is a good-faith effort to improve civic literacy.”

Weingarten began her column at Newsweek last week with a call for renewed civics education that is all entangled with her view that Donald Trump “and his cronies ran roughshod over the principles most of us learned in grade school.”

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Biden to Axe Trump Investigations of Secret Foreign Money in Higher Ed, College Groups Say

The Biden administration plans to shutter its predecessor’s investigations into undisclosed foreign funding of U.S. colleges and universities, the subject of years of warnings from elected officials, law enforcement and academic freedom groups, according to higher education lobbyists.

The commitment was recorded in an August letter from a higher ed lobbyist recapping a June 23 virtual briefing by top Department of Education officials for the American Council on Education (ACE) and other university groups, including the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR), which includes medical centers and independent research institutes.

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UC Berkeley Gave Hundreds of Thousands to Left-Wing Charity That Has Funded Groups Trying to Empty Prisons

The University of California, Berkeley gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2021 to a left-wing nonprofit funding groups that seek to empty prisons across the U.S., according to California financial records.

Berkeley sent over $262,500 to the Heising-Simons Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity that opposes “mass incarceration” and backs prison reform, according to records obtained by the transparency watchdog OpenTheBooks. The charity has granted huge sums to groups trying to overhaul the criminal justice system and get inmates back onto the streets, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.

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National Association of Scholars’ Civics Alliance Releases ‘American Birthright’ Model Social Studies Standard

A coalition of organizations and individuals convened by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) has released its model social studies standard, “American Birthright,” to teach America’s foundational history of liberty.

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‘A K-12 Civics Report Card’ Ranks America’s Leading Civics Education Programs

In a new report released Wednesday at the Boston-based Pioneer Institute, one of America’s top education scholars provides reviews and grades for the nation’s leading civics programs.

At a time when the purpose of civics education grows increasingly polarized, and many organizations present rival resources, Dr. David Randall, author of “Learning for Self-Government: A K-12 Civics Report Card,” evaluated 15 leading civics programs and graded them on their effectiveness.

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Commentary: A Trojan Horse For Woke Education

A massive new national project called “Educating for American Democracy” will be launched on Tuesday with the explicit aim of “redefining” and then “harmonizing” American civic education nationwide.

From the days of Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, Horace Mann, and the McGuffey readers to Ronald Reagan’s farewell address and the controversy over national history standards, citizenship education (broadly understood) has always been a vital function of American schools for the perpetuation of the American way of life. That’s about to change for the worse.   

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