Universities Failing us: Globalist Leaders, Woke Agendas, Dodgy Funding
VT’s Gloria Moss brings you the latest shocking news from Universities across the world
The educational news for the last few months has been extremely concerning.
Whether it is a Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge who permits the library to hunt down “problematic” books; or British academics kicking back over a move to stop the “denial of biology”; or Bill and Melinda Gates money in just under 500 of the world’s universities; or research that rips league tables apart – what is clear is that the behaviour of universities is now somewhat questionable as you will see from the four cases below.
1. Cambridge University: freedoms at risk?
On 2 October, Cambridge University’s new Vice-Chancellor, Deborah Prentice, gave her first address to the Senate House. She has said that she will encourage more free speech but how square this with the request to dons in October to report books that might be “offensive”, “harmful” or “problematic”?
How to reconcile her avowed support of free speech with her record in clamping down on freedoms at Princeton? And with the apparently conservative nature of her own research?
In what way conservative? Well, one of Professor Prentice’s main areas of research appears to be within the field of Gender Stereotypes, with a paper in 2002 concluding that the findings of her co-authored study are ‘consistent with numerous research demonstrations of the persistence of traditional, prescriptive gender stereotypes’.
So, other than presenting a dazzling array of statistical details, how does this advance us?
This is a fair question since there is no discussion, for example, of the way in which the stereotypes discussed in the article may have their roots in biology and may serve human society rather well.
For example, those traits considered stereotypically female (nurturing, and concern for others) would definitely advance the cause of Best Practice Leadership in which these traits have a pivotal role.
Only Worst Practice ‘Transactional’ leadership, a style where people are ignored until things go awry, rests on attributes that are stereotypically male.
Moreover, you might expect an impressive publication record from a Cambridge V-C whereas, in an article from September 2023 in Forbes Magazine, Prentice is described as the author of ‘more than fifty articles and book chapters’.
If you compare this oeuvre with that of philosopher Professor Zizek whose output includes over fifty books and hundreds of articles and papers, one is slightly underwhelmed.
Why then the appointment? Prentice has spoken of the ‘great opportunities to demonstrate how our leading universities can together harness their expertise to solve global problems’ so could it be that her track record at Yale, Stanford and Princeton qualifies her as the globalists’ placeman (whoops, woman)?
That would not be surprising since the previous Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope had been Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, a post that he resumed following his exit from Cambridge.
A sense of the values underpinning the Munk School can be gauged from its Master in Global Affairs programme which includes, the World Bank as a student research partner; and ‘Sustainability in the World’ and ‘Immigration and Pluralism Studies‘ as options.
What is more, Professor Toope attracted funding from China, with his early overtures to Chinese officials shortly after his appointment – whether diplomats or academics – attracting widespread criticism, both in Canada and in Cambridge.
Of course, the fact that Cambridge laid out the red carpet for overseas funders was nothing new. In 2009, the university awarded Bill Gates an Honorary doctorate in Law, a ‘thank you’ perhaps for his gift to Cambridge of US$210m (c,£170m) in 2000, the largest single donation made to a UK university.
This has funded their ‘Gates scholars’ and you might well ask whether their research will be influenced by the source of funding.
The same might be said of other institutions receiving his monies (see the section concerning ‘Dodgy money’ below), with Harvard University also bestowed beating Cambridge by two years in their award to him of an Honorary doctorate 2007.
That, incidentally, is not without a touch of irony since Gates left Harvard without completing a first degree.
So, Cambridge’s new Vice-Chancellor, Deborah Prentice, is now tied to an institution with a strong global pedigree. When she speaks therefore of introducing greater freedom into the discourse of students, this is likely to fall within strict parameters, and will not invite discussion on the causes of wars, Covid, and ‘hot’ topics like these.
Meanwhile, recalling the links that ‘top’ universities have to the World Economic Forum, it is fairly unlikely that the top job at Cambridge would go the way of a freedom-loving, anti-globalist.
2.The Woke agenda: ever present in universities
In August 2023, a Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, Alexander Rilwy, described the creep of woke thinking in Higher Education. As he writes:
‘Over the past several decades, institutions of higher education have been steadily adopting more and more ideas and practices destined …..to transform them, the goal being greater diversity, inclusion and equity.’
Examples abound. In October 2023, the American Anthropological Association canceled a panel on the importance of biological sex as a social and scientific category at its annual conference.
In the UK, in the same month, Michelle Donelan, the country’s secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, told a party conference that the government would protect scientific research “from the denial of biology,” claiming that scientists are being “told by university bureaucrats that they cannot ask legitimate research questions about biological sex.”
In response, over 2,000 UK scientists signed an open letter denouncing Donelan’s comments on the basis that they “do not reflect the view of UK scientists.” The letter quoted the 0.5 percent of the population that do not identify with the sex registered at birth, and that, there are a total of 1.5 million people in the UK that combine DSD, intersex, non-binary and trans characteristics and that the effect of the government’s views would be to exclude these from being the subject of research in biomedical, sports science and other research.
This letter ignores the fact that the totality of non-binary groups represents a minority when compared to the population as a whole, for whom the minister’s comments still stand.
Notwithstanding this, a large element in UK academia are resistant to discussion of biological gender. This is unfortunate since there is a great deal of relevant science concerning the manifestations of biological sex across the five senses as well as in medical symptoms and reactions to medications, discussed in this article by Gloria Moss from May 2023.
Note that the signatories to the letter span the range of universities in the UK, from Oxbridge, Imperial College, to newer universities, and many signatories offer their pronouns (he/him; she/her) alongside their name.
All this in a month when the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee, signed an executive order outlawing vocabulary that includes woke and anti-women words.
Race is arguably another hot topic. At Queensland University in the summer, the university was forced under pressure from students to withdraw a ‘white privilege’ assessment from its medical degree.
Meanwhile, at Florida State University, criminology professor Eric Stewart was dismissed in September 2023 following almost 20 years of service and allegations of research misconduct.
These claims led to the retraction of six studies conducted by Stewart, all published in major academic journals between 2003 and 2019 and supported by research funding of over $3.5m.
The articles spanned topics such as racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, public perceptions of minority communities, and the relationship between incarceration and various social factors.
One retracted study from 2019 suggested a link between historical lynchings and white people’s perceptions of black individuals as threats. Another from 2018 explored how white Americans viewed black and Latino individuals as “criminal threats.”
A 2015 study claimed that Americans wanted harsher sentences for Latinos due to their increasing population and economic success. The lessons? Education must free itself from woke agendas and focus on unveiling evidence-based truths.
3.Dodgy money: fresh revelations concerning universities’ links with Gates and Epstein
In October 2023, some disturbing findings came to light concerning the links between a Principal of the American, Bard College, and Epstein, the notorious sex offender. The Principal of Bard College, Leon Botstein, allegedly scheduled two dozen meetings with Epstein over the period during which new documentation came to light; meetings all allegedly motivated by the fact that he was an ‘unsuccessful fundraiser’.
Should this raise eyebrows? Well Bard College has the stated aim of seeking to “inspire a love of learning, idealism, and a commitment to the link between higher education and civic participation”.
Mention of “idealism” in the context of Epstein-originated funding sounds a jarring note and begs the wider question as to the ethics of funding sources more generally.
For example, we mentioned in the second news item that Cambridge was the recipient of $210 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and we can justifiably ask whether Cambridge and other institutions receiving money from this source are ethically tainted.
The scale of the funding? Since 2020, Gates has disbursed over $11.6bn in funding to 471 universities and higher education institutions in 66 countries in 2010-2020. This constitutes around 17 percent of Gates giving and universities in the US, Europe and Asia are all implicated.
Here is an extract from a report with details:
- The University Washington in Seattle is the biggest beneficiary, receiving 13 percent of all giving to higher education institutions. Between 2010-19, it received over $1.56bn from the Gates Foundation.
- The top five university beneficiaries are University of Washington ($1.56bn), John Hopkins University ($1bn), Emory University ($522m), University of California, San Francisco ($410m) and University of Oxford ($375m).
- Seven out of the top 10 beneficiaries are US universities. The biggest non-US beneficiary is Oxford University followed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ($344m) and the University of Manitoba ($281m).
Regionally, North American universities are the biggest recipient of Gates Foundation funding. 188 institutions received 72 percent of giving. Giving to US universities is increasing.
- European universities are the second biggest group of beneficiaries, receiving around 16 percent of Gates university-giving between 2010-19. Funding is heavily skewed to the UK. 109 European universities received $2bn. The UK is the biggest beneficiary with $1.4bn disbursed to 43 UK universities.
- The five biggest European beneficiaries scooped $1.1bn in Gates funding, 53 percent of all European university giving. They are Oxford ($375m), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ($335m), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine ($140m), the University of Greenwich ($118m) and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. 104 European universities shared the outstanding $956m of Gates funding.
- Seven out of the top 10 beneficiaries are US universities. The biggest non-US beneficiary is the University of Oxford, followed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ($344m) and the University of Manitoba ($281m).
Asian universities are the third biggest regional beneficiary, receiving five percent of Gates university funding in the past decade. Giving to Asian universities has risen by 800 percent between 2010 and 2019.
57 Asian institutions received $555m in funding. And it goes on:
- African universities received four percent of Gates giving. 58 institutions in 19 countries were awarded $444m over the decade. Giving to African universities has grown by 125 percent over the decade.
- 25 Australasian universities received $186m over the decade. Most of the funding is for neglected tropical diseases.
- Giving to the Middle East & North Africa is modest: $29m was shared between 9 universities. Israeli institutions were the biggest beneficiaries receiving $19m.
- Latin American universities received the smallest sums. $24m was awarded to 24 universities. Giving to Latin American institutions has been in decline since 2013.
The take-away? A little under 500 universities globally are in receipt of Gates funding, meaning that the sector is tarnished with what some might regard as tainted money, given the extensive harm caused by many of the Gates-backed vaccines.
The world of finance has spawned the concept of ethical investing and perhaps universities upholding ethical values need to shun sources that could be regarded as tainted.
Arguably, this would include government funding as well given the complicity of governments around the world in the funding of questionable activities.
The problem? The well-known phrase ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’ sums up the problem since funders can influence the manner in which their funds are used. On this basis, the 500 or so universities receiving ‘tainted’ monies cannot be relied upon to engage in ethical teaching and research.
This opens up a space for universities that can pride themselves on having ethical sources of funding.
4.University League Tables: built on sand and forcing conformity?
Who has not heard of university league tables? Well, the Office for Students in the UK manages the National Student Survey (NSS) that feeds into these, being an element that according to the Office for Students constitutes “a key component of the quality assurance and wider regulatory landscape in UK higher education”.
The survey is one of the largest surveys of its kind globally and encompasses satisfaction with teaching quality, assessment and feedback and course organisation and management. According to the Guardian newspaper, the NSS scores have an overall weighting of 20% in their final League Table scores.
So, imagine the shock to read in an article, published in October 2023 that results for “‘Student Satisfaction” really only reflect the personality of the student completing the survey!
What the results reveal is the ‘innate satisfaction’ of the student – in other words how contended they are with life – and this element accounts for 24 percent of the student-satisfaction scores in the NSS. These new findings put a question mark over the value of the survey.
The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal ‘Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education’ and suggests that over half of student satisfaction is attributable to unalterable individual-level personality traits such as neuroticism and extraversion.
What is less likely to be measured is the quality of the education received.
The paper’s finding are based on data from 409 students studying at 63 universities across 20 countries, cast doubt on the credibility and usefulness to students, their parents, universities and governments of simple student satisfaction scores that fail to control for trait happiness and other inherited personality characteristics.
It’s assumed, first, that students’ reported satisfaction directly reflects the quality of the education they get and, second, that their satisfaction can be readily increased by changing aspects of that education, such as, for example, the extent, nature and speed of assignment feedback – something students’ unions keenly promote.
However, these two erroneous assumptions directly contradict extensive satisfaction research in job, consumption and other domains that consistently finds levels of satisfaction with most things largely reflects inherited and unalterable personality traits especially innate happiness.
Consequently, satisfaction levels tend not to be susceptible to alteration by any objective change in, say, a job or consumed product.
That so much assessed student satisfaction stems not from extrinsic educational experience but from intrinsic personality traits (eg innate happiness) that cannot be altered by ministers, university administrators or academic staff highlights a major deficiency in league tables.
As if this were not bad enough, a further problem has been brought to the fore by the European University Association (EUA) in October. The EUA represents more than 800 universities across Europe and in a paper published in October 203 it identifies three problems concerning rankings.
The first concerns clouding by commercial interests”; the second is a lack of transparency around their methodologies; and the third concerns the use of a “very limited set of parameters” that fail to mirror the diversity of educational providers, leading to the exclusion of lower ranking of smaller / specialised universities.
Is it time to call out the illusory certainties offered by university league tables?
This is taken from a long document, read the rest here vtforeignpolicy.com
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