Monthly Archives: June 2022

The School of Liberal Arts at Tulane encompasses the arts, humanities, and social sciences through sixteen departments and nineteen interdisciplinary programs as well as the Carroll Gallery, Shakespeare Festival, Summer Lyric Theatre, and the Middle American Research Institute. Our small classes allow students to be active learners directly engaged with their courses. With a broad array of majors, minors, Masters and Ph.D. programs, students can choose to specialize in a wide number of fields, developing long-standing interests or discovering new passions. Engaged in the liberal arts, students not only learn key skills of writing, analysis and communication but come to understand better both themselves and the world beyond.Read more about Tulane School of Liberal Arts

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Majors and Minors / Undergraduate Studies / Graduate Studies

Tulane School of Liberal Arts strives to build a global liberal arts curriculum and faculty, embraces our dual identity as research one university and liberal arts college, and forges a deeper relationship with New Orleans and the Gulf South. These pillars build upon Tulanes distinctive academic strengths, provide leadership, and encourage students to remain in the city after graduation.Read more about Tulane School of Liberal Arts Distinctions

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School of Liberal Arts | Tulane University

Australia is playing our part in responding to the critical global challenge of climate change.

We are on track to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and we have a clear plan to achieve it, focused on technologies and not taxes.

Our emissions are already 20% lower than in 2005 (the baseline for the Paris Agreement). Thats lower than any year under the last Labor government.

We are on track to meet and beat our 2030 Paris target, with latest projections showing a 30-35% reduction.

Between 2005-2019, Australia has reduced our emissions more quickly than Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the United States.

Australia has a strong record of meeting our targets having beaten our 2020 Kyoto target by 459 million tonnes.

Well achieve our net zero target through technology, not taxes.

Our technology-driven Long Term Emissions Reduction Plan sets out a credible pathway to net zero by 2050, while preserving our existing industries, establishing Australia as a leader in low emissions technologies, and positioning our regions to prosper.

This decade, the Government will invest more than $22 billion in low emissions technologies, driving over $88 billion of total investment to reduce emissions while growing the economy and creating jobs across Australia.

Our approach to reducing emissions has been effective. Australias emissions are more than 100 million tonnes lower today than where Labor said they would be under Labors carbon tax.

Australias investment in renewable energy continues to break records with renewables now making up almost one third of our energy mix.

Australia has the worlds highest uptake of rooftop solar, with one in four homes with rooftop solar panels.

Across Governments and the private sector over $40 billion has been invested in renewable energy in Australia since 2017.

In 2020 alone, Australia deployed more renewable energy than in the six years of the previous Labor government.

The Morrison Government is investing in big projects including Snowy 2.0 (one of the largest pumped hydro projects in the southern hemisphere) and Tasmanias Battery of the Nation pumped-hydro.

The Coalition Governments green bank has just hit its $10 billion investment milestone, supporting more than 26,000 emission reduction and energy efficiency projects across Australia.

We are also making carefully considered and targeted investments in transmission projects to support new renewables coming online - including investing a further $84 million in microgrids for remote communities.

The Morrison Government is leading the way on waste and recycling. We want to see less waste going to our oceans and landfill, and more reused and recycled.

No longer are we exporting plastic, paper, tyres and glass waste. Instead, were recycling it here in Australia and creating over 10,000 jobs in the process.

In the words of the Prime Minister: Its our waste, its our responsibility.

Our $280 million Recycling Modernisation Fund is driving a $1 billion transformation of the waste and recycling sector.Already 87 new projects across Australia are turning the tide on waste management and weve launched the ReMade in Australia trademark to give Australians confidence that products have been remade here.

Our plan will significantly increase recycling rates, tackle plastic litter, improve battery recycling and halve food waste by 2030.

The Great Barrier Reef is a global tourism icon, a unique ecosystem and a wonder of the natural world. It contributes around $6.4 billion a year to Australias economy, supporting 64,000 jobs.

We are committed to protecting it.

In this years Budget, we further strengthened our Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan with an additional $1 billion, with our total investment now more than $3 billion - improving water quality, fighting crown of thorns starfish and conducting research into reef restoration and adaptation.

We are safeguarding our wildlife for future generations by investing $6 billion for threatened species, habitat restoration, marine conservation and environmental projects - including funding $74 million dedicated to koala recovery and conservation.

This investment reinforces our existing Threatened Species Strategy that puts vulnerable plants and animals on a better path.

Maintaining and expanding our protected areas on both land and sea is one of the best ways to look after our natural environment. Weve expanded Indigenous Protected Areas covering more than 104 million hectares and declared two new Marine Protected Areas in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island. These Marine Parks are twice the size of the Great Barrier Reef and are home to many native species.

Weve also achieved more than 90,000 hectares of weed control and over 3 million hectares of pest animal control.

Around $1 billion is being invested in Landcare between 2018 and 2023.

This includes Land Partnerships, to protect our threatened species, restore wetlands, and improve soil health on farms.

Landcare delivers practical actions on the ground in partnership with local communities and environmental groups.

In recent months we have seen devastating floods across New South Wales and South-East Queensland.

We stand with communities to support them as they rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

Total support to families, farmers, small businesses, local governments and their communities is expected to exceed $6 billion.

The Australian Government has allocated $2.8 billion to recovery including the $2 billion National Bushfire Recovery fund.

$200 million has been invested to help native wildlife and their habitats recover from the devastating impacts of the 2019-20 bushfires.

The $200 million Environment Restoration Fund is protecting, preserving and restoring our iconic natural landscapes.

The Morrison Government is further supporting our national parks, investing over $233 million in upgrades to parks including Uluru, Kakadu, Christmas Island and Booderee National Park.

The Morrison Government is protecting our oceans by: increasing our Marine Park coverage to cover around 45% of our oceans; restoring seagrasses, mangroves and salt marshes; and supporting marine life conservation while creating Indigenous employment.

Our $200 million Environment Restoration Fund will help improve the water quality of the Yarra, Swan, Canning, Torrens, Brisbane, Georges, Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers.

The Liberal and Nationals Government is investing over $2.8 billion to enhance Australias Antarctic operations and science capabilities. This includes funding for research, operations and a new ice breaker RSV Nuyina - now at sea.

We are constructing a modern station at Macquarie Island to provide year-round capability for scientific monitoring and priority research.

Information current as at May 2022

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Protecting Our Environment | Liberal Party of Australia

A conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a grassroots group has no standing to challenge the transfer of state park land for a proposed golf course. Liberal justices say the decision gives the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources free rein to redraw state park boundaries.

Friends of the Black River State Forest sued the DNR and its policy-setting board for approval of a land exchange in 2018. The Natural Resources Board allowed transferring nearly 5 acres of Kohler-Andrae State Park and a roughly 2-acre easement in exchange for 9.5 acres of Kohler Co. property.

The Friends group argued the land swap would harm public access and wildlife habitat, saying the exchange violated rules over selling or disposing of state park property.

The DNR moved to dismiss the case under former Republican Gov. Scott Walkers administration, and judges in Sheboygan and Dane counties ruled the group had no standing in the exchange. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in 2020, finding the Friends could suffer harm from the land transfer. Kohler and the DNR argued the group hasnt suffered injuries because no construction has begun.

In a 4-3 decision Thursday, the court's conservative majority reversed the appeals court ruling.

"The Friends alleged injuries resulting from the Board's land swap decision under several statutes and regulations, arguing the interests harmed fall within the zone of interests protected or regulated by these laws. We disagree," wrote Justice Rebecca Bradley for the majority. "None of the statutes or regulations cited protect any legally protected, recognized, or regulated interests of the Friends that would permit them to challenge the Board's decision as 'person(s) aggrieved.'"

The court's three liberal justices disagreed. In her dissent, Justice Jill Karofsky wrote the courts conservative majority went to great lengths to "slam the courthouse doors" on those seeking review of agency actions. She accused conservative justices of twisting the statutes and bending case law, saying its approach gives the DNR an unrestricted right to redraw state park boundaries.

"In redrawing the boundaries, DNR will be able to remove, and then sell off, every last inch of this cherished land to private entities, and not a single Wisconsin citizen for whom the parks exist could challenge that conduct in court," wrote Karofsky. "Not only is that result absurd, it betrays the broad cause of action the legislature endowed on citizens to challenge such lawless agency behavior in court. We have upheld that right for many just like the Friends, and we should uphold that right here."

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Kohler wants to add a "world class" 18-hole golf course, up to 16,000-square-foot clubhouse, 22,000-square-foot maintenance facility and other amenities similar in size to its Whistling Straits course.That existing course recently hosted the Ryder Cup. The project is anticipated to create 227 jobs with a$21 million annual economic impacton Sheboygan County residents and businesses.

Mary Faydash, president of the Friends group, said the ruling will make it more difficult for the public to challenge any "giveaway" of state park land.

"I'm fighting this until the end because it's absolutely wrong," said Faydash. "It's not community-based. It's not pro-environment, and basically they're on the side of denying citizens their right to use lawful means for redress."

The park land thats proposed for development includes a rare dune system and wetlands that support threatened and endangered species. Kohler would destroy nearly 4 acres of wetlands, as well as remove half the trees on the property to allow for views of Lake Michigan. The company intends to create or restore wetlands elsewhere in exchange for those that would be filled.

In 2018, Wisconsin Watch reported DNR staff felt pressured to sign off on a wetlands permit for the project. An administrative law judge revoked that permit in 2019. Kohler appealed the decision, and a Sheboygan County judge ruled in June last year that the permit cant be reinstated. Kohler now wants a state appeals court panel to reverse that decision, and a ruling is still pending.

In a statement, a DNR spokesperson saidthe agency is charged with being a steward of the public's interests in state park lands.

"The Department takes that responsibility seriously and works hard to ensure that the publics recreational, environmental, aesthetic and other interests are protected," said Sarah Hoye, a DNR spokersperson. "If land is exchanged with Kohler in the future, the DNR will ensure the publics interests are safeguarded and secured."

Dirk Willis,Kohler's vice president of golf, landscape and retail, said company officials are pleased the state Supreme Court upheld the land exchange.

"We look forward to developing our public golfcourse in the City of Sheboygan on property owned by Kohler Co. for more than 75 years, and are committed to creating a world-class golfcoursethat respects the propertys natural character and opens up private land to the public for the first time," said Willis in a statement. "Our company has an established track record of good environmental stewardship with a commitment to following all applicable municipal, state and federal regulations."

Kohler-Andrae State Park, which spans more than 900 acres, extends along the Lake Michigan shoreline near Sheboygan. The park sees more than 400,000 visitors each year.

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Challenge to land swap for proposed Kohler golf course thrown out - Wisconsin Public Radio

WASHINGTON

Shortly after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion to end womens constitutional right to abortion, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt appeared on Fox News suggesting Native American tribes in his state, looking to get around Oklahomas tough new abortion ban, might set up abortion on demand on any of the 39 Indian reservations in that state.

You know, the tribes in Oklahoma are super liberal, Stitt said, They go to Washington, D.C. They talk to President (Joe) Biden at the White House. They kind of adopt those strategies.

The U.S. government recognizes tribes as sovereign nations, and as such, have the right to pass their own laws regulating abortion on tribal land, subject to certain limitations.

Stitt's comments set off wide speculation in the press and in social media about whether abortion seekers could turn to Indian tribes for abortion services in states where the procedure is or soon will be banned now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called on the White House to open up federal land and resources to provide reproductive health services. Neither lawmaker referenced Indian reservations, nor have tribes suggested any interest in opening abortion havens.

Its been journalists. It's been activists looking for some sort of a solution, said Stacy Leeds, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and a law professor at the Sandra Day OConnor College of Law in Arizona. And now in the last couple of days, it has started to escalate, with politicians almost warning tribes that they better not do this.

Tuesday, the White House ruled out the possibility of using federal lands for abortion services.

But that hasnt stopped the conversation in social media.

It is a conversation, however, that most Native Americans find problematic, if not downright offensive.

Any time there's a call for tribes to do something that is not originating in their own thought processes, it very much just reeks of further colonization, said Leeds. You know, the outsider trying to tell a local tribal government what their law and policy ought to be.

Native Americans find the conversation particularly upsetting given a well-documented history of sexual violence against Indigenous women that ranged from rape and trafficking to forced sterilizations in the 1970s.

And you also have this history of the wholesale removal of Native children away from their families and communities to boarding schools or being adopted out to other communities. Its just traumatic for a lot of people, Leeds said.

In its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion, but that didnt guarantee all women had access. The 1976 Hyde Amendment, which was amended several times in later years, prohibits federal money being used to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or endangerment to the womans life. The Indian Health Service relies on federal funds and is the only health care provider available for many Native communities.

To look to tribes for abortion services is to assume Native Americans are a left-leaning monolith, Leeds said.

Politically, (Native) people are all over the place. You know, it's a large leap to just automatically presume that everybody would want this, she said. And a lot of tribal spiritual traditions hold life as sacred from beginning to the end.

In 2010, for example, the Navajo Nation Supreme Court ruled on a case involving the death of an unborn fetus in a highway collision, saying, We take judicial notice that the child, even the unborn child, occupies a space in Navajo culture that can best be described as holy or sacred, although neither of these words convey the childs status accurately. The child is aw tdhin, alive at conception, and develops perfectly in the care of the mother.

Native Americans have been given few opportunities to voice their opinions on abortion. One exception is a 2020 study by the Southwest Womens Law Center and the nonprofit Forward Together that surveyed Native American women on and off reservations in New Mexico a state where abortions remain legal and available, even after the recent Supreme Court ruling.

When asked whether they would support or oppose a law that would criminalize doctors performing abortions, 45% of respondents said they would oppose it; 25% said they would support it, and 27% said they did not have a strong opinion one way or the other.

Most of the Native women who are speaking out nationally are upset about the Supreme Courts latest decision, Leeds said. But I don't see any of them advocating that their communities then become the saviors of everyone else's communities.

Tribes are sovereign nations and have the right to pass their own laws regulating abortion on tribal land territories. But criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country is complex; whether tribal governments, state governments or the federal government has jurisdiction depends on the nature of the crime, the identity of the perpetrator and victim, and where the crime takes place.

In theory, tribes could perform abortions, said Leeds, but only in tribally funded facilities on Native patients by Native practitioners. Anyone else could be subject to state or federal law.

And that's the galling piece of this whole conversation, Leeds said. You want tribes to take this risk for you that might negatively impact their whole world indefinitely? People just dont understand what they are truly asking.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Oklahoma will be allowed to prosecute non-Native Americans for crimes committed on reservations when the victim is Native, a decision that cuts back on the courts 2020 ruling that a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma about 43% of the state remains an Indian reservation.

Stitt celebrated the decision.

Today, our efforts proved worthwhile, and the court upheld that Indian country is part of a state, not separate from it," Stitt said.

Oklahoma in May passed the Nations toughest abortion ban. Wednesdays ruling reduces the likelihood of any tribal abortion haven in that state.

More here:

Native Americans Bristle at Suggestions They Offer Abortions on Tribal Land - Voice of America - VOA News

It is safe to assume that there is not a single American citizen who has not been affected in some beneficial way, either directly or indirectly, by the scientific leadership of the Land-grant Colleges (Eddy, 1956, p. 275).

On July 2, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed three pieces of legislation; one banning polygamy in the territories and the second creating a loyalty oath for all government officials. The third is one of the most important pieces of federal legislation in the history of American higher education and an enduring legacy of his presidency the Morrill Land-Grant College Act (Loss, 2012).

Sponsored by Congressman and later Senator Justin Morrill, a Republican and the son of a blacksmith, of Vermont, the act allocated 17 million acres of federal land for the states to be used or sold to establish public institutions (United States Senate, n.d.). Eschewing financing existing public institutions, most states established new agricultural and mechanical colleges. These new colleges, poorly financed, were known as 1862s (National Research Council, 1995, p. 1). In time they were called Land-grant Colleges. The act specified:

[E]ach State which may take and claim the benefit of this act, to the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life (Morrill Act).

The Morrill Acts greatest legacy and impact is that it ushered in a watershed moment in American higher education, one that helped define the unique system of American higher educationthe Land-grant University (Veysey, 1965; Geiger, 2015). This novel, new system of higher education established the idea that higher education should broadly serve the citizens of the United States (Veysey, 1965; Geiger, 2015).

However, this new mission of public higher education in America was not just about expanding advanced learning to new populations of students and offering more vocationally oriented subjects. Rather, the newly emerged mission called for service to the nation through applied research that developed the best scientific practices in the growing fields of agriculture and the mechanical arts and broadly shared with anyone who could benefit from them, whether they attended college or not (Veysey, 1965; Geiger, 2015). And while mechanical arts was part of the original legislative framework, in reality, Land-grant Institutions largely focused on agricultural interests (Marcus, 2015). Students learned agricultural practice and theory and farmers hoped that Land-grant personnel would provide them with new information about how to farm more efficiently and effectively (Marcus, p. 6, 2015).

Central to this new Land-grant System was the establishment of model farms or experimental farms (Eddy, 1956). Although the new system called for teaching of agriculture, there was no agricultural science at the time and no body of knowledge on which to base teaching it. The term agriculture meant simple farming. The model farm loomed as one of the important, if not the most important, parts of the college (Eddy, 1956, p. 57). State agricultural experiment stations, from their early founding as the first model farms at Land-grant Universities, focused on conducting agricultural research to broadly benefit a largely agrarian society.

It would not take long for one state to embrace the idea that public higher education, and research conducted at Land-grant Institutions, should serve the citizens of the state. There is no more clear example of it than the Wisconsin Idea. A philosophy adopted by the University of Wisconsin System shortly after the Morrill Act of 1862 was enacted and implemented at the University of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin idea encapsulates the universitys direct contributions to the state: to the government in the forms of serving in office, offering advice about public policy, providing information and exercising technical skill, and to the citizens in the forms of doing research directed at solving problems that are important to the state and conducting outreach activities (Stark, 1995, p. 2).

One can see how completely the University of Wisconsin adopted the public service mission of the Morrill Act of 1862 via the Wisconsin Idea through its scientific achievements over the years. These achievements include a way to measure butterfat that allowed consumers to pay farmers based on fat content of milk; discovery of vitamin A and later vitamin B complex, which opened up the field of nutrition; discovery of how to biofortify food with vitamin D, which led to the near eradication of rickets by 1940; development of Vernal alfalfa that became the foundations for states $10 billion forage industry; cloning of a plant gene for the first time; discovery of the SCD-1 gene that plays a critical role in fat metabolism; and genetically sequencing all 99 strains of the common cold virus (University of Wisconsin, Some Notable Achievements).

These advances are just a few of thousands of discoveries made at the University of Wisconsin since it became a Land-grant University in 1866. And this tradition of making scientific advances in the name of the public good and the direct benefits they provided to millions of people in American and beyond can be seen at all Land-grant Institutions. It is a thread that uniquely defines these institutions that came about as a result of the Morrill Act of 1862.

USDAs National Institute of Food and Agriculture is proud to partner with the nations Land-grant Institutions to fund research and Extension projects that serve the public good.

References

Eddy, E.D. (1956). Colleges for Our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in American Education. New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers.

Geiger, R. (2015). The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Loss, C.P. (July 16, 2012). Why the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act Still Matters. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-the-Morrill-Act-Still/132877.

Marcus, A.I. (2015). Science as Service: Establishing and Reformulating American Land-Grant Universities, 1865-1930. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Marcus, A.I. (2015). Service as Mandate: How American Land-Grant Universities Shaped the Modern world, 1920-2015. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

National Research Council. (1995). Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Stark, J. (1995). The Wisconsin Idea: The Universitys Service to the State. Wisconsin Blue Book 1995-1996.

United States Senate. (n.d.) Justin S. Morrill, United States Senate. Retrieved from https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Justin_S_Morrill.htm.

University of Wisconsin, Some Notable Achievements. Retrieved from https://cals.wisc.edu/about-cals/history/notable-achievements/.

Veysey, L. (1965). The Emergence of the American University. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Photo: Left image of USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, courtesy of USDA. Right image of previous Vermont Congressman Justin Smith Morrill, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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Celebrate the 160th Anniversary of the Morrill Act | National Institute of Food and Agriculture - National Institute of Food and Agriculture

When the Supreme Court released its usual end-of-term rush of decisions last week, America experienced nothing less than a constitutional earthquake, a massive jolt caused by deep shifts in the tectonic plates of American jurisprudence.

On Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for all six of the Courts Republican appointees, ruled that religious schools must receive equal treatment in any school voucher system that a state might choose to create. On Wednesday, Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the same six, struck down New Yorks efforts to minimize concealed guns in public places. Then came Friday, when Justice Samuel Alito, writing for five Justices (all Republicans except Roberts) jettisoned a half-century of abortion jurisprudence and explicitly overruled the landmark cases of Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (2012). What on earth is the Court doing?

In a word: Originalism. Originalism is a profound and principled constitutional theory, available to liberals and conservatives alike, that prioritizes the Constitutions text and original history over even seemingly settled precedent. And after decades of doctrinal drift on Americas highest court, originalism is now openly ascendant.

Read More: The Fight Over Abortion Has Only Just Begun

The three new blockbuster opinions came from the Courts three senior-most Republican appointees, with decisive backing from their more junior fellows, all self-described originalists nurtured from youth in the bosom of the originalism-focused Federalist Society: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. In all three cases, the Courts old guard DemocratsStephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kaganhowled in dissent. In all three, the Court repudiated doctrines that appeared solid a generation ago.

America has been here at least three times beforein 1937, 1954, and 1963. In each of these previous turning points, new blood on the Court prompted big changes. Each prior revolution tossed overboard landmark rulings that had once seemed settled precedent, as the new Court condemned the old conclusions as egregious misreadings of constitutional text and history. But all three prior revolutions involved liberal, not conservative, originalism. And in that history lies a way forward for todays liberal juristsif they can bring themselves to see it.

In 1937, as in last weeks abortion ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, the new Court eradicated putative constitutional rights rooted in a half-century of prior precedent. Back then, the supposed rights involved powerful mens private property; in Dobbs, the contested right implicated less powerful womens private lives. Both times, the Courts new blood said that the supposed rights in questionwhether to enforce harsh contracts or to end pregnancieslacked solid foundations in the Constitutions text and original understanding. In 1937, the old legal order was epitomized by Lochner v. New York (1905), in which the Court struck down an eminently reasonable maximum-hour employment law as violative of a sweatshop owners right to drive a hard bargain with his workers. Lochner and other cases like it deployed a dubious doctrine, known to lawyers as substantive due process, that gave judges vast discretion to ignore laws they simply didnt like on substantive policy grounds. The new blood rightly viewed this amorphous and anti-textual concept with great suspicion. Roe carelessly revived the substantive due process idea in the context of womens reproductive rights, and the Courts new blood has now reacted just as the Courts new blood reacted in the late 1930s, by loudly denouncing this amorphous blob. Thus, Roe has now become the new Lochner.

In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education likewise said that an old precedent-setting case was egregiously wrong; this time, it was Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Once again, originalism provided the best justification for the Courts doctrinal about-face, though then-Chief Justice Earl Warrens opinion muted this fact, which became clear only in retrospect. Brown was right for the simple reason that the text and history of the Fourteenth Amendment promised racial equality, and Jim Crow was not truly equal. In last weeks school case, Carson v. Makin, Americas current Chief Justice subtly channeled his 1950s predecessor by once again proclaiming the idea of educational equalitythis time, the equal rights of religious parents and religious schools. As did Warren in Brown, Roberts in Carson muted some of the best originalist evidence that supported his ruling, but his bottom line was emphatic: If a private secular school gets a voucher, so must a private religious school that is identical in all other respects. What 1954 was for race equality in education, 2022 is for religious equality in education. Carson is the new Brown.

Read more: The Supreme Court Just Expanded Gun Rights. Heres What That Means

Finally, in 1963, the Warren Court switched into high gear after Justice Felix Frankfurter left after a stroke. Now, the Roberts Court is shifting into high gear after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs death. Beginning in 1963, the Warren Court dramatically expanded rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendmentsinvolving expression rights, search-and-seizure rights, and fair trial rights, among other things. In last weeks gun case, New York Rifle v. Bruen, the Roberts Court likewise dramatically expanded rights under the Second Amendment, involving the right to keep and bear arms, broadly construed. Bruen is the new Gideon (1963), the new Miranda (1966).

In hindsight, the lead architect of the judicial revolutions of 1937, 1954, and 1963 was a liberal originalist who stood like Martin Luther on the rock of constitutional text and history. This jurist led the Court to discard precedent after precedent because, he insisted, the old decisions were egregiously wrong on originalist grounds.

The most important judicial originalist in modern American history was thus not a conservativenot Robert Bork, not Antonin Scalia, not Clarence Thomas, not Samuel Alito. Rather it was Hugo Black, Franklin Roosevelts first appointee (in 1937), who became the driving intellectual force of the Warren Court from 1953 to 1969 and left the bench shortly thereafter. Black brilliantly understood the legal, political, and rhetorical power of the Constitutions text and history. He knew how to sing the song of Americas origins and amendments. The Constitutions text and background history really did offer strong protections of political expression by government critics (Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press); the right to vote (a textual refrain that repeatedly recurs in post-Founding Amendments); and jury trials of and for ordinary folk. Black insisted that these and countless other constitutional rights meant what they said, and that judges had to enforce them robustly.

Whether consciously or not, todays Federalist Society conservatives are building on Franklin Roosevelts first and best judicial pick. It is customary in most circles to refer to the Courts junior Republican trioGorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrettas Trump appointees, but in truth they are Federalist Society appointees, carefully groomed and vetted by this extraordinarily influential organization. Trump himself knows nothing about law and was indeed the most lawless president in American history. To him, law is simply an obstacle or a weapon. But most good lawyers and judges see law as a guide, a lens, a tool, an instrument for justice and community. The Federalist Society is part of this grand legal tradition and it has long championed originalism as the best way for judges and others to do constitutional law.

Meanwhile, the Courts liberals are eschewing originalism, and they are losing badly. They are prioritizing not constitutional text, not its adjacent history, but rather existing Supreme Court precedent.

Read more: Inside the Original Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Leak, 49 Years Before the Alito Bombshell

But purely precedent-based argumentation is misguided. For starters, each justice swears an oath to the Constitution, not to the Courts caselaw. And the Constitutions text could not be more clear: It, and not judicial precedent, is the supreme law of the landno ifs, ands, or buts. Moreover, precedent itself authorizes deviation from egregiously wrong precedent. That is the lesson of 1937, 1954, and 1963precedents on precedent, so to speak. A dissenter can of course invoke precedent, but the shelf life of a purely precedent-based dissent is shorter than that of a head of lettuce. Once a Court majority hands down its ruling, that ruling itself becomes a new precedent, and a precedent-worshipping dissenter must now change her tune in the next case. But an originalist dissenter need not fold her tent. The text says what it says and the history means what it means today, tomorrow, and forever. Most of Blacks biggest triumphs late in his judicial career began as dissents in his early days.

When last weeks liberals tried to make arguments from constitutional text and history, they often stumbled. For example, in Dobbs they repeatedly and passionately invoked womens liberty. But the Constitutions text protects liberty in a clause that promises fair procedures such as impartial judges and juriesdue processand nothing more. Textually and historically, this is not a Liberty Clause as such. Nor is it a Property Clause, despite Lochners strained efforts to make it so. Rather, it is exactly what it says it isa procedural Due Process Clause. A jurist steeped in arcane judicial precedent may have difficulty even seeing this basic point, but it is blindingly clear for a true originalist, who begins by focusing like a laser on the terse text itself: Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

In Carson, Justice Sotomayor opened her dissent by invoking the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build. This was lovely rhetoric but sloppy analysis. The wall of separation metaphor is not in the Constitution and our best constitutional scholars have proved that the Founding history of church and state is far more complex than this simple metaphor suggests. Most important of all, Carson involved a stateMaineand not the federal government. The key amendment was thus not the First Amendment, which explicitly speaks of Congress and was adopted in 1791, but the Fourteenth Amendment, which limits state governments and was ratified in 1868. That amendment says nothing about religious establishment as such, but does expressly stress the equal status of various races and religions. Sotomayor wasnt even looking at the right century or the right text! In Bruen, the New York gun control case, Justice Thomass ambitious originalist opinion for the Court took special care to highlight the possible difference between the understanding of American rights in 1791 and in 1868, yet Sotomayor and her fellow dissenters in Carson completely missed the memo.

The Dobbs liberals grumbled that originalism privileges white male history from long ago. But surely the Constitutions text binds us, no? And how can judges faithfully enforce the text without paying at least some attention its enactment context and pondering the reasons why Americans in years past put certain words in the document? In her 2010 confirmation hearings, liberal Justice Elena Kagan explicitly said, we are all originalists.

As Justice Black brilliantly showed throughout his career, there are often compelling originalist arguments to be made for liberal outcomes. And some liberal originalists working in todays law schools are making them. For example, they have emphasized the relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment to the abortion debate. Enslaved women were forced to reproduce against their will and modern abortion laws are likewise conscripting unwilling women into, quite literally, forced labor.

There are plausible counterarguments to this and other liberal originalist ideas; but unless liberals on the Court learn (or relearn) how to do originalism, they will lose many winnable cases. Perhaps conservative originalists on the Court will swat away even compelling liberal originalist ideas, but we will never know unless liberals on the Court put these ideas in play. Even if liberal originalist arguments fail to prevail immediately, they will leave a trail of dissent that will be a godsend to future jurists, unlike precedent-based dissents good for one day only.

Read more: What Ketanji Brown Jackson Could Bring to the Supreme Court

In the modern NBA, no team can consistently win without the ability to sink three-pointers. What is true of todays basketball court is also true of todays Supreme Court: the game is changing and new skills are now required. The Federalist Society is the judicial equivalent of the Golden State Warriors.

Beginning at noon today, when Ketanji Brown Jackson takes her oath of office to replace retiring Stephen Breyer, there will be fresh talent on the Court. In the years ahead, Justice Jackson and the Courts other liberals will need to hit the history books hard and practice their outside shots. Only if this happens will they have a fighting chance in the new era that has dawned.

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Post-Roe, Liberal Justices Need to Think Like Conservatives - TIME

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This article was co-published with The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In August 2020, Boise State University chose a doctoral student in public policy, Melanie Fillmore, to deliver what is called a land acknowledgment speech at a convocation for incoming freshmen. Fillmore, who is part Indigenous, would recognize the tribes that lived in the Boise Valley before they were banished to reservations to make way for white settlers.

Fillmore considered it an honor. She was devoted to Boise State, where she had earned her bachelors and masters degrees, taught undergraduate courses and served on job search committees. She also admired Marlene Tromp, a feminist literary scholar who came from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2019 to become Boise States first female president. Tromp had been hired with a mandate to promote diversity, and including an Indigenous speaker in the ceremony marking the start of students higher education would advance that agenda.

The convocation was to be virtual, because of the pandemic. Fillmore put on beaded Native American jewelry and recorded an eight-minute video on her phone. She began by naming the rightful owners of this land, the Boise Valley Indigenous tribes, and then described her own complicated background. Her father was Hunkpapa Lakota, her mother white. I can trace eight generations of my Lakota ancestors being removed from the land of their lifeblood to the reservation, just as I can trace seven generations of Norwegian and English ancestors taking that land, she said.

Fillmore urged viewers to find a way to share your story here at Boise State and to learn the history of Indigenous people. When we acknowledge the Boise Valley ancestors and their land, we make room for that story of removal that was genocidal in purpose, she said. When we tell those stories honestly and fully, we heal, and our ancestors heal with us.

She submitted her speech to the university, but the students never heard it. Boise State higher-ups thought that it was too long and too provocative to roll out in a politically precarious climate, one former official said. They consulted another administrator about whether to drop the speech. I communicated that pulling it was a bad idea and incredibly wrong, said this person, who has also left the university. I dont believe in de-platforming Indigenous voices.

The advice was disregarded. Two days before the convocation, the vice president for student affairs told Fillmore that her appearance was canceled, explaining that her safety might be at risk or that she might be trolled or doxxed online.

Fillmore was devastated. She had encouraged the students to tell their stories, and now hers was being erased. She wondered if administrators were worried about the timing. The Idaho Legislature which normally meets from January to March, when it decides how much money to give to public education, including Boise State would hold a special session three days after the convocation to consider COVID-19 measures. Conservative legislators, who ever since Tromps arrival had been attacking Boise States diversity initiatives, might hear about Fillmores talk and seize on it to bash the university.

I didnt say anything that I havent already been sharing with my research and work, she wrote to a faculty mentor, political scientist Stephen Utych, in an email the next day.

I was incredibly frustrated for Melanie, but also that the university caved on something so relatively benign, because theres so much pressure coming externally, Utych said in an interview. He added that concerns about the Legislatures impact on Boise State were one reason he quit his tenured professorship this year to work in market research.

When the universitys convocation committee, which organized the event, was informed of the decision, Amy Vecchione expressed misgivings. I remember saying, Typically, what we do is allow speech to take place, regardless of the content, said Vecchione, assistant director of the universitys center for developing online courses, who was the faculty senate liaison to the committee. We process reactions if there are any. Thats part of academic freedom.

After the convocation, Tromp commiserated with Fillmore over Zoom. She told me it was a sad outcome, Fillmore said. Tromp did not respond to questions about the incident. Alicia Estey, chief of staff and vice president for university affairs, said in an email that safety was a concern.

Almost two years later, Fillmore still broods about how she was treated. Although she loves teaching, shes rethinking her aspirations for an academic career. I really lost a lot of faith in Boise State, she said. It was more important for the university to cope with whatever the Legislature wanted than to advocate for students. I feel more like a liability than a part of the community.

Across the country, elected officials in red states are seeking to impose their political views on public universities. Even as they decry liberal cancel culture, theyre leveraging the threat of budget cuts to scale back diversity initiatives, sanitize the teaching of American history and interfere with university policies and appointments.

In Georgia, the governors appointees have made it easier to fire tenured professors. Florida passed a law requiring public universities to survey faculty and students annually about the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented, and allowing students to record professors lectures as evidence of possible bias. In North Carolina, the Republican-dominated legislature, through its control over key positions, is inappropriately seeking to expand [its] purview into the day-to-day operations of state campuses, the American Association of University Professors reported in April. In Texas, the lieutenant governor and conservative donors worked with the state universitys flagship Austin campus to start an institute dedicated to the study and teaching of individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets, according to The Texas Tribune.

Perhaps reflecting such tensions, the average tenure of public university presidents has declined from nine years to seven over the past two decades, and they are increasingly being fired or forced to resign, according to data prepared for this article by Sondra Barringer and Michael Harris, professors of higher education at Southern Methodist University. Between 2014 and 2020, 29% of departures by presidents of NCAA Division 1 public universities were involuntary, up from 19% between 2007 and 2013, and 10% between 2000 and 2006. Moreover, based on media reports and other sources, micromanaging or hyperpartisan boards were responsible for 24% of involuntary turnover at such universities in red states from 2014 to 2020, a rate more than four times higher than in blue states, Barringer and Harris found.

One way to weaken these institutions is to weaken the leadership of these institutions, Harris said. Higher education is under attack in a way that it has never quite been before. These are direct assaults on the core tenets of the institutions. ... Boards are running leaders out of town. Its scary stuff.

The pressure has been intense in Idaho and especially at its largest university, Boise State. Egged on by the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to exposing, defeating, and replacing the states socialist public policies, conservative legislators have pushed to prevent an overwhelmingly white institution from considering diversity in its policies and programs.

In 2020, Idaho banned affirmative action at public universities. Last year, the state trimmed $1.5 million from Boise States budget, targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, along with a total of $1 million from the other two state universities. Idaho also became the first of seven states to adopt laws aimed at restricting colleges teaching or training related to critical race theory, which examines how racism is ingrained in Americas laws and power structure. The lieutenant governor convened a task force to protect our young people from the scourge of critical race theory, socialism, communism and Marxism in higher education. This year, the Legislature adopted a nonbinding resolution condemning critical race theory and The New York Timess 1619 Project for divisive content that seeks to disregard the history of the United States and the nations journey to becoming a pillar of freedom in the world.

Boise State is a revealing prism through which to examine how public universities, meant to be bastions of academic freedom, are responding to red-state pressures. The school would seem to be in a strong position to resist them. It receives a relatively modest 18% of its budget from the state, with the balance from tuition, student fees, federal student financial aid, research grants and donors. Buoyed by its nationally known football team, which plays on a blue field that has come to rival the potato as Idahos most recognizable symbol, and located in one of the nations fastest-growing metropolitan areas, Boise State has seen its academic stature and private fundraising rise. It received $41.8 million in donations in fiscal 2021, up from $34.2 million in 2020, although one prominent donor vowed to reduce his giving, complaining that the university was trending leftward.

But for all its seeming clout and independence, Boise State has yielded again and again. It has canceled events, like Fillmores speech, that might alienate conservatives; avoided using the terms diversity and inclusion; and suspended a course on ethics and diversity with 1,300 students over a legislators unfounded allegation of misconduct by a teacher.

University administrators seem to want to placate the conservatives, said sociology lecturer Michael Kreiter, who was an instructor in the suspended course and teaches classes on racism. Their goal, in my view, is just to stay out of sight, hoping that all of this backlash wont get focused on them.

Idahos anti-critical race theory law has chilled some Boise State educators and shut down their teaching and speech about race and gender in the classroom, said Aadika Singh, legal director at the ACLU of Idaho, which investigated potentially unconstitutional enforcement of the law. But it is also clear that some courageous educators have doubled down and reacted to the legislatures attacks on education by teaching more controversial topics. The university administration has not been courageous; they havent had their facultys backs. While the investigation remains open, Singh said, the ACLU of Idaho shifted its focus to educating faculty members on their academic freedom and free-speech rights in the classroom.

Boise State spokesperson Mike Sharp said that the 18% slice of its budget doesnt convey the full scope of the states support for the university. Its land is titled in the name of the state Board of Education, and its buildings are all state buildings, he said. If Boise State had to cut programs to meet payroll, he added, enrollment would decline, and its credit rating might be downgraded. Without state support, Boise State as it exists today would disappear, Sharp said.

In an email to ProPublica, Tromp explained her strategy. My aim is to support our faculty, students and staff and to open lines of dialogue with those in our community who are certain universities dont see or hear them, she wrote. The work we are doing has the potential to be truly transformative not just here but more broadly. She declined to comment further, saying it is a delicate moment, in which it continues to be easy to harm the best efforts in almost any direction.

Some professors worry that the unanswered attacks are hurting Boise States credibility. When faculty members and community organizations recently sponsored a symposium on how to adjust property taxes to help homeowners affected by Boises soaring housing values, they held it off campus and didnt list the university as a sponsor, in contrast to a similar symposium that the university conducted on campus 15 years ago.

I am saddened by whats happened in the last couple of years, said Boise State political scientist Stephanie Witt, who helped organize the discussion. Theres the perception that working with us is somehow connected to this taint on all higher education. We cant be trusted.

As it searched for a president in 2019, Boise State was increasingly gaining national recognition and not just for athletics. Founded as a junior college by the Episcopal church in 1932, it entered the state system in 1969 and became a university in 1974. For years thereafter it was largely a commuter school for working adults. But now enrollment was steadily growing, especially from out of state; 17% of its undergraduates come from California. Its status had recently been upgraded to high research activity under the Carnegie system for classifying universities, and U.S. News & World Report had named it one of the countrys 50 most innovative universities.

One shortcoming stood in the way of its aspirations: a lack of diversity. Its faculty is 83% white, 5% Latino, 5% Asian and 1% Black. Even though 43% of degree-seeking undergraduates come from outside predominantly white Idaho, fewer than 2% are Black. Latinos make up 14%. The services needed to attract faculty and students of color, as well as low-income and LGBTQ students, and make them feel at home were scanty compared with many universities.

We are a modern day Cinderella story, a university commission concluded in 2017. Unfortunately ... it is not clear that everyone is being invited nor supported to participate in the ball. It called for creating an infrastructure with executive leadership, and with the appropriate resources.

During the presidential search, faculty, staff and students emphasized the importance of diversity. But some candidates were wary of Idaho politics. One finalist, Andrew Marcus, former dean of arts and sciences at the University of Oregon, cited limited state funding and a climate of growing national concern about universities as challenges in his job application. A Boise State staffer warned Marcus that Idaho was a one-party state in which Republicans were split into three factions: Mormons, who supported state funding for higher education; and libertarians and Trump acolytes, who didnt.

Another hopeful bowed out after researching state politics. I felt my values may not be shared by the governance structures in Idaho, she said. I didnt want to have those fights.

Tromp was the clear choice for the job. Born in 1966, she was raised a two-hour drive from the Idaho border, in Green River, Wyoming. Her father was a mechanic in a trona mine, a mineral processed into baking soda, and her mother was a telephone operator. Her high school guidance counselor applied to colleges for her, because she couldnt afford the application fees. When an East Coast university offered her a full scholarship, her father said, Honey, what would happen if you got all the way across the country and this turned out not to be real? She enrolled at Creighton University in Nebraska, where she was smitten by Victorian poetry.

After earning her doctorate at the University of Florida, she spent 14 years at Denison University, a liberal arts college in Ohio. An English professor and director of womens studies, she earned teaching awards and churned out books and articles. She advocated for nontraditional departments such as queer studies, said Toni King, a professor of Black studies and womens and gender studies at Denison. She cares very deeply about individual people, she pulls talent together, she innovates beyond, King said. She was always, We can get there quicker, sooner, bigger.

Tromp immersed herself in campus life, speaking at Take Back the Night marches to raise awareness of violence against women. She was married on the steps of Denisons library in 2007. Music department faculty played in the reception band. When she left for Arizona State, King thought, There goes a college president.

At Arizona State, Tromp served as dean of a college that offered interdisciplinary programs across the sciences, social sciences and humanities. At UC Santa Cruz, which she joined in 2017 as executive vice chancellor, she launched a mentoring program for faculty from underrepresented groups. She also proposed a new strategic plan too quickly, without enough familiarity with campus culture, according to Ronnie Lipschutz, an emeritus professor of politics.

Marlene swept in and wanted to make an impact, said Lipschutz, who is the author of an institutional history of UC Santa Cruz that examines why numerous strategic plans there have failed. She didnt talk to many people about how the place operated. Tromp did not respond to questions about the strategic plan and her experience at Santa Cruz.

The battle over her plan was dragging on when Tromp left. She told the Santa Cruz academic senate that incidents involving her personal and familys safety led her to accept the Boise State presidency, according to meeting minutes summarizing her talk. She also expressed fear that there may be a lack of understanding of how easy it is to incite rage against the leaders in our community. Santa Cruz colleagues said that she had been alarmed when people threatened and jeered her while she was jogging along a coastal road. They may have been unhoused students for whom dormitory space wasnt available, and who had been denied permission to live in their cars and park in a campus lot, one friend said.

For a feminist university president, Idaho seemed unlikely to provide a safer, less volatile environment. We were all surprised at her departure, especially since her project had not finished, Lipschutz said. The fact that she was going to Idaho was also a bit of a surprise. It was like, Why on earth would you go to Idaho?

Tromp had no such doubts. She was very enthusiastic and very much felt that she was coming home to the region that shaped her, King said.

The Legislature wasnt about to give her a honeymoon. In June 2019, Boise States interim president had highlighted the universitys diversity initiatives in a newsletter. They included graduation fetes for Black and LGBTQ students, six graduate fellowships for underrepresented minority students, recruiting a Black sorority or fraternity and implicit bias training for employees.

The next month, eight days after Tromp started, half of the 56 Republicans in Idahos House of Representatives wrote to her, assailing these programs as divisive and exclusionary and antithetical to the purpose of a public university in Idaho.

Through no fault of her own, Tromp was boxed in. She responded by calling for meaningful dialogue, thanking legislators for their genuine engagement and saying she looked forward to hearing their concerns.

In the midst of this firestorm, she met with three student activists. Ushered into her office, they noticed her treadmill desk and the bookshelves featuring her own works. When they told her about racism on campus, including swastikas painted on dormitory walls, Tromp started crying, according to two students, Ryann Banks and Abby Barzee.

Didnt you know about this before you took the job? Banks asked her.

I did not know, Tromp said.

About 10 days after the legislators letter, cartoon postcards were mailed anonymously to state officials and lawmakers, depicting Tromp as a clown. Other attacks ensued. Although Tromp had spent only two years at UC Santa Cruz, the Idaho Freedom Foundations sister organization, Idaho Freedom Action, lampooned her as a California liberal ... Turning Boise State Into a Taxpayer-Funded Marxist Indoctrination Center. A scholar of xenophobia in Victorian England, Tromp was experiencing fear of outsiders firsthand.

After the foundation encouraged its supporters to troll her, Tromp received hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of some of the most venomous hateful emails I could possibly imagine, she said at a private 2021 meeting, according to a recording the Idaho Freedom Foundation obtained and posted. Threats to drag me out in the street and sexually assault me and kill me. Messages of hatred. ... Its a manifestation of the toxicity of the political climate across our country.

Much as former President Barack Obama once courted congressional Republicans, Tromp sought to conciliate the conservative legislators. In one-on-one meetings, she assured them that she took the free-speech rights of a student wearing a Make America Great Again hat as seriously as anyone elses. All means all became her mantra. Previously either a Democrat or undeclared, she registered to vote in Idaho as a Republican.

But she faced several disadvantages, starting with her gender. These extremists think that its easier to pick off a woman than a man, and so they go after her, said former Boise State President Bob Kustra.

Tromps striking appearance shes tall and slender, with close-cropped hair, glasses (often red) and multiple ear piercings may have disconcerted some Idahoans. I sometimes wonder if Dr. Tromp isnt an easier target because she looks like a modern woman, said Witt, the political scientist. People say, Shes got more than one hole in her ears, shes got short hair.

As Idahos only urban university, Boise State attracts disproportionate media attention and conservative skepticism. It also has few of the natural allies on whom universities often lean politically: alumni in key government posts. Tromp reports to the state Board of Education, which has only one Boise State graduate among its eight members.

While its campus is a mile from the state Capitol building, Boise States presence there is sparse. About 10% of legislators are Boise State alumni, which may be partly attributable to its lack of a law school. Two Mormon institutions, Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg, together have about twice as many alumni in the Legislature as Boise State does. The University of Idaho has almost double Boise States representation. Gov. Brad Little is a University of Idaho graduate.

The disparity is even greater on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, which sets the higher education budget. Six members of the Republican majority on JFAC graduated from the University of Idaho, including a co-chair, and none from Boise State.

As Idahos only land-grant university, with the states only public law school, the University of Idaho possesses in-state cachet and connections that Boise State is hard-pressed to match. Its diversity initiatives are comparable to Boise States. It has a chief diversity officer, as well as a director of diversity and inclusion for its engineering college. Boise State has neither position. Yet the Legislature appropriated 72% more per student to the University of Idaho in fiscal 2022 than to Boise State.

The University of Idahos president, C. Scott Green, called out the freedom foundation this past January, denouncing a false narrative created by conflict entrepreneurs who make their living sowing fear and doubt with legislators and voters.

Green avoided any pushback because he has friends in key positions, said Rep. Brent Crane, a committee chairman and former House assistant majority leader, who graduated from Boise State in 2005.

Even though Crane is an alumnus, Boise State cant count on his support. His father, a former state legislator and treasurer, is treasurer of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, with which Crane agrees 82% of the time, according to its rankings.

The 47-year-old Crane represents the Boise suburb of Nampa, where he was born and grew up, and where hes vice president of his familys security and fire alarm business. He and his brother also own a fire sprinkler company. At a nearby coffeehouse, he said that, when he was a political science major at Boise State, his teachers never revealed their opinions. What I respected most about my professors was that I didnt know if they were Democrats or Republicans, he said. Whatever the student thought, the professor took the opposite tack. In my perfect world, Id like to see Boise State get back to where it was when I was there.

Crane, who is white, said that he disagrees with critical race theory: Theres no racism in my life. In his boyhood, he said, African Americans were revered and looked up to. They were the athletes who played on the football and basketball teams. They were the heroes.

Under immediate pressure, Tromp began rethinking her agenda. From day one, when she came in, and the letter from the legislators came in saying, Youre under a microscope, youd better start scrubbing your campus of these programs, that changed the operating environment from her perspective, and probably the perspective of everyone, one insider said.

There was a quiet reassessment of what can we reasonably accomplish and an ongoing conversation about how do we serve our students best without unnecessarily inflaming the rage and the accusations of these legislators?

Crane, the legislator and Boise State alumnus, had a role in one of the universitys early concessions. Boise State was advertising for a new position: vice provost for equity and inclusion. It would be the top diversity job at the university, implementing Tromps agenda. The vice provost would oversee recruiting and retaining faculty, building diversity into the curriculum and monitoring the campus climate.

The search produced two finalists. One of them, Brandy Bryson, looked into Idaho politics and withdrew her name from consideration. There was no way the institution was going to survive the political strong-arming that was coming from the Legislature, said Bryson, director of inclusive excellence at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Boise States desire to hire a vice provost for equity and inclusion was a clear commitment to academic excellence and the empirically proven benefits of diversity, which the Legislature didnt seem to understand or value.

The other finalist, John Miller Jr., then chair of social work at a liberal arts college in the South, noticed that someone from the Idaho Freedom Foundation was tracking him on social media. Nevertheless, he accepted an invitation to visit Boise State, where he met in March 2020 with Tromp and other leaders, and gave a presentation.

Some search committee members had reservations about Miller, who wasnt a shoo-in, insiders said. Still, the vibe I got, when I was dropped off at the airport, I fully expected an offer, Miller said. I was definitely under strong consideration.

After the student newspaper reported on the opening, though, Boise States critics weighed in. Idaho Freedom Foundation President Wayne Hoffman wrote on the groups website that BSU didnt get the message from the written rebuke by the 28 legislators. Shortly after Miller returned to South Carolina, Crane denounced his alma mater for hiring a vice president of diversity, calling it a direct affront to the Legislature and me personally. Despite getting the job title wrong, Crane clearly meant the vice provost position.

Crane also conveyed his concerns privately to Tromp. He regarded the new position as part of the woke agenda sweeping the country: I dont want to see Boise State caught up in that, he told ProPublica. The House had already killed the higher education budget twice. If Tromp had forged ahead, other Boise State priorities might not have been funded, Crane said.

She and I disagree on the vice provost of diversity, he told ProPublica. Thats not a hill she wants to die on. She chose to pay deference. A week later, Boise State notified Miller that it had halted the search. It never filled the position.

Crane continued to lambaste Boise State. During an April 2021 debate on the higher education budget, Crane read aloud what he said was an email from an unnamed Boise State music student complaining that a professor had asked a class to discuss how Black composers are superior to white composers. The student protested that skin color has nothing to do with the quality of music but was purportedly told to be quiet. (The incident could not be confirmed.)

Im disgusted. Im embarrassed and Im ashamed, Crane told the legislature. There has been a direct shift in the ideology thats being taught at Boise State University. ... Our tax dollars do not need to be spent silencing kids voices on our college campuses.

One way that Boise State sought to reduce legislative pushback was by adjusting its language. For example, Tromp asked a university planning committee to avoid the words diversity and inclusion, which legislators would be searching for, said Angel Cantu, a former student government president on the committee. Boise States 2022-26 strategic plan doesnt mention diversity or inclusion, while the phrase equity gaps appears four times. By contrast, the University of Idahos plan calls for building an inclusive, diverse community and creating an inclusive learning environment.

Boise State administrators discussed the importance of terminology at several meetings, a former official recalled. The message was that you can use different words to have the same meaning. Equity and words like that are less incendiary.

The university tweaked job titles similarly. In August 2020, Francisco Salinas, then the universitys top diversity officer, moved from director of student diversity and inclusion to assistant to the vice president for equity initiatives.

Although his responsibilities did change, Salinas said, the new description wasnt his choice, and he disagreed with scrubbing words like diversity. The tactics being used against Boise State, he said, were bullying tactics. Its the same thing you learn as a kid. If a bully is successful at taking your lunch money, theyre going to keep going. You have to stand up and let them know they cant do that to you.

Discouraged, Salinas left Boise State in April to become dean of equity, diversity and inclusion at Spokane Falls Community College in Washington. He said other diversity officials have fled. I know what Dr. Tromps heart is, he said. I was very pleased she was hired. I thought shed be able to make progress along this axis. But the environment did not afford that.

The legislative barrage also affected recruitment. Ive been on hiring committees and I see who applies for jobs here, said Utych, the former political science professor. They are a lot whiter than they are at other universities. Part of that is the location, but part of that is also the Legislature attacking diversity and inclusion.

Tromp described being very, very disheartened that the best thing to do might be to pull back because of the resistance, her friend King recalled. There was concern, with all the information she had before her, how could she move forward? She had to think about the university as a whole.

When the university did move forward with a lightning-rod event, it took precautions to avoid a backlash. Republican legislators had attacked the Rainbow Graduation, which honors LGBTQ students, in their letter to Tromp, and the Idaho Freedom Foundation had accused Boise State of holding segregationist commencements. At this springs Rainbow Graduation, Boise States dean of students pointedly reminded the 30 or so seniors that this is not a commencement ceremony. Since they were aware that they would actually graduate nine days later, the disclaimer appeared to be intended for critics outside the university.

Some faculty were undaunted. The sociology department has doubled the number of its courses focusing on race and racism from two to four, and it opened an Anti-Racism Collective that brings in speakers. This is a great opportunity in some sense, said sociology department chairman Arthur Scarritt. Added Kreiter, who doesnt have tenure: I feel I dont have a lot of longevity here. Im just going to teach this as fiery as I can.

Several professors and administrators urged Tromp to fight back. There were a lot of people on campus, even in senior leadership, who said, You cant get out of this by taking the high road, one recalled. I would have preferred a more direct approach.

Tromp drew the line at cultivating the Idaho Freedom Foundation. Hoffman said he has asked to meet with her on multiple occasions and has been refused. Nothing has changed at Boise State, he said in an email. Its just handled more carefully.

There is some evidence for the contention by Crane and other critics that conservative students at Boise State tend to feel squelched in class. A state Board of Education survey completed last November found that 36% of Boise State students who self-identified as right of center felt pressured often or very frequently to accept beliefs they found offensive, as opposed to 12% of students in the center and 6% on the left. Conservative students were more apt to feel this pressure from professors; liberals, from classmates.

Still, the faculty encompasses a range of views. Anne Walker, chair of the economics department, holds a fellowship in free enterprise capitalism. One member of the lieutenant governors task force on communism in higher education was Scott Yenor, a Boise State political scientist and occasional Tucker Carlson guest. In December 2020, Yenor and an Idaho Freedom Foundation analyst co-authored a report urging the Legislature to direct the university to eliminate courses that are infused with social justice ideology. In a speech last fall, Yenor mocked feminists as medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome and universities as the citadels of our gynecocracy.

Boise States donors also span the political spectrum. Timber and cattle ranching magnate Larry Williams served for 20 years on the Boise State Foundation board and has donated millions of dollars for athletics and business programs. He has also given six figures to the Idaho Freedom Foundation. In this years Republican primary campaign, he gave about $125,000 to more than 30 conservative candidates, including $1,000 to Crane.

Throughout 2020, Williams pressed Boise State to scuttle the programs identified by the 28 Republican legislators, to no avail. Although he found Tromp to be open and engaging, he told legislators in February 2021 that he would no longer donate to Boise State, with the exception of its football program, until this is turned around.

It appears BSU no longer shares our Idaho values, Williams wrote. Students are taught ... that our honest, hardworking rural farmers, ranchers, miners and loggers are white privileged with implicit bias toward minorities and Native Americans.

The Idaho Freedom Foundations Hoffman acknowledged that Boise State has fewer diversity initiatives than some big universities in other states. We recognize that its a small but growing dedication of resources to this enterprise, he said. I dont care how big it is. I care if any taxpayer dollars are wasted on these efforts. We want to catch it now before it becomes an even bigger problem.

Like white students from rural Idaho who are exposed for the first time to concepts like white privilege and systemic racism, some students of color, especially from other states, endure culture shock on campus. After Kennyetta Coulter, a biology major from Long Beach, California, arrived at Boise State last year, accompanied by her mother, they hardly saw another Black person for two weeks. If you dont like Boise, dont be afraid to tell me, her mother said on leaving.

In a Difficult Conversations class, Coulter, who describes herself as a political moderate, found that she was the only student in her discussion group who favored background checks for gun buyers or was open to letting transgender athletes participate in sports based on their gender identity. Her three roommates, all of whom had blue eyes and blond hair, were nice to her. But sometimes she felt peer pressure to suppress her views. At Boise State football games, she squirmed in the student section while big, buff white boys with cowboy boots chanted, Fuck Joe Biden.

Coulter became so depressed that she sought counseling. Sometimes I just feel Im all alone, she said, and Im the only one who understands what Im going through. She didnt have the energy to go to class and stayed in bed and watched television.

The administrations reluctance to challenge legislators dispirited her. Why isnt the university saying anything? Coulter wondered.

In some red states, public universities have fought back. The University of Nebraska has been especially effective in warding off political pressure. Its the only public university in Nebraska, and about half of the states legislators earned degrees from institutions within the University of Nebraska system. So did all eight regents. And as a retired vice admiral and former superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, Nebraska president Ted Carter has the kind of military credentials that make it hard to call him a communist.

University regent Jim Pillen, a veterinarian and former Nebraska football star who is running for governor, proposed a resolution last year that critical race theory seeks to silence opposing views and disparage important American ideals and should not be imposed in curriculum, training and programming.

Aided by the ACLU of Nebraska and other advocacy groups, the universitys administration, faculty and student government mobilized against the resolution. At a hearing last August before the regents, almost 40 people testified against it, while only a handful supported it. Defenders of critical race theory noted that the Declaration of Independence refers to merciless Indian Savages. A retired English professor pleaded with the board: If you pass this, you repudiate my whole career.

The four nonvoting student regents also voiced their opposition, including Batool Ibrahim, the first Black student government president of Nebraskas flagship Lincoln campus. Ibrahim considers herself a native Nebraskan, although technically she isnt. Her Sudanese parents were flying to the U.S. in 1999, hoping she would be born on American soil so she could become president someday, when her mother went into labor on the plane. The pilot hurriedly landed in Dubai, where Ibrahim was born. The family soon moved to Lincoln, where she grew up.

Critical race theory is the history of people of color in this nation, Ibrahim said. It is my history. So when we talk about whether critical race theory should be taught or it should not be taught, youre telling me that my history does not belong in the classroom.

Pillen defended his resolution, saying that it did not violate academic freedom and that Nebraskans deserve the confidence of knowing their hard-earned tax dollars cannot be used to force critical race theory on anyone.

The board upheld teaching critical race theory by a 5-3 vote. But the battle was just starting. One regent in the majority warned that 400 of 550 constituents who contacted him supported the resolution a promising sign for Pillen, who would go on to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

Read more here:

The Other Cancel Culture: How a Public University Is Bowing to a Conservative Crusade - ProPublica

The Police on Thursday brought three men before an Oyo State High Court for allegedly unlawfully grabbing 3.562 hectares of land belonging to Rev. John Famodimu.

The defendants, Alhaji Muktar Gbadeyanka, Ambali Gbadeyanka and Ajayi Morufu, were arraigned before Justice M. Ishola on charges of conspiracy, false pretence and land grabbing.

The prosecuting counsel, Joseph Udo, informed the court that the defendants and others now at large forcefully grabbed the land and intentionally engaged themselves in acts inconsistent with the proprietary rights of the complainant.

He alleged that the defendants, who employed self-help, hired thugs and went to the 3.562 hectares of land lying and situated at Adepo Village in Kite area, Iwo road in Ibadan, belonging to the complainant.

Udo said that the defendants allegedly went to the land to cause violence and injured a construction site worker, Olabitan Usman, in his face and right leg.

The prosecutor said that the defendants allegedly wrote a frivolous, unwarranted petition against the owner of the real property to the police at zone 11 headquarters, Osogbo, causing the arrest and interrogation of the site workers.

Udo said that the defendants committed the offences on April 24, 2021.

He said that the offences contravened Section 7(4)(a) and punishable under section 7(4)(b) of the Real Properties Protection Law of Oyo State, 2016, and section 518(6) of the Criminal code, Laws of Oyo State of Nigeria, 2000.

The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The defendants counsel, Oludare Adebayo, however, applied for and urged the court to admit the defendants to bail in the most liberal terms, arguing that the alleged offences could attract bail.

Although the prosecuting counsel opposed the bail application, Justice Ishola upheld the defendants application for bail and granted the defendants bail in the sum of N1 million each with one surety each in like sum.

Ishola further said that each of the sureties must possess three years valid tax clearance and must have a valid house address within the courts jurisdiction.

The Judge adjourned the case until Oct. 24, Oct. 25, and Oct. 27 for commencement of hearing.

Link:

Three in court for alleged land grabbing in Ibadan - - The Eagle Online