This is when 21st century McCarthyism gets serious.
Dan Patrick, the talk-show host who is now Lieutenant Governor of Texas, wants to ban the teaching of “critical race theory” in higher education. Critical race theory, the study of systemic and institutionalized racism, has been taught and debated in law schools and colleges since the mid-1980s.
Patrick wants to quash academic freedom in higher education. He thinks he can prevent professors who have devoted their academic careers to the study of racism from talking about it. Maybe, he believes, if they don’t talk about and study racism, no one will know it exists. Or maybe it will just go away.
Erica Grieder wrote in the Houston Chronicle about Patrick’s plans to restrict academic freedom and to have the state spend $6 million on a “think tank” called the “Liberty Institute” to prevent errant professors from exercising their freedom to teach and speak. Last year, the state passed a law to ban CRT in K-12 schools, where (he thinks) children are being stuffed with left wing propaganda and with the claim that racism is real.
“I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with critical race theory,” he announced in a tweet.
“We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed,” he continued, adding: “That’s why we created the Liberty Institute at UT.”
This was in response to a report, in the Austin American-Statesman, that the Faculty Council of the University of Texas at Austin had passed a resolution defending academic freedom.
In other words, Patrick, hearing of an innocuous nonbinding resolution in support of freedom, responded by threatening to pursue even more aggressive restrictions on freedom, while also wrapping himself in the banner of “liberty.” Naturally. This is from the lieutenant governor, arguably the state’s most powerful elected official.
Patrick, a rabid supporter of vouchers, as well as limits on free speech, is a public nuisance who menaces the freedom of students, teachers, and professors in Texas.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That is so insane. That is so unconstitutional. That is so against everything the Founding Fathers fought for.
And from what I’ve been reading, at least for now, all the Republican Senators in Congress have lined up behind McConnel are going head-to-head against Trump’s elected MAGA Republican supporters and those that are running for office in 2022, to get them out of and keep them out of office and replace them with Republicans that are not controlled by the traitor and his MAGA way of thinking.
I don’t know if your claim is true or not, but if it is, it will really be hard to put the evil Genie back into his lamp again. The ghouls have been able to run amok and unchecked for far too long. Not sure that this can happen in 1 election cycle. When did the GOP decide to finally wake up?
One thing I’ve learned in life is that things always change, but they never go back to normal.
The trick that McConnell plays is that he will quietly urge non-Trumpers to run but he will support Trumpers if he has no alternative. Power is #1 for him.
Les visions du chevalier Tondal (1475), is one of the earliest descriptions of Purgatory, which is described in the book as a place for “the wicked, but not very.” LOL.
Well, there is a faction in the Repugnican Party that I would describe as “the stupid, but not very,” though it is as callous and rapacious as the rest of The Party is. And McConnell is their leader.
These relatively smarter Repugnicans were just fine with going “full Trump” when he was President. Trump was dumb enough that they could put anything in front of him, to please their environment-destroying, workers’-blood-sucking donors. He was their useful idiot.
Now, these same people have come to the reasonable conclusion that if Trump is their nominee in 2024, they will lose again, but by an even greater margin this time. And, this fact is made all the more pressing because they are now at a historic juncture. They have the opportunity in 2022-24 to seize it all–the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, in addition to the Supreme Court, and with that in place, they can enact fascist legislation to restrict voting and protests and crush social programs and what’s left of unions and promulgate a Christian nationalist curriculum with a big dose of libertarian, laissez-faire economics thrown in.
And the smartest of these creeps know that this is their one shot because the demographics of the country and the young people coming up are overwhelmingly against them. This is their opportunity to seize victory from the jaws of defeat and rise Phoenixlike from the ashes of democracy.
And McConnell doesn’t want to blow this. A crafty turtle he is. That’s why he wants to clear the way for a (relatively) smarter Trump MiniMe like DeSatan.
correction:
with a big dose of libertarian, environment- and worker-raping, laissez-faire economics thrown in
Many people are unaware that the concept of “academic freedom” was to separate teaching curriculum from political pressure. It was not a freedom of speech concept, or a “I can teach anything I want” concept.
This is a prime example for why academic freedom exists and why it must be defended.
exactly
Censorship is already under way at Texas A&M just in a different/digitized form.
Texas A&M students PROTESTED after their university president abruptly ended print publication of the 129-year-old Battalion newspaper.
The Battalion’s print product is exclusively funded by advertising revenue. It pays its own way! Keeping student-run newspapers like The Battalion independent and self-funded helps hold institutions accountable. Texas A&M’s administration should release the reins of the paper. Students were never consulted on the shutdown decision.
The Battalion has served its community since 1893. Now A&M is Forcing it to become another university program that’s reliant on the administration for funding, making it unable to be an unbiased source of information.
https://pittnews.com/article/171456/opinions/editorial-student-press-needs-to-be-unrestricted/
!!!!!
The core idea of what makes a great world class university is being a haven for Academic Freedom and free speech. Making laws that put restrictions on established principles and academic theories may be taught or discussed in a state’s universities [and I would argue in a state’s secondary schools} makes these schools into state indoctrination centers and destroys their “world class” reputation. In Michigan, when I started my career teaching in a public school in the 1960s, I had academic freedom under the state’s constitution and laws and was granted tenure after three years, when I first became eligible. These MAGA politicians think they can stamp out ideas they find troubling if they take away our academic freedom and tell us which events and ideas we must leave out as we teach history.
If I were to return to the classroom or seminar room in Texas I would tell my students that Gov Abbot and his MAGA crowd have banned these books and articles and are not allowing me to discuss them with you. If you want to know why they are banned and why their subject matter is off limits for our class room you will have to find copies and read them. Then if you see me in the cafeteria, or our local Starbucks I’d be glade to have a private discussion with any one of you or all of you. But I am being clear with you these books, articles, historical events, or theories of history will not be discussed in my classroom.
We must remember that it not only the conspiracy theory nuts, OAN, Newsmax, FoxNews and other sources for “Alternative Facts” whose speech is protected by the First Amendment, it also protects our free speech. Academic Freedom is not limited to what we teach or discuss in our classrooms. It also protects our “private conversations” we can have with our students away from the classroom setting.
Thank you, Kenneth. I hesitated to use the word, but Dan Patrick is a fascist.
If it quacks like a duck, . . .
Universities should hold “teach-ins” , where professors deliberately break these laws en masse, forcing the fascists to show their true colors just like Gandhi did.
exactly
I love the idea of teach-ins, discussing what teachers and professors have been warned NOT to teach. Nothing makes a book more desirable than to ban it. Better yet, discuss why.
Years ago, when I was fifteen, the teachers in the high school I attended were wondering, one morning, what was up. Many students had shown up that day with baked goods and musical instruments. Many were wearing peace signs and flowers in their hair. Teachers asked what was going on, but no one said a word. “Beats me, Mr. Luckenbill.” LOL.
Then, at 10:30, every student in the school got up, walked out of class, went to the school Commons, and sat down on the grass.
It didn’t take long for the administrators and teachers to show up and start telling us all to go back to class. They were met with chanting: Hell no, we won’t go. Some girl with a guitar started singing Melanie Safka’s “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).” Everyone joined in. My classmates had organized this protest in opposition to Nixon’s bombing and invasion of Cambodia. They passed the word one to another, and astonishingly, in the days leading up to this, no one, in the vernacular of that time, narced.
I sat there thinking, wow, there are a LOT more of us than there are of them, so there’s nothing they can do, and all it took to make this happen was for us to act in concert. It was a powerful lesson.
I should hasten to add that many of my own secondary school associates agree with the censors due to the suggestions of their ministers. Others, not so much.
Roy, that’s sad.
Beautifully said, Mr. Kolk!
When Hitler came to power, he was able to overcome academic opposition due to the numbers of German professors who agreed with Hitler is some ways. Many academics were satisfied when their own research was funded and accepted Hitler’s anti-intellectual thugs who dominated German universities as a consequence of their desire to do particular research.
Now we will see if our universities are truly “liberal” or are actually willing to prostitute their right of thinking in order to keep their positions.
A truly disgusting case in point: Prior to the war, Edmund Husserl was the most renowned philosopher in Europe. He championed the work of a student, Martin Heidegger, and saw to the publication of the poorly written and not completed but interesting work Being and Time that made Heidegger’s reputation. People took the work seriously because it had the imprimatur of the great Husserl.
In other words, Husserl was Heidegger’s mentor and made him. When Hitler came to power, Heidegger joined the Nazi Party and was appointed rector of the University of Freiburg, where both Husserl and Heidegger taught. Heidegger opened his tenure with a pro-Nazi speech in a hall festooned with swastikas, with members of the Nazi SA (the brownshirts) in attendance. And then Heidegger barred Husserl from teaching and even from access to the university library because Husserl was a Jew. Is there a word in any language sufficient to describe this level of betrayal? If there is, I don’t know it.
Here, the 2-minute crash course in Heidegger:
Fascinating story. Word to describe: Stool pigeon. Turncoat. What about the Bubba dicitonary: Asshole
I don’t think language equal to the task, Roy
It is amazing how hypocritical these libertarian leaning politicians are. They want to step on First Amendment rights while they embrace a distortion of the Second Amendment. They constantly extol “freedom” as they restrict a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body and a worker’s right to join a union. They praise the so-called free market while they dismantle the common good. They are regressive and out of touch, but unfortunately too many people today are bamboozled by this fake notion of “freedom.”.
The irony totally escapes these morons.
They also believe that “freedom of speech” means “freedom to call black people n___ers and apes”.
As Ice-T said in the days when he was a pioneering artist, Freedom of speech…just watch what you say.
Calling black people apes and the n word is tantamount to inciting a riot.
The whole purpose is to taunt people to respond aggressively.
I’d bet my bottom dollar that the prime target of Patrick, one he viciously mislabels as “looney Marxist UT professors,” is surely Dr. Leonard Moore. His book Teaching Black History to While People is inarguably one of the most important American books since the publication of The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Indeed, they complement each other nicely. This book will be my standard birthday/Christmas/whatever gift for the foreseeable future. Check it out to see what truths scare Patrick enough to try to excise them from history. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58153140-teaching-black-history-to-white-people
Ordering a copy, Greg!
Read Greg’s review of the book at the link he provided. It follows the book description. In the comments. Well done, Greg!
“I knew he [the officer who pulled Moore over] was going to dig deeper to see what courses I taught. There was no way I was going to tell this guy I teach a class on the Black Power movement and a class called Race in the Age of Obama. No way!”
Because in Texas, they execute Black motorists for less.
“This is from the lieutenant governor, arguably the state’s most powerful elected official.”
How is the lieutenant governor more powerful than the governor?
This is an anomaly in Texas. He controls the state senate legislative agenda (which, since nothing can be passed without the senate, essentially gives him control over the entire process), the budgeting process and sits on just about any board with power in the state. Here’s a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Governor_of_Texas
Thanks for the explanation, Greg.
Is there anything about Texas that isn’t an anomaly?
Remember the Anomalo!
I thought critical thinking was banned in Texas long ago.
Isn’t Critical race theory just a subset of that?
It’s not just Texas that has abandoned critical thinking. When we look at how much red is on electoral maps, we can see how much tribalism preempts critical thinking since most people in rural areas are voting against their own self interests.
All hat and no cattle
Texas is hat
Without the cows
Texas is cat
Without meows
Texas is brain
Without the thought
Texas: insane
A cuckoo spot
All Hat and No Cattle. I love that Texas saying. I had forgotten it.
George Dumbya Bush was the epitome of All hat and no cattle.
Also, of “All brush and no chipper”
Patrick is a trump-level genius:
That’s why they don’t play games on paper. They play them inside television sets. –Dan Patrick
The Lt. Governor of Texas needs to focus on a major problem and, save for another day his tamping down on student knowledge and character development.
Back to basics- Do Christian schools in the state know what is illegal? I’d characterize the alleged crime as a one-off except FIVE school administrators, including the superintendent and principal, and coaches at a Christian school were charged with failure to report a student’s alleged rape of another student with a baseball bat.
When Jesus guides the religious right, man’s law is irrelevant.
Wlatzing across Freedom in Texas (to the tune of O Danny Boy)
for Dan Patrick
O Danny boy, the facts, the facts are galling.
From lecture halls and from academies,
they’re speaking truths we rubes find most appalling.
Oh, save us please, from those fell histories.
But come ye back with pandering and jingoism,
Make teachers teach our sweet mythologies.
What counters those must be accounted terrorism,
offenses to our ideologies.
But make profs free to think what they are told to think,
to say no more than what you tell them they’re to say.
Your ministry of truth will get them well in sync.
Disturbing thoughts they will not dare convey.
cx: Waltzing
“..the facts are galling” LOL
Where have you gone… Spencer Tracy, Walter Cronkite, and Ed Bradley? Our nation..
It is striking that the idea of academic freedom is so quaint in the public imagination that this issue captures almost none of the media. The right wing media constantly gripe about the various radicals on the right being denied a platform in universities by student activists. They accuse the students of “cancel culture”, a sort of populist censorship.
Along comes real censorship like this and they are as quiet as a nun at mass. One is tempted to suggest that the advocates of censorship have themselves created the real cancel culture.
Dear LG Patrick:
The Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984 was meant as a WARNING, not as a MODEL FOR GOVERNANCE.
Do not assume that Dan Patrick ever read George Orwell.
He thinks of “read” as a four-letter word. That’s why it should all be banned.
Does this mean that Mr. Patrick is throwing his hat in the ring for the 2024 Presidential Race? After all, establishing a national educational Ministry of Truth has become THE de rigueur agitprop pose for aspiring Republican post-Trump Glorious Leaders.
Gotta run now. CRT just blew a bunch of leaves and other debris onto my porch.
Patrick is evangelical protestant. His view is similar to the view of white Christian nationalism held by Hungary’s Viktor Orban as described by Elizabeth Spiers at MSNBC when she wrote about the New York Young Republican Club’s recent endorsement of Orban.
There is little distance between conservative Christian/Catholic religion and racism. While Spiers’ choice of term was Christian nationalism, Hungary is 40-50% Catholic. The next largest denomination is Hungarian Reformed Church (Calvinist) at 13-16%.
According to Wikipedia, Dan Patrick pretends to be an Uber-Texan. He was born in Baltimore. His birth name was Dannie Scott Goeb. He’s a fraud on all counts.
All hat and no cattle.
Uber-Texan: a Baltimore transplant who rides an Uber and calls it a horse.
Uber-Texan: All Uber and no horse.
I would prefer to be shocked when I learn about Republicans who are frauds. Unfortunately, it’s so commonplace, the terms have become synonymous.
Opposite topic: Gail Halvorsen, the man who arguably gave birth to one the best example of American ideals, the Berlin Airlift. He was the opposite in every way of a scourge like Dan Patrick. Take some time to learn about him. The book The Candy Bombers tells this great story, one that will demonstrate America at its very best. Halvorson was a devout Mormon and later worked at BYU. This past summer I visited Berlin and saw the greatest monument to his memory: a secondary school named for him.
http://www.halvorsen-schule.de
Motto of the school: Freedom, Responsibility, and Friendship