Now that Republican state legislatures have had their way imposing their personal views on what may or may not be taught in the public schools, they are taking aim at what may be taught in state universities. In Wyoming, the legislature wants to defund gender studies.
Legislation to defund gender and women’s studies at the University of Wyoming has stoked faculty fears about how far lawmakers will go to stop public colleges from teaching courses they don’t like.
The Wyoming Senate voted on Friday to pass a budget amendment that would prevent the university from using state money for its gender and women’s studies program and courses, a move that would effectively eliminate them. While a version of the amendment died in the state’s House and its future is unclear, the mere possibility of its passage has left some Wyoming professors shaken by what they see as an infringement on their academic freedom.
This is censorship, plain and simple. Will they next come after science professors who teach about evolution? Or legal scholars who study critical race theory?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Comment by Randolph Wieck (KY) on Kentucky Teacher pension’s Russian investments:
Do the hardworking teachers of Kentucky deserve the amoral disservice the Kentucky legislature, and their retirement pension have provided them?
Kentucky teachers demanded transparency of pension investments in 2015 and filed a lawsuit to force secret investments and fees to be revealed. This demand for transparency was met with stonewalling by the pension directors and, also in response, a lame explanation that secrecy of investments – in the form of alternative and private equity investments whose contracts had exacted secrecy as the rite of entry – was necessary to benefit from the stellar returns attainable through alternative investments.
At this time, Kentucky teachers’ pension found itself in a jam: threatened with further credit downgrades caused by outrageous legislative underfunding extending over more than a decade – itself an illegal impairment of contract – TRS hit upon alternatives as a “big bet” to lift itself out of a meager 40%-funded-ratio hole.
Recently it was revealed the TRS has exposed itself to the world of Russian oligarchs, specifically Oleg Deripaska, and to a losing investment in Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender and a favorite of the Russian mafia and money launderers. Assets in this holding fell 95% overnight following the imposition of sanctions; TRS was fortunate in being tipped off in advance and was able to exit with just a 3million $ loss, offset by dividends over the life of the investment – or so TRS claims.
This is but one poor, compromised investment that has floated to the surface of public attention before being flushed by TRS in full view of the public.
What else is TRS exposed to in the current climate of shady, secret – and as it turns out – Russian investments through such private equity behemoths as KKR, Blackstone, Carlyle? TRS maintains secret investment contracts with some 100-plus alternative firms. Will KY teachers only learn the bad investment news after the fact, once the losses mount up, and float up?
It must be noted that in 2017, Senate Bill #2 was passed requiring that all investment contracts be posted online. However, as of March 6, 2022, TRS has posted only 5 of 98 (!) – a clear violation of the law, and one noted by the Kentucky State Auditor in 2019 in his Examination of Transparency Compliance.
No – the Kentucky Teacher Pension system has waded into the muck of the Russian oligarchs, and the secrecy surrounding Ky TRS investments promises to yield more shocking investments indicative of an amoral disrespect for hardworking public school teachers.
(Dr. Randolph Wieck, a graduate of the London School of Economics – taught for 30 years.)
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Kentucky teachers are fortunate not to have lost even more. When states are reckless with pension investments and under funding schemes, generally the retirees are left in a lurch. Other state pension systems have suffered from under funding, but none have reported any involvement with Russian oligarchs, I don’t believe. Teachers should have a seat on state pension boards to keep grifters away from pension funds.
Randy, are there any representatives of teachers on the Kentucky TRS board?
What’s next with these anti-American atavisms? The requirement to drag our knuckles on the ground and communicate in grunts? The GOP no longer deserve the blessings of our Constitution. They forfeit the right to liberty every day in every way. They don’t even think elections count any longer unless they win them.
and apparently they want the leadership dragging its knuckles on the ground and communicating in grunts to be ALL from one specific background: straight White males. Back, back to the fifties…
Mirror, Mirror on the wall,
who is fairest of them all?
Beauty is in the eye
of the beholder.
Study, study at the U,
should my personal view
be tied to you?
To do so, is self-reduction,
to forfeit your eye to
the eye of the study.
You’re more than a “study”!
“They” may cancel studies,
but the only way cancelled
studies, can cancel you,
is with your cooperation.
F (family blog) ’em.
They’re NOT your master,
YOU are.
Many elected state and federal Republican representatives and the kleptocratic oligarchs that fund their election campaigns remind me of Putin. That also goes for neo-liberals in the Democratic Party.
Well until I find the Ukraine one here’s good ole Wyoming for you! 😉
Sent from my iPad
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