Parents of a Clemson University graduate who were “incredibly impressed” by its capitalism institute recently donated $25 million to expand the popular program.
Read MoreClemson University Expands Capitalism Institute with $25 Million Donation
Tag: 1619 Project
1619 Project Releases New ‘Reparations Math’ Curriculum for High School Students
High school students will learn about the causes of racial inequality and discuss reparations for slavery as part of a new “reparations math” curriculum developed by the creators of the controversial 1619 Project.
The 1619 Project Education Network, overseen by the Pulitzer Center, released the outline for “Reparations Math and Reparations History” on May 8.
Read MoreCommentary: The Greatest Refutation of the 1619 Project May Come from a French Liberal
Perhaps, we as 21st-century Americans should adopt some humility surrounding our own abilities to interpret and understand the motivations and events encompassing the founding and early years of our nation, lest we run the risk of rewriting and corrupting our history.
Read MoreCommentary: Teachers Don’t Want to Tell Parents What’s Going on in Classrooms
Do parents have the right to know what their children are being taught in public school?
Parents say yes; teachers say no.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple. The description of the latter party can be tweaked to “teachers unions” — although you don’t hear many individual teachers bucking the union line — but the dichotomy remains: parents want to know what’s going on in their kids’ classrooms, and teachers, administrators, and their union bosses would rather not tell them.
Read MoreCommentary: Yes, They’re Coming for Your Guns
Perhaps, like me, you’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the un-American Left is ignorant of many things. But then they open their mouths and remove all doubt.
The most recent example comes from the gaping maw of Elie Mystal on MSNBC, where he claimed that, like everything else in this country apparently, the Second Amendment is the creation of long-dead, racist white supremacists who supported it for the sole purpose of putting down slave revolts keeping the enslaved populations in bondage. Of course, there is as much “truth” to that as there is in the 1619 Project. Progressives use such revisionist history to discredit the founders so that they can dismantle the founders’ republic.
Read More1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones: ‘Europe Not a Continent,’ Alarm over Ukraine a Racial ‘Dog Whistle’
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the primary author of the widely-discredited “1619 Project,” drew more criticism and ridicule from fellow Twitter users over the weekend when she declared Europe is “not a continent by definition,” and referred to the alarm over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its people, who “appear white,” as a racial “dog whistle.”
“What if I told you Europe is not a continent by definition, but a geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia and so the alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us,” Hannah-Jones tweeted, as Fox News noted.
Read MoreCommentary: Teaching Unbiased American History
In his Gettysburg Address at the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln pointed out that the United States was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” “Now,” he continued, “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Thankfully, we are not in a civil war today – and, one hopes, never will be again. We are, however, in a battle for the soul of our country.
Read More1619 Project Creator Says She Doesn’t ‘Understand This Idea That Parents Should Decide What’s Being Taught’ in School
The 1619 Project Creator said she doesn’t understand the argument “that parents should decide what’s being taught” to their children in school on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
The 1619 project was created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a writer for The New York Times, and it promotes the idea that America’s ‘true founding’ occurred when slaves arrived in the colonies, framing the history of the country around race and slavery.
“I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” Hannah-Jones said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science,” she said.
Read MoreTaxpayer-Funded Critical Race Theory Training Program Draws Criticism
Critics are questioning a taxpayer-funded program that trains students in critical race theory.
The backlash comes after The Center Square uncovered federal grant documents from the Department of Education that showed the federal government has awarded millions of dollars to a program that trains future educators in critical race theory.
Experts said the program disproves claims that critical race theory is not being pushed at K-12 schools.
Read MoreIllinois School District: Yes, We Are Teaching the 1619 Project and ‘Critical Race Theory’ to Seventh and Eighth Graders
Oak Park Elementary District 97 is teaching students so-called “critical race theory,” which argues that racism is to blame for differences in racial group performance, such as lower test scores by black students, or higher violent crime rates for blacks than whites.
In response to a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request by West Cook News, District 97 indicated it is teaching the critical race theory-centric “1619 Project,” which holds that the American Revolution was fought to preserve black slavery, Abraham Lincoln was a racist and that America’s wealth today is the result of black slavery.
Read MoreCommentary: The Left Destroys Everything It Touches
What was the purpose for the insane opposition of the Left between 2017 and 2021? To usher in a planned nihilism, an incompetent chaos, a honed anarchy to wreck the country in less than a year?
No sooner had Donald Trump entered office than scores of House Democrats filed motions for impeachment, apparently for thought crimes that he might, some day, in theory, could possibly commit.
Read MoreCommentary: Understanding the 1619 Project
The cover of the August 18, 2019, issue of the New York Times Magazine was adorned with a photograph of a blackish, foreboding ocean captioned by these words: “In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.”
What greeted the reader once he turned past an advertisement for a new, highly revisionist Broadway production of To Kill a Mockingbird was a reiteration of the initial message, boldly announced in giant white type. The number 1619 took up two-thirds of the vertical space against a black background. An introduction by New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein appeared beneath the giant “1619” in the same white print, but much smaller: “It is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country’s history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth.”
Read MoreCommentary: 1619 Project, Touted as Racial Reckoning, Ignores Democratic Party Racism
Democrats who advanced a bill in June to remove statues of white supremacists from the U.S. Capitol ignored a central fact about those figures: All of them had been icons of their party, from Andrew Jackson’s adamantly pro-slavery vice president, John C. Calhoun, to North Carolina Gov. Charles B. Aycock, an architect of the white-supremacist campaign of 1898 that ushered in the era of Jim Crow.
At a time when governments, sports teams, schools and other bastions of American society are rushing to expunge legacies of slavery or racism, this was another instance of the Democratic Party’s failure to acknowledge that it did more than any other institution in American life to preserve the “peculiar institution” — and later enforce Jim Crow-style apartheid in the Old South.
Read MoreCommentary: School Choice Is Not Enough
If there is a public policy silver lining to this past year, it is the increased support for school choice. Most public schools went online during lockdowns and parents, dissatisfied with the results, sought out other solutions, including private schools, pods, charter schools, online learning, and homeschooling. The last more than doubled with 11.1 percent of households homeschooling, up from 5.4 percent the year before.
Many state legislatures improved school choice options in their states. This is to be celebrated and continued.
School choice by itself, however, will not save students from a failing education if charter and private schools adopt the same curriculum and practices as the most woke schools. Without a focus on the right subjects and lessons, students will be unprepared for personal or professional success.
Read MoreDonors Bash University of North Carolina over ‘Marxism,’ BLM Affiliation During Nikole Hannah-Jones Tenure Debacle
Donors to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) criticized the university for its perceived sympathy towards “Marxism” and Black Lives Matter during the debate over whether to offer New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones a tenured position, according to emails seen by Fox News.
The emails, sent to various UNC faculty, criticized the university for its perceived affiliation with the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as its tolerance of “Marxism”, its diversity and equity policies, and its promotion of Hannah-Jones, according to Fox News.
Read MoreCommentary: Historians Selling Out for Leftist Star, Nikole Hannah-Jones
The University of North Carolina’s decision on June 30 to offer tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones came about through a torrent of threats (often tweeted), profanities, doxxings, and assaults—tactics that have become increasingly commonplace among professional activists and racial grievance-mongers.
Hannah-Jones, of course, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion writer and architect of the New York Times’ notorious “1619 Project,” which claims that America’s true founding was not in 1776 but rather in 1619, when 20 or so African slaves arrived in Virginia. Hannah-Jones contends, moreover, that the American War of Independence was fought solely to preserve slavery.
More than two-dozen credible historians, many of them political liberals and leftists, have debunked Hannah-Jones’ claims. Though, as we’ll see, some are less firm in their convictions than others. What’s clear, however, is that peer review is passé in the era of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Forget a stellar record of scholarly accomplishment—that’s a relic of “Eurocentrism.” Far more important these days is a candidate’s enthusiasm for social justice. It was Hannah-Jones’ celebrity activism and her “journalism,” not her scholarship, that formed the basis for the university’s initial offer of tenure earlier in the spring.
Read MoreNikole Hannah-Jones Hails Cuba as Among the ‘Most Equal’ Countries
In a resurfaced 2019 podcast hosted by Ezra Klein of Vox and the New York Post, Howard University professor and 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones praised Cuba’s socialist economy, deeming it one of the “most equal” countries in the west.
“If you want to see the most equal, multiracial democ … it’s not a democracy – the most equal, multiracial country in our hemisphere it would be Cuba,” Hannah-Jones said, the NY Post reported.
She then praised Cuba’s socialist economy, claiming it has led to “the least inequality”.
Read MoreUniversity of North Carolina Grants Tenure to ‘1619 Project’ Author Nikole Hannah-Jones
The University of North Carolina’s Board of Trustees voted on June 30 to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the “1619 Project,” who will be the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.
It is rare for a university to grant tenure to someone who has not climbed the academic ranks through teaching and research. Tenure, which virtually guarantees job security, is usually the result of a multi-year process, not a privilege granted before a professor teaches a single class.
Read MoreStreaming Service Hulu to Release Series Based on 1619 Project
The streaming website Hulu has announced that it has acquired the rights to stream an upcoming series on the “1619 Project,” a far-left narrative that falsely claims the United States was built on racism, as reported by The Hill.
The series, based on a series of articles at the New York Times by Nikole Hannah-Jones, will be produced by Roger Williams, Geoff Martz, and Shoshana guy. The production will be carried out by Lionsgate Films and Oprah Winfrey’s studio Harpo Films, as previously reported.
In a statement to Variety magazine, Williams called the 1619 Project “an essential reframing of American history,” and falsely claimed that “our most cherished ideals and achievements cannot be understood without acknowledging both systemic racism and the contribution of black Americans.”
Read MoreCommentary: Expose the False Narrative of the ‘1619 Project’ by Teaching Students About Federalism and the States
A few weeks ago, the civics curriculum wars reached the White House: Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission published its first report on a Monday, and Joe Biden’s administration disbanded the group by Wednesday, the new president’s first day in office. The Commission’s first and only act, the 1776 Report, was a conservative response to the New York Times’s 1619 project, which it criticized by name. Its aim was to lay the foundation of a proper American civics education. The U.S. civics curriculum is subject to constant badgering from the Right and the Left, and as this latest White House drama shows, each side restating its narrative at the other accomplishes little. Conservatives are correct to care about America’s founding principles. But by tripping over tweaks to the curriculum, we miss a bigger opportunity to help the next generation act on one of those principles: federalism. Focus on national narratives comes at the expense of state-level knowledge and action.
Read MoreCommentary: The Coming ‘Reset’ of Memory and Truth Is Not Just Politics, But a Effort to Redefine America
Riotous rogue Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on January 6 were properly and widely condemned by conservatives. They were somewhat reminiscent of the mobs of fanatic leftists and union members that a decade ago stormed the Wisconsin state capitol at Madison, or the unpunished hundreds of rioters who created havoc on Washington, D.C. streets during the Trump 2016 inauguration. We expect the Capitol stormers will be punished, and not in the lax fashion of the latter two groups that were not.
Within a few days, the talking points were finalized that all of Donald Trump’s supporters deserved blame for the violence. That riot, the Trump defeat, and the loss of the Senate have greenlighted left-wing talk of “deprogramming,” “de-Baathification,” “re-educating,” and “reprogramming” half the country to ensure they think correctly and act properly from now on—the exact methodology of such brain rinsing apparently to be announced later.
Read MoreCommentary: Those Who Should Be the Defenders of Civilization Are Determined to End It
The year 2020 witnessed a long series of writs lodged against an America beset with plague, quarantine, recessions, riot and arson, and the most contested election since 1876.
What was strange was not so much the anarchist Left’s efforts in the present to wipe away the past to recalibrate our Animal Farm future. What was odder were both the absurdities of the complaints against American civilization, and the unwillingness or inability of Americans to rebut them and defend their own culture.
Read MoreNew Book Meticulously Debunks NYT’s 1619 Project
Peter Wood’s new book “1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project” accomplishes two things in one. It meticulously debunks claims made in the New York Times 1619 Project and offers a positive, more accurate narrative of America’s true foundation.
Wood, an anthropologist and president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, took on the 1619 Project’s attempt to reframe American history, and in so doing disproved the New York Times’ main arguments that the American Revolution was fought to protect slavery, that slavery is the basis of American capitalism, and that Abraham Lincoln was a racist.
Read More1619 Project Writer Nikole Hannah-Jones says American Flag Outside Childhood Home ‘Embarrassed’ Her
Harvard University hosted New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones for a virtual event, where she discussed the 1619 Project and said that her father’s patriotism “deeply embarrassed” her. The comment was made during a September 21 event where she spoke on the “pressing issues of race, civil rights, injustice, desegregation, and resegregation.”
Read MoreHistory Professor Rips New York Times’ 1619 Project for Not Telling ‘The Whole Story’
University of New Hampshire Professor Eliga Gould participated in a webinar series at the beginning of the fall semester in which he and other faculty members discussed the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project. The 1619 project was created by New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones in 2019, a project that later received a Pulitzer Prize.
Read MoreTrump Says He Will Stop Funding Schools That Teach New York Times’ 1619 Project
President Donald Trump said in a tweet Sunday that the Department of Education would stop funding California public schools if they teach the New York Times’ 1619 Project.
“Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!” Trump said in a tweet as a response to a post that claimed “california has implemented the 1619 project into the public schools. soon you wont recognize america[sic].”
Read MoreArmstong Williams Commentary: Reflecting on the 1619 Project
In the wake of recent Black Lives Matter protests — in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer and the important dialog that has resulted — I am inclined to revisit The New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project. This project propagates a popular narrative, which has taken hold among many in the media, politics, and education, to link the foundational origins of the American experiment not to the context of the American Revolution of 1776 but to 1619, the year that enslaved Angolans arrived on the shores of colonial Jamestown, Virginia.
Read MoreCommentary: The ‘1619 Project’ Learns from Mussolini
Contrary to what many think, fascism is not based on the belief in absolute truth. Fascism is based on the belief that there is no truth; that is, on relativism, or nihilism. This position is actually built on a fatal contradiction: a relativist says there is no truth, but in so doing, he is asserting a truth which then becomes the basis for what he intends to impose on everybody else.
Everybody else has been so polite as to let the relativists go on instead of pointing out that they are proceeding from a premise that contradicts their own premise and therefore they don’t deserve to be listened to. But that’s where we are and where we’ve been for some time in the relativistic postmodern worldview.
Read MoreCarol Swain Commentary: A Dangerous Revisionist History of America’s Founding Pushes a False and Destructive Narrative
Under the guise of a venture called the “1619 Project,” revisionist history about race in America is being introduced into classrooms across America without undergoing the normal peer review expected of educational materials. August 2019 marked the birth of the project, a publication of The New York Times Magazine and the Pulitzer organization, containing a collection of essays and artistic works to commemorate the 400-year anniversary of slavery in America. The project has mushroomed into a movement to re-educate Americans via newfangled claims about how deeply racism is embedded in America’s core.
Read MoreStar Tribune-Owned City Pages Says Female Conservative ‘Super Horny for Founding Fathers’
City Pages, a progressive blog owned by The Star Tribune, mocked conservative writer Katherine Kersten as being “super horny for the Founding Fathers” in a Monday article.
Read MoreLiberals Freak Out at Star Tribune for Letting Conservative Writer Question 1619 Project
Popular conservative writer Katherine Kersten had Minnesota liberals in a conniption Sunday when she dared to question The New York Times’ “1619 Project.”
Read MoreGingrich Calls the New York Times’ ‘1619 Project’ to Inform Americans of the Country’s ‘True’ Founding, ‘Embarrassing’
Some conservatives and journalists condemned The New York Times following its “1619 Project” that “aims to reframe the country’s history.”
Read More