Tag: diversity

‘Majority of Faculty Agree with Many or Even Most of My Positions’: Canceled Professor Speaks Out

Minnesota Sun Staff
Dorian Abbot

A University of Chicago professor, whose prestigious lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was cancelled at the behest of a Twitter mob who disagreed with his viewpoints, warns that “free society is at risk” as “woke ideology” and cancel culture takes hold.

Dorian Abbot, a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, had his appearance at the Carlson Lecture cancelled on Sept. 30 “to avoid controversy” just eight days after a Twitter mob consisting of MIT students, postdocs and recent alumni went after him, according to a written account published on Common Sense by Bari Weiss

For 10 years, Abbot has been teaching and researching climate change and the possibility of life on extrasolar planets, never considering himself a very political person until about five years ago when he noticed a shift in attitude toward discussions involving a difference in opinions, Abbot wrote on Weiss’ Substack.

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The Number of White People in America Has Declined for the First Time Since 1790

Minnesota Sun Staff
Crowd of people walking in New York City near the subway

The number of white people in the United States has dropped for the first time since 1790, according to new data from the 2020 Census.

Data from the 2020 count of people living in America shows that the country has become substantially more ethnically diverse, particularly in the under-18 category. Additionally, the country’s population grew 7.4% in the last ten years, a slower rate than any decade since the 1930s.

The numbers indicate that growth in the American population for the last decade has been driven by minority populations. While whites still make up a little less than 58% of the American population, that figure dropped below 60% for the first time since the census-taking began.

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Memo Reveals University of North Carolina Plan to Sideline ‘Diversity of Thought’ Ahead of Nikole Hannah-Jones Appointment

Minnesota Sun Staff
Nikole Hannah Jones

A memo obtained by Campus Reform reveals that the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media considered “diversity of thought” to be in conflict with its efforts to achieve social justice objectives.

Hussman Dean Susan King wrote the August 1, 2020 memo to university Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. She stated, “There is a fundamental conflict between efforts to promote racial equity and understandings of structural racism, and efforts to promote diversity of thought. These two things cannot sit side by side without coming into conflict.”

King wrote the memo in anticipation of Nikole Hannah-Jones joining the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty and teaching a class based on the “1619 Project.” 

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Biden Administration Approves Rule Forcing Companies to Hire Minority, LGBTQ+ Executives and Publicly Disclose Diversity

Minnesota Sun Staff
group of people in an office watching a presenter

The top U.S. financial regulatory agency approved a rule that forces publicly-traded companies to reveal the diversity of their executive boardroom to investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted in favor of the rule, which will apply to all companies traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange, according to the text of the approval released Friday. The rule, first proposed by Nasdaq in December, will also require companies to hire at least one female director and one either minority or LGBTQ+ director to their boards.

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Arizona State University Debuts New Degree in Social Justice Activism

Corinne Murdock

Arizona State University (ASU) debuted a new undergraduate degree geared toward social justice activism, called community development. The course description describes education on the basics of activism, citing concepts like diversity, inclusivity, sustainability, equity, and social and environmental justice. If students enjoy studying community development, they may also earn a graduate degree in it.

“The BA program in community development equips students with tools to collaborate with, empower and educate diverse community constituents by drawing on grassroots and inclusive frameworks such as sustainable development, social and environmental justice, participatory democracy, social and economic equity and social accounting,” reads the course description.

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Commentary: Fighting Back in a Woke World of Cancel Culture

Minnesota Sun Staff
Empty office

By now there are enough “cancel culture” stories to fill volumes. After my own story about standing up to a woke mob – and succeeding – went viral on Twitter, I decided to speak out, because I am convinced that Americans need more encouraging stories about standing up to cancel culture, and information on how they can do it themselves.

In order to withstand attacks, you’ll need to be armed with an understanding of the ideas in play, and the courage to stand up to bullies. I hope my story can help give you both.

My story began in 2010, when my husband and I founded a nonprofit organization that trains people around the world who are providing care for survivors of trauma. We were pleased with the success of our organization for the first several years, but around 2016, we noticed a change.

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Minneapolis Council President: Critical Race Theory Should Be ‘Baked into Our Systems’

Minnesota Sun Staff
Minneapolis City Council Member Lisa Bender

Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender said at a recent meeting that employees of color in Minneapolis have “been carrying the burden of white supremacy.”

In a May 28 meeting, Bender referred to an open letter which all city employees are invited to sign — anyone who signs the letter is acknowledging racism as a public health crisis, accepting responsibility for the “pain” they have caused as “stewards of the City of Minneapolis’s policies,” and recognizing that Minneapolis has been and continues to be harmful to the BIPOC community.

The letter was filed into the official city record and will be published on June 11 with the signatures of all who choose to sign, making it easy to know which employees decide not to sign the letter.

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BLM Cofounder Patrisse Cullors Called for End to Israel in Newly-Unearthed Video

Minnesota Sun Staff
Patrisse Cullors

Patrisse Cullors, one of the three original founders of the national Black Lives Matter organization, is revealed to have called for the total destruction of the state of Israel in a recently unearthed video from 2015, as reported by Fox News.

The video is from a panel at Harvard Law School seven years ago, featuring Cullors and other far-left activists. The panel was titled “Globalizing Ferguson: Radicalized Policing and International Resistance,” and was hosted by Harvard’s Human Rights Program. During the panel, Cullors recounted her experience visiting Gaza and the West Bank, and described alleged “violence” and “terror” carried out against Palestinians by the Israeli government, despite offering no evidence to back up any of these assertions.

She then went on to describe Palestine as “our generation’s South Africa,” and said that “if we don’t step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that’s called Israel, we’re doomed.” To this end, she voiced her support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a far-left and jihadi-sympathizing movement that seeks to force American companies and government entities to condemn and boycott Israel.

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Joint Special Operations Command Personnel Requested to Attend Conference on ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’

Minnesota Sun Staff

Both civilian and military personnel with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are being asked by the Pentagon to attend virtual conferences focusing on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” in order to boost their “professional development,” according to a Breitbart exclusive.

The emails making the requests were sent in April and May by JSOC’s Civilian Training Office, claiming that the conferences that would normally cost “$500 a session per person” are now available “at no cost” to personnel, and would both be virtual and broadcast at JSOC’s compound in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

There were three different conferences promoted by the email: “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” “Change & Transformation,” and “Emotional Well-Being.” The diversity conference would include four different panels: “Inclusive leadership for building equitable organizations,” “psychological safety and belonging,” “restorative justice, community trauma, and the partisan divide,” and “racism, white supremacy, and anti-racism.”

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Coca-Cola Faces Challenge to Race-Based Hiring Quota

Minnesota Sun Staff
Coca-Cola

The massive soda company Coca-Cola is facing a challenge to its internal efforts to force diversity on law firms that are contracted to work for it, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

In January, Coca-Cola announced an initiative that would target law firms contracted to work on behalf of the company, wherein all firms would be hit with a 30 percent reduction in their overall payment unless 30 percent of that firm’s workforce was “diverse.” Of those 30 percent, 15 percent had to be black.

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Commentary: Put the Woke Corporations to Sleep

Minnesota Sun Staff

Georgia finally enacted some laws to protect ethical voting. My American Spectator colleague, David Catron, refers to these laws as “election integrity laws” — and that is what they are.

“Jim Crow”? What on G-d’s Earth are the leftist Crazies talking about? What are the Leftists saying?

… that Blacks and Hispanics do not want election integrity?

… that Blacks and Hispanics, 158 years after slavery ended, do not have access to a photo ID?

… that Blacks and Hispanics, 158 years after slavery ended, cannot figure out how to vote honestly and need vote harvesters?

… that Blacks and Hispanics, 158 years after slavery ended, do not want integrity at the voting booth? 

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Minnesota Theater Cancels Cinderella Production Because Cast Was ‘Too White’

Minnesota Sun Staff
Chanhassen Dinner Theatres

A suburban Minneapolis theater company has cancelled a production of “Cinderella” because its cast was “too white.”

Chanhassen Dinner Theatres was scheduled to stage Roger & Hammerstein’s classic play later this year before its artistic director stepped in to criticise its lack of racial diversity, twincities.com reported.

“It was 98 percent white,” Michael Brindisi, the theater’s artistic director, told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press on Wednesday after looking at the actors who had been cast. “That doesn’t work with what we’re saying we’re going to do.”

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Intellectual Magazine Removes Professor’s Column Critiquing Critical Race Theory

Minnesota Sun Staff
Alaric Naudé

A lengthy column by a professor that critiques critical race theory and the concept of “whiteness” and “blackness” was removed by an online intellectual magazine after it generated controversy.

Alaric Naudé, a linguistics professor at Suwon Science College in South Korea and head professor of its English Department, said his essay “Blackness, Whiteness and Other Mythological Creatures” was removed by the UK-based online magazine Res Publica.

The publication bills itself as providing “an academic platform where ideas and concepts can be praised and challenged.” It did not respond to requests from The College Fix seeking comment on the matter.

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Disney to Launch a New ‘National Treasure’ TV Series Starring an Illegal Immigrant

Minnesota Sun Staff
Disney Plus Shows

Disney has announced that the beloved “National Treasure” film franchise will be rebooted into a TV series that will feature a young female DREAMer as its main character, as reported by Breitbart.

The new series will premiere on Disney’s exclusive streaming platform Disney+, with the show’s description declaring that the story will be told “from the point of view of Jess Morales, a twenty-year-old DREAMer who, with her diverse group of friends, sets off on the adventure of a lifetime to uncover her mysterious family history and recover lost treasure.”

“DREAMer” refers to the failed amnesty bill known as the DREAM Act, which Barack Obama tried to get passed through Congress while he was in office. When the bill could not garner bipartisan support to pass, he took the highly unconstitutional action of implementing most of the DREAM Act via executive order, which came to be known as the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” or DACA order. This order pledged to give blanket amnesty to illegal aliens who arrived in the United States as minors, and since the signing of the executive order, has become a legal and political football that has bounced from one court to another trying to determine its legality.

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University Abruptly Suspends Diversity Classes: ‘Students Have Been Humiliated and Degraded’

Minnesota Sun Staff

Amid rumors of a video that shows a student being targeted during a diversity lesson at Boise State University, administrators have abruptly suspended all of the school’s general education classes called “University Foundations 200: Foundations of Ethics and Diversity.”

“We have been made aware of a series of concerns, culminating in allegations that a student or students have been humiliated and degraded in class on our campus for their beliefs and values,” states a March 16 memo from President Marlene Tromp to the campus community.

“This is never acceptable; it is not what Boise State stands for; and we will not tolerate this behavior,” Tromp stated. “…Given the weight of cumulative concerns, we have determined that, effective immediately, we must suspend UF 200.”

She goes on to note that academic leadership will determine next steps “to ensure that everyone is still able to complete the course.”

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University of Florida Spends $38k on ‘Anti-Racist’ Training that Discourages ‘All Lives Matter’

Minnesota Sun Staff

The University of Florida spent $38,000 on a new diversity, equity, and inclusion training for students that is “not a requirement,” but has a due date.

The training is similar to those that students take relating to alcohol, drug usage, and sexual harassment. Within the diversity training, students are prompted to take quizzes, watch videos, and read about different issues relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This new course is part of the university’s wider anti-racism initiative that includes removing its “gator bait” chant, and reviewing name changes for various buildings as well as monuments across campus, according to The Alligator.

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Parents, Educators and Activists Fight Back Against Radical School Curriculums: Trend

Minnesota Sun Staff

Parents, educators and activists are taking on left-leaning school curriculums in a variety of ways, from speaking out and filing lawsuits to crowdsourcing solutions and creating alternative educational resources.

In California, for example, a group called “Educators for Excellence in Ethnic Studies” has banded together to lobby for the removal of critical race theory from the state’s ethnic studies model curriculum.

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Commentary: Citizenship and the Nation-State

Minnesota Sun Staff

A prominent immigration scholar, David Jacobson, writes that “[t]ransnational migration is steadily eroding the traditional basis of nation-state membership, namely citizenship. As rights have come to be predicated on residency, not citizen status, the distinction between ‘citizen’ and ‘alien’ has eroded. The devaluation of citizenship has contributed to the increasing importance of international human rights codes, with its premise of universal ‘personhood’.” 

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Seeking Inclusion, Grammys Change Name of a Music Category

The Associated Press

The Grammy Awards have changed the name of their best world music album category to the best global music album, an attempt to find “a more relevant, modern and inclusive term.”

The Recording Academy said in a statement that the new name “symbolizes a departure from the connotations of colonialism, folk and ‘non-American’ that the former term embodied.”

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Carol Swain Commentary: Unity Training Should Replace Failed Diversity Training

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Trump’s recent decision earlier this month to use his executive authority to end certain forms of diversity training in federal agencies was a bold and necessary action to bring about racial healing and reconciliation. In making his decision, the president was reacting to reports of federal training exercises that singled out white people with accusations that “virtually all whites contribute to racism,” or they benefit from it. 

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Target Pledges to Make Black Employees 20 Percent of Its Workforce

Corinne Murdock

Target is pledging to ensure that Black employees make up at least 20 percent of its workforce. The Minneapolis-based corporation based their goal on a diversity report of 2019.

Target stated that the data indicated a need for more “equitable outcomes for Black team members.” For this ethnicity only, the corporation promises to broaden leadership pathways, develop hiring and retention programs, increase mentorship and sponsorship programs, tailor benefits.

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Minnesotan Public University Grants $92K to ‘Decolonize Educators’

Corinne Murdock

Bemidji State University will grant $92,000 for a “Decolonizing Educators” program. The university announced its decision to fund these scholarships in a press release last week.

The funds come from a Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) initiative called “Minnesota Indian Teaching Training Program” (MITTP). The state program administers scholarships to enrolled members of federally-recognized tribes, or first- or second-degree descendants. MITTP is currently available through six universities and colleges.

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Census Report Shows Widespread Demographic Changes in the United States

Minnesota Sun Staff

Minority populations are increasing and the white majority is on the decline, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Thursday.

Over the past decade, the white population grew by 10.5 million individuals, a 4.3% increase, while the Hispanic population grew by 10.1 million individuals, a 20% increase, the Census figures show. Among white people, there were 1.34 births for every death, whereas the Hispanic population had 5.81 births for every death, according to the report.

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Ole Miss Students Required to Complete ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ Training

Admin
college students

The University of Mississippi has introduced a new diversity and inclusion course requirement for students.

The main catalyst for Ole Miss implementing this course was an incident in which several students were photographed holding guns near a memorial for Emmett Till, resulting in an FBI investigation.

The online course, which is 45 minutes long, was due on April 1. The Daily Mississippian reports that it followed the same structure and method as alcohol and sexual assault online courses used at Ole Miss and schools across the country.

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George Mason University Professor Calls College a ‘Racket,’ Blasts Diversity Hires

Minnesota Sun Staff

An economics professor at George Mason University is speaking out about the “racket” that he says is college, and blaming it on the “diversity people” who he says have flooded the university system with unnecessary and perpetually increasing expenses tied to a seemingly endless need for more and more diversity initiatives and faculty.

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Flowchart Tells Non-Minority Students They Could Be ‘Taking Up Space’

Minnesota Sun Staff

A diversity orientation presentation for law students at the University of South Dakota encourages non “minitorized” voices to consider whether or not they are “taking up space” when they contribute to a discussion.  This comes just weeks after the South Dakota Board of Regents announced an investigation into the existence of liberal bias in the diversity offices of state schools.

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Commentary: Racist Purge Decimates Democrats’ Campaign Committee

Minnesota Sun Staff

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairwoman Cheri Bustos (IL-17) has been facing growing criticism from Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus members who charged that the DCCC lacked diversity and was, in essence, a bastion of white privilege.

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Commentary: A Lame Case for Diversity

Minnesota Sun Staff

by Charles Geshekter   Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian are senior psychologists at the University of Michigan and Hunter College, respectively. As an opponent of group preferences and double standards to achieve diversity among university faculty, I read their book, An Inclusive Academy, hoping to learn something from people with whom…

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Commentary: Is Diversity an Enemy of Excellence?

Minnesota Sun Staff

by John Staddon   The National Science Foundation (NSF) was created by Congress in 1950 “to promote the progress of science….” Following a 2012 recommendation, NSF now has an Office of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). NSF was just following the crowd, for almost every academic and research institution now has a…

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Campus Diversity Movement Takes Off in Surprising New Directions

Minnesota Sun Staff

by John Rosenberg   Ever since Justice Powell’s lone opinion in Bakke allowed the camel’s nose of “diversity” under the anti-discrimination tent, controversy has raged over preferential treatment awarded to college applicants of certain races. Just as hurricanes often change direction after landfall, the diversity movement has recently taken off…

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Parents Sue Over De Blasio’s Plan to Diversify NYC’s Elite Schools

Minnesota Sun Staff

by Neetu Chandak   Asian-American parents and civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against New York City officials Thursday over a plan that would increase admissions for black and Hispanic students to elite schools in the city. Black and Hispanic students make up 68 percent of the city’s population with…

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REPORT: Trump Administration Will End Obama Era Race-Based University Admission Practices

Admin
college students

The Trump administration is preparing to abolish policies that direct colleges and universities to increase diversity by considering race in college admissions, according to U.S. officials. Media reports say Trump administration officials intend to argue against guidelines issued by president Barack Obama’s administration that offered legal recommendations for schools seeking…

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