Cornell Faculty Coalition Calls for Race-Based Hiring, Promotion, and Curriculum (Update)
Cornell Faculty Coalition: “every ‘colorblind’ event, mechanism, and process at the university — from new faculty orientations to selection of endowed positions — perpetuates racial disparities and reinforces an unjust status quo.”
Cornell University has joined a growing list of universities embracing “antiracist” activism, a euphemism for race-based advocacy.
Antiracism does not mean non-racist. It is a term of art used, most famously, in the book How to Be An Antiracist, which is being used as a teaching tool at universities throughout the country, including Cornell, and forms the ideological framework upon which the university is moving forward.
In “antiracist” lingo, being merely not racist is racist. There are only two alternatives, racist or antiracist, and race-neutrality is deemed racist. Advocating colorblind policies and the treatment of people without regard to race is considered racist in this formula.
Discrimination based on race is at the heart How to Be An Antiracist:
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
We covered these events in July 2020, Cornell University takes a major step towards compulsory racial activism for faculty, students, and staff:
Both of these trends — the obsessive focus on race and the requirement of activism — have come together in an announcement by Cornell President Pollack, in an all-campus email this afternoon. The email announced a deepening of race-focused education on campus and proposed mandatory participation by faculty and students [and staff].
You can read President Pollak’s July announcement here. On September 4, 2020, President Pollak reiterated the campus focus on “antiracism” as a top priority, and announced progress on various intitiatives, including faculty, student, and staff requirements (underscoring added):
Faculty-led Initiatives
Under the leadership of Dean of the Faculty Charlie Van Loan and Associate Dean of Faculty Neema Kudva, the Faculty Senate is developing frameworks for three of the announced faculty-led initiatives: the creation of a center that will promote research and teaching in matters that relate to systemic racism, colonialism, bias and inequity, a required educational program for faculty, and a for-credit educational requirement for all Cornell students that covers the same. The Senate has met with students from DoBetterCornell to become better informed about their goals for these programs. Now that the semester has begun, conversations with faculty have started and committees will be formed for each initiative over the next few weeks with significant opportunities for one-on-one interactions among faculty, under the auspices of the Senate.
Staff Initiatives
A required training course for Cornell staff on equity and cultural competency will be available this month. The course, “Advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Cornell,” will consist of six modules, each with a required online component and voluntary community chats to deepen engagement with the material. The first module will be available mid-month through CULearn. Subsequent modules will be released monthly, and all required components must be completed by every staff member by September 2021. Furthermore, in response to a forum for staff of color on issues of concern to the BIPOC staff community hosted by the Men of Color and Women of Color Colleague Network Groups, three subcommittees were formed to focus on high-priority issues of work-life and wellness needs, the employment life cycle and elevating the voices and successes of staff of color. The subcommittees will be meeting regularly, with the first meeting this month.
These requirements for faculty and students also are making their way through the University Faculty Senate, though the results have not been finalized and voted upon yet.
In a significant move, a “Faculty Coalition” has just published a list of race-based demands that would implement race-based requirements in almost all aspects of the university hiring, promotion, and curriculum, and the elimination of race-neutral policies. The list of Demands was published on September 7, 2020, at Medium, published by a group called the Cornell Faculty Coalition.
The faculty group, seeking also to include students and staff, has issued Faculty, Students and Staff for an Anti-Racist Cornell, 2020 Demands, explicitly rejects “colorblind” policies (emphasis added):
What we demand of Cornell is substantive action rather than the performance of racial innocence or enlightenment. “Black Lives Matter” is a call not just for reflection or dialogue, but for genuine reallocation of resources and power. If the suddenly-popular term “anti-racism” is to mean anything at all, it must mean redistributive justice and the dismantling of white supremacist norms and conditions. It must also mean serious intellectual and policy work over the long term. As an institution Cornell aspires to the highest principles of civic duty. Yet every “colorblind” event, mechanism, and process at the university — from new faculty orientations to selection of endowed positions — perpetuates racial disparities and reinforces an unjust status quo.
The long list of demands include, among other things, the following “Immediate Demands”:
IM1: Support and encourage Departments to make cluster hires of Black and other faculty of color….
IM2: Encourage and support the recruiting of graduate students of color in clusters and cohorts in departments….
IM3: Create benchmarks for departments to follow through on President Pollack’s call, issued earlier this summer, to “embed anti-racism” in the full spectrum of Cornell activities. As Pollack noted, “At the core of our institution lies our primary mission to provide an exceptional education, cutting-edge research and public engagement to shape our world for generations to come, and we must embed anti-racism across these activities.” Pollack further called for,
A systematic review of the curriculum in each of our colleges and schools to ensure that courses reflect, represent and include the contributions of all people. Several colleges/schools and departments already have this work underway. (“Additional actions to create a more just and equitable Cornell” July 16, 2020)
We need an action plan from departments and the Faculty Senate about how this process is to be implemented. (We propose additional considerations in “Curriculum” below.)
IM4: Pair anti-sexist and anti-racist policies to address white and/or male domination of department chair positions and other administrative structures….
With regard to curriculum, they demand:
IM7. Embed decolonized readings in every possible course at Cornell, including but not necessarily limited to the social sciences and humanities. Such curricular offerings must go beyond diffuse and vague “diversity” course requirements, such as the social difference requirement in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Among the demands with regard to faculty, they demand elimination of colorblind recruitment:
LT7. Make retention offers for all BIPOC faculty.
LT8. Abolish colorblind recruitment policies and practices in partner/spousal hiring and replace them with intentionally anti-racist policies and practices….
The list goes on and on and on. There is almost no aspect of campus in which race-neutrality would not be eliminated
Of interest, the group includes in the long list a demand to end the Cornell Partnership with Israel’s Technion:
LT23. Set benchmarks for addressing Cornell Tech’s involvement in the gentrification of Queens and, through its institutional partnership with Technion Israeli Institute of Technology, the military occupation of Palestine.
This is consistent with the tactic of one of the five original signatories to the Demands, Professor Russell Rickford, who consistently tries to hijack race-based issues and turn them against Israel.
Expect the list of signatories to rise. Race-based discrimination is fully embedded in the ethos of Cornell University, in the name of antiracism.
UPDATE:
As predicted, the list of signatories has grown substantially, It’s worth noting that three four five of my colleagues who signed a letter falsely accusing me of supporting racism for criticising Black Lives Matter, have signed the Demand letter explicitly calling for race-based hiring and promotion, a blatantly illegal and racist objective. I wonder if they will be denounced by the Dean also?
— Thomas Chatterton Williams ? ? (@thomaschattwill) September 11, 2020
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End ALL government funding of non-STEM higher education! TODAY!!
There is no way the taxpayer should be subsidizing this illegal, racist nonsense!
“End ALL government funding of non-STEM higher education!”
There’s no rational reason to treat STEM differently. We should just stop pouring tax dollars into higher “education”, period.
STEM is fully corrupted in the universities. The leftists are just as much in control as they are in the humanities and soft sciences.
There’s a glut of skilled people in most STEM fields (particularly since employers want, and get, cheap immigrant labor). The big-tech lobbyists have waged a successful disinformation campaign to drive salaries down and immigration up. There’s no reason for society to subsidize expensive education for people who will be underemployed.
When people say “STEM” they usually mean engineering and the medical professions. I don’t think there’s a glut in those fields.
Wow, you would think a College would know about AFFIRMATIVE ACTION and QUOTAS. I guess since the 60s their heads have been in a hole.
Good Diversity – Attract and hire men and women of varied backgrounds and perspectives so we can see the Elephant from all sides and understand the entire entity.
Bad Diversity – Hiring a person from a country where they drive on the Left Side and hiring a person from a country where they drive on the Right Side. And, proclaiming that everybody deserves the right to drive according to how they were brought up. Crash.
That’s because they don’t believe “the browns” can make it on their own merit.
There is a word for that belief … if only I could remember what the word is.
A very large percentage cannot make grade, and those should not have their feelings protected. Dim witted whites must live with reality, brown and black deserve the same. By and large, brown and black in America have an average IQ of 85, that means that half are less than 85, something which explains their failure to thrive. In Africa, the overall average is in the mid 60’s, and the group with the lowest average is 59.
Most shit holes in the world are a result of low IQ. Evolution left much of humanity holding the short straw.
Methinks factors like poor childhood nutrition and lack of a social environment conducive to learning have something to do with the lower average intelligence of Black people. In any case it’s a complicated problem. Ibrahim X Kendi thinks the best way to solve it is to collectively pretend it doesn’t exist. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Poor childhood nutrition…. are we talking famine or poot choices by adults for the kids?
Social environment…. some things are intrinsic/genetic. Driving down the ability to nourish the IQ is cultural in this instance. Again… a lot of poor choices by adults. Poor schools in Africa should be compared to schools here and see which has the better scholastic outcome… I put my bet on Africa.
“Methinks factors like poor childhood nutrition and lack of a social environment conducive to learning”
1) No child should be malnourished in America, and if they are, that is likely due to dull witted mothers, They are receiving welfare in the majority of cases.
2) There is ample evidence that blacks low intelligence is mostly due to genetics, and that nurture cannot compensate for innately low IQ.
What you are shoveling is the liberal party line of the sixties, since that time society has poured lots of money into the nurture theory, with dismal results. Frankly, it has been thoroughly discredited.
Falsely promoting nurture has done a huge disservice to all of society, but especially to those whose IQ limits their capabilities. We generally do not do this to dull people of other races, we advise them based on their actual performance level, and we should be doing the same for blacks. Anything less is cruel.
The University is very likely to find itself on the wrong end of a civil rights compliance suit. Rejecting ‘colorblind ‘ approaches is another way of saying they reject neutral hiring, evaluation and retention practices.
This radical stance places the University squarely at odds with current Civil Rights laws. The zealots are, as usual, going too far.
Perhaps those pushing this agenda would care to demonstrate their personal commitment to the ideology by resigning their tenured positions in favor of those who, in their eyes, are more worthy and deserving? My bet is no.
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Too much verbiage from The Left®. They should keep it simple:
#DownWithWhites
#MayTheBestMenOrWomenWin
Racist!
One by one, the freedoms will be taken away,
— the freedom of speech
— the freedom of association
— the freedom to protect oneself from others and from government itself
— the freedom to keep the fruits of one’s labor
and on and on,
until we say, NO
As ALWAYS, it’s the left who’s doing the taking away. They will NOT leave us alone.
“It is the common fate of the indolent [*] to see their rights become a prey to the active [**]. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude [***] is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.” John Philpot Curran (1750- 1817).
In other words, you better fight-&-defend or all those hard-earned rights will be taken without a moment’s notice. And as recent evidence, look at how governors and their staffs acted during the COVID-19 lockdown. You can “Let George Do It” (a post-WWII detective radio show), but what if George has no intent of doing it?
* The indolent – those who may complain but yet won’t take action even when informed that forming your own citizen-led chapter of the John Birch Society (type “jbsagenda”) can counter the left
** The active – experience has taught that the left has a never-ending list of stupid, freedom-depriving ideas; the left will NEVER leave us alone. Green New Deal; elimination of 1st Am., 2d Am., mail-in voting, shut-down orders, and on and on
*** Servitude – comes in a variety of forms, from detention (jail, stay-at-home orders) to economic deprivation via regulations (which always result in bigger government, higher prices for goods/services and greater unemployment) to increased taxation
No one said “no” when private businesses in privately held buildings and property were declared public accommodation in 1964.
Speaking one’s mind over lunch can cost you a job, even if that lunch is not eaten at work or on campus.
2nd amendment restrictions too numerous to list.
Very few have said no.
Civil war, here we come!
This is a policy doomed for failure from day one. The only result will be increased anger, separation and hatred between people. The Coalition understand this and should be ignored for the benefit of all of us.
Affirmative Action has morphed into Affirmative Racism.
All animals are “equal”….
The Dhimmi-crat Regressives are staunchly committed to moving things backward, as far as racial progress is concerned. Dr. King’s aspiration that Americans be judged by the “content of their character,” as opposed to skin pigmentation, has been contemptuously tossed aside.
I was pondering the other day how it’s patently obvious that the vile Dhimmi-crats have no interest or desire, whatsoever, to see progress made towards achieving racial harmony in this country, because their entire political ethos and platform is predicated upon fomenting an embittered and poisonous perpetual grievance and fallacious victimhood.
There’s simply no political percentage in it for the Dhimmi-crats to acknowledging undeniable racial progress and greater equality. These dopes have a vested interest in keeping the black community in a perpetual state of infantilized resentment and agitation.
We don’t have systemic racism. We have systemic leftism!
Far from an alleged “institutionalized racism,” what we have in this country is “institutionalized racial preferences” for people “of color” — discriminatory preferences in job hiring, school admissions and contract awarding. Combine that fact with the tens of trillions of dollars spent over decades, on the following — urban “renewal;” a slew of obscenely generous welfare entitlements covering housing, healthcare, cellular phones, Internet access, groceries, child-rearing; anti-poverty programs, etc., — plus, the election and re-election of a bi-racial, empty-suit, pathological narcissist, radical demagogue-hustler, and, only a totally myopic fool would have the dishonest gall to assert that there exists “systemic” racism in this country.
No country in history has worked harder or spent more money to atone for its past sins.
Each new idiocy promulgated by academia proves that “education” is purely indoctrination. Its only value is in providing credentials. There are better, less expensive, and more honest ways to make a good living.
And despite very stiff competition Cornell again leads the Worst of the Ivies Competition ?…/golf clap/
Let’s be serious and facetious here for a minute.
When do stupid people get a seat at the university table? I’m talking about people well below average intelligence. They are perhaps the most underrepresented group on American university campuses today while simultaneously being the most desperate members of our society.
Whether it be by the cruel crap shoot of nature or poorly lacking nurture, the very stupid are innocent victims shut out from an institution virtually everyone touts as all but mandatory for success in today’s increasingly competitive world.
We can’t just be stupid-blind. We must be anti-stupidest.
I look forward to Cornell being a leader in the anti-stupidest movement.
Don’t get me started on society’s neglected shy and socially phobic. I have university days stories that would punch you in the gut and bring tears to your eyes.
Oh, it’s coming… they’ll push Affirmative Action grading. No whites will be allowed to get As.
We all know that grading has a racial component to it. Absolutely does. What a disturbing world it is to allow democrats positions of power and influence.
We already have some of the stupidest at Cornell (and other universities.) They’re the ones who have created and are signing this petition.
Actually, you’re talking about a different group.
Probably the most over-represented group on university campuses today:
The somewhat intelligent but stupidly gullible and impressionable.
I’ll have to ask my brother-in-law how he’s going to teach anti-racist statistics.
Our son is majoring in statistics and data science at UC Santa Barbara.
It never occurred to me to make sure the program is anti-racist.
What kind of horrible racist am I?
Math is already racist according to some fat, ugly white woman I was reading about a week or so ago. Or, was it the patriarchy? I can’t keep up.
Ergo, statistics are racist. Or something.
Segregation now, segregation forever!
Well, George Wallace was a Democrat after all. Wallace moved away in his later years, the Democrat Party has decided to move back.
Since this includes “staff”, let’s make sure that cafeteria, housekeeping, maintenance, landscaping, and so forth meet these quotas. Be sure to lay off the excess black and brown faces in favor of hiring white staff to meet those quotas. Can’t find enough white staff to fill those roles? Do without.
Does this apply at the medical school as well? Will have to be on the lookout for doctors with MDs from Cornell in the future and avoid them like… well, like, Covid-19.
The question a lot of us likely have now Professor is will you refuse to participate in this racist indoctrination?
Dear Virtue-Signalling People of Pallid Pigment in Academia,
The script has already been written. The movie already made.
You will be the educational equivalent of the leftist mayors who stoke racial discord and encourage uncivil activism in the streets.
And who reality then slaps in the face as the monster they helped nurture along one day shows up as a mob on their doorstep and drives them from their homes.
_________
Wheeler, Ted et al. 2020. “But I Was Their Ally!” Seattle: Mostly Peaceful Publishing.
That should be Portland, not Seattle.
D’oh!
When I was young, I listened to speeches by MLK. He delivered logical, ethical, and just messages. I also heard speeches by Democrat mayors and governors and the Democrat militants (KKK). Those Democrat speeches were irrational and morally repulsive.
In 2020, the Democrats are still giving the same types of speeches and still judging people by the color of their skin. The only difference is they call the followers of MLK racists for NOT judging people by the color of their skin. Apparently, the obvious lies are due to the infusion of hard-core Marxism into the Democrat Party. The immorality that was already there blended nicely with the Marxism.
Define Racism.
“Racism” is a failure to discriminate based on race.
Define Discrimination.
“Discrimination” is the failure to make admissions decisions based on race.
I see Cornell is fine with having its reputation go into the toilet. You can admit students with a diversity policy, or admit students on a merit based policy.
Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to have both.
Someone at Cornell has been studying and replicating Oberlin.
To end discrimination, the left tells you:
Don’t stop doing it, do it MORE, much more. Instead of unraveling discrimination for everyone, lefties say wind the cord ever tighter, In perpetuity, so all people experience discrimination.
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
There you have it.
Professor Jacobson, we are counting on you to lead the charge back to sanity in our Institutions of higher learning.
Sadly, it seems the faculty leadership at Cornell and elsewhere have become dumber by degrees…
Maybe they have reached the poison pill level of Affirmative hiring?
I find the wording refreshingly direct. It is also interesting that they are treating blacks from foreign countries differently than blacks from America. It is clear that they are demanding funding and power although the document is very short on a rational for why these demands are justified or beneficial to the University.
How will this work for Cornell after today’s announcement from Betsy DeVos at the Department of Education? Methinks the Prof might realize some benefit from that rule when it’s official.
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Please put yourself in the shoes of a Cornell Professor of Africana Studies. Your department has been around since 1970, located on the edge of campus. Twelve years ago, they expand your building a build a new wing to house the library with an African culture motif. Six months ago, a student-drafted set of demands calls for moving your library back to the big library building in the middle of campus. You are having trouble getting published and Lindsay, Begoshian and Pluckrose have had more success getting hoax articles published than you have publishing real ones.
The student-drafted petition (which calls for a mandatory anti-racism class) gets the attention of the President who politely refers it to the Faculty Senate for due consideration. You then read that the CEO of Twitter gave BU $10 million for a new Anti-racism center. The BU professor published a best-selling Anti-Racism book that your President has recommended to all Cornell student, while you are being ignored. Fifty years of your department’s work is being ignored while an ignorant white woman publishes a best seller on White Fragility. What do you do?
In desperation, you raise the temperature on your rhetoric and make over-the-top demands knowing that they will never be honored and in fact violate several laws. But what backs up these demands? Will the Cornell faculty signatories buy one-way bus tickets for a bunch of Portland protesters to come and burn down the campus? Will the faculty all threaten to quit en mass? I feel their agony, but do not see their chosen path.
I used to think that race-based hiring and promotion were illegal. Now, it appears that many businesses and virtually all universities are using racial preferences in hiring. Many universities (including the one where I used to work) are establishing “diversity” positions where white males are not eligible.
Is this all considered legal now?
Nope. It’s still illegal, and begging for a lawsuit.
I don’t understand why we haven’t yet heard about a lawsuit by non-black restaurant owners against Uber.
How about granting their demand and create a mandatory introductory course in anti-racism. Then have a conservative professor emeritus from the Law School teach it by debunking every myth being put forward by the critical race theory gang.
Further down the hole they go. Circling the drain is in the rearview mirror.
Is this the Cornell that’s the private school? Or, the Cornell that’s a State school? I fail to understand why administrators put up with this crap. I would very succinctly relate to all the “Rabid Faculty” MYOB. I run the show, if you don’t like it, leave. There are a lot of other candidates available. Maybe it’s time for Academia to lose tenure and have right to work laws.
Is this the Cornell I attended in the mid-’50’s? Have the “Red Guards” arrived with their Cultural Revolution and indoctrination camps? Has Martha Pollak substituted statues of George Orwell and Pol Pot for the statues of Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White on the Quadrangle? How could a world-class institution of learning have fallen so far so fast into a state of blind stupidity? Regrettably, I think I know the answers to these questions. I am appalled. But Cornell is a microcosm of what is coming for the entire nation, if we let it metastasize.
I do not recognize the legitimacy of affirmative action or race-based preferences and I have no problem with applicants who check off whatever box is convenient on their applications. A dark skinned man circumvented affirmative action by applying as Black. If you come from a place once ruled by Spain (including parts of Italy), you have a case for checking off “Hispanic.” If it works for Elizabeth Warren it should work for you.
You could also take a DNA test to see if you have traces of Black ancestry (or some other preferred ancestry). Of course, white racists should have to take these tests as well because they may find they aren’t entirely “white” which would be hilarious.
(Does not constitute legal advice but I would, as a juror, presume any race-based preference to be illegitimate.)
Then again, if this is the kind of swill Cornell is going to teach for Ivy League tuition, consider SUNY instead. E.g. “for-credit educational requirement for all Cornell students” I think the tuition paid for that course alone will pay for a full semester at SUNY if it is a 3-credit course, but I am not sure.
We all have black DNA, unfortunately for contemporary blacks, evolution of Caucasians and Asians, left most of them behind.
There is no solution to this today, there is potential to raise their, probably everyone’s, intelligence level in the future. Those advances are most likely to come from Ashkenazi Jews.
More proof that the long-time saying that “College is the key to success” is false. I guess we should thank them for their point-blank statement telling at least three-quarters of the nation not to waste their time.
“a for-credit educational requirement …” Well, of course.
For under the old dispensation one might be required to attend “sensitivity training,” even without an accusation of misbehavior. And at first that merely required the presence of one’s body, but inevitably that morphed into coerced particupation. Yet for a time if you were put on the spot in such a “training,” you could make a counter-argument and suffer no more than (possibly severe) harassment. Then that dispensaton ended as well, with Damore’s getting fired from Google.
“For credit/required” implies that if you don’t give the “correct” answers in such a course (on a written exam, or in class) then you will be failed, and thus be denied graduation. Such as (for example) declaring that “AntiRacism” is, in fact, grossly and manifestly racist in response to a written exam question or in-class interrogation.
At a minimum this requirement for publicly expressed conformity is a massive violation of individual freedom of conscience, and in its essence not all that different from a coerced religious conversion.
Nor will it stay in the classroom: inevitably it will lead to verbal challenges on public streets, where failure to respond (or responding incorrectly) is likely to result in violence.
Of course, the real question (other than: “how many fingers?”) is: what can be done about it? For it’s not as if many academics will, in today’s cancel-culture, risk open dissent.
Sickening madness.
I have read Cornell’s current policies with respect to faculty retention, and they are well-written and make sense: http://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/the-new-faculty-handbook/read-me/tenure-and-promotion-to-the-rank-of-professor/ In brief, they are cast a wide net, have the department chair give an evaluation at 3 years, and then have a very tough comprehensive review at 6 years with less than half the faculty getting tenure upon a showing of “excellence.”
There are two problems: 1) the COVID pandemic has hurt the productivity of faculty, and a reasonable person should consider giving an extension of time for tenure review of faculty whose teaching, research, speaking at conferences, etc. was significantly hindered by COVID. 2) Cornell has a %60 million per year faculty hiring budget earmarked for affirmative action hiring. As I understand it, after a department gives one of these faculty tenure, the funding for that faculty member shifts back to the traditional budget. So, the people on these budgets face a high bar to get promoted. I don’t understand what demand LT7 is intended to address, but if it gives BIPOC a higher chance of tenure at Cornell, it will generate many lawsuits and a loss of alumni giving support.
My Alma mater is the University of Michigan. I no longer say that with pride – at all. It is embarrassing because just as with EVERY other “highly acclaimed” liberal arts college – and many of the lesser – we now know that to graduate all you need is to parrot the liberal groupthink ideology and the more you victimize yourself, the easier your time is there. Actual academic scholarship is a JOKE. And with affirmative action – fought for, and lovingly established via the Supreme Court at my school – we also now know that admissions has been dumbed down. I will never give a dime to U of M. Ever. Nothing will change unless and until ther is a WHOLESALE revolt by ALL alumni from all generations refusing any further gifts. This is an all out war and they are winning because of the false pride that is still associated with a degree. How long will the game continue?