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A “mania has taken over academia where every issue, including math, revolves around race and the patriarchy”

A “mania has taken over academia where every issue, including math, revolves around race and the patriarchy”

My appearance on Chicago’s Morning Answer: “this is in many ways a threat to the survival of the country. They’re going to turn us into Yugoslavia, competing ethnicities and competing groups who are at war with each other.”

I appeared on January 23, 2023, on Chicago’s Morning Answer, with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson (no relation) a show I have been on many times and which I enjoy because the discussions are not squeezed into a 4-5 minute hit.

The topic of the discussion revolved around open racial discrimination by the Providence (RI) Public School District that has been challenged by Legal Insurrection Foundation:

The discussion got started by a discussion of Vanderbilt mathematics professor Luis Leyva who Calls College Math a ‘White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space’.

(If video does not load, click here)

Partial Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors)

(emphasis added)

PROFT (03:29):

On math Professor Leyva’s treatise on the new math, as it were, is not something you’re unaccustomed to in the Ivy League, or at least unaccustomed to hearing about.

WAJ (03:44):

No, unfortunately, there’s some sort of mania that has taken over academia where every issue, including math, revolves around race and revolves around the patriarchy. It’s almost like that saying, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So that’s their issue, and they’re going with it. It’s popular among their circles. The rest of the world pretty much thinks they’re insane. Math is hard. I’m sorry. Math is hard. As somebody who never made it past trigonometry in high school and who barely made it past that, math is hard. It’s hard for everybody. To blame that on whiteness or to blame that on the patriarchy or whatever is comical. It’s really sad that it’s taken over.

AMY JACOBSON (04:32):

Well, what do you think the students think, though? I mean, are they just brainwashed to believe all of this?

WAJ (04:39):

I think most students just keep their heads down, don’t say anything. They live in fear of a bad grade. They live in fear of being called mames on the internet. I’ve seen this in so many different contexts where students will approach me privately or by email and ask me to keep it quiet, expressing frustration with the culture on campuses, which is similar to what you’ve just described this math professor doing, but they say they’re afraid to say anything. And that’s why these surveys that have come out in the last three-four years consistently show that on college campuses, the significant majority of students are afraid to express their opinions for fear of that sort of retribution, including liberal students. You’d think it would be just conservative students, but it’s not, even the liberal students are so afraid of the radical race and radical gender ideology that’s taken over the campuses. They are afraid to express traditional liberal views on campus. So it’s a bad situation.

PROFT (05:44):

…. I would just like to challenge the quality of the scholarship by asking questions. So Professor, now, tell us more. I’m just trying to get my handle around this, get a handle on this….

WAJ (06:28):

I think that the typical explanation you’d get from these sort of people is that maybe the math itself, the actual calculations are not racist, but the approach. The emphasis on punctuality, the emphasis on hard work, all of these things, they lump into the category of whiteness. And we’ve seen this in many contexts, which of course is very insulting not to white people, but to people who are not white, right? To say that those sort of things are a reflection of whiteness, suggesting, I guess they are, that people who are not white don’t have those inherent qualities, which of course they do. So they usually will talk about the approaches to it and the way it’s taught and the way the classes and the departments are structured, but they won’t normally talk about the mathematical calculations themselves.

PROFT (07:21):

Something else that’s happened to all this over the last several years is the new segregation. We’ve seen this in Illinois, even at the high school level…. And, you at Legal Insurrection have taken up some of these same sorts of new segregation cases, in Rhode Island.

WAJ (08:06):

So the Providence, Rhode Island, School System, which is the biggest in Rhode Island, it’s the major city in Rhode Island, is a complete disaster. It actually had to be taken over by the State of Rhode Island. I might be slightly off on the percentages, but something like 10 to 12% of the students are at grade level in math and reading and other core subjects. So it is a complete disaster.

Yet what is the Providence School District Administration focused on? It’s focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. And one of the things they’re focused on, it’s hiring teachers of color, which is fine. Nobody’s saying you shouldn’t do that, but they have made it aracist sort of approach. So the Providence School District has a teacher loan forgiveness program. If you’re a new teacher hired into the system, you get up to $25,000 of your loan forgiven, but only if you’re non-white.

We have filed a complaint with the US Department of Education, which provides Providence with $200 million a year, that we’re waiting to hear. They also have, as part of that programming, they recently had an Educators of Color get together. Now, this is not something that was spontaneous by educators of color. This is actually a governmental event. This was the Providence School District organized an event,  at a local event forum exclusively for educators of color. So we wrote to the event forum and said: Hey, I know you didn’t organize this, but you are subject to the public accommodations law, and you cannot allow them to hold a segregated event at your venue. And lo and behold, the next day, we got some news coverage on it, it’s no longer being held at that venue. They moved it elsewhere. And Providence says, oh, this was all a mistake. We didn’t mean to say that only teachers of color were allowed. Well, why did you say that at announcement? And why did your event form sign up that have list your race and ethnicity and white wasn’t one of them? Oh, that was just a mistake. But it got a lot of local coverage, and this is the stuff that we’re starting to do because they’re not even hiding it. This isn’t like a nod, nod, wink, wink. They are outright in the Providence Public School District, they are outright discriminating on the basis of race, and we’re going to continue to challenge them, but that’s just a microcosm of what is happening throughout the country.

AMY JACOBSON (10:25):

So is this the new normal then? I mean, this ever gonna go away?

WAJ (10:29):

People have to challenge it, and that’s one of the things we’re ramping up to do, Legal Insurrection Foundation. We’re ramping up to file lawsuits, file legal challenges against these practices because they’re illegal and somebody’s gotta do it. Now, it is so deeply ingrained in the system, it’s not gonna be one or two cases that’s going stop it, but there has to be a sustained effort to challenge these…. And it needs to be done thousands of times across the country because it’s happening tens of thousands of times across the country

***

I saw a statistic recently, it sounds actually low to me, that there is $3.5 billion – with a “b” – spent on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programming in the country each year. I think it’s probably higher than that. If you look at the budgets of these 14,000 or 13,000 school districts across the country, I bet you it’s more than 3 billion. I bet you it’s some multiple of that. There is so much money because we follow these things. We have a website, as you know, called CriticalRace.org that documents what’s going on in education.

It’s gotta be in the tens of billions. There is so much money flowing towards pushing this stuff. I laugh, you know, or cry maybe is the better word, every time I hearSheldon Whitehouse and other people talk about “right wing dark money.” It is minimal compared to the left wing…. So this is a very deep problem, and people need to wake up to it. But how do you solve a problem? You have to start someplace. And I think challenging these things is the way to start, because they haven’t been challenged for over a decade, and they’re now widespread in the system.

***

How did we get to this point? We got here over, 10, 20, 30 years. It didn’t just happen. And the principles of the American Civil Rights Movement have been completely abandoned. The notion that the goal of the American Civil Rights Movement is for blacks and other non-whites to fully participate in our system, and enjoy the benefits of the American system, that’s been largely achieved. The goal of the new radicalized movement is to tear down that system.

So I think that we are really in a place where, and and I’ve said this before, this is in many ways a threat to the survival of the country. They’re going to turn us into Yugoslavia, competing ethnicities and competing groups who are at war with each other. We’ve moved away from that. over the last 50, 60 years, we’ve moved away from that. They want to bring us back to that dark place of different ethnicities, different races, competing for supposedly limited resources and fighting with each other. And I don’t think we need to turn into the former Yugoslavia.

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Comments

We didn’t get here over 30 years.

This crap only started about 10-15 years ago.

Before that affirmative action existed but it was never a real focus.

In the last 10 years the left has gone INSANE with their racism and pushing transsexuals. Literally 10 years ago trannies were the but of jokes on leftist sitcoms and now they’re put on pedestals.

As Mark Levin has written so eloquently American Marxism with its unholy trinity of systemic racism gender fluidity and climate change is a very dangerous movement in the US

Most people are tired of this constant framing through race. Unfortunately the people who occupy the positions to end it either believe in this bunk or are themselves too cowardly to act.

I don’t blame some random drone at a corporation any more than a random student for not sticking their head up. All they will get is hit by the hammer. The blame should fall on those who have the power to stop it. The Presidents, Deans and Sr tenured faculty in academia. The school boards, superintendents in K-12. The members of the State legislature, the Gov, LT Gov and AG. Members of Congress, Sr members of the uniformed services and senior executive service of the federal bureaucracy.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to CommoChief. | January 25, 2023 at 9:00 am

    Either that, or, enough have to stand up that they can’t fire or “dis-enroll” all of them.

      Theoretically sure when a critical mass of folks stands up to an employer or university, tells them to pound sand, then maybe the crap is beat back. Of course that would have prevented the video from gaining a toe hold and it would have been far easier to pushback in the beginning.

      Average folks are capable of a cost benefit analysis and the costs of becoming one of the key ‘troublemakers’ in a revolt are very high. These folks look around and wonder who, if anyone, will join them. Why should they risk their career and endanger their ability to provide for a family by hoping that others will stand up and support them? Especially since at least one person probably did stand up previously and no one had the guts to support them.

“the approach. The emphasis on punctuality, the emphasis on hard work, all of these things, they lump into the category of whiteness.”

Well, the Smithsonian did it, so it must be true… right?

Colonel Travis | January 24, 2023 at 11:27 pm

it’s taken over every aspect of America

Not all that many years ago we used to place people who displayed these anti-societal symptoms in special institutions – and they weren’t called schools

Whiteness, with its iron llogical laws, pre-existed the universe and will outlast it, is all they’re saying. Like arithmetic, algebra and geometry.

    amwick in reply to rhhardin. | January 25, 2023 at 7:04 am

    What is whiteness? Rhetorical question, because the answer would just piss of the nutters. Clown world. Ty Professor, for being a candle in the darkness.

      henrybowman in reply to amwick. | January 28, 2023 at 2:32 pm

      They’re pissed off enough right now for being told “What is a Woman?”
      Maybe Matt Walsh needs to tackle whiteness in a sequel.

The overriding rule is that The Bell Curve must be wrong. Therefore there is something wrong with cognitive activity.

When illiberalism overtakes liberal. Clowns like this math ‘teacher’ are desperate to make it into the peer group that is temporarily in charge. He will say, do or roll over to be noticed and accepted.

I’ll bet if the school shorts his paycheck by $267.00 next month, he will get real good at math, his honky skin color not withstanding.

    DaveGinOly in reply to Whitewall. | January 25, 2023 at 12:31 pm

    Of course he would. He’s a permanent member of an oppressive class. He can’t help himself no matter how aware he becomes of his oppressor status.

where else than academia are all these aa/dei “experts” even remotely considered “employable?”–with their worthless grievance-studies degrees and their bigotry?

academics screwed-up royally by acknowledging/ceding any relevance to these dei hucksters at all–and many of the rest of us have been cowed/bullied/persecuted into enabling these dei slugs instead of roundly rejecting their blatantly racist / discriminatory practices–their blather, no matter how loudly/profanely/persistently proclaimed, is pure racist bullshit

    henrybowman in reply to texansamurai. | January 28, 2023 at 2:42 pm

    “where else than academia are all these aa/dei “experts” even remotely considered “employable?”–with their worthless grievance-studies degrees and their bigotry?”

    HR departments of at least half of the giant corporations in the world. Coca Cola, Nike, Apple, Google, Pfizer… plus the US federal government and at least a third of the states.

    These people are the Pet Rocks and Purse Poodles of the 21st century. They’re totally useless — in fact many of them will actively break your own company’s windows / bite your own best workers’ ankles — but if you don’t have them, you’re not one of the Cool Kids.

    And then the Cool Kids will ambush you in the MSM rest room and give you swirlies.

When I cross a large bridge (of the type that just the fall into the water below would be fatal, and that gives one the willies just looking out from it), I’m comforted to know that is was designed using White math from the cisheteropatriarchal space.

    MajorWood in reply to DaveGinOly. | January 25, 2023 at 12:43 pm

    Almost makes one want to buy a whole bunch of signs that say “This bridge was built using white math” and then posting it prominently at the entrances.

Mayor Pete was right— roads and infrastructure are racist. When that bridge is under engineered and falls down- it’s because the matrix multiplication on the vector forces were in fact racist.

systemic racism is everywhere.

Alexander Scipio | January 29, 2023 at 4:59 pm

Kinda losing patience with the increasing acceptance by society of this anti-white nonsense.

What people are missing: What is going on with the CRT-based “anti-racist” nonsense, by “Progressivism,” by Marxism BLM… is a revolt by non-Westerners against the West; against our art, literature, music. norms, values, traditions, work ethic, morals, families, … PROGRESS. — the THINGS THAT CREATED THE WEST AND THAT THE WEST THEN CREATED… THAT ALONE ACHIEVED MODERNITY.

That we are white is only happenstance. The revolt is against those who succeeded – by those who did not. It is a demand by non-Westerners that what we did is not important, is, in fact, evil… because WE did it and THEY did not; because WE succeeded and THEY failed.

Ancient populations in Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary had dark skin around 8,500 years ago. Europeans seem to have developed white skin only about 8,000 years ago, Africans have been around about a million years – 9,915 times longer than we. If they could have invented anything – in that amount of time – they’d have done so.

How was modernity built? Merit, punctuality, hard work, hard education, solid science – all the things that today are taught as “white supremacy.” These are WESTERN supremacy; all the things no other people accomplished. It could be argued that we are superior because we are white; I am aware of NO national figure making that argument – only that, because WE invented them – we are bad.

This is not about race – that is a proxy. It is about how far the West has outstripped ALL others – those incapable of creating what we created – or they would have – and destroying what they could not create. Because history cannot be rewritten, our creation of modernity cannot be changed. Others need to accept it – or be crushed… because WE are not going to leave behind a world in which OUR kids are punished because the punishers, at a civilizational level, achieved NOTHING.

If they continue to attack us, we WILL fight back. As with the creation of modernity, in which we succeeded, and they did not – the race war they demand will have the same result and for the same reasons: We… CAN… and THEY …. CANNOT.

When those railing against “white supremacy” reject ALL of what we created and have shared without complaint: machine-woven textiles, grids delivering water and electricity and taking-away sewage, modern metallurgy, integrated circuits, chips, computers, communication, electronics, mechanized transport, modern fertilizers and farming techniques that feed the world… THEN – and ONLY then – can their anti-modernity screed be paid attention; until then it is the whining of humanity’s losers.

This is being caused by millennials and it’s not just in academia. It is happening in every facet of our lives. When was the last time you saw a completely white family in any commercial on TV? My son does storyboards for many different commercials and the companies have told him to mix it up and have some of each but no total white families. This is the millennial influence that they received when they were in school. I have a son and a daughter who are both millennials one is conservative and one is looney. My daughter is a wonderful lady but has no love or respect for our country or military. She worked for the VA and dealt with the bottom crowd of losers and drug addicts. Illegals are no biggie and abortion is number one even though she has two beautiful children and most likely never have one. They are polluting every organization and company in America. If we had a world war, I don’t think we could fight it with the young people we have today. When I grew up a “Safe space” was the jail and to be triggered was to be shot. I don’t see how we are going to get through this period without a serious rebellion.

As an undergraduate at Cornell in the early to mid 80’s I remember this crap starting to bubble up. At the time students still had some cover for conservative opinions because the country was somewhat politically right of center with Reagan in the White House. At the time PC speech was the big issue. I remember a student run conservative paper run David Brown that was very critical of left-wing positions. The Cornell Daily Sun’s editor was Marc Lacey, who went on to a career at the New York Times and is currently one of its managing editors. But I clearly remember the lines being drawn at Cornell in the early 80’s. These might have been some early salvos in the on-going war between left and right. David Brown also went on to a career in journalism if memory serves and as a conservative voice.

Women students now represent the majority of the student population at colleges in the United States, according to spring 2021 enrollment estimates from the nonprofit organization, the National Student Clearinghouse. Data show that 59.5 percent of college students in the United States were women in spring 2021, while 40.5 percent were men.

There are 100 women born for every 105 men in the US.

patriarchy ?