The takeover of our education system by IDEOLOGUES is likely one of the most substantial THREATS TO THE FUTURE of the country

A commentary on the day before the election

By Norbert Gleicher, MD, Medical Director and Chief Scientist at The Center for Human Reproduction in New York City. He can be contacted through The Reproductive Times or directly at either ngleicher@thechr.com or ngleicher@rockefeller.edu


Briefing: The uproar at many of the country’s leading universities and colleges after the events of October 7, 2023, have highlighted several discoveries that really should not have been the surprises they ended up being. Among those, of course, the most disturbing discovery was the blatant antisemitism at those institutions of higher learning not only among students but also among many of their professors and administrators. Outbid by the attention this subject deservingly received in the media, what has been to a significant degree left unreported is the fact that this antisemitism is only the symptom and not the disease. The disease is the complete takeover by ideologues of advanced education—or, actually, of all education starting in kindergarten—and continuing until college or university. And how complete this take-over really is can now also be seen in the politicization of funding organizations like the National Science Foundation or the U.K.-based Wellcome Trust which are charged with funding the best and brightest but now decided to instead invest their money in promoting DEI. The ramifications for this country from switching substantial financial support from meritocracy to DEI cannot be overemphasized.


This is, indeed, what appears to be happening based on a recent article by Rupa Subramanya in The Free Press. It has become a must-read for everybody in academia since it laid bare the transformative changes introduced by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in its funding of research (1).  And one is left astonished, disturbed, and extremely worried because the funding of grants by scientific merit seems to significant degrees to have been replaced by funding grants based first and foremost on their perceived social and political values.

 

This is how grants claiming to explore “white supremacy” and “non-normative forms of gender and sexuality” were apparently advanced over much more scientifically substantial studies with the potential to change the world, which has always been, or at least used to be, the goal of the NSF in awarding grants to researchers. Concluding that DEI has been transforming the NSF, Subramanya’s article becomes terrible news for anybody interested in maintaining the country’s increasingly shaky lead in scientific research.

 

Her Free Press article noted a recent Congressional report (in full disclosure from Republican members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation) based on an analysis of all NSF grants between 2021 and April of 2024 which revealed almost unbelievable numbers: from over $20 billion awarded in grants by the NSF in these approximately three years, over $2 billion (over 10% of funded grants) no longer prioritized scientific quality in awarding grants but prioritized other aspects of grant submissions. And this did not happen accidentally, but, according to Subramanya, has become a central feature of grant-awarding by the NSF.

 

And the U.S. is, of course, not alone in this. We were recently made aware that the U.K.-based Wellcome Trust, with a £36.8 billion investment portfolio (USD $47,683 billion), instituted similar changes to its grant selection processes, allegedly awarding between 25% and 33% of total grant evaluation points to considerations of whether applicants paid appropriate attention to DEI.

 

How far this redirection of grant support by the NSF has gone off into the political becomes obvious if one looks at some of the grant recipients: Marwa Elshakry in the Congressional report was found to be a co-recipient of a grant (and to be fully transparent again, considering many other cited grants, it was a relatively small-sum grant) meant to identify how (and, yes, this almost impossible-to-understand word scramble was really the chosen subject of the application) “hegemonic narratives have sought to obfuscate not only the contemporary existence of non-normative sexual experiences in certain national contexts, but also aimed to bury any historical traces of non-normative forms of gender and sexuality” (1).

Marwa Elshakry, PhD

Is an Associate Professor at Columbia University in NYC in the Department of History, who specializes in the history of science, technology, and medicine in the modern Middle East. She earned her PhD from Princeton University (2).

She being a grant recipient of the NSF is of interest for several reasons: (i) The subject of her grant apparently does not correspond to what Columbia University describes as her area of specialty (see footnote to figure above); (ii) As Subramanya notes in her article, Elshakry and her co-recipient on the grant, history student Jamil Sbitan, were among several grant recipients from the NSF who held leadership positions of prominence during the campus protests against Israel at Columbia University where the unrest and encampments at university campuses around the country had their beginning after the events of October 7, 2023. (iii) Considering that Elshakry allegedly justified the October 7 massacre by Hamas, was allegedly since November of 2023 a “coordinating member” of the Columbia group called the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine-CBT (FSJP-CBT) (3), and therefore – very obviously – must be viewed as a supporter of Hamas and the organization’s policies in Gaza, according to the anonymously run website Canary Mission, the subject of her NSF grant can only be viewed as hypocritical. Imagine how the subjects addressed in this project would be viewed by Hamas in Gaza!

 

Interestingly, Elshakry is, according to Subramanya, on (we assume paid) leave this semester, which is how Columbia University has been avoiding the firing of many faculty members who, after October 7, very obviously breached Columbia University rules (and often federal laws). In “laying low” in its responses to obvious transgressions by students and faculty members in support of the atrocities committed by Hamas after the October 7, the administration of Columbia University, as just recently was revealed, followed the rather shocking advice of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Dem., NY; and, interestingly, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the country), recently released in a report from the House Education and the Workforce Committee. The report claims that Schumer allegedly advised the then-President of the university, Minouche Shafik, after pro-Hamas violence had broken out on campus, “to keep heads down” and not to be concerned about the horrors because “political problems are really only among Republicans” (4).

 

The obscenity of Schumer’s words, of course, go far beyond just the fact that he is Jewish. We, indeed, would argue that one’s religion—as much as possible—should not affect one’s politics. But what makes this alleged Schumer episode so obscene is that it reflects how the politics (of the left) in this country have assumed full control over higher education with full cooperation from the educational establishment at even the nation’s most prominent universities.

 

But since we are already talking about Chuck Schumer whose political base from the very beginning has been in Brooklyn, and especially in the Jewish Orthodox community, he, indeed, increasingly resembles Senator Bernie Sanders (Dem., VT, and another prominent Jewish senator) in his anti-Israeli activism, first by attacking the qualifications of the Israeli prime minister and accusing him of being a barrier to peace with Hamas. But probably even more surprisingly, Schumer has for months now been singlehandedly blocking the passage of the so-called Antisemitism Awareness Act which passed the House with overwhelming bi-partisan support (320 to 91) following above-discussed events, by refusing to bring it to a Senate vote because “it divides Democrats” (4). This bill would define antisemitism by including anti-Zionism, and would push colleges and universities toward stronger enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.

 

It by now seems obvious that treating the symptoms, like in medicine, will at best only cover them up; but such treatment will not cure the disease. The disease is the complete takeover of the U.S. education system by ideologues rather than teachers. Unless we start treating the disease by removing politics from education, the country’s future looks bleak.


References

1.           Subramnya R. The Free Press. October 10, 2024. https://x.com/TheFP/status/1844061951556714998

2.           Columbia University. https://history.columbia.edu/person/elshakry-marwa/

3.           Canary Mission. https://canarymission.org/professor/Marwa_Elshakry

4.           The Editorial Board. New York Post. November 1, 2024. https://nypost.com/2024/11/01/opinion/traitor-chuck-schumer-sold-out-to-pro-hamas-thugs-at-columbia/

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