Worth Reading January 10, 2023
JDQB: The Woke World
For those of you who follow the daily madness of the woke world, which does not seem to be going away, several recent short articles are of interest. The first is by Jonathan Turley titled “Diversity Through Obscurity: Applicants’ told To Delete The Names Of Schools On Their Resumes.” This is not a university or Government directive, but a New York real estate consulting firm. To achieve diversity goals, the company wants applicants to list only the degree they got and not where it came from.
The second such piece is from the Wall Street Journal, and hence behind a pay wall. The piece is titled: Inside the Woke Indoctrination Machine by two authors who write regularly on education. The article is based on nearly 100 hours of leaks from the 108 workshops held virtually last year for the National Association of Independent Schools’ People of Color Conference. According to the authors the leaked videos “… act as a Rosetta Stone for deciphering the DEI playbook.” No short summary does the article justice and I’m not sure how many independent private schools in this country buy into the program described, although I am aware that my own alma mater certainly does, which has caused me to reconsider on non-trivial planned gift to the school.
The final piece in this woke trilogy is a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled The U.S. Government’s Woke Training. This received fairly wide attention and readers may therefore be somewhat familiar with it from other sources. But the WSJ editorial focused on details from hundreds of pages of diversity and inclusion training materials used by the federal government in 2021 and obtained under the FOIA. Especially noteworthy is that the US Army offered three separate modules on transgender policy: one for “Commanders at all Levels, another for “Special Staff”, and a third for “Units and Soldiers.” Considering that the mission of armed Services is quite specific to defense matters (not to mention vital to the national interest) it is somewhat depressing to see the military mired in the special Orwellian vocabulary and training of today’s DEI regime.
To all of which WDM adds the quote of the week: “We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that stupid people won’t be offended.”
Christopher Rufo sounds a more hopeful note, based on the migration of what he calls “The Quiet Right” to small towns and where conservatives are reshaping education and culture away from the woke orthodoxy. WDM hopes Rufo is correct, and that those migrating into Talbot County will support our conservative values and not impose the failed policies and culture of the cities they are leaving.
WDM: Immigration
Another trenchant comment on President Biden’s trip to a deserted border comes from Noah Rothman in Commentary. Rothman’s description of “Biden’s insult at the border” is vividly illustrated by this photo of El Paso streets before and during his visit.
The editors: Ukraine
Three articles on the defense of Ukraine stand out this week. A comment in the establishment journal Foreign Policy describes a strategy of deep strikes into Russia as a proportional response to Russia’s terror bombing, and that Washington must provide more advanced long-range weapons if Ukraine is to carry out this plan.
Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates agree on the need for more advanced weaponry and point out that time is not on Ukraine’s side. They end with an observation on our national interest: “The way to avoid confrontation with Russia in the future is to help Ukraine push back the invader now. That is the lesson of history that should guide us, and it lends urgency to the actions that must be taken — before it is too late.”
A commentator who has worked for democracy in Ukraine for decades counters the scurrilous attacks on President Zelensky as a corrupt leader of a kleptocracy. He recounts the history of democratic and anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, and observes that American investment in Ukraine is not confined to recent deliveries of military equipment: “For decades, Washington has invested in supporting the institutions that enabled Ukraine to take a different path than Russia, a path toward democracy and independence and away from autocracy and subservience, and to tackle corruption to serve citizens instead of fostering kleptocracy to steal from them.”