Woki-leaks South Dakota is back today with another report on what’s happening at USD, and seems to be pointing a finger at Provost Kurt Hackemer for putting the social engineers in positions of authority to push the woke agenda. As noted in part..
These first three paragraphs are telling. The authors make the claim that “Eurocentric bias” pervades USD and/or society in general. This is consistent with the general Social Justice position that the United States is a bastion of systemic racism, White supremacy, sexism, and so on. ..
And..
Giving credit where credit is due, the authors of the letter thank USD Provost Kurt Hackemer for having helped build this network and for installing activists in positions of power:
These experts in “equity and inclusion” appear to include one of the authors of the open letter, Professor Mandie Weinandt. On February 3, 2021, the Provost’s office announced that Dr. Weinandt will be taking over as head of USD’s Center for Teaching and Learning later this year. A few days later, Weinandt suggested on Twitter that she may spend her time preparing for her new role by learning how better to scapegoat White people for society’s ills and “weaponize” the Woke propaganda tracts she’s been reading (see Weinandt’s twitter page for more details) to liberate the “oppressed minds” of students of color)
4 thoughts on “Woki-Leaks SD Claims USD Provost helping to promote woke agenda at USD”
I have communications with SDBOR dating back to 2011 that seem to indicate to me that the SD university system is leaving a very big opportunity on the table with the way it conducts itself. I think a full public audit of all South Dakota university budgets, programs, research outcomes, associates, affiliates, and funding sources by citizen information scientists, compensated at something like the market rate for information scientists using COVID money (or obviously other funding somehow) would be a fantastic way to work toward full employment in future proof tech jobs.
I can do my part by providing a complete educational curriculum from K through college level graduation and beyond using our intellectual property at DB2DOM dot com.
Fundamentally, software is just a writing endeavor.
Amazon knows this very well ..
Now, Parler does, too.
“The authors make the claim that “Eurocentric bias” pervades USD and/or society in general. This is consistent with the general Social Justice position that the United States is a bastion of systemic racism, White supremacy, sexism, and so on. ..”
^ Love this. Thinking is hard! Critical thinking is even harder! But it feels like a logical leap is being made here. “Eurocentric bias” means an education that has horse blinders up when it comes to things outside the realm of what we all learned when we were 12 years old in middle school. That seems fine by me. Students should be exposed to the wider world in that respect. The fact that most people see Isaac Newton, a European, as the harbinger of calculus while ignoring the deeper history with its roots in the Middle East is probably something that falls under this umbrella, just as an example.
But the leap comes when you conflate the acknowledgment of a “Eurocentric bias” with “the general Social Justice position that the United States is a bastion of systemic racism, White supremacy, sexism, and so on.”
Has the U.S. enacted and supported policies that bolster systemic racism and white supremacy? Uh, yeah. Ignoring that history would be pretty stupid. I mean, it might feel nice for the smooth-brained folks in back, but for college students, such a limited understanding would be lacking.
But the author of these posts seems to believe that if you acknowledge the United States’ very evident past, you’re somehow sullying its present. That’s not the case. You can be a proud Catholic while still having an understanding of the very uncool things the Catholic Church has done in its long history. Understanding those previous shortcomings is an essential part of making sure they don’t happen again. Learning from your mistakes, so to speak, unless, of course, you think it would be neat to have more white supremacy and sexism in the present, in which case I can understand why learning from the past might be spooky for you.
The Germans had a period after WW2 where the country’s actions leading up to and during the war were totally taboo. In the 50s and 60s, a term popped up called “Vergangenheitsbewaltigung” – oof! It roughly translates as “learning from mistakes of the past” and refers to the idea of how a nation can learn from its past collective sins. A similar concept in our society, which I assume many people in this comments section may have a negative opinion of, for whatever reason, are Truth and Reconciliation committees/commissions. You should check out the German concept if you have a free second, it’s pretty interesting.
Working through the past is hard, but it doesn’t have to mean you slander your nation. Instead, it can help us all become more patriotic and proud of where we live when we see how much we’ve grown and what we still have in store.
When students learn calculus, they generally just learn calculus. The discussion doesn’t focus on how Newton was European, so “Europe rules!” Maybe in 1930s England. But not really now. Most people don’t care about the race of who did what. The project of turning history into some sort of racial/cultural awards ceremony in which now we’re going to redistribute the awards or whatever is misguided. It just annoys normal people and plays into the thinking of racists. It also perpetuates the problem of seeing everything in terms of race and difference.
Also, it’s pretty clear that the social justice warriors are not about careful criticism of real injustices. Maybe you are. But the wokies are all about exaggerating problems to justify punishing and controlling people.
Fair, but the definition of social justice warrior gets a bit murky, as the author of the blog highlights. There is a difference between professional umbrage takers and those who are, rightfully, challenging US pedagogy and its historic underpinnings. That nuance, however, doesn’t make for great outrage fuel. Instead, we paint a picture in our minds of some early 20s, mult-colored hair having caricature or middle aged marxist professor and get upset about it rather than discuss the underlying issues. We exercise righteous indignation towards people whose righteous indignation upsets us without recognizing the irony.
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I have communications with SDBOR dating back to 2011 that seem to indicate to me that the SD university system is leaving a very big opportunity on the table with the way it conducts itself. I think a full public audit of all South Dakota university budgets, programs, research outcomes, associates, affiliates, and funding sources by citizen information scientists, compensated at something like the market rate for information scientists using COVID money (or obviously other funding somehow) would be a fantastic way to work toward full employment in future proof tech jobs.
I can do my part by providing a complete educational curriculum from K through college level graduation and beyond using our intellectual property at DB2DOM dot com.
Fundamentally, software is just a writing endeavor.
Amazon knows this very well ..
Now, Parler does, too.
“The authors make the claim that “Eurocentric bias” pervades USD and/or society in general. This is consistent with the general Social Justice position that the United States is a bastion of systemic racism, White supremacy, sexism, and so on. ..”
^ Love this. Thinking is hard! Critical thinking is even harder! But it feels like a logical leap is being made here. “Eurocentric bias” means an education that has horse blinders up when it comes to things outside the realm of what we all learned when we were 12 years old in middle school. That seems fine by me. Students should be exposed to the wider world in that respect. The fact that most people see Isaac Newton, a European, as the harbinger of calculus while ignoring the deeper history with its roots in the Middle East is probably something that falls under this umbrella, just as an example.
But the leap comes when you conflate the acknowledgment of a “Eurocentric bias” with “the general Social Justice position that the United States is a bastion of systemic racism, White supremacy, sexism, and so on.”
Has the U.S. enacted and supported policies that bolster systemic racism and white supremacy? Uh, yeah. Ignoring that history would be pretty stupid. I mean, it might feel nice for the smooth-brained folks in back, but for college students, such a limited understanding would be lacking.
But the author of these posts seems to believe that if you acknowledge the United States’ very evident past, you’re somehow sullying its present. That’s not the case. You can be a proud Catholic while still having an understanding of the very uncool things the Catholic Church has done in its long history. Understanding those previous shortcomings is an essential part of making sure they don’t happen again. Learning from your mistakes, so to speak, unless, of course, you think it would be neat to have more white supremacy and sexism in the present, in which case I can understand why learning from the past might be spooky for you.
The Germans had a period after WW2 where the country’s actions leading up to and during the war were totally taboo. In the 50s and 60s, a term popped up called “Vergangenheitsbewaltigung” – oof! It roughly translates as “learning from mistakes of the past” and refers to the idea of how a nation can learn from its past collective sins. A similar concept in our society, which I assume many people in this comments section may have a negative opinion of, for whatever reason, are Truth and Reconciliation committees/commissions. You should check out the German concept if you have a free second, it’s pretty interesting.
Working through the past is hard, but it doesn’t have to mean you slander your nation. Instead, it can help us all become more patriotic and proud of where we live when we see how much we’ve grown and what we still have in store.
When students learn calculus, they generally just learn calculus. The discussion doesn’t focus on how Newton was European, so “Europe rules!” Maybe in 1930s England. But not really now. Most people don’t care about the race of who did what. The project of turning history into some sort of racial/cultural awards ceremony in which now we’re going to redistribute the awards or whatever is misguided. It just annoys normal people and plays into the thinking of racists. It also perpetuates the problem of seeing everything in terms of race and difference.
Also, it’s pretty clear that the social justice warriors are not about careful criticism of real injustices. Maybe you are. But the wokies are all about exaggerating problems to justify punishing and controlling people.
Fair, but the definition of social justice warrior gets a bit murky, as the author of the blog highlights. There is a difference between professional umbrage takers and those who are, rightfully, challenging US pedagogy and its historic underpinnings. That nuance, however, doesn’t make for great outrage fuel. Instead, we paint a picture in our minds of some early 20s, mult-colored hair having caricature or middle aged marxist professor and get upset about it rather than discuss the underlying issues. We exercise righteous indignation towards people whose righteous indignation upsets us without recognizing the irony.