Pushback: University will hire no one who supports “critical race theory”
Still a supporter of Christianity and western civilization
Bring a gun to a knife fight: According to the president of Southern Wesleyan University, it refuses to hire anyone who supports “critical race theory”, and instead seeks out scholars who support the basic tenets of Christianity and western civilization.
[A]s Southern Wesleyan University President Bill Barker enters his eighth month at the helm of the private, four-year institution, he said he has made it a priority to educate critically on critical race theory. … “I made it very clear where SWU stands on critical race theory, and we made it very clear in our hiring processes,” Barker said in a Zoom interview with The College Fix. “Personnel is policy.”
“We’re not hiring people – and I’ve been clear since I came here and the Board of Trustees has supported this – who endorse critical race theory. We will have the courage to let faculty or staff go if they are teaching critical race theory.” Barker took the helm of the South Carolina-based campus in July 2022.
Barker’s policy is more than words. For example, as the article describes, he hired Nathan Street soon after Street was removed as the school district administrator in North Carolina because his superiors there discovered he had written articles and tweets as well as a book describing and condemning the leftist and queer indoctrination of children in the education system.
Street, in an interview with The College Fix, said he disagrees that racism is embedded in all parts of American society. He argues sociologists cling to critical race theory for power and use it to preach social justice when it results in the opposite. “Critical race theory is a wedge that is used to keep people divided,” Street said. “If they can keep people divided and disabled because of fear of racism, then they can easily destroy what they will. ‘They’ are the liberal, leftist, wealthy elites who want to maintain control over the levers of power in the world.”
Both Barker and Street place Jesus in a central part of their thinking, which makes a lot of sense as key members of the faculty of a self-described “Christian university”. Unlike other so-called Christian colleges, such as St. Olaf’s (which fired the director of its free speech institute for advocating free speech), or the University of Notre Dame (which though supposedly a Catholic college has hosted a number of pro-abortion and pro-queer events), it appears that Southern Wesleyan still actually believes in Christianity, and wishes to teach its values.
As a non-Christian American, I say “Hallelujah!” We need more of this kind of firm courage, not just from Christians but from other religious sects as well freedom-loving atheists. The principles of western civilization are designed to protect them all so that in the free marketplace of ideas the best ideas from any of them can move to the forefront, while the worst can be rejected freely.
The principles of critical race theory attempt to do the exact opposite, by demanding censorship and blacklisting of anyone who dares disagree with its tenets. That so many universities today now endorse this movement — and practice censorship and blacklisting with enthusiasm — goes against the very etymology of the word “university”, which is supposed to embrace the whole universe of ideas and knowledge.
SIDEBAR: I did no blacklist columns last week because I had simply burnt out. The number of such acts of oppression has become so horrible and unrelenting that I simply could not stomach writing about it. Fortunately, by the end of the week I started to come across a number of positive stories (such as the one above), and now intend to devote the next week or so on reporting these stories. All indicate that there are individuals of courage and principle still left in America willing to die for freedom and equal justice before the law.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Still a supporter of Christianity and western civilization
Bring a gun to a knife fight: According to the president of Southern Wesleyan University, it refuses to hire anyone who supports “critical race theory”, and instead seeks out scholars who support the basic tenets of Christianity and western civilization.
[A]s Southern Wesleyan University President Bill Barker enters his eighth month at the helm of the private, four-year institution, he said he has made it a priority to educate critically on critical race theory. … “I made it very clear where SWU stands on critical race theory, and we made it very clear in our hiring processes,” Barker said in a Zoom interview with The College Fix. “Personnel is policy.”
“We’re not hiring people – and I’ve been clear since I came here and the Board of Trustees has supported this – who endorse critical race theory. We will have the courage to let faculty or staff go if they are teaching critical race theory.” Barker took the helm of the South Carolina-based campus in July 2022.
Barker’s policy is more than words. For example, as the article describes, he hired Nathan Street soon after Street was removed as the school district administrator in North Carolina because his superiors there discovered he had written articles and tweets as well as a book describing and condemning the leftist and queer indoctrination of children in the education system.
Street, in an interview with The College Fix, said he disagrees that racism is embedded in all parts of American society. He argues sociologists cling to critical race theory for power and use it to preach social justice when it results in the opposite. “Critical race theory is a wedge that is used to keep people divided,” Street said. “If they can keep people divided and disabled because of fear of racism, then they can easily destroy what they will. ‘They’ are the liberal, leftist, wealthy elites who want to maintain control over the levers of power in the world.”
Both Barker and Street place Jesus in a central part of their thinking, which makes a lot of sense as key members of the faculty of a self-described “Christian university”. Unlike other so-called Christian colleges, such as St. Olaf’s (which fired the director of its free speech institute for advocating free speech), or the University of Notre Dame (which though supposedly a Catholic college has hosted a number of pro-abortion and pro-queer events), it appears that Southern Wesleyan still actually believes in Christianity, and wishes to teach its values.
As a non-Christian American, I say “Hallelujah!” We need more of this kind of firm courage, not just from Christians but from other religious sects as well freedom-loving atheists. The principles of western civilization are designed to protect them all so that in the free marketplace of ideas the best ideas from any of them can move to the forefront, while the worst can be rejected freely.
The principles of critical race theory attempt to do the exact opposite, by demanding censorship and blacklisting of anyone who dares disagree with its tenets. That so many universities today now endorse this movement — and practice censorship and blacklisting with enthusiasm — goes against the very etymology of the word “university”, which is supposed to embrace the whole universe of ideas and knowledge.
SIDEBAR: I did no blacklist columns last week because I had simply burnt out. The number of such acts of oppression has become so horrible and unrelenting that I simply could not stomach writing about it. Fortunately, by the end of the week I started to come across a number of positive stories (such as the one above), and now intend to devote the next week or so on reporting these stories. All indicate that there are individuals of courage and principle still left in America willing to die for freedom and equal justice before the law.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Zimmerman stated;
“The principles of critical race theory attempt to do the exact opposite, by demanding censorship and blacklisting of anyone who dares disagree with its tenets”
Where does such authoritarian actions lead?
China has a new emperor.
https://www.visiontimes.com/2023/03/30/china-removes-all-references-to-marxism-from-central-government-guidelines-leaving-only-xi-jinping-thought.html
This is big, like the Berlin wall falling.
Or Hitler declaring himself the Fuhrer of Germany.
Local universities are embracing Marxism, following the path of other nations that destroyed themselves (including Venezuela recently…)
There’s still hope that the rational thought will win in the end.
The good intentions that are destroying this country are quickly resulting in their own destruction. (A house built upon sand, and no honor among thieves)
As a British Lord said in parliament recently, the illusion of the left versus the right as the great hope of the nation, is nothing more than the left cheek and the right cheek of the same butt. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting.
The only hope of the irrational left is to control the media using AI to scrub the Internet all negative references to the disasters that befall us. (you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time…)
Pull down statues and rewrite history to make the next generation believe a “lie” that never existed, it’s difficult to rule an informed and rational population.
It’ll be interesting to watch as China rewrite history once more. How many cultural revolutions is this now?
In the first chapter of the “three body problem” sci-fi that was written in China, the cultural revolution describe there (that Zimmerman has also displayed at times as capitalist and intellectuals are shamed and killed) is occurring now in our universities almost as if the following the Chinese marxist cultural revolution model… Right down to the little red book! Very interesting and informative parallels.
Currently, State controlled media will only play “free election advertisements” of variations of Trump.
Playing the fiddle while Rome burns…
The principles of western civilization are designed to protect them all
Which are the principles of Christianity. Which is why Progressivism works so hard to destroy them – they get in the way of their utopia.
“I did no blacklist columns last week because I had simply burnt out.”
That’s good. The evil we see is so horrifying it’s healthy to take a break once in a while.
“All indicate that there are individuals of courage and principle still left in America willing to die for freedom and equal justice before the law.”
Some on our side have already been killed in the war. Some have lost everything.
I’m still optimistic that our side will win but it will be ugly.
Godspeed.
One of the things that things Trump has promised to cut off money from universities that teach such things as CRT.