Another big week. Here are a few headlines you may have missed if you put down your phone at all during the past seven days:
Can Never-Trump conservatives ever prove their case? At NR.
the story of recent right-wing politics has been a nearly unrelieved study in bomb-throwing and icon-smashing, from the ’90s distempers of Gingrichism on through to the neoconservative capture of foreign policy in the George W. Bush administrations to the intersecting bigotries of the Tea Party and Birther movements in the Obama age. To truly brand an honest inquiry into conservative intellectual life as “Never Trump,” such an effort would also have to show how Trumpism is in fact a culmination of long-unruly, demagogic, and cynically jingoistic tendencies in the house of the American right.
Wow: Brigham Young University removes its restriction on same-sex romantic displays. At CNN.
- We should ask again: Will evangelical colleges follow BYU? Here at ILYBYGTH.
Ouch. Olivet University admits to fraud. At CT.
California-based Olivet University—represented by its president Tracy Davis—pleaded guilty to falsifying business records and engaging in conspiracy, and was fined $1.25 million, according to the DA’s press officer.
Historian John Thelin puts “free college” in historical context, at HNN.
The historic reminder is that creating and funding colleges has been – and remains – the prerogative of state and local governments.
Another big story: CA has to spend $50 million to help kids learn to read, at EdWeek.
The state did not meet its constitutional responsibility to educate all children and had not followed suggestions from its own report on the problem from years earlier, the court filing claimed. . . . The settlement is a “milestone” that represents “a comprehensive, holistic and far-reaching program for achieving literacy in California,” said Public Counsel lawyer Mark Rosenbaum, who sued along with the law firm Morrison & Foerster.
- More on this story from the LA Times.
Under the settlement with the state, most of the funding will be awarded over three years to 75 public elementary schools, including charters, with the poorest third-grade reading scores in California over the last two years. The agreement comes after the novel lawsuit contended that the students’ low literacy levels violated California’s constitutional mandate to provide all children with equal access to an education, said attorney Mark Rosenbaum at the pro bono law firm Public Counsel.
Time for your Texas-Man story of the week, from TT.
Almost no one — Democrat or Republican, wealthy or poor, old or young — wants to see [Robert Morrow] elected to the State Board of Education, the 15-member body that decides what millions of public school children learn. Yet according to political pollsters, Morrow’s chances in this March’s Republican primary can’t be ruled out.
History teacher in hot water for comparing Trump to Nazis and Soviets, at NBC.
A slide used in an Advanced Placement history class at Loch Raven High School in Towson shows a picture of Trump above pictures of a Nazi swastika and a flag of the Soviet Union. Two captions read “wants to round up a group of people and build a giant wall” and “oh, THAT is why it sounds so familiar!”
Michael Petrilli: Watch out: Schools are cramming leftist history down kids’ throats. At NYP.
“In many schools, you are more likely to encounter the 1619 or Zinn version of history than anything positive,” he said. “We’re telling our young people that America is racist and oppressive and has only failed over the years to do right by the most vulnerable, rather than that we were founded with incredible ideals that we have sometimes failed to live up to.”
We had a lively Sunday discussion of this question on the Tweeter. Short version: We settled nothing.
I Love You but You're Going to Hell 