Education & Schools – MILESFORTIS

Missouri Making Moves to Bump School Safety Up a Notch or 12

Keeping students safe is as universal of a goal as you’re going to find in such a divided country. The problem, however, is that we’re divided to a point that we can’t even agree on how to keep them safe. Some people want to restrict the rights of ordinary people to such a degree that they can delude themselves into thinking students can’t be hurt by violent people.

The rest of us recognize that violent people aren’t going to be stopped with laws. If they were, the laws against hurting kids would be more than enough.

So, in that vein, it seems Missouri is stepping up the game a few dozen notches and really taking the goal of keeping kids safe seriously.

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School president cites study finding guns don’t increase crime to oppose campus carry.

UPDATED – President Elizabeth Chilton’s opposition to campus carry included a study that found no link to increased crime

New Hampshire lawmakers should vote down campus carry because some people might feel less safe, according to a university president.

Editor’s note: The article has been updated to show the legislation is dead.

Legislators were considering House Bill 1793, which would prohibit public universities from regulating guns on campus and establish a commission to study campus carry. The bill officially died last Thursday, however.

According to a student government survey cited by The New Hampshire, a majority of respondents said they would be less likely to attend UNH if campus carry were allowed. In response to the perceived campus climate, the student senate passed a resolution opposing the bill.

President Elizabeth Chilton also took an institutional stance against the law, sending out both a campuswide message and testifying to the state senate judiciary committee. She (pictured) submitted testimony along with Don Birx, president of Keene State College and Plymouth State University, and Mark Collopy, the police chief for UNH.

They said “research from states that have adopted campus carry has found increased fear of crime, lower perceptions of campus safety, and reduced confidence in campus police.”

But neither study found a link to actual crime and campus carry.

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Student Injured in Antioch Shooting Sues AI Detection Company

We’ve written a lot about the use of AI to detect firearms. Proponents of the technology claim it not only works but can work faster than any other tool available to prevent school shootings. Some of these systems call the police immediately upon noticing a gun, even if it hasn’t been drawn.

Assuming, of course, they don’t misidentify a bag of Doritos as a firearm. Or a clarinet.

The problem with AI is that it’s more artificial than actually intelligent. It makes massive mistakes, and because of how it works, it can create panic and confusion when it creates a false positive.

But a student injured in the Antioch High School is taking aim at the company the school used for its AI gun detection system for failing to recognize the threat.

A student injured during the deadly shooting at Antioch High School has filed a lawsuit against the company behind the school’s AI-powered gun detection system, alleging the technology failed to detect the shooter’s handgun before shots were fired.

The lawsuit, filed May 1 in Davidson County Circuit Court, was brought by Antonyous Henin, who was 17 years old at the time of the Jan. 22, 2025 shooting at Antioch High School. The complaint names Virginia-based Omnilert LLC and Lebanon-based System Integrations, Inc. as defendants.

On January 22, 2025, 17-year-old Soloman Henderson opened fire in the Antioch High School cafeteria, killing 16-year-old Josselin Dayana Corea Escalante before taking his own life.

According to the complaint, Henin was injured and another student was wounded.

At the time of the shooting, Antioch High School did not have traditional metal detectors in place. Instead, the school had AI-powered security cameras designed to identify weapons….
The lawsuit alleges Antioch High School had an Omnilert gun detection system installed and operational at the time of the shooting. The system was designed to use artificial intelligence to detect visible firearms and trigger emergency alerts.

Henin’s attorneys claim Omnilert marketed the system as technology that could “detect firearms — both indoors and outdoors — before a shot is fired” and “turn passive cameras into life-saving tools.”

Yeah, well, that worked out swimmingly, didn’t it?

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Missouri schools could hire armed ‘rangers’ under bill sent to governor

A bill to create a new faction of school protection officers with “physical fitness superior to a U.S. Marine” got final approval from Missouri lawmakers in the final days of the legislative session.

The legislation seeks to allow schools to hire volunteer or paid guards called “Missouri Rangers” who could carry a gun on school grounds.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. David Gregory of Chesterfield, told senators he wanted to give schools “a choice to have a higher trained armed guard.”

He compared current protection-officer requirements to that of a “Walmart guard with a gun.” Currently, schools can appoint teachers and administrators as school protection officers, allowing them to carry a gun or “self-defense spray device” with training and a concealed carry permit.

School protection officers must undergo a minimum of 112 hours of training, according to a Department of Public Safety rule. The state also has school resource officers, which are law enforcement officers with an additional 40+ hours of training related to school safety.

Gregory’s legislation proposes a maximum of 160 hours of training, specifying that the program must include lessons on “close-quarter combat,” bomb and arson training, de-escalation and others.

Prior to training, rangers must pass a physical fitness test. For those 35 and younger, they must “complete a minimum of 40 pushups in less than one minute” and be able to run 1½ miles in less than 12½ minutes. The legislation asks the state’s Peace Office Standards and Training Commission to identify lower standards for older applicants.

The bill’s first pass through the Senate brought little opposition, garnering the support of groups like the St. Louis County Police Association in its first committee hearing. In early April, just two senators voted against the proposal, but Senate Democrats unanimously voted against it when it returned to the chamber last week with less than a day before session adjourned for the year.

House Democrats unanimously rejected the proposal, uncomfortable with the proposition of having more firearms in schools.

“The answer to guns in schools is not more guns in schools,” said state Rep. Elizabeth Fuchs, a St. Louis Democrat, advocating instead for mental health support for students.

Their arguments did not sway House Republicans, who unanimously voted in support of the bill.

State Rep. Burt Whaley, a Republican from Clever, has experience training school staff on what to do in case of a shooting. The key benefit of having a ranger, he said, was being able to quickly respond to threats.

In one school he trained, the local law enforcement estimated that it could take up to 45 minutes for them to arrive.

“It is typically another person with a gun that knows how to use it, that’s trained how to use it … they’re usually the ones that are able to subdue (a threat),” he said.

The bill follows other proposals passed last year addressing security concerns, like laws directing schools to share emergency operations plans with local law enforcement and report school safety incidents to the state’s education department.

Some of the provisions passed in last year’s legislation have yet to be implemented because of a lack of funding, such as a requirement to equip schools with bleeding control kits and train staff on how to apply a tourniquet.

Gov. Mike Kehoe has until mid-July to sign or veto bills before they become law.

DeSantis Signs Law Arming Trained College, University Faculty After FSU Shooting

A year after a gunman opened fire on Florida State University, trained college and university faculty can carry guns onto campus under a bill Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Friday.

“It puts the bad guys on the defense — they don’t know who’s going to be able to offer them resistance,” DeSantis said during a Miami press conference. “We’ve taken this more seriously than probably anyone else has … in our state’s history.”

He referred to Florida’s guardian program, a state initiative allowing schools to train certain staff or hire security to wield firearms for self-defense. It was created for public K-12 schools in 2018 following shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead. The tragedy unfolded while a sheriff’s deputy delayed confronting the gunman for nearly five minutes.

DeSantis later removed him from office.

Under the new law, HB 757, the program will be extended to colleges and universities. Staff hoping to become guardians must complete 144 hours of training — 132 hours with firearms. Although the program isn’t mandatory, college and university presidents have the power to appoint their school guardians.

“Sadly but undeniably, institutions of learning have become targets of violence in our state and other states,” Senate sponsor Don Gaetz, a Republican from Crestview, said in a written statement.

“As parents and grandparents, we want our students to be safe and secure when they are on campus. This legislation ensures our institutions will use commonsense safeguards as well as high-tech systems to prevent violence where possible and respond quickly and effectively when needed.”

The measure comes 13 months after 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner shot to death two and wounded five others outside FSU’s busy Student Union in the middle of final exams. Police shot him in the jaw three minutes after he opened fire, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Despite the speedy response from law enforcement, lawmakers agreed new reinforcements were needed. This included funding for more locks on classroom doors — after some students reported that they couldn’t lock themselves away from the shooter — and increased security measures.

Other provisions in the package signed Friday include:

Makes it a second-degree felony to fire a weapon within 1,000 feet of a school.
Promotes the use of a mobile suspicious activity reporting tool, like FortifyFL, to quickly alert law enforcement to dangerous circumstances.
Requires a student’s threat assessment reports and psychological evaluations to be transferred from a K-12 school to their college or university upon enrollment.
Mandates schools create family reunification plans, active assailant response plans, and threat-management teams.
Requires schools to annually conduct security risk assessments.
Increases training for faculty and staff to identify and respond to mental health problems.
Further connects students with mental health services.

Oops…Class Cancelled After High School Resource Officer Leaves – And Loses – His Gun in a Bathroom.

“Classes have been canceled Tuesday at Forest View Educational Center in Arlington Heights [Illinois] after a school resource officer lost their firearm in a restroom, the school said. Arlington Heights police said a school resource officer removed his service weapon while inside a restroom just before dismissal Monday. He realized it was gone moments later.”

As a trained law enforcement officer, that can be…awkward. But remember, our betters in the gun control industry tell us — with monotonous regularity — that only LEOS have the training, skills and mindset necessary for the awesome responsibility that is carrying a firearm.

Still, you have to wonder how long after his constitutional it took for Officer Snoozy to realize that his pistol wasn’t in his holster. Long enough, apparently for someone to have grabbed the gat before the cop could double back and check the stall.

Officers searched the building, reviewed surveillance video, and called in multiple K-9 unites trained to detect weapons, but the gun was never found. A school officials said they received confirmation that the gun is not in the building.

We certainly hope it turns up soon. The students will love the free day off today on a suburban Chicago spring Tuesday, but those young skulls full of mush need some educating. Because after all, the children are our future. We need to teach them well and let them lead the way. And it would be really great if that curriculum covers gun handling basics like… it’s a really bad idea to unholster your firearm and leave it in a bathroom stall.

BLUF
“Social-justice education is harming the very students it was meant to help,” Wilson concludes. “America’s most marginalized children are being left less educated, more excluded, and more vulnerable.” That’s not justice.

Focus on teaching kids to read — not fixing ‘root causes.’

Democrats “lost the plot on schools,” writes Charles Barone in Education Next. He suggests a “credible, student-centered education agenda” to regain leadership.

Democrats can “rejuvenate public education,” and “strengthen ties with Black, Latino, and suburban women — voting blocs that care deeply about school quality,” writes Thomas Toch in the Washington Monthly. But progressives and centrists have start talking to each other — and not just in insults.

Fordham’s Mike Petrilli spotlights the discussion on Schooled. In a follow-up, Vlad Kogan challenges Barone’s statement that, “public education desperately needs strengthening, but policymakers must address root causes by addressing the many hurdles in students’ lives that compound their challenges in classrooms.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, writes Kogan. As he writes in his book, No Adult Left Behind, “people have been saying the way to fix urban education is to fix “root causes” since at least the 1960s.”

“It’s much easier to teach an elementary school child how to read than to fix poverty, racism, and other root causes,” Kogan writes. “If we don’t know how to use public policy to ensure that all kids how to read by the end of third grade, the idea that we’ll figure out how to use policy to fix much more difficult issues underlying ‘root causes’ is just implausible.”

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There are things that are too stupid to be said by anyone but a professor of education. – Charlie Martin

It’s called ‘algebra’ because the Arab who figured it out called it “al Jabr”

Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate “whiteness”, “unearned privilege” in society.

A math education professor at the University of Illinois has argued in a recently published academic book that algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate “unearned privilege” among white people.

Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, made the claim in a anthology for math teachers, arguing that teachers must be aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” in society.

In the book chapter, the professor explains that she sees her role as a math educator not just in the way of an educator, but that of an activist against whiteness, which she claims facilitates “microagresssions” and “privilege” between those who excel in math and those who do not.

“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Gutierrez argued.

Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”

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Arizona Moves Forward With K-12 Firearm Safety Education Bill

Arizona Senate Bill 1424 has passed the Senate and has passed the House Education Committee and the House Rules Committee. The bill requires school districts and charter schools to provide age-appropriate firearm safety awareness training in all grades, kindergarten through 12th grade.

The instruction is to be objective and not promote firearms ownership or any political position. The instruction is to be limited to accident prevention and personal safety awareness. It is to include guidance on safe firearms storage in homes and vehicles. The instruction is to provide guidance on what to do if a firearm is encountered, including not touching it and notifying an adult.

Inside the bill, there is a long list of restrictions on six things that may not be included in the instruction:

3. NOT INCLUDE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:

(a) A LIVE FIREARM.

(b) AMMUNITION OR SIMULATED AMMUNITION.

(c) A DEMONSTRATION THAT INVOLVES HANDLING, OPERATING, LOADING, UNLOADING OR FIRING A FIREARM.

(d) INSTRUCTION THAT IS INTENDED TO TRAIN STUDENTS IN THE USE OF FIREARMS.

(e) A MORAL JUDGMENT REGARDING LAWFUL FIREARM POSSESSION.

(f) AN INQUIRY, SURVEY OR REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ABOUT WHETHER A STUDENT, STUDENT’S PARENT OR MEMBER OF THE STUDENT’S HOUSEHOLD OWNS, POSSESSES OR MAY POSSESS A FIREARM OR ABOUT THE FIREARMS STORAGE PRACTICES OF A STUDENT, STUDENT’S PARENT OR MEMBER OF THE STUDENT’S HOUSEHOLD.

The Arizona Citizens Defense League (AZCDL) supports the legislation.

An advocate for gun storage legislation made the argument that the legislature should pass a bill requiring safe storage of guns instead. The SB 1424 is considered a partisan bill, supported mostly by Republicans, according to Legiscan.

Fatal firearms accidents have declined greatly since the 1930’s high mark. The number of firearms per person has increased about 3X during that period.

Firearms are among the many hazards children encounter as they grow up. Education, not prohibition, is the surest answer to their safety.

The bill has passed the Arizona legislature, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans. Republicans have a 17-13 advantage in the Senate and a 33-27 advantage in the House. SB 1424 might avoid a veto from Governor Hobbs (D), but it seems unlikely. Governor Katie Hobbs has earned a reputation for the number of vetoes she has given. Governor Hobbs is facing serious re-election challenges. She might sign SB 1424 to claim she is not against rights protected by the Second Amendment.

SB 1424 severely restricts what may be taught to students. This may be necessary to secure passage in a legislature with a very small Republican majority.

The bill is a step toward greater understanding of firearms safety. It makes students more aware of firearms. It has the advantage of not being overtly against the ownership or use of firearms. As “age-appropriate” instruction on firearms safety, later grade levels might include information about the legal status of firearms in Arizona. It is difficult for people to obey the law if they do not know what the law is. Firearms are among the many potentially hazardous items children encounter as they grow up.

It is far better to gun-proof the child than to attempt to create a gun-free environment.

Functional Illiteracy

The Age of Functional Illiteracy

Functional illiteracy was once a social diagnosis, not an academic one. It referred to those who could technically read but could not follow an argument, sustain attention, or extract meaning from a text. It was never a term one expected to hear applied to universities. And yet it has begun to surface with increasing regularity in conversations among faculty themselves. Literature professors now admit—quietly in offices, more openly in essays—that many students cannot manage the kind of reading their disciplines presuppose. They can recognise words; they cannot inhabit a text.

The evidence is no longer anecdotal. University libraries report historic lows in book borrowing. National literacy assessments show long-term declines in adult reading proficiency. Commentators in The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New York Times describe a generation for whom long-form reading has become almost foreign. A Victorian novel, once the ordinary fare of undergraduate study, now requires extraordinary accommodation. Even thirty pages of assigned reading can provoke anxiety, resentment, or open resistance.

It would be dishonest to ignore the role of the digital world in this transformation. Screens reward speed, fragmentation, and perpetual stimulation; sustained attention is neither required nor encouraged. But to lay the blame solely at the feet of technology is a convenient evasion. The crisis of reading within universities is not merely something that has happened to the academy. It is something the academy has, in significant measure, helped to produce.

The erosion of reading was prepared by intellectual shifts within the humanities themselves—shifts that began during the canon wars of the late twentieth century. Those battles were never only about which books should be taught. They were about whether literature possessed inherent value, whether reading required discipline, whether difficulty was formative or oppressive, and whether the humanities existed to shape students or merely to affirm them. In the decades that followed, entire traditions of reading were dismantled with remarkable confidence and astonishing speed.

The result is a moment of institutional irony. The very disciplines charged with preserving literary culture helped undermine the practices that made such culture possible. What we are witnessing now is not simply a failure of students to read, but the delayed consequence of ideas that taught generations of readers to approach texts with suspicion rather than attention, critique rather than encounter.

This essay is part of a larger project to trace that history, to explain how a war over the canon helped usher in an age in which reading itself is slipping from our grasp, and why the consequences of that war are now returning to the academy with unmistakable force.

Montana Accidentally Made Things Right on Gun-Free School Zones

I don’t think that schools should be totally gun-free zones. While I get that Bruen said that sensitive places could be gun-free, and schools are probably about as sensitive a place as you can name, I don’t think that barring lawful carry in schools for staff and parents is a winning strategy. After all, how many school shootings have we seen despite the schools having this status?

Yeah, plenty.

But the truth is that in most places, schools are as off-limits as they come. At least they are when it’s K-12 schools. Colleges are a different matter in many states, but below that level? The rules are firm.

And those rules include a “buffer zone” of sorts that prohibits the carrying of firearms around the school, regardless of most any other factor.

And Montana accidentally exposed a loophole and made things right, even if that’s not quite what they were trying to do.

Sometimes the most consequential gun control stories don’t start with a bill banning firearms. They start with lawmakers trying to expand freedom — and discovering that the Constitution doesn’t bend the way critics expect it to.

That is exactly what just happened in Montana.

In an effort to strengthen the right to carry, Montana lawmakers may have effectively erased gun-free school zones everywhere except on school property itself. Not through activism. Not through litigation designed to gut federal law. But through their own permitless carry statutes — and a federal court noticed.

The result is a ruling that has left gun-control advocates furious, school administrators uneasy, and Second Amendment supporters pointing out an inconvenient truth: when the state recognizes the right to carry as a right, federal carve-outs start to fall apart.

It all boils down to a guy who would go for a walk near a school. Sometimes, he’d carry a gun openly, and other times, it would be concealed. Local police told the school that he wasn’t breaking any state law, so they couldn’t do anything about it. The school moved kids away from the man and tried to erect visual barriers so no one would see him.

Eventually, the feds stepped in, arrested him, and saw the whole thing thrown out.

Why?

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because Montana statutorily authorizes concealed carry for eligible citizens, those citizens qualify for the federal licensing exception.

In plain terms: if everyone is licensed by law, then everyone qualifies for the exemption.

The court dismissed the charges and made it clear that the outcome wasn’t an accident; it was the logical result of Montana’s legislative choices.

The ruling emphasized that Montana did not delegate licensing authority to agencies or local officials. The Legislature itself granted the authority. Congress, the court said, did not clearly prohibit states from doing that.

As a result of that ruling, though, gun-free school zones are confined exclusively to the school itself, not the area around the school.

If schools are going to be gun-free zones, this is how it should be. The idea that the area around the school is also gun-free is a major problem because, frankly, people travel by those schools all the time. They have to in order to get to where they’re going, and unless they’re licensed under state law, they may be committing a felony.

The “buffer zone” thing has always been wrong, but Montana accidentally fixed it for residents there. Instead of just saying a license isn’t needed, they licensed everyone, which had an unintended but positive effect regarding the whole school zone thing.

Maybe other states should address this via their own constitutional carry laws. Most didn’t take quite the same approach as Montana, but they could make that happen and change things once and for all.

It would be a win for gun rights, sanity, and everything else decent in the universe, and the anti-gunners would still have their allegedly gun-free schools.

Again, not that it seems to do much good.

Brown Lawyers Up After Bungled Response to Mass Shooting, Retaining Former US Attorney
Security lapses have drawn scrutiny as Brown faces mounting questions over its response to the attack

Brown University has retained former federal prosecutor Zachary Cunha as it bolsters its legal team in the aftermath of last week’s mass shooting that killed two students and wounded nine others.

“Brown works routinely with outside counsel whose expertise complements that of the University’s Office of the General Counsel. In this case, we retained Zachary Cunha, the former United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island, to assist the University in coordinating with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies,” Brown said in a statement.

Cunha, who stepped down earlier this year as U.S. attorney for the District of Rhode Island, joined the law firm Nixon Peabody in March.

The decision to lawyer up comes after Brown faces increased scrutiny over its security policies in the wake of the shooting. Emergency sirens never sounded after the attack, and campus services took 20 minutes to send an alert out to students. Students then received a flurry of alerts that repeatedly conveyed incomplete or inaccurate information.

In recent months campus security received many complaints, including frustrations from law enforcement that security was not disclosing information surrounding bomb and shooting threats across campus. In October the school’s Security Patrolperson’s Association issued a vote of confidence in the university’s director of public safety and emergency management.

The public safety department also decided to decrease the number of field officers to make room for more administrative positions. The Patrolperson’s Association said this decision “directly contributed to an all-time low in morale and has strained the department’s ability to effectively serve the Brown University community.”

Brown could face legal issues over these lapses. At least two law firms have begun soliciting potential plaintiffs for civil lawsuits tied to the shooting, Providence Journal reported.

Anti-liberty/gun cracktivist’s
By Mike McDaniel

Some things, death and taxes among them, never change. In the same category are the specious arguments of anti-liberty/gun cracktivists. Whenever a horrific crime like a mass shooting occurs, they blame the gun and the Americans who would never commit such a crime.

They also have additional narratives they hope Americans can be tricked into believing, such as virtually every mass attack is carried out by white men, all of whom are domestic terrorist, racist, transphobic white supremacist, Ultra-MAGA, Nazi, haters determined to destroy “our democracy.”

One such cracktivist is apparently John Davenport:

Graphic: Fordham University Faculty Site. Public Domain.

Dr. Davenport tells us the idea of greater security for students and the public at large is a “fallacy,” and “would not make us much safer.” He should know. He’s a professor of peace and justice studies, which obviously makes him an expert about peace and justice and stuff.

Think about it for a minute. How much would it actually cost to put armed guards in every single store and restaurant, every 300 feet or so on beaches and at open air events, in every movie theater and every 200 feet at concerts, at every entrance to every building at any hospital, college, school, church, temple or mosque, at all streets junction where lots of traffic piles up – and so on?

Actually, he’s sort of right. In 2013 even the NRA was advocating armed guards in every school. The usual suspects were against that, and the idea eventually died because the costs were—and are—simply too high. The numbers aren’t exact, but there are more than 110,000 K-12 public and private schools in America. missiongraduatenm.org/number-of-schools-in-the-us/ Putting even one, full-time armed guard in each school is prohibitively expensive, and far more than one would be necessary.

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BLUF
The infrastructure of American decline is operating at full scale right now. The mechanisms are completely visible to anyone willing to look. The solutions are clear and well-defined. The only remaining question is whether enough Americans will demand action before the window of opportunity closes permanently.
Which will America choose?

How America’s Education System Became a Weapon Against Itself
Manufacturing Hatred: How $13 Billion Taught a Generation to Despise Jews and Their Country

When college students tore down posters of kidnapped Israeli children in October 2023, parents asked: where did this come from? The answer lies in curriculum materials developed at Brown University. These materials reached approximately one million students annually in roughly 8,000 high schools across America. What teachers didn’t know, and what parents never learned, is that the professor who shaped these materials was funded by a Middle Eastern government. His purpose was to advance one specific narrative: Israel as a settler colonial project. Not to debate it. Not to present multiple perspectives. To establish it as fact.

“This is not a debate,” Professor Beshara Doumani told a Brown audience in 2016. “And it’s not meant to be a debate.”

This is the root of American antisemitism’s resurgence. But antisemitism is just the visible symptom of something larger. The same infrastructure that taught a generation to hate Jews is now teaching them to hate America. The same foreign funding mechanisms that delegitimized Israel are delegitimizing Western civilization itself. America is being systematically dismantled. One classroom at a time. One algorithm at a time. One generation at a time.

The Hidden Infrastructure

Eleven Middle East Studies centers at America’s elite universities receive $260,000 each annually from the Department of Education under Title VI. That totals $2.9 million in taxpayer funding (National Association of Scholars, 2022). The Cold War-era program was originally designed to develop regional expertise for national security purposes. It became a pipeline for foreign influence when universities discovered they could supplement these federal grants with something far more lucrative.

Since 1981, American universities have accepted $13.1 billion from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait (Bard, 2024). Qatar alone contributed nearly $6 billion. Roughly 73% of these contributions are worth approximately $10.7 billion. None of these billions have any publicly stated purpose despite federal disclosure requirements (Bard, 2024).

The scale is staggering. Cornell received $2.3 billion. Carnegie Mellon took $1.05 billion. Georgetown and Texas A&M each accepted over $1 billion. When you look at Georgetown’s records, you find more than $1 billion with no stated purpose. Just blank spaces where explanations should be.

Here’s what we do know. Saudi Arabia gave Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center $20 million. The funding was structured to “follow” the center’s director. This gave the Saudi government effective control over who held the position (Middle East Forum, 2020). Qatar Foundation International sponsored K-12 teacher training sessions. They covered travel and expenses for American educators attending workshops on Middle East history (Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, March 2025). At least one donation explicitly funded a Palestinian Studies professorship at Brown. The position went to someone who supports boycotting Israel (Bard, 2024).

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This is the easily discredited (as all Marxist ideas)”Labor Theory of Value”
Robert Heinlein illuminated this in Starship Troopers:

“Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero.

By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero.

Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.

These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value — the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives — and to illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.

ASU professor calls traditional grading racist, suggests ‘labor-based grading’ instead

Arizona State University professor Asao Inoue recently ranted about “White language supremacy in writing classrooms,” during which he called for abolishing traditional grading in favor of “labor-based grading.”

The latter method scores assignments based on the amount of effort students put towards in the work, devaluing quality and accuracy in the grading.

During Nov. 5 lecture at the University of Tennessee titled “The Possibilities of Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies”, Inoue claimed that “White language supremacy in writing classrooms is due to the uneven and diverse linguistic legacies that everyone inherits, and the racialized white discourses that are used as standards, which give privilege to those students who embody those habits of white language already”.

In order to rid the classroom of the “Habits of White Language”, Inoue advocated for grading to be based on the time spent on assignments, a move he claims “structurally changes everyone’s relationship to dominant standards of English that come from elite, masculine, heteronormative, ableist, white racial groups of speakers,” The College Fix reported.

Inoue paused several times throughout the speech, according to The College Fix, to allow the audience to practice being “anti-racist” by observing themselves “participating in racism, engaging in white fragility, in white rage, or in white language supremacy”.

Inoue has spent a considerable amount of time promoting his grading philosophy. As Campus Reform reported in March, he wrote a 358 page book titled Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom.

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MSU Denver Writing Center calls ‘Standard American English’ a tool of white supremacy.

Metropolitan State University of Denver flags “Standard American English” as a concern for “anti-racist” initiatives on a web page dedicated to “Linguistic White Supremacy.”

The page appears on the school’s Writing Center section and prompts professors to counter white supremacy in the classroom through initiatives such as “Grading with Equity,” “Restorative Justice Approaches to Plagiarism,” and an “Anti-Racist Book Club.”

“Consider how you can design assignments, pedagogy, response/grading practices that acknowledge that racism exists in our assignments, pedagogy, response/grading practices,” the center says.

The university also warns against “Standard American English,” which is “a social construct that privileges white communities and maintains social and racial hierarchies.”

“The MSU Denver Writing Center rejects the notion that Standard American English (SAE) exists for many reasons,” the website says. “We fully support students in using their English (whatever that may be) in communicating their thoughts and ideas.”

“Standard American English (SAE) is a version of English that is often expected in professional and educational settings,” the page continues. “Employers and instructors may believe there is a common set of rules that govern SAE, but that is not in fact true. What is true is that different people have different assumptions about what SAE is.”

The website also recommends that professors ask about assignments: “Is this antiracist?,” “How does this prompt fight white supremacy?,” and “Does this prompt exploit the students in any way?”

The Writing Center names an example of an assignment that may exploit students: “Write About the Biggest Obstacle You’ve Overcome in Life.”

“This prompt is alienating because the biggest struggle some of your students may have faced is losing a pet, while others may be refugees from war-torn countries,” the page says. “Provide prompts that will not force a student to relive trauma.”

The page further advises that professors should “[a]void assumptions of American cultural knowledge.”

College English departments often promote “anti-racist” ways of teaching and grading.

In 2022, the University of Maryland at Baltimore sought writing consultants with “[p]revious anti-racist coursework or activism.”

“For students committed to anti-racist action in your own professional practices and communities, the rigorous preparation will be a major benefit of this campus job,” the job description said.

Professors at a 2021 “Antiracist Pedagogy Symposium” at Towson University in Maryland argued that grading students for grammar reinforces “white supremacy.”

“The repeated references to ‘correct grammar’ and ‘standard language’ reinforce master narratives of English only as White and monolingualism and a deficit view of multilingualism,” one professor said.

Students Push New Gun Control Bill to Prevent Gun Theft

A group of college and high school students in Minnesota is pushing for a gun control measure aimed at reducing the number of firearms stolen from vehicles.

This comes after the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis earlier this year. The group is working with state legislators on legislation that would ostensibly promote gun safety, according to The Minnesota Daily.

“ The University of Minnesota and high school students are working together with the state legislature to target legal loopholes to improve gun safety in Minnesota schools.

Jenny Wen, a student at Columbia University, is part of a student-led policy group working with state Rep. Julie Greene (DFL), to draft a new gun safety bill for the upcoming legislative session.

“This isn’t about taking away anyone’s guns,” Wen said. “It’s about addressing the reality of gun theft, accidental access and impulsive violence.”

The bill would establish uniform requirements for securely storing firearms in vehicles parked on all school property.

It also extends those requirements to Minnesota State High School League-sanctioned events and removes a provision allowing principals to give individuals permission to carry firearms inside school facilities.

Fourth-year Matthew Smeaton said he remembers sitting on a school bus years ago when a tree branch scraped across the windows. A friend jumped, thinking it was gunfire.

“That always stuck out to me just because of how ridiculous it is that we have to live in a world where that’s a concern kids have,” Smeaton said.”

Wen explained that state law prohibits firearms at school events. However, people can carry firearms if they get permission from the principal. She argued that “there’s no legitimate reason someone needs to bring a gun to a school football game” and that “Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean it’s safe.”

She noted that the bill they are working on will punish people whose guns are stolen and then used in a violent crime.

Between 2019 and 2023, almost 1.1 million firearms were reported stolen. This breaks down to about 200,000 each year, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

The Council on Criminal Justice revealed that by 2022, about 40 percent of reported gun theft incidents involved thieves stealing the firearms from vehicles. Only about 14 percent involved burglaries.

However, only about 10 percent of stolen firearms are used to commit crimes. Among those using firearms for nefarious purposes, 43.2 percent bought their weapon from an underground dealer. Moreover, about 20 percent obtained the firearm for the specific purpose of committing a crime. It’s also worth pointing out that 85.9 percent of those who possessed a firearm when they committed a crime obtained it from someone other than a licensed dealer.

These kids likely mean well. They are probably too young and uneducated to understand the problems with this bill — and gun control in general.

Yes, we definitely want to prevent people from stealing firearms. But blaming a victim of gun theft for a shooting or homicide unfairly criminalizes people. Moreover, it’s not going to save lives because criminals don’t follow the law.

If an armed individual strolls onto a college campuses with intention to harm people, they already know they are breaking the law. Students and faculty on these facilities who obey the law will be sitting ducks. We have seen this happen over and over again with school shootings and other types of mass gun violence.

Nobody wants to see people gunned down at a football game. But a more effective way to prevent this would be to use other security measures such as cameras, metal detectors, armed security, and other methods. Simply passing a law mandating that people lock up their guns a certain way isn’t going to cut it.

It’s also worth noting that if a student or faculty member has to leave their firearms in their vehicle, they are granting a significant advantage to would-be mass shooters. This is not going to keep anyone safe. In fact, it’s yet another example of how gun control makes people more vulnerable to bad actors. If these students want to prevent gun crime, they should focus on how to stop criminals rather than making it harder for responsible people to defend themselves.

A foreigner, here on a student visa, who supports a murderous terrorist group need to be immediately deported, as in stuck on the first available plane back to their home country with nothing more than the clothes on their back and their passport in their pocket.

Faculty group demands protections for non-citizens who ‘express support’ for Hamas.

A national faculty coalition is pushing to grant non-citizens First Amendment protections, demanding that the Trump administration be permanently barred from revoking visas over pro-Palestinian activism or support for terrorist groups.

The initiative is led by the American Association of University Professors and several of its university chapters, including Harvard’s, in partnership with the Middle East Studies Association.

A court victory for the AAUP in September stated that the Trump administration was violating the First Amendment by revoking visas of pro-Palestinian activists, according to The Harvard Crimson.

The national coalition’s new proposal seeks to block the Trump administration from continuing what it calls unconstitutional arrests and deportations. However, it also demands that any relief must apply to all noncitizens, not just members of the petitioning organizations.

It also includes a list of pro-Palestinian statements that cannot warrant a threat to a person’s visa.

The list includes statements considered “to express support or sympathy for terrorism or a designated foreign terrorist organization such as Hamas.”

However, not everyone agrees that citizens and noncitizens should share the same rights.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies Program Director Brandy Shufutinsky told The College Fix via email that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “has the power to revoke visas as they are a privilege, not a right.”

In her experience, no one has faced deportation or visa revocation solely for pro-Palestinian speech. However, she noted that visa-holders who express support for terrorism or violate U.S. civil-rights laws have faced appropriate consequences.

“If we do not allow criminals and terrorists into our country, why would we allow noncitizens who are already here to engage in criminal or terrorist activity?” Shufutinsky said.

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‘nonpartisan’
My opinion is that anything concerning the 2nd amendment can not be ‘nonpartisan’. There is no middle ground when it comes (as Justice Thomas called it) the unqualified statement: “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED”
I’d like to see the actual curriculum that is going to be taught. That being said, two of the three directors, Ashley Hlebinsky and David Kopel are well known for their pro-RKBA stances.

Dept. of Education to fund nonpartisan 2nd Amendment high school curriculum

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded the University of Wyoming nearly $1 million to develop what the college calls a “historically grounded” school curriculum on the Second Amendment. The university’s Firearms Research Center said the initiative will give educators nationwide tools to better understand the constitutional right to bear arms.

The two-year, $908,991 grant stems from the department’s American History and Civics Education Program tied to the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations. In September, President Donald Trump redirected $137 million to the program that’s directed by what The New York Times called organizations “closely aligned with the president’s Make America Great Again movement.”

The National Second Amendment Initiative’s aim is to give teachers sources, instructional videos and access to academics that the university said come from various perspectives on the lightning rod issue of firearms in America.

“Our project will honor the nation’s 250th anniversary by allowing educators to engage with the complexity and nuance of the country’s founding documents,” Ashley Hlebinsky, executive director of the Firearms Research Center, said in a release.

Because it’s not named as a role of the federal government in the Constitution, the Department of Education cannot force the curriculum on school districts. The restriction is also described in the 1979 law establishing the department. It can only ensure schools are obeying federal education laws like the Civil Rights Act and conduct the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Why Wyoming?

While the U.S. has myriad schools focusing on constitutional law, colleges and universities with a specific focus on the Second Amendment are far and few between. Beyond Wyoming, Duke University’s Duke Center for Firearms Law is one of the only major collegiate programs that focuses on firearms law, but not from a gun violence prevention perspective.

Wyoming’s law school positions itself as the “premier law school for practitioners who serve the legal needs of all those who produce, employ, own, and regulate firearms.”

What happens in the classroom?

While the federal government cannot dictate curriculum and states set broad educational requirements, the teacher still controls the classroom.

The National Education Association, the country’s largest teacher union, has long been outspoken on its advocacy for gun control laws.

In an issues section of the union’s website, the association focuses on school violence due to the country’s proliferation of firearms and advocates for laws that would place restrictions on gun possession and locations where they can be carried.

The union did not respond to a request for comment.