Ivy League Round Up

The Ivy League’s reputation for academic success is only eclipsed by its constituent universities’ left-wing antics. The Review mostly focuses on such antics here at Cornell, so we wanted to share some from our rivals as well.

Harvard: A graduate school program, “Making Caring Common,” recently released a report that aims to educate parents to prevent “gender bias” in their children.

The report, called “Leaning Out: Teen Girls and Leadership Biases,” explains to parents that their daughters are very unlikely to succeed because of societal biases against women in leadership positions. Based on research and surveys taken, the report lists steps to reduce and prevent biases, urging parents to “Check your own biases” and “Don’t just let ‘boys be boys’”.

The report also goes on to explain survey results in which most boys and girls viewed men as better political leaders than women (though most of the participants answered that neither makes a better leader), but the participants viewed women as better childcare leaders than men (though about an equal number of participants who voted for “women” said “neither” here as well).
The report advises parents to encourage the development of “cross-gender friendships,” recommending “gender-neutral toys, games, and clothes” and the organization of “tasks and activities in ways that don’t reinforce traditional gender stereotypes” from a young age.

Yale: Professor and master of Pierson College, Yale’s residential system, Steven Davis claims that the term “master” carries “racial and gendered weight,” and that students at the university should terminate its use.

Campus Reform reports that Davis wrote in an email to students: “[L]et me state it unequivocally. I think there should be no context in our society or in our university where in which an African-American student, professor, or staff member—or any person, for that matter—should be asked to call anyone ‘master.’ And there should be no context where male-gendered titles should be normalized as markers of authority.” The professor has requested students call him “head of the college” instead.

A master, according to the school’s website, is the “chief administrative officer and the presiding faculty presence in each residential college” and “is responsible for the physical well-being and safety of students” in the college.

“I have heard stories and witnessed situations involving members of our community who have felt viscerally marginalized by this linguistic practice: students who have felt it necessary to move off campus their junior or senior year to avoid a system where the title ‘master’ is valorized; faculty members who cringe at this aspect of our college culture; tea guests who perform subtle and dexterous verbal gymnastics to avoid having to say the name,” Pierson said.

The Daily Caller reports that Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway, a black person himself, wrote in an email: “[Davis’s] reading of the title is more literal and focused on our national narrative and naming practices than mine — I see it as nothing more than a legacy of the British Oxbridge system that Yale was blatantly trying to emulate when it created the residential college system in the early 1930s.”

Yale has also been in the spotlight recently for urging the discussion of renaming its college honoring John C. Calhoun, former vice president and senator from South Carolina, as well as a supporter of slavery. The petition to rename Calhoun College received over 1500 signatures.

Princeton: After a heated debate on Fox News’ The Five on the topic of abortion, Princeton professor Robert George challenged Geraldo Rivera to another debate

“I just listened to Geraldo Rivera on Fox TV ranting—angrily—in favor of abortion, and bullying the other panelists on The Five,” George stated. “I’ve heard him do this before. I wrote to him at his Fox email address a few months ago respectfully requesting the opportunity to debate him on the subject—anytime[,] anywhere.”

Geraldo has not been eager to accept the invitation, despite the professor’s offer to “host him at Princeton or appear on his show.” The professor goes on in his Facebook post to say that even though he does not generally like “gladiatorial spectacle” debates, “there is something about Rivera’s smug certainty and air of moral superiority in defending the butchering of unborn children that causes me to think, this guy really needs to be forced publicly to confront the serous arguments against his position.”

Robert George also serves as Chairman for the United Sates Commission on International Religious Freedom and is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He also is a contributor for the National Review and has written several books. The professor has also drafted the “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience” in which he urges Christians to resist “any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage.” A non-liberal Ivy League professor–a rarity indeed.

Geraldo suggested in the debate that aborted babies should be used for medical research, saying that he wanted a cure for cancer, but he later suggested they be used for dog food.

It’s not hard to imagine who would win this debate.