Free Republic

NEA Funds Woke Journal Anti-straight white male journal received $35,000 from taxpayers The National Endowment for the Arts is funding a journal that writes extensively on white privilege and features feminist screeds like "Why I Left Men for Books" and "On the Coming Extinction of the Great White Male." Electric Literature is a nonprofit based in New York dedicated to "making literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive." The online journal received $15,000 from the Trump administration's NEA last month, bringing its total in taxpayer funding to $35,000. The NEA grant is to "support the publication of ‘Recommended Reading,' a free...

<p>The Trump administration gave $25,000 to support an artist and social activist whose works include "F**k Trump."</p> <p>The National Endowment for the Arts awarded the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Md., funding last month for a new installation by Roberto Lugo, a ceramics artist who claims his pottery wheel can "kill hate."</p>

The effort to expand cynically named "right to work" laws says a lot about what is wrong with politics in our country. Disguised as protecting workers, the real goal is to silence workers’ voice, reduce our bargaining power and make our jobs more precarious. It’s about power—social, political and economic power.

Bringing guns into schools ‘does nothing to protect’ our students, educators from gun violence Washington, DC - February 21, 2018 - In a listening session at the White House today, Donald Trump proposed to arm teachers and school staff in an attempt to prevent mass shootings.The following can be attributed to NEA President Lily Eskelsen García:“Bringing more guns into our schools does nothing to protect our students and educators from gun violence. Our students need more books, art and music programs, nurses and school counselors; they do not need more guns in their classrooms. Parents and educators overwhelmingly reject the...

Spielberg, Capshaw and Katzenbergs also donate $500,000 to ‘March for Our Lives’ rally organized by Florida students A number of Hollywood heavyweights, including George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey, announced hefty donations Tuesday to help fund the “March for Our Lives” rally against gun violence that is being organized by students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the site of last week’s massacre that left 17 students and staff members dead.Clooney and his wife, human-rights attorney Amal Clooney, announced a $500,000 donation Tuesday morning to help offset the costs of the march in Washington. “Amal and I are...

With 17 people murdered Wednesday at a Florida high school in yet another mass shooting at a public place, the immediate reaction in the media and the left has been predictable. The go-to phrase from comedian Chelsea Handler, newspaper columnist Jessica Valenti and SiriusXM Radio executive Norm Ornstein — and now thousands of others — is that Republicans and Second Amendment defenders “have blood on their hands.” This is a despicable response, of course, but par for about everything from the left nowadays. Worse, it does nothing to actually limit future atrocities. There is no compassion in that. But there...

Earlier today, the National Endowment of the Arts Chairman Jane Chu released the following statement regarding President Trump's budget plan for 2019. Today we learned that the President's FY 2019 budget proposes elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts. We are disappointed because we see our funding actively making a difference with individuals in thousands of communities and in every Congressional District in the nation. In FY 2018 to date, the NEA has awarded 1,134 grants totaling $26.68 million to organizations and individuals in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, launched a national songwriting...

Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman, both famous literary left-wingers, had a famous feud. McCarthy dared to proclaim that Hellman was a Truly Big Liar. When Dick Cavett asked (in 1979) what was so "dishonest" about Hellman, McCarthy snapped, "Everything. I once said in an interview that every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" These entertaining charges make more sense when we consider that Lillian Hellman was "an ardent leftist," according to leftist PBS. Hellman was a pure expression of the agitprop personality. She instinctively engaged in meddling and propaganda. It was almost official doctrine that communists...

Strong unions help to create strong schools for students and even stronger communities that benefit all of us. This, we know.For generations, unions have been the best path to the middle class for working people, especially people of color and women. But in this rigged economy, unions are under attack, and those attacks are coming not just from the White House and Capitol Hill. They’re happening at the ballot box and at the Supreme Court with cases like Janus.Today, the National Education Association and the American Association of University Professors submitted an amicus brief today with the Supreme Court in...

For years, the opioid crisis was described as one of negligence. In this narrative, doctors overprescribed pills that shouldn't have gone to patients and pharmaceutical companies overzealously promoted medications while playing down the risks. Robert Gebelhoff But new reporting demonstrates how this version, as worrying as it sounds, might understate the role of drugmakers in the opioid crisis. The Washington Post and 60 Minutes reported that some of the Drug Enforcement Administration's most experienced investigators believed criminal charges were warranted against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, alleging that the company, McKesson Corp., did little to prevent...

We've come full circle on school discipline: Now students beat the teacher. "City teachers pleaded with district administrators Monday to help support them as they deal with what they are calling an unprecedented level of misbehavior among children, some of which is resulting in physical violence against teachers," Felix Rodriguez Lima reported on Fox 43 from Harrisburg, Pa. on November 21, 2017. "The Harrisburg Education Association says the behavioral issues have prompted the resignations of at least 45 teachers between July and October, and further resignations have since occurred, according to association president Jody Barksdale." "Some of the worst behavior...

Lily Eskelsen García: “Thoughts and prayers are not enough.” WASHINGTON - November 15, 2017 - NEA President Lily Eskelsen García issued the following statement in reaction to yesterday’s shooting in Northern California, which targeted students and educators at Rancho Tehama Elementary School:“We pray for the victims of this latest tragedy in Tehama County, California, and the schoolchildren and adults shot by another out-of-control man who could spray bullets through a classroom and down the street with a rapid-fire weapon. We’re grateful to the educators who heroically protected their students in this rural school, the heroes in a Texas church, and...

On a recent weeknight, writing instructor Ellen Tara James-Penny sits with a student in a parking lot near San José State University for more than an hour, explaining the perils of “hasty generalizations” and other pitfalls in college-level writing. Then, James-Penny and her husband get into their aging Volvo sedan and drive a few blocks to a local church, where she sleeps in their car with one dog and he sleeps in a tent a few feet away with the other.Despite the four college courses she teaches, and the master’s degree she earned a few years ago, James-Penny is homeless....

The teachers' unions blockade, which deprives poor children of good education, is starting to crack. The latest fissures are created by a study of the country's largest private school choice program. According to researchers, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, which provides vouchers, increased college enrollment rates by about 6 percentage points for students who participated at all. For those who were in the program for four or more years, the college enrollment rate was as much as 17 points higher. Before anyone leaps to suggest that this really just means those schools cream off the best students, opponents of...

In an otherwise predictable New Jersey election season, the state’s largest public sector union has come out behind a Trump-supporting Republican facing an incumbent Democrat. The New Jersey Education Association, which is New Jersey’s top political spender, is backing Republican Fran Grenier against Steve Sweeney, the Democratic state Senate president and New Jersey’s second most-powerful elected official. The controversial endorsement has angered liberal allies, but the union remains unapologetic in its message: Democrats cannot take teachers for granted. It’s a contentious move, but one that is unlikely to change the ultimate outcome of the election. Democrats are expected to control...

Our hearts are broken yet again by the senseless mass killings in community after community by dangerous people with access to dangerous weapons designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. At this writing, 58 concert goers dead in Las Vegas. Over 500 wounded. Several educators are among the victims. And millions terrified and in trauma that it could happen again. There’s much to do, but the first thing is to comfort those who lost their friends and family members. So many want to help, and there is an immediate need of donations of dollars, blood and hugs.Here’s...

California has spent tens of billions of extra dollars on its K-12 school system in recent years on promises that its abysmal levels of academic achievement – especially those of disadvantaged children – would be improved. And what have those massive expenditures – a 50 percent increase in per-pupil spending – and a massive reworking of school curricula accomplished? Fewer than half of California’s children are meeting English standards and fewer than 38 percent are making the grade in math. Not much, the latest results from annual testing indicate.

Being a teacher means instilling a lifelong love of learning in students and providing them with the tools and support they need, and it also means advocating for students, public education, and our profession. The NEA’s recent “Black Student Leader Day” was all about exposing aspiring educators to lobbying as well as grassroots organizing for racial and social justice. This kind of outreach to aspiring African American teachers is essential at a time when the number of black teachers is declining.

In an article I posted here in July, I lamented the fact that the National Endowment for the Humanities had funded the research for Professor Nancy MacLean’s hatchet job of a book entitled Democracy in Chains. I was sure that the government’s largesse was not limited to just this nasty book and therefore was not surprised when I came across this article by Christine Roe, “From Cactus Theater to the Met, US Government Pours Hundreds of Millions Into Well-Heeled Arts.” Based on a new report from that invaluable organization, Open the Books, Roe highlighted numerous cases where federal money had...