#tenure

This Friday I will hold my Tenure Appraisal Seminar for early conclusion of my Tenure-Track Assistant Professorship and promotion to Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen. It won't be as grand an event as the one pictured here, but it will be more momentous.

Rachel Leingang at The Guardian:

Donald Trump wants to shut down the US Department of Education, saying at recent rallies that it should be disbanded to “move everything back to the states where it belongs”. The idea of dismantling the education department has become increasingly mainstream, though it’s nearly as old as the department itself, which was created by Congress as a cabinet-level agency in 1979. Trump made similar promises on the 2016 campaign trail to either cut or hobble the department.

Eliminating it would require Congress to act, which could be an impossible feat, though several of Trump and his allies’ policy goals on education could be accomplished through presidential actions. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s rightwing manifesto for a potential incoming Trump administration, lays out how dismantling the federal education department would work, leaving behind, if anything, a husk focused solely as a “statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states”, writes Lindsey Burke, the author of the education chapter and leader of Heritage’s education policy center. The department’s elimination is one of many goals contained in the extensive conservative playbook that will inform a second Trump term. Project 2025 calls for privatizing education and driving out any programs related to LGBTQ+ youth or diversity.

[...]

Trump tells voters on his campaign site a few ways he would manage education:

Cut federal funding for schools that are “pushing critical race theory or gender ideology on our children” and open civil rights investigations into them for race-based discrimination.

End access for trans youth to sports.

Create a body that will certify teachers who “embrace patriotic values”.

Reward districts that get rid of teacher tenure.

Adopt a parents’ bill of rights.

Implement direct elections of school principals by parents.

[...]

The project proposes phasing out one major program, Title I, over a 10-year period. The $18bn funding source supports low-income students. Instead, the project says states “should assume decision-making control over how to provide a quality education to children from low-income families”.

“Phasing that out is going to be very detrimental to that population of students who are already vulnerable for many reasons,” James said. The Heritage Foundation also wants to eliminate Head Start, a program that funds early childhood education for low-income families, because it is “fraught with scandal and abuse”, according to a chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services. The Center for American Progress says in a new report that eliminating Head Start would reduce access and increase costs for childcare, hurting economic stability. Beyond these major funding changes, the project – and Trump – both want to see expansions of school choice, like voucher programs that allow students to use money that would otherwise fund their seats at public schools to attend a private ones. Trump has said that he supports universal school choice, or the ability of any student to use taxpayer funds to attend whatever school they want. Trump also has a video on his campaign site dedicated to how he would help home-schooling families. [...]

LGBTQ+ and diversity issues attacked

Anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-diversity policies are sprinkled throughout the education recommendations in Project 2025 and in Trump’s platform. The project also supports passing a parents’ bill of rights to give parents more access to classroom materials.

The project proposes ridding education programs of any “gender ideology and critical race theory”, like a “non-binary” category in data collection or the ability of trans youth to participate in sports aligned with their gender. It also calls for parental approval for the use of names or pronouns other than those on birth certificates. And it wants to gut protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Project 2025 suggests the federal government put anti-LGBTQ+ policies in place in the schools it oversees as a way to set an example to state and local leaders. As examples of what the project considers “critical race theory” that should be abolished, it mentions “mandatory affinity groups”, training programs for teachers that require them to “confess their privilege” or assignments in which “students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist”. These activities are “actively disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness”.

Attacks on the Department of Education are a key part of the radical right-wing Project 2025 playbook, and also Donald Trump’s.