Published Monday, October 17, 2022 | |
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NO MEETING
This Wednesday
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A note from
OCPAC FOUNDATION PRESIDENT
BOB LINN
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In 2021, the Texas legislature funded a new program at the University of Texas designed to accommodate broad academic (non-woke) points of view.
It was aptly named the Liberty Institute.
It seemed a great victory for the serious (non-woke) academicians at U.T. Those focused on academics have grown weary of the forced acquiescence to leftist political thought and the softening of academic standards.
I was disappointed last Friday to learn that the Liberty Institute has been coopted by a leftist university president and is now a complete failure. I am making the complete letter from one of the leaders of the project, University of Texas professor Richard Lowery, available to you later on in this newsletter.
Dr. Lowery stated that:
By now, only the most dishonest or intentionally ignorant observers deny the existential crisis facing higher education. Universities focus instead on a particularly toxic and frankly absurd form of “social-justice” activism.
Ultimately, it was conservative politicians and donors, not Marxist faculty, who brought it down out of their unwillingness to confront a supposedly prestigious Texas institution.
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In Oklahoma, Mo Anderson, co-owner of Keller Williams International, is speaking with the power and clarity of a seasoned wordsmith to those at the University of Oklahoma responsible for its rapid academic collapse under Marxist ideology.
Her letter to O.U. President
Joe Harroz is available below.
The collapse of America’s Biblical foundations has led to the inevitable collapse of everything else from the family, its economic security, and, of course, its academic standards.
The enemies of America’s children pushed through the unthinkable legislation in Oregon last year, removing all requirements of reading, writing, and mathematics for high school graduation last year. Find more here.
Those same enemies are behind the firing last week of New York University (NYU) organic chemistry professor, Dr. Maitland Jones, Jr.
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Our future medical doctors & surgeons, now medical students at NYU, complained that his classes were too difficult. So, NYU fired him!
More here.
Wokism can be fought only by adults who have the sense to comprehend it. Renowned philosopher, Sir Roger Scruton labeled it well in the title of his 2015 book, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands.
It must be fought by our leaders in business and industry. The fight must include educators, professionals, and most of all, our clergy.
A shining example is Fifth Circuit Court Judge, James C. Ho. In a speech last week to the Kentucky Federalist Society conference titled, “Agreeing to Disagree — Restoring America by Resisting Cancel Culture,” Judge Ho cited Yale Law School as “one particular law school where cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency … Starting today, I will no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School … And I hope that other judges will join me as well.”
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Federal judge Elizabeth Branch is one of at least twelve other judges who have followed Judge Ho's lead and agreed not to hire Yale graduates. Read more.
Even the not-so-conservative comedian and film maker, Woody Allen, has spoken out against the insanity.
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Mr. Allen said about wokism:
Well, you know, the human race has consistently behaved stupidly throughout history. Cancel culture is the stupidity of our generation. We will be ashamed of it. And we’ll say to ourselves, “My God, did people really do that and accept it? That teachers be fired, university professors, that scientists be discredited, that actors be put on blacklists? Read more of Woody's comments here.
Thank God for Oklahoma’s Mo Anderson! All of us need to join her in the fight. The most important challenge before us is the decision Oklahoma will make regarding the policies which will guide our future.
All WOKE policies destroy our children. Anyone in the Governor’s office and in the seat of State Superintendent of Public Instruction who holds to WOKE principles will contribute to the same cloak of darkness which is devastating Oregon, NYU, and Yale educational institutions and will oppress Oklahoma’s children as well.
This Wednesday, we take a week off.
However, our Foundation board will meet to gauge our progress. After that, Jane and I will travel again to Colorado and fulfill last month’s promise to watch our oldest grandson play his final soccer game of the season.
Be sure to read the important articles which follow.
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We are in desperate need of returning
our nation and our state to Biblical foundations.
Thank you for your activism.
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Table of Contents
WADE BURLESON
We Press Forward
MO ANDERSON
Losing Credibility at O.U.
DR. RICHARD LOWERY
Lost Credibility at U.T.
LAST WEEK
Author John Dwyer
TWO WEEKS AGO
Video: CRT by Dr. Robert Reynolds
OK COUNTY GOP
Friday Chili at Sundance Airport
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WADE BURLESON
We Press Forward
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This coming Wednesday, I will lead the OCPAC Foundation in its October meeting to discuss our progress on a number of fronts.
Chief of our issues will be our fund raising efforts.
I was out of state last week attending a financial seminar with one of my ministry partners. It was an important meeting for us, though I regretted missing my friend John Dwyer last week.
I understand it was one of the finest meetings we have had!
Be praying about our future and our fund-raising needs.
God Bless.
Wade
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MO ANDERSON
Losing Credibility at O.U.
| A few week's ago, Mo Anderson met with O.U. President, Joe Harroz to address the toxic nature of the woke agenda and its impact on the faculty and students. Below is her opening letter. | |
September 29, 2021
Dear President Harroz,
The University of Oklahoma is sacrificing its credibility as an academic institution. The evidence is damning and overwhelming.
OU has embedded a Marxist-derived worldview in its colleges via so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs that foster racial and social division. OU’s DEI efforts produce the opposite of diversity and inclusion. Mainstream Oklahomans know they will now be labeled “privileged” individuals regardless of life circumstances, meaning OU is not a welcoming place for all students. That there are more “diversity” staff than faculty in key departments shows OU no longer prioritizes academics.
As a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and business leader, OU’s attack on the family and the crucial role of women in society is distressing. To cite one example, reported by London’s Daily Mail this year, OU made two men homecoming royalty this year (doing away with the traditional homecoming “king” and “queen”). The symbolism did not go unnoticed. OU chose to eliminate women and replace them with men and acted as though everyone should be happy about it.
How will Oklahoma prosper if OU’s college graduates have no grounding in truth and are educated only in faculty-lounge abstractions that never survive exposure to reality? A generation trained primarily in how to identify people as “privileged” or “oppressed” is not going to be able to lead citizens, create jobs, build businesses, or support families.
OU’s recent “Free Speech Week” seemed like a hollow gesture, coming as it did amid OU’s 52-week-a-year war on free-speech—which has included asking students to surveil one another, mandating agreement with Marxist-derived DEI training, forcing athletes to watch political documentaries and profess agreement, and punishing some professors who don’t embrace this insanity.
This is occurring against a backdrop of fiscal mismanagement. As OU devotes enormous sums to a “wokism” and academic flim-flam, it turns away students in areas such as nursing and reneges on promises to bondholders despite record revenue.
As a proud Oklahoman, I cannot support the deliberate destruction of our state’s future. I will not donate to OU’s academic efforts any longer. I am seriously considering if our continued support of OU’s athletic programs should stop as well. I am aware others are considering doing the same.
Sincerely,
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DR. MATT LOWERY
Texas Administrators Destroy Academic Freedom
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How UT-Austin
Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative
By now, only the most dishonest or intentionally ignorant observers deny the existential crisis facing higher education. Universities no longer even maintain the pretense of dispassionate rational and free inquiry, focusing instead on a particularly toxic and frankly absurd form of “social-justice” activism, increasingly even in the hard sciences.
Why does this situation persist?
Here, I can contribute to our understanding, having had a front-row seat to perhaps the most spectacular failure of a higher-education reform effort in recent memory: the “Liberty Institute” at the University of Texas at Austin.
We drafted a brief proposal for an independent academic unit that could house faculty with perspectives and research agendas that would disqualify them from employment elsewhere on campus.
What we saw at UT-Austin was a huge gap
in the study of the fundamentals
of how free societies function
and
the relationship between
freedom and human flourishing.
This plan, as agreed to by the UT president and the chairman of the Board of Regents, gained support at the legislature, and funding for the project was added to the 2021 budget. We thus prepared to implement the plan.
No other recent effort that I know of has boasted the same combination of ambition, near success, and, ultimately, abject and total failure.
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The effort was undone not through the machinations of the campus Left but through weakness on the part of supposed conservatives, a lesson that anyone else wading into reform efforts should learn.
We now know that, during this time, UT’s president put a critical race theorist in charge of developing the Liberty Institute.
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Then, in late August, The Texas Tribune ran a hostile article on the project, which led to a continuing sequence of hostile Faculty Council meetings in which UT professors attacked the idea, opposing anything even potentially conservative coming to campus.
This Tribune article was explicitly used as
an excuse to default on the original plan
that had been agreed to with the state.
Either the government could have come in and insisted that the original plan be followed, or potential donors could have presented a united front to demand follow-through and the creation of a meaningful institute. Instead, everyone caved completely to the university.
It was conservative politicians and donors,
not Marxist faculty, who brought it down.
Academic standards and the objectives of the state were sacrificed to avoiding conflict with leftists while creating the appearance of activity.
Thus, we now have the beginnings of an institute that will both be intellectually mediocre (at best) and have no ability to fulfill its mission to bring underrepresented but important ideas to campus. The extreme hostility of the faculty toward this project shows the desperate need for something serious along these lines.
With the current administration at UT-Austin,
nothing will be possible without far
more direct state intervention.
READ THE REST HERE.
Richard Lowery is an associate professor of finance at the University of Texas at Austin. He is an applied game theorist and studies strategic interactions within financial institutions.
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Some said this may have been the best OCPAC Foundation meeting ever. And, we have had many fabulous meetings!
John Dwyer did not just talk about Oklahoma history. He challenged us from the very beginning to make our lives count for Christ and his mission on the earth.
Governor Frank Keating and and former U.S. Prosecutor, Bill Price were on hand to add their authentic color to the presentation.
Find the presentation on Facebook here.
Find the presentation on Rumble here.
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TWO WEEKS AGO
DR ROBERT REYNOLDS
Video Links
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Last week, we included the Power Point for Dr. Reynold's presentation but not the video. Here are the video links!
Find the presentation on Facebook here.
Find the presentation on Rumble here.
POWER POINT HERE
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OKLAHOMA COUNTY GOP
CHILI AND CANDIDATES
THIS FRIDAY
OCPAC FOUNDATION DOES NTO ENDORSE CANDIDATES
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As a 501(c)(3), the OCPAC Foundation does not endorse candidates; however, as a part of our educational mission we encourage our membership to get to know the candidates and will from time to time announce events, times and locations where our membership can educate themselves about these candidates and issues important to the educational component of OCPAC Foundation’s mission.
LIVE:
THE BOBBY BENNET BAND
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