Author: Sherry Sylvester

Halloween tourists are making their annual descent on Salem, Massachusetts to visit the real-life site of the supernatural on trial—the 1692 execution of 19 people for witchcraft. Piles of books and movies tell the Salem witch trial story, replete with wild-eyed, sexually repressed Puritan zealots roving the dark, foggy countryside seeking out women to drag into their evil court.

Although it’s no comfort to those who faced the gallows over 300 years ago, in fact, the made-for-Halloween scenes are largely based on centuries-old propaganda repeated by left-wing libertines today, who use it to push the myth that piety is bad and America was, somehow, rotten to the core from the beginning. The truth is the American colonies in 1692 were probably one of the safest places in the world to be if you were a woman—or even a witch.

Records indicate that at least 12,000 people were executed for witchcraft in Europe during the 17th century, although the estimates go as high as 300,000, during the so-called “Burning Times.” In England, witch executions had slowed down by the mid-1600s, but still, more than 250 women were executed. By contrast, the total body count in the American colonies, including the Salem witch executions, was 35.

Of course, early American colonists believed in witchcraft, just like their European cousins. About 200 people were charged as witches in the American colonies in the 17th century, but almost all of the charges were dismissed.

Equally important, after the witch trials were shut down in Salem in the summer of 1692, no one was ever executed for witchcraft anywhere in America again. Meanwhile, in England, witch trials continued and witchcraft was not decriminalized until 1727. To peg that date to an American benchmark, in 1727, Benjamin Franklin was 21 years old and already writing pamphlets on freedom.

The real history is not easy to uncover, even in Salem, where witch trial tourism is a huge boost to the local economy. (The town slogan is “Stop by for a Spell”).

But what we think we know about the Puritans in general and the Salem witch trials, in particular, comes from some dubious sources, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Salem-born American writer who was a descendant of an early Puritan family. Hawthorne’s great-grandfather had been one of the judges at the Salem witch trials, which was a huge public relations problem for him because of the general shame associated with the trials. To get around it, he changed the spelling of his name. Then, he wrote damning portraits of the Puritan founders of Massachusetts, which helped to distance him from his forebears—and, incidentally, to boost book sales.

This time of year, some secular writers routinely re-tell the witch trials story as one of religious hysteria, blaming the deep faith of the Puritans rather than the virtually universally held superstitions of the times.

Some contemporary Puritan scholars believe that Salem marked an intellectual turning point for the early Americans. Going forward after the trials, the colonists were forced to admit they’d made a horrible error, despite their commitment to creating a new and more moral society.

Historian Paul Johnson noted that in the months following the Salem witch trials, the General Court of Massachusetts passed a motion condemning the Salem judges. The families of those who were hanged were paid compensation and most of the members of the jury signed statements of regret. Many of those who had falsely testified against the victims confessed to perjury.

Samuel Sewall, one of the judges in the witch trials, almost immediately repented his involvement. Churches in Salem convened for days of penance and fasting, a practice that continued annually in Salem churches for years. Richard Francis, Sewall’s biographer, writes that Sewall’s own penance for his involvement in the witch trials was dedicating the rest of his life trying to eradicate slavery in America.

Of course, none of this compensates for the community compliance with the hysteria and mob violence that allowed the Salem witch trials and resulting executions to occur. Still, the American colonies were far ahead of the rest of the Western world at the time in confronting and dismissing superstition.

Their immediate repentance and reparations shows they didn’t hold themselves to a European standard. Instead, the people who had committed to building that “shining city on a hill” when they first landed in the Massachusetts Bay, held themselves to a standard that was higher than anyone in the world had yet seen.

They didn’t realize they were building what would become America, but they did know that their task was to create a place that would come to be called exceptional.

Senate Bill 17, which will close down the so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” offices on Texas campuses in January, was not passed to push an ideological agenda on Texas universities. Instead, the priority was to stop a sanctioned system of internal indoctrination that is making students stupid.

Recent protests in Austin make it clear that for many students at the University of Texas, SB 17 is too late. A student group from UT-Austin called the Palestine Solidarity Committee drew hundreds to the Capitol — “double to triple” the number of attendees at the pro-Israel rally earlier in the day, according to Austin American-Statesman reports.

In a battle between brutal terrorists, who killed, mutilated, maimed, and captured hundreds of people in Israel, these University of Texas students chose to march in support of the terrorists. Chanting “Israel is a racist state” and “Free Palestine” on the streets of Austin, they demonstrated no understanding of the history of the region or the latest Hamas terrorism, the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Incredulously, one of the demonstrators told the press they were not anti-Semitic.

To understand why these Texas students made such a hateful, ugly, and frankly dumb choice, just look at what they are learning from the DEI programs that infuse every aspect of campus life on the glorified 40 acres.

The National Association of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officers in Higher Education’s stated mission is to teach:

“…the history of racism, colonization and conquest on how higher education and other sectors of society have been complicit in maintaining systems of [white and male] privilege.”

In their view, racism in America is virtually the same as it was in the days of slavery. The meaning of conquest and colonization are distorted by DEI, too. For example, DEI proponents claim that the Pilgrims didn’t come to America for religious freedom – they came to conquer the natives.

Using proscribed propaganda by hucksters like Ibram X. Kendi and the multi-million dollar fraudsters at Black Lives Matter, DEI has created partisan activists on campus who parrot the precepts of critical race and gender theory and view the world as divided between those who are oppressors because they are descended from colonizers, and those who are oppressed because they are descended from those who were victims of oppression.

Words like merit, hard-work, persistence and achievement are presented as illusions to obscure the basic premise of DEI — the deck is stacked in favor of those who were born with what they define as privilege, regardless of their circumstances, and nobody else has a chance at success.

According to them, the American dream is a lie and has been since 1619.

So it is not surprising that when Hamas terrorists attacked and killed thousands of Israelis last week, including women and children, these DEI infused students immediately started marching in support of the killers. After all, Hamas’ mission is also based on lineage — their goal is to kill everyone who was born Jewish.

It is ironic that so much of DEI is focused on the “pretend violence” including so-called “micro-aggressions.” Students tell me there are rooms set aside in the library at Texas A&M to protect so-called LGBTQIA+ students from having to study in close proximity to anyone who isn’t LGBTQIA+. These are called “safe spaces.”

But apparently, the brilliant thinkers studying at Texas universities missed the obvious parallel in Israel. Hamas dragged Israeli families out of their homes on a holiday. They killed children in front of their parents, raped and mutilated women, and abducted hundreds of other victims. UT’s Palestinian Solidarity Committee apparently didn’t notice that on October 7, there were no safe spaces for Jews in Israel.

It was big news the other week when the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) announced that Harvard University had the worst record on free speech of any university in the country. This is particularly sad considering its history. Harvard is where Samuel Adams first began to formulate the concept that the American colonies should free themselves from control of the British Parliament. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Samuel’s cousin John Adams all credit Samuel Adams with being the first to conceptualize the idea of freedom for the American colonies. It was virtually unthinkable idea at the time but it became a reality because Adams and his friends at Harvard discussed and debated it, effectively incubating the idea of independence for Americans.

By the mid-1760s, the British had made Samuel Adams and anyone who agreed with him public enemies, just for talking about independence.

Luckily for us, that didn’t stop them. Those Harvard men moved forward, writing pamphlets and making speeches, despite knowing that their statements would likely ruin their prospects for advancement, at best, or ultimately get them arrested or hanged, at worst.

That’s why it is so tragic that Harvard students today report they frequently are afraid to say anything that might be construed as controversial or politically incorrect. They are afraid of being censured by their professors. One student told researchers that she chose to write on topics that weren’t controversial to avoid censure.

According to FIRE, Harvard’s free speech record is so bad that it actually managed to score lower than zero. It called Harvard’s record “abysmal.”

FIRE establishes its rankings by polling students. It also compiles data on how many students are dismissed for speaking out, how many controversial campus speakers turn out to be dis-invited, and whether or not the university administration has stood in support of free speech or buckled under campus or faculty pressure.

Harvard ranked 248 out of 248 academic institutions surveyed.

Yet, the University of Texas at Austin’s ranking was almost as bad as Harvard’s—near the bottom, they ranked 236, the worst of any school in Texas.

According to FIRE researchers, the majority viewpoint at both Harvard and UT Austin is liberal, which is no surprise. What is surprising is that students at UT Austin outnumber conservatives by a ratio of almost 4-to-1. That’s slightly higher than Harvard, where the liberal to conservative viewpoint ratio is 3.32-to-1.

Harvard, of course, is a private school (although it does receive plenty of federal tax dollars). Still, voters in Massachusetts gave Joe Biden a 33 point victory in 2020, so maybe a 3-to-1 liberal to conservative ratio on the nation’s oldest college campus makes sense there.

But the University of Texas at Austin is located in a state that has elected conservative Republicans to every statewide office for more than two decades. What excuse can there possibly be for Texas taxpayers to underwrite a campus where the liberal to conservative ratio is almost 4-to-1 and students don’t feel like they can speak their minds?

The study also found that UT Austin students were more comfortable than Harvard students when it comes to shutting down speakers they don’t agree with on campus. A larger percentage of UT Austin students gave a green light to “blocking entry, shouting down and physical violence to prevent on-campus speakers from speaking” than those at Harvard.

Harvard students also showed more tolerance for both liberal and conservative speakers on campus than students attending the University of Texas. FIRE didn’t call UT Austin’s record abysmal, but it did call it “poor,” not a term Texans usually find acceptable in any ranking, particularly when describing a multi-billion dollar operation that presents itself as the flagship of flagships.

Both Harvard and UT Austin scored below average on “comfort expressing ideas via writing in class and among their peers and professors”–146 at UT and 144 at Harvard. You can see how this would happen after seeing former UT Dean of so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”(DEI) Skyller Walkes, screaming at a group of students that “an educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor. Which one will you identify as?”

If you watch the video it is clear there’s no room for “What do you think?” or “Speak up if you disagree.”

Also, remember University of Texas Psychology Professor Kirsten Bradbury who asked the following multiple choice question on a test:

“Which sociodemographic group is most likely to repeatedly violate the rights of others, in a pattern of behavior that includes violence, deceit, irresponsibility and lack of remorse?”

The correct test answer was “wealthy white men.”

The student who came forward with that test question did so secretly and took great care to remain anonymous. She did not present it to university officials.

Bradbury issued a non-apology and there have been no reports of repercussions from the university.

Freedom of speech is essential to the primary purpose of a university education. Diversity of thought, and open inquiry are critical to creative thinking and innovation. Without them there is no hope of expanding worldviews that were previously unimagined–like Samuel Adams did.

By the way, Texas A&M ranked seventh on the FIRE survey. WHOOP.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Her career has spanned across multiple states, positions, and even parties. On this episode, Taylor and Sherry talk about the evolution of women in politics and why Sherry chose to leave the left and embrace Texas conservatism.

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Aggie Land has launched a major investigation to determine what really happened with Dr. Kathleen McElroy, the tenured journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin who was recruited to revive the J School at A&M.

An official A&M spokesperson assures us that no stone will be left unturned in the quest to determine who actually hired McElroy, who changed the original offer from a tenure-track position to a year-by-year contract, who told her there was “outside interference” and who finally pulled the plug. A&M’s president, an interim dean and an executive associate dean in the School of Architecture all have resigned so far in the wake of the debacle.

Investigators could save a lot of time if they will take a look at the smoking gun in this mess — McElroy’s on-the-record statement to NPR regarding her philosophy of journalism:

“We can’t just give people a set of facts anymore. I think we know that and we have to tell our students that. This is not about getting two sides of a story or three sides of a story, if one side is illegitimate,” McElroy said. “I think now you cannot cover education, you cannot cover criminal justice, you can’t cover all of these institutions without recognizing how all these institutions were built.”

 The investigation in College Station shouldn’t take long. We can assume that the first person at A&M who read McElroy’s “smoking gun” statement would take steps to ensure that the hiring did not go forward. Even Aggies wouldn’t hire someone to teach journalism who doesn’t believe in telling both sides of the story.

McElroy is not an anomaly. Most of the Texas and national news reports regarding the McElroy incident failed to report her “smoking gun” statement. For example, Channel 2 in Houston reported that Hart Blanton, head of communications and journalism at A&M,  “acknowledged” that her treatment was based, at least part, on race.

A real journalist would report that Blanton alleged it was based on race. Blanton has no proof race had anything to do with it, because there isn’t any.

McElroy originally went to the Texas Tribune with her story and the intrepid reporters there didn’t include the smoking gun statement either. Instead, they followed McElroy’s guidelines and proclaimed dissenting views as illegitimate. Here’s how they describe the backlash that erupted shortly after the news about McElroy’s hiring at A&M:

…the conservative website Texas Scorecard wrote a piece emphasizing McElroy’s work at UT-Austin and elsewhere regarding diversity, equity and inclusion and her research on race, labeling her a “DEI proponent.” That website is the reporting arm of Empower Texans, a Tea Party-aligned group formed with millions in oil money that holds considerable influence over Texas officials.

Conservative, Tea Party and “millions in oil money.” Clearly those voices would fall into McElroy’s “illegitimate” category. The term “DEI proponent” is the official descriptor now being used for McElroy, making it sound like she is some kind of advocate for minority and marginalized students and voices, but again, there’s no evidence of that.

National news outlets have latched onto the story, portraying it as a clear cut example of racial discrimination in Texas. Virtually no national news story reports what McElroy said, but they all report that she is black,  as if that is what really matters.

The most ironic statement was a blog post by disgraced TV news anchor (and frequent Texas Tribune event star) Dan Rather, who states he’s embarrassed to be a Texan because of what happened to McElroy. Rather, who literally invented the term “fake but accurate” to describe the documents he created to try to frame former President George W. Bush, doesn’t seem to realize that his status as a Texan is an embarrassment to the rest of us.

Texas A&M should never have offered McElroy a job without knowing what she stood for. And once officials learned, they were absolutely correct to withdraw the offer. The only remaining question is why Texas taxpayers are still paying her salary at the University of Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed Texas’ anti-DEI Bill into law on June 14, which should close down so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices on every Texas university campus. But according to Valerie Sansone, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Texas at San Antonio, efforts are already underway to defy the law.

“Conversations of how to push back are being conducted in hushed tones—not in whispers, but not entirely out in the open either,” Sansone said. “We’re not necessarily using our state university emails to communicate about this, Sansone says, “You’ve got to be a little smarter than that.”

Whether or not Ms. Sansone is “a little smarter than that” is an open question, since she chose to share the news of the covert operation with a reporter from Inside Higher Education, a national publication that boosts almost 400,000 subscribers.

Claiming to speak for DEI officers throughout the South, where DEI programs are being scrutinized, Sansone says the fact that so many folks are staying behind despite anti-DEI legislation is a “form of resistance.”

What they are resisting is Texas Senate Bill 17, which states that no program or policy will be allowed on any Texas university campus that “promotes differential treatment or provides special benefits to individuals on the basis of race, color or ethnicity.”

Sansone and her DEI colleagues in “the resistance” are fighting the basic premise of all civil rights legislation and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution—that there should be no differential treatment in America on the basis of race.

According to the Inside Higher Education news story, “DEI Officers Gear Up for Battle in Red States” the DEI crowd describes their enemy as “[university] board members, lawmakers and the voting public.”

Only Texas and Florida (two of the three largest states in the union) have an outright ban on DEI, but nearly 20 other states are considering taking similar steps.

And the battle isn’t just in red states. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) held a debate in April on whether DEI should be abolished. No consensus was reached before the sellout crowd, but there was general agreement that DEI has gone way “off the track.”

For some DEI leaders, the fight isn’t against all voters, just Republicans. Adrianna Kezar, director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of California, suggests that one way to make DEI harder to target is to “disperse” DEI programs throughout academic institutions rather than centralizing it in a single administrative office. She also says renaming DEI to something like Selective Equity Leadership (SEL) can also throw Republicans off the scent.

Like DEI, Selective Equity Leadership doesn’t really mean anything and it certainly doesn’t describe the ideology that fuels “the resistance.” DEI proponents believe that America and all its institutions are racist reflections of a white supremacist culture. In their view, to see it any other way is clearly racism.

That ideological narrative is also “hush, hush.” Instead, throughout the debate over DEI in Texas and in other states, DEI officers misinformed the public and the press, insisting that shutting down DEI programs will harm minority and marginalized students.

But it would be hard to imagine anything that has been more harmful to minority and marginalized students than DEI.

The University of Michigan has the largest DEI program in the country. Its response to current criticism of DEI is to double down on its ideological strategy, with a new Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity officer who says that “’race conscious’ programs continue to be the key” to helping minority students. She says “race neutral” programs will fail. After a decade of DEI at Michigan, the largest university in the state, Michigan still has a student population that is less than 4% black even though African Americans make up 14% of the population.

And in what may be a design flaw, it appears that the more DEI programs do, the unhappier marginalized students are. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that “over the past several years, the university [Michigan] has hired more diverse faculty and staff, increased the number of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and incorporated diversity-related material across the curriculum, according to a university analysis, but fewer students reported being satisfied with the campus climate in 2021, compared with those surveyed in 2016.”

These findings were similar to data compiled by Texas A&M which found that the percentage of African American students who felt like they belonged at A&M dropped almost 30 points from 2015 to 2020.

Apparently a constant drumbeat that one is living in a college quagmire of white supremacy and patriarchal tyranny is not a morale booster. Neither are daily assurances that one’s setbacks are the result of oppression and unconscious racism.

Urging minorities to view themselves as victims and others as victimizers is not an education, it is activist training. In the end, it ensures that the only kind of job they will be able to get is working in DEI.

Indeed, a quick visit to the website for the NADOHE shows that their primary objective is to create most positions for DEI officers.

Immediately following the passage of Senate Bill 17, Texas A&M called for a comprehensive review of all DEI programs in what appears to be a serious effort to transform that campus. At the same time, a former DEI advocate for the New York Times was hired to run the journalism school. This is how the anti-DEI resistance will work—like whack-a-mole.

Even before the Texas anti-DEI bill passed, DEI officers in Texas were waving it off as inconsequential, promising to shift staffing to different departments, rename programs and decentralize efforts. The transformation of university health systems, where DEI already has a pernicious stranglehold, is a goal for many DEI advocates.

The Texas anti-DEI bill is the strongest in the country. It includes several layers of oversight as well as empowering the Legislature to withdraw funding if any aspect of the legislation is violated. Still, removing the scourge of DEI from Texas campuses will not be easy. The war against DEI has just begun.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.