Alumni and Donors United targets USD for pushback against “Woke takeover”
Last week I received the letter below from Linda Sweeny, the President of a new organization called “Alumni and Donors United.” Its goal is to resist the “woke takeover” of colleges and universities across the country. The University of San Diego is among the first institutions ADU has targeted as being a particularly egregious example of one of these “hostile takeovers,” but also one that might be able to oppose such a stark transformation of its purpose and abandonment of its traditions and mission. ADU has compiled a report (see download link below) entitled “The Woke Takeover of the University of San Diego” that lists the particulars of this takeover, and they aren’t pretty.
As readers of the RC will know, I’ve had my own run-ins with wokeness on the campus of this small and formerly cute university. But if the changes listed in this report are enacted, both I and my colleagues and students can expect much worse. Evidently we will, for example, have to sit through mandatory “social justice” indoctrination sessions that presumably will ask us not to object or walk out as they preach to us doctrines (critical race theory, for example) that, as near as I can tell, are quite false as a factual matter and also mean no good at all to our students, their parents, this faculty, or indeed our nation at large. Can one in good conscience just sit there without objection while this is done? I don’t know, but I’m thinking not. But if I refuse to take part, it looks like I will be fired. So can I risk the livelihood of my family if I resist? The President, Provost and their helpers seem not to be playing games. Students, just for starters, will be subject to speech codes that make it a disciplinary matter if they speak “hate speech”, so for example, if they say “Asian students always do well in school,” they could get hauled up before a campus disciplinary committee — or so it certainly looks. We already have a problem of students being afraid to speak their minds out of fear of retaliation from woke professors and students.
These changes to promote “racial justice” and similar doctrines seem calculated, as I’m sure their drafters know, only to make this problem much worse. They are trying to cow us into silence. Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom to inquire — these seem not only not to be valued by the drafters of these plans, but to be actively targeted by them. I don’t think it’s wrong to call this a “hostile takeover” of the university, except that it’s unfair to hostile takeovers. Takeovers at least want to make corporations better. These plans appear to strike at the very heart of the university, and I fear it will be a killing blow if we allow it to happen. As for the classroom, professors discussing controversial topics, from US foreign policy to personal sexual morality in class — well, you can forget that, unless you happen to espouse the ever-changing fashionable norms of contemporary morality. These examples go on and on.There’s much more in the current Administration’s plans that will transform how professors are hired, evaluated and promoted. Their agenda is ambitious and envisions what looks like a complete transformation of this university, and not for the better.
Please read the attached report. It makes for sobering reading. If you care about the University of San Diego, there is something you can do. You can write President Harris and Provost Baker and tell them to stop this madness. You can follow this story as it develops here in San Diego. If there is a college or university that you love, and has problems similar to those here at USD, you can withhold your donations unless and until it comes to its senses. Around the country parents are getting organized and speaking up concerning the educations, or lack thereof, that their children have been getting in elementary and high schools. Now is the time to extend this process to the university and college level. Linda is right that the solution to these woke takeovers cannot come from within the college campus itself. While the position of faculty is privileged in many ways, in other ways we are hostages to whatever rules the university administration decides to impose on us. Call it golden or perhaps brass handcuffs, but most of us are frightened, and rightly so, to speak up against our bosses. I’m concerned about this myself. But there comes a point when enough is enough, and we’ve reached that point.
You can download the report here:
Download Woke Takeover at USD Report 9-23-21
Here’s the cover letter:
Dear Students, Parents, Alumni, Donors, Faculty and Members of the Community who care about the University of San Diego,
Our future depends on our young learning within an environment that supports individualism, optimism and freedom of thought, teaching students how to think for themselves not what to believe. No culture that restricts freedom of inquiry has continued to advance.
The moral and intellectual climate at most colleges and universities in the United States has become dominated by movements that attack the foundational notion of education which requires freedom to engage in intellectual debate without fear of censorship or retaliation and encourages diversity of thought in pursuit of the truth. But, the pervasive influence of identity politics and cancel culture leading to campus monoculture and group think is closing the door to freedom of thought and most recently, critical race theory which casts everyone in inescapable, rigid roles of victim or oppressor has exploded nationwide.
The University of San Diego, is no exception to this one-mind movement. This brief tweet speaks for itself: The University of San Diego administrators are auditing white students to point out their whiteness, white privilege, and white racial ignorance.
Attached is the report, The Woke Takeover at the University of San Diego, a snapshot that reveals the current, sweeping structural and cultural changes now in place and those planned for the near future, designed to educate, and shape the minds of students in a particular direction.
Please take the time to read and digest the genesis and rationale for this woke overhaul to determine for yourself if this is what you want, what you are paying for. All the data and information within it were pulled from publicly available documents. All summarized documents are footnoted and where they are linked to the full documents. Pay particular attention to the Anti-Racism Task Force and its resulting Horizon Project.
Alumni and Donors Unite (ADU), an action tank committed to restoring academic freedom in higher education, commissioned this deep dive look into the who, how, what, where, and when of the transformation of USD, this Woke Takeover.
Phase One of ADU s action process is generating the report and getting informed. Please widely disseminate this email and accompanying report. Talk to your colleagues, fellow students, alumni, other parents, donors and faculty to share and discuss your thoughts.
Phase Two involves planning appropriate action. Change will not come from inside academia, as they built the new structure. So, it is incumbent upon the outside forces the customers of higher education and society at large to act, to leverage their significant power and financial influence and speak up loudly and effectively, to be heard and force change. Many want to do something, but what to do? Many voices are required. There is great power and courage in numbers!
This phase will require more secure communication and web tools, which ADU will be developing with you, as you start to self-organize and build action plans that reflect your concerns. We will share our experience and contacts and incorporate ideas for change into effective solutions.
Phase Three is the execution of the organized and unified action plans applying all the levers of power where changes can be made at the Administration, Trustee, donors, and legislative (for public institutions) levels.
While we are starting with USD, our model can be replicated and used at any other school, answering a vast unmet need throughout higher education in America.
Please study the accompanying report and look at the last section (page 24) titled Now what? Next steps. Nothing will change unless there is unified action. Contact us and join ADU s actions to reclaim freedom of thought and open inquiry. Jointly, we can restore USD and similar institutions that are deviating from their educational mission.
Kindest regards,
Linda
Linda Sweeney
Founder & President
Alumni and Donors Unite
(858) 699-4736
Terry Gannon
Board President