Isle of Man school review framework to be published in July
The minister told MHKs making the full reports public could "hinder open professional development".Several MHKs raised concerns about the decision with Arbory, Castletown and Malew MHK arguing that the Department of Education, Sport and Culture was "lacking in transparency".Lawrie Hooper MHK said it was "unusual" for an inspection framework not to be made public and parents would not know what the schools were being assessed against without the methodology.Before the launch of the pilot schools on the island were not subject to formal inspections and external validations of their own self-reviews.
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The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
White House freezes $108m in funds to Duke University over affirmative action
The Trump administration has frozen $108m in federal research funding to Duke University after the federal government announced this week that it was investigating allegations that the school engaged in racial discrimination in the form of affirmative action, according to a person familiar with the matter and media reports. The National Institutes of Health reportedly halted the funding to the private university in North Carolina, said the person who spoke to the Associated Press on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. CNN and ABC News also reported the funding freeze. The development came as, earlier this week, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education issued a joint letter to Duke, stating that it had been made aware of allegations of what it called racial preferences in Duke's 'hiring, student admissions, governance, patient care, and other operations'. Duke is the latest institution to have its federal funding held up as the government investigates allegations of antisemitism and policies that support greater diversity, equity and inclusion that the Trump administration alleges are unlawful. It follows other investigations by the administration into top-flight private universities, including the Ivy League's Harvard, Columbia and Cornell. Duke did not immediately comment on the reported funding freeze. In Monday's letter to Duke, the Trump administration states that it has been made aware of allegations that Duke University and Duke Health are engaged in practices that, 'if true, would violate Titles VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, and render Duke Health unfit for any further financial relationship with the federal government'. 'These practices allegedly include illegal and wrongful racial preferences and discriminatory activity in recruitment, student admissions, scholarships and financial aid, mentoring and enrichment programs, hiring, promotion, and more,' the letter from the government states. The letter does not provide any specific examples. 'Racism is a scourge when practiced by individuals, but it is especially corrosive when enshrined in the nation's most eminent and respected institutions,' the letter, signed by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and the education secretary, Linda McMahon, adds. The letter orders Duke to end any practices at its health system that give 'benefits or advantages' based on race. Saying Duke is unlikely to be capable of an 'honest and trustworthy review', the letter takes the unusual step of requesting a new merit and civil rights committee that would be approved by the government and authorized by the school's board of trustees. The panel would be tasked with identifying and ending any racial preferences. If problems remained after six months, the administration would pursue legal enforcement, the letter said. The education department separately opened an investigation into the Duke Law Journal on Monday over allegations that it gave advantages to prospective editors from underrepresented groups. The Trump administration has used federal research funding as leverage in its unprecedented effort to reshape universities that Trump has described as hotbeds of liberalism. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion It has presented a crisis for universities that rely on federal grants as a major source of revenue, spurring some to take on debt and find other ways to self-fund research. Duke University spent $1.5bn on research last year, with nearly 60% coming from federal sources, according to the university's website. Even before the latest funding freeze, Duke faced financial turmoil. Last week, university leaders said almost 600 employees had accepted voluntary buyouts but that layoffs would still be needed. Officials said they needed to reduce costs amid uncertainty around federal research funding and a hike to the university's federal endowment tax. The Trump administration has been ratcheting up pressure on universities in hopes of striking deals such as one that Columbia University signed last week. The Ivy League school agreed to pay a $200m settlement over three years to the federal government and make changes to admissions, hiring, student discipline and more in exchange for regaining access to federal funding, among other things. In exchange for Columbia's concessions, the White House will reinstate $400m in federal funding it had stripped from the university earlier this year over allegations that it allowed antisemitism to fester on campus. The Columbia deal was met with mixed reactions from students, faculty and alumni. The administration has described it as a template for other universities including Harvard, which has been in talks with the administration even as it battles the White House in court.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
White House freezes $108m in funding to Duke University over allegations of racial discrimination
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New Statesman
2 days ago
- New Statesman
Maga zealots want to redraft the Civil Rights Act
Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump hoards attention like a preening gorilla at Washington's National Zoo, obscuring what his administration is actually doing. When asked in Scotland whether he would force Israel to give food to starving Gazans, for instance, he whined about not getting thank you cards for American aid and then offered up a Trumpian non-sequitur about how the stock market was booming. Such showboating is partly responsible for the growing view that Trump's style masks his real substance: that beneath the bombast lies a traditional Republican. Several of his predecessors, including Ronald Reagan, also wanted to expand executive power, abolish the Department of Education and rein in the administrative state. Trump's military build-up and raid on Iran have recast him as the heir to the Republican tradition of waging war abroad and cutting taxes and regulations at home. There is some truth to this. But away from the spectacle, Trump's Maga acolytes are undertaking a revolutionary redrafting of the purpose of the American government unlike what has come before. In Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building on 23 July, across the road from the Capitol, his congressional loyalists were prosecuting their case to remake the state. Eric Schmitt, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, opened a hearing on ending diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) with a tirade against the civil rights infrastructure established in the Sixties. He said the Civil Rights Act had led to 'a new racial caste system sanctioned and enforced by the administrative state'. Nevermind that an actual racial caste system existed before the Civil Rights Act. The Ur-text for Trump's most revolutionary followers is Christopher Caldwell's 2020 The Age of Entitlement. In it, Caldwell argues that the civil rights reforms formed 'a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible'. This regime, Caldwell thinks, elevated a new social contract centred around anti-racism. 'I take the Caldwellian view,' the chief Maga influencer Charlie Kirk told the New York Times earlier this year, 'that we went through a new founding in the Sixties and that the Civil Rights Act has actually superseded the US Constitution.' Trump's disciples, in other words, are pursuing something more radical than Reagan or the Bushes ever conceived: the overthrow of the civil rights settlement that was erected in 1964. In his first week Trump overturned affirmative action and then went on to root out DEI programmes across the government and, by proxy, in those companies the state works with. (Reagan's team once drafted an executive order to overturn affirmative action but he never signed it.) The assault has also been fought by Trump's appointed judges: by overturning Roe vs Wade in 2022 and then affirmative action the following year. A month after the election Caldwell wrote in these pages that Trump's victory, like those of 1992 and 2008, was as much a social revolution as a political one. Put simply, Caldwell thought the age of woke was coming to an end. The irony, however, is that according to critics like Caldwell, some of Trump's most extreme supporters are no longer interested in scrapping the civil rights reforms they loathe – and are instead using them to pursue their own ends. In simpler terms, as Caldwell and others would see it, parts of the right have gone woke. Trump's assault on universities uses accusations of anti-Semitism, for instance, as a bludgeon with which to bully progressive institutions into submission. The administration's campaign has led Columbia University to adopt a much more expansive definition of anti-Semitism in order to curry favour with the administration. Caldwell thinks this is a mirror image of progressive attempts to compel conservatives into obedience under Democratic administrations. 'The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gives tremendous power to the executive branch to both override congressional and local democratic legislation and really bring pressure to bear, including financial pressure, on all sorts of institutions, not just government institutions, but also private universities,' Caldwell told me. Caldwell thinks Trump is not interested in scrapping 'this incredibly powerful tool' but wants to 'use it for himself and from what we know about Trump, it shouldn't surprise us. He has a tremendous instinct for power.' This power grab is happening as a new, overtly white identitarian politics is asserting itself in Washington. Jeremy Carl, who was a senior official in Trump's first term and has been nominated for a State Department role this time, wrote in his 2024 book The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart that white people needed to start seeing themselves as white in order to fight apparent discrimination against them, which he and others argue began in the Sixties. Carl's book is not a plea for America to return to the ideals of a 'colour-blind' or classically liberal society, but a manual for one in which racial groups compete for power. He wants to co-opt the language of woke. He writes that ''No justice, no peace' applies to white people as well'. Those on the right who dislike positive discrimination because it treats people differently based on their skin colour are now being outflanked by parts of the movement that want to vivify the concept of whiteness. Tribal white politics has once again found a place at the heart of American power. Away from Trump's pyrotechnic gaggles with reporters, he sits astride forces far outside of his control. [See also: Donald Trump, the king of Scotland] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
