The Tragedy Of Losing Betsy DeVos

If the preliminary counts hold up, we'll lose Betsy DeVos.

   This is a real, actual, certifiable tragedy for higher education--and I'll bet for primary and secondary education, too. She's been such a good, sane, reasonable Secretary of Education I almost couldn't believe she was real. This has been true about a couple of things about the Trump administration: it succeeded fantastically just by installing someone intelligent with common sense--and not of the swamp. 

   DeVos is apparently hated because she has done things like: guarantee the accused in sexual assault cases due process. The once and future practice was just to railroad them. Biden has already said he'll undo her good work. He's got a long list of smart, common-sense Trumpian accomplishments to undo. It's gut-wrenching even to contemplate, actually. 

   Perhaps even more important is that the Department of Education under DeVos has adopted the freaking brilliant strategy of telling universities that, if they're going to advance the project of leftist politicization by claiming that they're full of "systemic racism," then they're going to have to report to Ed...and if it's true, they'll lose federal funds. After all, to get those federal funds they have to certify that they aren't a big fat bunch of racists. This, obviously, puts universities in a dilemma: they either have to stop pretending that they're hotbeds of "systemic racism"...thus give up the fiction that allows them to further politicize the institutions...or they have to give up federal funds. 

   This is a brilliant strategy that we could describe like so: forcing them to stop bullshitting and face facts. Since none of them actually are eaten up with "systemic racism," none of them will actually lose funds...but all of them will lose their fictional justification for moving the institutions further left. 

   So Biden will get rid of that immediately. He'll install some Secretary that has an Ed school degree...which means a swamp creature indoctrinated into the ways of the cult. Academia will lose a powerful defender of truth, reason and objectivity. And we'll slip back into the progressive fantasy world that has swallowed up academia for decades. Innocent young men will continue to be railroaded on the basis of fictional statistics about campus sexual assault. Right now, every even vaguely plausible perpetrator is being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the rules...largely because universities are giddy at finding such a case. If they don't prosecute enough cases, Ed frowns on them. After all, the left alleges rape to be more common on college campuses than it is in the Congo. So if universities aren't prosecuting it, they're falling down on the job. My own august institution lost a lawsuit for $850,000 a few years back because it initially (and correctly) found that a student was not guilty of sexual assault. So then they just tried him again, this time guaranteeing that he'd be found guilty. 

   If you voted for Biden, then, even if tacitly, you voted for all that.