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This article is a response to Will Catholic universities survive the upheaval in higher education? The next 10 years will tell, a feature by Charles C. Camosy. Read more views on this issue linked at the bottom of this article.

If the Covid-19 pandemic should teach us anything, it is that the unexpected will come at us. And when it does, we have a choice: to take care only of ourselves, what Pope Francis calls the hyperinflation of the individual, or to take stock, look at the suffering world and work for change that has the common good at heart.

Charles Camosys analysis of the future of higher education, which unfortunately stokes divisions and uses vague references to the culture to be resisted, does not get us closer to envisioning the kind of work we need to do. Most fundamentally, I do not find a compelling reason in his essay for the why of higher education, which is where this conversation needs to begin. Why should people of faith care if we have colleges and universities at all?

The why of higher education today must go beyond the day-to-day of campus life or faculty politics. If, as is made evident by the kind of critical theories that are criticized by Dr. Camosy, higher education in the United States has for most of its history ensured the preservation and continuation of privilege based on race and class (remember thecollege admissions scandal?), then our current moment calls for new models that will reverse this. The model for todays university must involve working for true societal transformation, equipping more of us to be thoughtfully critical and engaged in a shared civic life of genuinely communal concerns. It must involve inviting more of us into conversations that build a bridge across borders, continents, classes and races.

Higher education is at its best when it allows us to explore the many intersections where we can meet and discover us-ness, while celebrating the beauty of difference. This has been a focus of my own work, which resulted in the bookTeaching Global Theologies: Power and Praxis. This expansive view of who we mean by us makes clear that the Catholic intellectual tradition we teach has to be reimagined to make room for the writings of the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador, the forceful critiques of feminist theologies, the unceasing voices of economic and post-colonial analysis from the global South, and the ideas of our young people, who are forging courageous alliances in defense of planetary flourishing.

Our campuses have to make present the disenfranchised many, not by pigeonholing Hispanics as being well suited for small schools close to their homes, as Dr. Camosy suggests, but by having the presence of young people from very dissimilar communities on all of our campuses, shaking us up, changing our spaces, creating a new reality steeped in solidarity. Higher education should be abundant, not a rare privilege for the few. If that means seeking partnerships with corporations or government wherever these are possible, so we can multiply resources, then let us do it.

Let us seek a true culture of encounter where we can affect each others worlds. If Google wants to put funding into education, then perhaps we can work together so they will come to embrace the centrality of ethics. As we engage beyond our spaces, we can work to bring about the challenging work that Pope Francis describes inLet Us Dream, his book with Austen Ivereigh, as redesigning the economy so that it can offer every person access to a dignified existence while protecting and regenerating the natural world.

There are many ways that we are Catholic. We may be described pejoratively as woke, but my community of accountability, my students, want to be seenand I want them to know I see them. Jesus extraordinarily countercultural practice was to invite outsiders to share the table and in that unlikely fellowship begin creating the kin-dom of God. This radical inclusion is what gets us past pointless culture wars and into the Good News.

Read more:
The solution to the culture wars on campus? Radical inclusion. - America Magazine

I thought we were beyond this anti-American, anti-Christian madness, particularly here at home, but I was wrong.

There is a nasty underbelly of radicalized conservatives in Citrus County. I found it shocking since I didnt think the county where I was born and raised supported such narrow-minded, bigoted people.

One of the messages being used is a slanderous assault on library staff, which accused them of trying to peddle LGBTQ "propaganda" during June in celebration of "Gay Pride Month, with rainbow flag displays featuring books and slogans promoting homosexuality and gender dysphoria. Their language was uncivil, inflammatory, unchristian, and scientifically wrong. In a move outside of the standard practice for the BOCC, this became an agenda item at a recent meeting. Luckily, common sense and three brave Commissioners voted to continue to allow the library to educate its patrons.

This group also promoted a march supporting the Patriots who stormed the Capitol building in DC. Patriots connote a vision of a revolutionary war hero and the American fight for independence. Now they are in jail.

Get more from the Citrus County Chronicle

They also took a shot at our award-winning Superintendent of Schools. This group doesnt mind degrading anyones reputation if they dont espouse their worldview. We have a good school system. It is well run and produces solid citizens, but that wont stop this group from creating issues they can protest.

Hopefully, these people dont represent Citrus County. They dont represent the people I know in Citrus. The people I know are kind and want this divisiveness to end.

Nathan Sharp

Crystal River

Read more:
Culture Wars are alive and well in Citrus County - Citrus County Chronicle

The COVID-19 pandemic has been extraordinarily hard on people everywhere, creating personal, social, and economic hardships and leaving an almost unimaginable death toll. It has been particularly devastating in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other kinds of congregate housing. Thus it is not surprising that inmates in American prisons and jails would be among the hardest hit segments of the population.

The COVID Prison Project reports that People who live in correctional settings are at a high risk of exposure to COVID-19. In fact, a majority of the largest, single-site outbreaks since the beginning of the pandemic have been in jails and prisons. As of January 18, 2022, there were 494,528 cases among people in prison and 2,748 inmates have died from the virus. In addition, 159,984 prison staff have contracted COVID-19, and 259 have died from it.

The severity of COVID-19 outbreaks does not follow the usual blue state/red state breakdown. California and Texas each lead the nation in COVID-19 cases among the incarcerated. Together they have had more than 100,000 cases in their prisons.

The everyday uncertainty and terror of trying to live with and through a pandemic is compounded many times over behind bars. Overcrowded conditions make social distancing impossible; health care in prisons is notoriously inadequate even when COVID-19 is not raging. Prison medical personnel invest little time and energy in keeping up with the latest in COVID-19 protections.

All of these things may be the predictable consequences of life behind bars during a pandemic.

But this weeks news that officials in Arkansass Washington County Detention Center have been administering to COVID-positive patients drugs that are not approved to fight the disease, and not getting consent from the inmates for those drugs, is shocking. CBS News reported that medical staff gave them the anti-parasite drug ivermectin last year, without their consent, to treatCOVID-19, while telling them the pills were vitamins.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit on behalf of four of those inmates who say that had they been informed that the drugs they were given included the dewormer ivermectin and informed of its nature and potential side-effects, they would have refused to take it.

The news about the lawsuit and the possible violations of the prisoners rights serves as a reminder of the profound vulnerability of all inmates to the skill, judgment, and concern of medical personnel who are assigned to care for them.

That COVID-19 culture wars and unreliable information are now influencing medical decisions in prisons means that legislatures and courts must be especially vigilant in ensuring that prison doctors recognize and respect the right of inmates to informed consent to any medical treatment provided to them.

Ivermectin was developed forty years ago as a drug for livestock and quickly became a big moneymaker for pharmaceutical giant Merck. Ivermectin has been recognized to have limited human uses. It has been approved only to treat diseases like river blindness, intestinal problems caused by roundworms, head lice, and rosacea.

A National Public Radio report on its use as a treatment for COVID-19 notes that in June 2020, a group of Australian researchers published a papershowing that large quantities of ivermectin could stop the coronavirus from replicating in cell cultures. But, as the NPR report notes, The amount of ivermectin a person would need to take to achieve that effect isup to 100 timesthe dose approved for humans.

As a result, the Food and Drug Administration has not approved its use as a COVID-19 treatment and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned against using the drug for that purpose.

The FDA went as far as tweeting out a reminderlast year on August 21: You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, yall. Stop it.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the FDA and CDC position, ivermectin has come to play an important role in COVID-19 culture wars. Anti-vaxxers and mask skeptics have embraced it and claimed it is a miracle cure for COVID-19.

Acolytes of former President Trump like Texas Congressman Louis Gomert and Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson have ivermectin as an important part of the effort to defeat COVID-19. Fox News personalities, including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, have also promoted the drug.

Perhaps this is why the Washington County Detention Centers Dr. Robert Karas started doling out ivermectin to inmates with COVID-19. Karas has been a vocal advocate for using the drug during the pandemic. On January 15 he boasted about its use at the prison.

Inmates arent dumb, he said, and I suspect in the future other inmates around the country will be suing their facilities requesting the same treatment were using at WCDCincluding the Ivermectin.

It is of course one thing for an inmate to request a particular treatment, but quite another for Dr. Karas or any other doctor to give it to them without their consent.

Courts have long recognized that physicians and other medical personnel must obtain informed consent before treating patients.

As a New York appellate court put it in a 1914 decision, Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body, and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patients consent, commits an assault, for which he is liable in damages.

And what applies beyond prison walls also applies on the inside as well.

The National Commission on Correctional Healthcare notes that Any procedure requiring writtenconsentin the community also requires a signedconsentfrom aninmatein a correctional setting.

And some state correctional departments have codified that right in regulations and policy directives. For example, the Michigan Department of Corrections states that Informed consent shall be obtained when consent is required under prevailing medical community standards before medical care is provided, unless the medical treatment or procedure is authorized by state or federal law or Department policy (e.g., blood sample for mandatory DNA or HIV testing or, body cavity search), including situations set forth in this policy.

The American Medical Association calls for respecting the autonomy and obtaining informed consentfrom the incarcerated patient[A] physician must be able to conclude, in good conscience and to the best of his or her professional judgment, that to the extent possible the patient voluntarily gave his or her informed consent, recognizing that an element of coercion is inevitably present.

The AMA is right to recognize the coercive environment in which inmates live. But recognizing that fact means that medical personnel must make special efforts to be sure that treatment is as voluntary as it can be.

Dr. Karas and his Arkansas colleagues seem to have ignored that obligation in their COVID culture war zeal. In a letter to the Arkansas Medical Board, Karas made the stunning admission that inmates had not been given necessary information about ivermectin. Only after the media got wind of the situation, Karas acknowledged, were steps taken to assuage any concern that any detainees were being misled or coerced into taking the medications.

Writing a decade ago about severe inadequacies in medical care provided in California prisons, former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy rightly observed that the Constitution recognizes that Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons. Using them as guinea pigs in COVID-19 culture wars is surely incompatible with that constitutional command.

Go here to see the original:
Prisoners Should Not Be Used as Human Guinea Pigs in COVID-19 Cultural Wars - Justia Verdict

Sir Julian Brazier is a former Defence Minister, and was MP for Canterbury from 1987-2017.

In the background to the unhappy struggles in the Conservative Party today is a philosophical clash in which the voices of libertarians are loudest. While (mostly) still supporting the man, their accusation is that the Johnson government has abandoned liberty.

These voices call for much that traditional small c conservatives should agree with a smaller state, lower taxes, less regulation but their message carries at its heart a deeply unhelpful strand which would be bad for the country, and calamitous for the Partys prospects of staying in power.

Our most important domestic challenge today is reining back public expenditure so we can lower taxes on struggling families. Government spending is the highest proportion of GDP since the aftermath of the Second World War.

Where I part company from my libertarian friends is that I believe it is time we acknowledged that one of the hidden drivers of runaway public spending is libertarianism itself and its left-wing cousin, the human rights lobby. Both stress freedom and gloss over the responsibilities and consequences which should come with it.

John Stuart Mill formulated the paradox of hedonism: those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.

Similarly, the paradox of liberty is that we can only attain true freedom and a smaller state, if we focus not on selfish individualism but instead on nurturing and rebuilding those natural structures and attitudes which reduce the need for the services of the state. This requires active citizens, robust families, stronger communities and a sense of nationhood. These were themes of the late, great, Sir Roger Scruton.

One of his favourite examples were the American laws which allowed people, in most places, to build freely where they wanted, but then required the American taxpayer to expend huge sums taking roads and power to them. This has created a nightmare of ever-expanding suburbs with social black holes in town centres and heavy government spending.

More broadly, he attacked the growing wish for extending freedoms without accepting any corresponding responsibilities, even crucially where there are heavy costs to the taxpayer and wider community (including later generations).

There is a parallel with Britains NHS. The cost of NHS and social care has exploded to the point where some are claiming Britain is becoming a health and social care system with a country attached. The Party is buzzing with ideas for reform of the NHS and social care from pruning expensive bureaucrats and tackling GP contracts, to moving towards an insurance-based system. Yet there is one way we could reduce NHS spending dramatically and improve productivity in the economy: by persuading millions of obese people to lose weight and the nation to become fitter.

Scandinavian countries adopted a wide range of contrasting approaches to Covid but, with their much fitter populations, all suffered far lower rates of Covid deaths, and lower pressures on their health systems. Indeed, the Swedish approach was never an option here because our large population of obese people would have brought the NHS down.

The impact of Britains obesity, the worst in Europe (apart from Malta), goes far beyond Covid. A range of illnesses from cardiovascular conditions to arthritis to diabetes are made both more likely and more dangerous by obesity and also drive up the cost of the NHS.

Yet libertarians oppose measures to incentivise fitness, from sugar taxes to public health campaigns (what they call the Nanny State). Meanwhile the human rights lobby screams against fat-shaming even in professions (such as the Army and the Police) where fitness is self-evidently important.

So, yes to lower taxation in general. But yes also to taxes targeting unhealthy foods and to tax breaks for gym subscriptions.

A parallel example is opposition to so-called Covid passports. Most of the Covid deaths, for some time now, have been among the unvaccinated. All Conservatives should wish to raise restrictions as quickly as possible. Indeed, the noisy lobby calling until recently for the re-imposition of Covid restrictions was mostly on the Left, but the circumstances which have underpinned their case the existence of large numbers who refuse to vaccinate and get sick is ignored by libertarians and the human rights lobby.

By contrast, millions of Britons saw nothing wrong with those who choose to be refuseniks paying some price (in terms of minor inconvenience) for their potential impact on the NHS. Even as we manage to ease out of the last parts of lockdown, protecting the short-term liberties of the refusenik minority has consequences, not just for public spending, but also for many who have other life-threatening conditions over which unlike the refuseniks they have no choice. Sick refuseniks are occupying beds desperately needed by other sick people.

A broader example is attitude to the family. Individualists on left and right campaigned successfully a generation ago for the virtual end to restrictions on divorce and the end of allocation of fault as a factor in child custody and the division of assets.

Today, attempts to reinforce traditional families are bitterly opposed by many the same people. Iain Duncan-Smiths radical reforms on social welfare reintroduced incentives to work, but he was consistently blocked in trying to remove disincentives for traditional families to stay together.

Yet the result of the decline of the traditional family is not just growing misery among children, with mental health, suicide, self-harm and drug-taking all on the rise and mostly higher than other European countries. It is also extremely expensive for the taxpayer as social security spending and the requirement for police officers, social workers, prison officers and childrens mental health staff grows. Studies consistently show that stable two parent families offer on average the best outcomes for children and family breakdown has an immediate cost to the benefit system.

If the state can encourage responsible personal choices and the rebuilding of those Burkean structures, from the family to the community to a sense of shared nationhood, expenditure can fall as the use of the safety net declines. If, on the other hand, choices which lead to mounting bills for the taxpayer are protected on the basis that We are not a country which asks to see papers, the size of the state will expand as the safety net gets more and more crowded.

Scruton once commented When government creates an unaccountable class it exceeds its remit, by undermining the relation on which its own legitimacy depends. In courser terms, people hate a freeloaders charter; rights should be balanced by responsibilities.

Boris Johnson led us out of the European Union. The next moves we take should seek to re-establish that balance. So, yes to reducing regulation (such as the Clinical Trials Directive which destroyed East Kents biggest employer). Yes to making strategic choices to cut public spending and taxation (a smaller university sector, an end to the triple lock for pensions?). Yes to forging new global trade and wider partnerships.

But lets have an end to the suggestion by so many of the Prime Ministers critics that a combination of offering freedom, alongside state-funded protection from the consequences, will capture the hearts of the British people.

Read this article:
Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation the libertarian movement - ConservativeHome

Its called the Great Quit and refers to the mass exodus of American workers deciding that their long-standing jobs and careers just werent for them anymore. It has happened in every sector of the economy: manufacturing, construction, aviation, medicine, government, and now it seems, in a big way, teaching.

Teachers throughout our region, ones strongly tied to their calling, are leaving the profession. This isnt just the standard attrition rate or some demographic blip its a record-breaking departure of some of our best teachers.

Some teachers are retiring earlier than planned, while others have left mid-career to pursue new endeavors. And some young teachers are just opting out to take another path. Our local school systems cant hire new teachers at nearly the rate they need. Vacancies for full-time teachers and substitutes are going begging. The situation is desperate. There doesnt seem to be an end in sight.

Already the quality of teaching in our region is suffering. Substitutes and theyre not enough of them either are being hired full-time to cover classes that no longer have regular teachers. Alas, not all of these subs have the training necessary to teach full-time in the subject theyve been assigned.

At the same time, regular teachers are being asked to teach extra classes. Some, with no breaks in a days schedule, are being assigned up to seven classes. Thats an overwhelming workload. Theyre still being asked to carry out other teacher assignments, such as lunchroom duty, bus duty and whatever extracurricular activities they sponsor. This situation is already unsustainable. Indeed, if the workload and the stress continue unabated, its likely more teachers may reevaluate their careers.

So, just what do we do about it, and what are some of the underlying causes for the great quit among teachers? For years, the commitment on the part of educators was such that even when offered high-paying jobs elsewhere, they stayed. This was particularly true of math and technical instructors. That commitment has begun to fray, and local school systems dont seem to be doing enough about it.

One problem is the now highly politically charged environment of public education. While school board meetings have turned into right versus left debates over critical race theory or this or that book in the library, teachers are often the ones caught in the middle. They just want to teach not get involved in the nations mindless culture wars.

Then there is pay. Some say this doesnt matter that we pay the teachers enough as it is already, and besides, no one became a teacher to get rich but the fact remains, they are leaving and were not able to hire new ones. The counter to that is if you pay people enough, they will be more inclined to stay. Its basic economics.

Last months annualized inflation rate was 6.9%. If that keeps up it will erase most of the benefits of pay increases enacted during the past year. Like it or not, local boards of supervisors and school boards are probably going to have to raise pay to stem the exodus.

In the meantime, everything possible should be done to improve morale in the workforce. Lack of communication has been a frequent complaint. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when it came to policy changes, schedule changes and just an open back-and-forth between school administrators and instructional staff, it seemed that sometimes the teachers were the last ones to get the word.

There is also the concern that no one is listening to teachers concerns about working conditions. Remote instruction was grueling and because many teachers must teach both in person and in-class at the same time, it still is. Another frequent complaint is lack of support from school administrators in dealing with discipline problems or difficult parents.

In the end its about morale, which comes down to paying attention to working conditions, pay, support and communication. Some of the teacher exodus is a function of a societal trend. However, a little more focus on retaining teachers could go a long way to at least mitigating what is already an educational crisis.

David Kerr is an adjunct professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and has worked on Capitol Hill and for various federal agencies for many years.

Read the rest here:
Kerr: How to solve the 'great quit' in education - Inside NoVA