Penna Dexter
As we begin 2024, I want to offer a New Year’s prayer for our country. But frankly, it seems a little presumptuous to ask God’s blessing on this nation.
In boardrooms, in some states, and in the federal government, leaders are enacting rules and laws that force people to treat men as women and women as men.
Other states oppose this.
But, before 2023 even ended we received the disappointing news that prolife Ohio Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill that would protect minors from being given gender transition hormones and surgeries. The law would also bar physicians from prescribing cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers for the purpose of gender transition. Advocates of this protocol refer to it as “gender affirming care”.
HB 68, the SAFE Act, would also prevent biological males from competing in women’s sports.
The Daily Signal published strong reactions from leaders in the pro-family movement, including Ryan Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of “When Harry Became Sally,” one of one of the early books warning of the harms of the burgeoning transgender movement. Dr. Anderson said, “DeWine just vetoed an outstanding bill that protected the integrity, fairness, and safety of sports, and protected children from unethical medical attempts at the impossible — ‘affirming’ a sexual ‘identity’ at odds with reality.”
Since, HB 68 passed both houses of Ohio’s General Assembly with supermajorities, lawmakers could override the governor’s veto. Let’s put that in our New Year’s prayer.
We can and should pray for America. I’m going with this:
“O God, the fountain of wisdom whose will is good and gracious and whose law is truth, so guide our Senators and Representatives assembled in the General Assembly of Ohio (or the Legislatures of the other States, or the United States Congress) that they may enact laws pleasing in your sight, to the glory of your name and the welfare of this people. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Kerby Anderson
Yesterday I talked about some of the problems with the universities in America and focused on the economic issues. Today I would like to talk about ideology. Victor Davis Hanson answers the question: “How Were the Universities Lost?”
He begins by acknowledging that most Americans already sensed that universities were a hotbed of liberalism and intolerance. But after the Hamas attack on Israel in October, most Americans were shocked at the level of antisemitic hatred on college campuses. He has several explanations.
First, elite universities worked to reduce their “white” incoming student populations. He points to the abolition of the SAT requirement and no longer looking at the comparative ranking of high school grade averages. The net result was a dramatic decrease in the number of Jewish students at many elite universities.
Second, was the description of Jewish students as “white” and “privileged.” The academic and financial success of Jewish people made it easier to target them as oppressors even though they are a minority in America. Third, universities began to admit increasing numbers of foreign students, especially from oil-rich Middle East countries, who possess an anti-Jewish bias.
He concludes, “The net result is that there are now thousands of students from abroad, especially from the Middle East, far fewer Jewish students, and student bodies who demand radical changes in faculty standards and course work.”
He also argued that these schools may go the way of Disney and Bud Light. “At the present rate, a Stanford law degree, a Harvard political science major, or a Yale social science BA will soon scare off employers and the general public at large.”
That’s why I suggest that a college degree may not be worth as much as it was just a few decades ago.

Kerby Anderson
For the next two days, I want to talk about some of the problems with universities in America. Much of what I will be talking about today comes from “Harvard is Big Business at Its Worst” by Allysia Finley. She focuses on Harvard because of the testimony last month by Harvard President Claudine Gay, but her comments apply to most of the major universities.
The first issue is the fact that the IRS recognizes most private colleges as nonprofits, meaning they don’t pay taxes. This saves Ivy League schools like Harvard millions of dollars, which is why they have massive endowments. Couple that with the fact that Columbia is New York City’s largest private landowner, with more than 320 properties, valued at nearly $4 billion.
Second, these schools may have nonprofit status, but they operate like business corporations. For example, they charge exorbitant prices for their product with inelastic demand. Moreover, they “practice price discrimination by awarding financial aid to lower-income kids so the schools can market themselves as diverse and accessible.”
Third, these schools exploit low-cost labor by employing graduate students to teach classes for higher-paid faculty. As a graduate student at Yale, I taught undergraduate students just a few years younger than myself and wondered if they and their parents thought they were getting the best education money could buy.
Finally, Ivy League colleges differ from corporations in one way: “The schools don’t have shareholders who can force changes.” We are seeing the influence of big donors announcing they will withdraw their donations, but that is nothing like what you find in typical corporate management.
Perhaps you can now see why many universities are big business at its worst.