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Noem Says SD Universities Stink (of Liberal Indoctrination and Relativism)

The Governor is supposed to serve in part as a “cheerleader-in-chief” for her state and its august institutions. But yesterday she issued a baldly political press release declaring that South Dakota’s public universities stink and “challenged” the Board of Regents to wrest our floundering schools from the muck of diversity, equity, and poisonous liberal ideologies.

Evidently trying to drown out Governor Ron DeSantis’s official announcement of his bid to be the “anti-woke” President (and you don’t have to shout very hard to drown out such an embarrassingly botched Twitter rollout), Noem projected her Trumpist truthlessness onto our noble public university professors:

Across the nation, higher education is in a state of crisis. For the last several decades, many states have allowed liberal ideologies to poison their universities and colleges. Once a hotbed of ideological diversity, debate, and the pursuit of truth and discovery, many institutions have become one-sided, close-minded, and focused on feelings rather than facts. Professors have discarded reason and logic in favor of subjectivity and relativism. Higher education leaders have rejected universal truth and knowledge and replaced it with “individual truth” [Gov. Kristi Noem, press release, 2023.05.25].

Kristi Noem might have heard me making an argument like that against some education professors at SDSU back in those good old days, but “discarded reason and logic in favor of subjectivity and relativism” reads like a condition for winning Donald Trump’s endorsement. It’s Kristi Noem and her party who have been abandoning objective journalism, science, and shared truth and morality in favor of “alternative facts” and a literally deadly nihilist relativism.

Noem says the Regents have to “revitalize” our public universities, cut costs, raise graduation rates, ban drag shows, stop using students’ and staff’s preferred pronouns, make everyone take U.S. history and government, and stop taking money from China. To help that revitalization, Noem says she has set up a hotline—605-773-5916—that students, parents, taxpayers, and faculty can call to blow the whistle on “concerns about institutions of higher education”. (Now don’t get crazy and flood that hotline with calls from PrankDial.com, or Noem will have you arrested and force you to plead guilty to disorderly conduct.)

Noem ends her release with a reminder that she just appointed two new Regents on May 2 and an ominous note that “She will be making additional BOR appointments in the near future.” Hmm… the Regents’ webpage says the only Regent whose term is up this year is Jim Thares—is Noem warning the Regents that if they don’t heel to her call to Hillsdalify South Dakota’s public universities the way DeSantis is Hillsdalifying his New College in Florida, she’ll invoke SDCL 3-17-1 and remove the Regents for gross incompetency?

But for now, potential scholars, you’ve heard it straight from the Governor of South Dakota: if we generously read her words as an honest institutional assessment rather than a baldly political pitch for radical right-wing indoctrination, South Dakota’s universities are inferior and require a lengthy and complicated reform process before they can be worth your time and tuition dollars. Thanks a lot, Kristi, for that great marketing assist.

Update 12:35 CDT: For the record, let’s spotlight the language Noem used to deride South Dakota’s public universities specifically:

Less than half our students are even graduating, compared to 63% nationally. Students are also graduating with more debt and lower prospects at obtaining gainful employment. 43% of students who completed a college degree were underemployed after graduation. Countless students have been set up for failure – and charged tens of thousands of dollars for their trouble.

As a country, we should be ashamed of this. As a state, South Dakota can show the nation what quality higher education is supposed to look like.

I am charging the Board of Regents with the responsibility of revitalizing the institutions under its control and leading the nation by example. We must work together to ensure that we are providing an education that truly prepares our kids for the world they are entering… [Noem, 2023.05.25].

Noem said nothing about South Dakota’s public universities leaving graduates in debt, underemployed, and “set up for failure” just last month, when she claimed South Dakota’s universities provide “top-tier education” that “help[s] you succeed in future careers!

Kristi Noem, tweet, 2023.04.22.
Kristi Noem, tweet, 2023.04.22.

Did South Dakota’s public universities really collapse from “top-tier education” to setting countless students up for failure in one spring month? Or do Kristi Noem’s beliefs simply flip and flop with the changing needs of each day’s political attention cycle?

60 Comments

  1. Alan F 2023-05-26 08:12

    SDSU should revoke her “Degree”!

  2. sx123 2023-05-26 08:23

    Why bash your own state universities? Come on. One information controlling DeSantis n this country is too many; we don’t need another.

    I highly doubt the engineering department is teaching kids to design electric circuits using emotion.

    FYI, you like to bash experts, who normally use facts and reason. Make up my mind.

    Perhaps you just haven’t realized yet that your worldview is based on religion, and is probably wrong, if you quit ignoring the facts.

  3. larry kurtz 2023-05-26 08:28

    Why anyone is surprised by Mrs. Noem’s brazen pandering to the far white wing of her party remains a mystery.

  4. Jenny 2023-05-26 08:42

    https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minnesota-senate-passes-bill-for-free-college-tuition-for-families-earning-less-than-80k-annually/
    Here in MN, the legislature passed a bill making college free for familes making less than $80,000 annually and the Pubs were actually against it because it didn’t benefit enough families. Minnesota state government is always looking out for its people.

    SD….well, Gov Noem’s remarks ridiculing SDs colleges and universities speaks for itself. Always the same old crap in SD. To all the professors and students in SD universities, sorry for your governor making you all look bad.

  5. e platypus onion 2023-05-26 09:25

    Ronda Santis, so named by a fellow commenter from Field Negro blog, doesn’t know what anti-woke means and he also promised judicial candidates of the Clarence Thomas gold standard.

    Outside of a small portion of South Duhkota, who the hell cares what Noem wants?

  6. P. Aitch 2023-05-26 09:49

    I’m vacationing at delightful Disney World. It’s a marvel of inclusion and diversity and is going all out in June to celebrate Pride Month. This passive aggressive behavior makes my heart swell.
    *Ronnie DeSantis’ anti-woke DisneyWorld will require every guest to kneel and pledge their souls to Jesus while English speaking only will be the rule.
    ⚖️ STAY WOKE – IT’S NO JOKE 🗝️

  7. O 2023-05-26 11:00

    When life has given you most every advantage, it must be quite a burden to have to manufacture the outrage of being under attack — while not really offering a solution. If the university system has become too liberal, get your advanced degree and go to work at one of those universities (which would clamor over the opportunity to land a big-name/former governor professor) and teach what “needs to be taught.” Put YOUR ideas into the fray of open discussion, dissection, and evaluation.

    This is the Republican Party. This is who they choose as a leader; this is what they choose to elevate to issues.

    There is a reason “liberal” thought tends to prevail in institutions of higher learning: smart people come to smart conclusions based on evidence — based on reality. Smart people reject foolish dogma. Both are reasons why university systems more-and-more come under the fire of the Right.

    Divide, divide, divide . . .

  8. Donald Pay 2023-05-26 12:19

    I can’t think of anything better to drive people out of state than to make higher ed into the vast wasteland that Noem has made of state government. She’s got a press person whose newly minted advanced degree is in flashing her ass and shutting her mouth. And when they give a person (Noem) a degree as a participation trophy, higher ed has gone off the liberal deep end. There is nothing worse than a spoiled child, unless the child grows up to have the power to ruin your children’s education.

    O is absolutely correct. Smart people are evidence-based. What is her evidence? Noem mouths a “conclusion,” but her evidence (graduations rate in SD compared to nationally) is very suspect. South Dakota has a lot of students who are poor or lower middle class compared to other schools. South Dakota state government does very little to provide students with aid, unlike other states. That’s more a problem resulting from conservative government. Students need to go to work, something Noem should be familiar with if her “story” about skipping college because of inheritance taxes is anywhere near the truth. Maybe lower standards for admission results in fewer students able to make a go of it. We don’t know exactly what statistic she is using. Is it college completion in four years, five years or six years. Many students these days go part time and work part time to be able to both work and study. I was one of those for a time in the 1970s, Obviously, those students are not going to graduate in four years.

    Noem needs to release where she got her single statistic, because it is highly suspect. Further, I’m not sure how she draws her conclusion from that one statistic It’s a non sequiter. There are multiple statistics that she could use and someone without an agenda would be delving much more deeply to find answers. It’s on her watch that South Dakota higher ed is not performing. Throwing out good professors is not going to improve anything. It’s going to make matters worse.

  9. Loren 2023-05-26 12:44

    Yah, I’m going to take my cues on higher learning from someone with a “participation certificate.”

  10. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2023-05-26 12:51

    Also lacking in the evidence Noem presents for her case: any specific instances of liberal indoctrination at South Dakota’s universities or students set up for failure. One drag show doesn’t count—heck, two don’t count: Caleb Finck starred in a drag show at SDSU and went on to be a respected Republican legislator and now president of the Tripp Economic Development Corporation. Where is the evidence that South Dakota’s public universities are a cesspool of liberal indoctrination? Name names, Kristi.

  11. All Mammal 2023-05-26 13:05

    This is the golden opportunity an obscure few have been chomping at the bit for! There’s even been a growing eye-witness whistleblowing list of accounts written down. I sh!t you not. Deez Nutz are swinging into action with KN’s chin as the target! Prank dot com, eat your heart out.

  12. Bonnie B Fairbank 2023-05-26 15:04

    Wait, wut?!? Is our beloved and respected Snow Kween dissing her alma mater SDSU? Did she not sweat a hard earned degree in Poly Sci, studying on grueling flights to and from DC, where she was “mentored” by white supremacist Steve Scalise? How did she get all those gold stars to paste on her Intern Certificate? What did her “course work” at USD consist of? How does this entitled, ignorant piece of fluff keep her job in spite of her vast intellectual shortcomings?

    Noem is thoughtless, malicious, and irresponsible; she should not be allowed to issue press releases. They’re as embarrassing as she is.

  13. larry kurtz 2023-05-26 15:14

    I remember having a conversation with none other than Bill Janklow on SDPB when Dakota Midday was still called South Dakota Forum back in the ’90s about consolidating counties and making two regental universities community colleges. He said he carried a “bloody shirt” for bringing a similar suggestion to the legislature and regents.

    Today, few dispute the reasons educated people continue to flee my home state of South Dakota. The state is struggling to keep white workers, infrastructure is crumbling, industrial agriculture is failing, South Dakota churches are girding for gun violence, meth is replacing alcohol as the state’s drug of choice, Pierre’s culture of corruption and rape violence threaten open government, socialism is quietly replacing free enterprise, pheasant numbers are dwindling, environmental degradation is increasing, wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl, jails far outnumber colleges, ag bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny.

    Any registered nurse with half a brain will leave for Minnesota, Colorado or the Southwest the instant they graduate so the work force in South Dakota will just get stupider and more Republican.

    How are 64+ county seats and their bureaucracies either conservative or sustainable? They’re not; but, it is the way Republican cronyism and patronage built barricades to democracy by providing benefits of the public dole to those who say they deplore big gubmint in a state that hates poor people.

    The Wanblee district should be in Oglala Lakota County then Jackson should be rolled into Stanley, Haakon, Jones and Lyman Counties. Mellette, Bennett, Todd, Gregory and Tripp should be one county. Dewey, Ziebach and Corson should be a county. Butte, Harding and Perkins should be one. Lawrence and Meade should be one; Fall River and Custer should be one.

  14. grudznick 2023-05-26 16:08

    You fellows might want to check all your libbie rage over the Regents Board being called onto the carpet about the Liberal Indoctrination they have allowed to creep into that organization, but for the betterment of society we cannot allow the Regents Board to let the universities push all our kids into becoming members of the woke mob. The Regents must be forced, forced or ousted, grudznick says, to remember that balancing competing perspectives and ensuring checks and balances are essential components of a healthy democracy. Constructive dialogue, respect for diverse viewpoints, and the recognition of individual rights and freedoms can help navigate complex societal challenges while promoting social progress.

  15. sx123 2023-05-26 16:10

    It’s not all bad Larry. Although little has changed in the last 30 yrs, the rolling hills are green this spring, both East and West River. Very pretty.

  16. DaveFN 2023-05-26 16:32

    “‘…universal truth and knowledge…”

    Sun revolves around earth, no, earth revolves around sun, well, matter tells space how to curve and space tells matter how to move. She missed the Karl Popper paradigm episode on the differing scientific explanations for any given phenomena throughout scientific history.

    How it is not possible to resort to ad hominem attacks and the most derogatory epithets against such nescience, I simply don’t know.

  17. grudznick 2023-05-26 16:38

    Are there particular fellows on the Regents Board who are more likely to be ousted than others? Will Governor Noem oust young Messrs. Rave and Partridge first? grudznick guesses “yes.”

  18. DaveFN 2023-05-26 16:41

    “Noem wrote in her letter that the average graduation rate of all the SDBOR’s institutions is currently 47%, according to the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, which the Department calculates based on the share of students who graduated within eight years of entering a college for the first time.

    Those graduation rates range from 39% at BHSU to 54% at SDSU, with USD at 53%, Mines at 52%, NSU at 47% and DSU at 42%, according to the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard.

    Noem is now tasking the SDBOR to aim to raise graduation rates to 65% by 2028, five graduating classes away from now.”

    https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/education/2023/05/25/south-dakota-kristi-noem-universities-board-of-regents-graduation-rates-drag-shows-preferred-pronoun/70257976007/

    Noem doesn’t have DeSantis’ Disney to take on so instead she uses what she’s got. First Sherry Bren for being too tough and now the SD university system is the whipping boy. God only knows the machinations our universities will now be going through to inflate their graduation numbers and degrade educational quality at the same time. Oh, and cutting full-time faculty positions for all kinds of part-time tutors and staff that already exist.

  19. Arlo Blundt 2023-05-26 17:46

    Mr5s. Noem is sputtering complete nonsense. What state does she live in?? Does she even know??

  20. John Dale 2023-05-26 18:01

    In my view, you have to lose confirmation bias and take a really hard look at universities.

    I did that.

    And when I read Governor Noem’s statement, I started cheering out-loud that somebody sees it, too.

    They are not all bad, but they need to get better.

    Quickly.

    Or people won’t understand interviews like these:
    https://spearfishcitylimits.com/spearfish_city_limits_presents_jessica_polema

    These graduates will assume positions of authority and responsibility in our communities. We want them to be America First, protect America’s brand (elections), and be capable of building and maintaining systems that perform the job and uphold integrity.

    Our universities are falling short of that goal as we watch western freedoms give-way to the globalist operating system for taking-over, Communism. As soon as domestic actors empowered to rule over the ashes accomplish the goal of devolving our capabilities (intellectual, defense, food, security, borders, language, culture), they will be the first put up against the wall when globalist deep state generals get boots on the ground.

    Get your heads in the game.

    Countries get invaded.

    Traitors get hung and assassinated regardless of the outcome of the communistic coup.

  21. P. Aitch 2023-05-26 18:26

    You’re funny, John Dale. 😂

  22. Arlo Blundt 2023-05-26 18:34

    Mrs. Noem is sputtering complete nonsense. What state does she live in?? Does she even know??

  23. grudznick 2023-05-26 18:59

    It should be a wake up call to the woke amongst you when grudznick and Mr. Dale, who is a fine enough fellow at times, agree about the libbie indoctrination that the Regents Board is actively doing. Some of the fellows, and lady, on that group are part of the deep state woke mob. Ms. Noem probably knows which ones.

  24. Donald Pay 2023-05-26 19:20

    Let’s hear one example of “Libbie indoctrination.” I bet no one can can come up with one documented case.

  25. DaveFN 2023-05-26 19:31

    Donald Pay

    “Libbie indoctrination” gets right into the heart of critical theory of any kind which challenges power structures and which is part and parcel of 20th century thought. But don’t tell *them* that (they don’t understand it in the first place and aren’t capable of doing so in the second and so can merely fear it in the third).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory

    “A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to attempt to reveal, critique, and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals.[citation needed] It argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, sociology, history, communication theory, philosophy and feminist theory.

    Critical Theory (capitalized) is a school of thought practiced by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer on the one hand, and on the other any philosophical approach that seeks to liberate people from all forms of slavery and actively works to create a world in accordance with human needs (usually called “critical theory”, without capitalization). Philosophical approaches within this broader definition include feminism, critical race theory, post-structuralism, queer theory forms of postcolonialism.

    Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them”. Although a product of modernism, and although many of the progenitors of Critical Theory were skeptical of postmodernism, Critical Theory is one of the major components of both modern and postmodern thought, and is widely applied in the humanities and social sciences today.

    In addition to its roots in the first-generation Frankfurt School, critical theory has also been influenced by György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci. Additionally, second-generation Frankfurt School scholars have been influential, notably Jürgen Habermas. In Habermas’s work, critical theory transcended its theoretical roots in German idealism and progressed closer to American pragmatism. Concern for social “base and superstructure” is one of the remaining Marxist philosophical concepts in much contemporary critical theory.”

  26. John 2023-05-26 19:33

    Noem, again, spouts nonsense – albeit with a smidgen of truth. Enough truth allowing true believers to swallow her nonsense lies.
    Noem appointed or reappointed 6 of the 8 Regents. Her fingerprints are all over the Regent’s shortcomings.
    She has a point that the SD college graduation rate is abysmal – yet she fails identifying why. Merely matriculating those unprepared, under-educated is a fast track to having the nation’s least competent college graduates (like their governor). That is a moniker SD cannot afford. Perhaps, an inquiring mind should ask whether SD high schoolers are systemically unprepared for college. Inquiring minds want to know.
    She spouts “freedom of speech” while proposing limiting free speech. Once SDSU’s Prairie Repertory Theater produced, South Pacific. Now snowflake Noem suggests that was a crime. The ghosts of the folks who won WWII in the Pacific would differ. That’s a viable thought this Memorial Day.
    One of higher education’s afflictions is the rampant increase of “administrators” to students. Noem offers no metric slashing administrative nonsense. SD colleges ought have one administrative metric. (One would think that SD has no business or government or public administration professors or professionals who’d stand by an public administration metric.) Those “administrators” subject SD students to higher student loan rates than are available to students via loans outside of SD banksters. The systemic college bureaucrats default their loans to SD lenders. After I bitterly complained about a rate, an honest plebe confided that if I specified ‘x’ (out of state) lender that my rate was lower. That is in essence – near criminal behavior among the banksters and government. (That was years ago and the situation is likely worse.)
    She fails addressing the generation + long shortfall in student population to fill SD colleges — due to the collapse of the SD and US demographic pyramid. Noem, and her regents, and her colleges, are massively failing to get behind ANY solutions. Bluntly 3 state colleges may not survive the generation + of the student population hole: Madison (too near SDSU and Sioux Falls to matter or stand out to be viable); Aberdeen (NSU) (past its prime soaking up those fleeing area towns and farms); and Spearfish (unwilling to rise to a challenge outside of a basketball court, failing to care enough to send anyone to the Sd legislature for a decade). The expedient is making each a 2-year community feeder college. That likely serves the need for most students and those 3 communities. And don’t get me started on the nonsense of why SD “needs” 2 engineering colleges. (Maybe SD needs east and west river banksters, or judges — since the economy is sooo “diverse”.) Perhaps the Regents are fittingly renamed the rubber-stamped Regents.

  27. grudznick 2023-05-26 19:38

    Those who use the term “libbie indoctrination,” as grudznick does, may argue that certain institutions or individuals are pushing a specific ideological agenda, suppressing opposing viewpoints, or promoting a biased understanding of social, political, or cultural issues. This indoctrination stifles free thought, undermines critical thinking, and limits intellectual diversity.

    Blue links, certainly those from my close personal friend Lar, are not to be trusted, but if you dare read this web blogging you will find examples of such indoctrination taking place. There are members of this Regents Board who need to reign in the lean towards the woke mob.

    https://www.sdbor.edu/administrative-offices/infogovtrelations/Documents/2019.01.03%20%20Intellectual%20Diversity%20Response%20(FINAL).pdf

  28. DaveFN 2023-05-26 20:00

    grudznick

    “The page you’re looking for doesn’t exist.”

  29. John 2023-05-26 20:03

    The only thing I saw of ‘radical indoctrination’ in SD universities were the shorn Reagan youth students – after my military retirement.
    I was taken that those righteous, blonde mush-brains fell for anything and stood for nothing. It was truly as if they learned nothing from Vietnam, Korea, the Dominican Republic, the Banana Wars, Watergate, Teapot Dome, WWII, or even opened one page to US history.
    Those morons were radicalized OUTSIDE the universities. They carried their trash and pseudo fears into the university,
    The only difference between Islamic nationalism and christian nationalism are pork and Bud Light.

  30. James Cadwell 2023-05-26 20:11

    Keep digging lady, pretty soon you won’t be able to see the light of day. Attacking your own post-secondary Schools sounds so much like Trump and his political party. So glad you are part of that party. You wouldn’t fit in anywhere else.

  31. DaveFN 2023-05-26 20:43

    John

    Virtually any 20th century intellectual scholarship that questions the status quo of power structures is radical to Noem’s mind. That includes the theoretical underpinnings of much of what is currently found throughout humanities departments nationwide.

  32. DaveFN 2023-05-26 20:48

    Some of the most widely accepted ideas in the intellectual world today are what Noem seeks to purge. Welcome to the dark ages.

    Noem has gotta go.

  33. Donald Pay 2023-05-26 20:49

    So far I see no documented examples of “Libbie indoctrination” in SD universities. Noem, of course, wouldn’t have any or she would have disclosed them. Grudz, of course, rambles on, belching up his gravy, but I smell no documented examples in his upchuck.

  34. Donald Pay 2023-05-26 21:11

    DaveFN, See, I know enough conservatives to know they question the status quo incessantly. Back in the 1980s the right and the left were both questioning the Trilateral Commission and private-public partnerships. Look today at the right’s critique of the FBI and the deep state. Some of their critique I can agree with, but they tend to vastly overstate things without much evidence. Those of us in the real world tend to have evidence before we go off half-cocked.

    Noem’s efforts seem more like Hitler’s attack on the modern literature and art of that time in Europe. It’s crude and it leads to fascism.

  35. Arlo Blundt 2023-05-26 21:44

    Good God, Grudznick…give me an example of “Libbie indoctrination”…what college or University in South Dakota??? What course??? what professor?? I can give you many examples from back in my day of professors, now long dead, of a Conservative bent, who had no trouble from anyone for speaking at length in defense of Joe McCarthy, citing the”Civil Rights Movement” as communist influenced, and States Rights as an orthodox political position defending the “Southern Way of Life”. That was Ok with everybody involved..because there were other Professors with views diametrically opposed. We assumed we were to “think for ourselves”. What happened to that notion. Thinking back, it’s hard to determine who was really a libbie or a conservative…some were just trying to keep us awake and pull our chain. Good teaching…you would have the young walk in lockstep…Backward.

  36. DaveFN 2023-05-26 21:59

    Donald Pay

    Your idea of libbie indoctrination is not the same as Noem’s idea so you’re looking in the wrong place for documented examples which are not Noem’s target. She is out for something much more foundational.

    It started years ago with anything originating in France such as deconstruction, for example, including but not limited to Derrida, Baudrillard, and—in the field of eye-opening science studies—Bruno LaTour’s groundbreaking work in the sociology of science, all of which at the time were under the demonized rubric of “postmodernism” by so-called conservaties (better known as Luddites, perhaps). The ideas of these intellectual giants are foundational to much of the best in the humanities today, however far removed they are in intellectual history.

    But now Noem and her ilk are going after those deeper roots, namely, any critical theories whatsoever. She is anti-intellectual through and through. As much as I myself question the overt and IMHO grotesque manifestations and often lopsided, Americanized interpretations of global critical theories which have emerged (distortions fostered in part by warped British-American ego psychologies and therapies which has become so common in the U.S. and removed from their roots as to be a norm oblivious to other methods and theories practiced in continental Europe and elsewhere), Noem collapses the roots of theory with their logical derivative applications in classrooms then presumes to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

    Noem is far from intent on purging the overt manifestations you are looking for as evidence but seeks to purge the underlying substratum, namely, critical theory itself which we take for granted if we live in any semblance of the global intellectual world as it exists today.

  37. Donald Pay 2023-05-26 22:48

    DaveFN, Yeah, but I think you give Noem too much credit. Noem and her ilk are not thinkers. She doesn’t have a clue about modernism, postmodernism or any other -isms that came before, whether in art, literature, history, sociology, psychology or any other field. Not that I’m any expert. She and her ilk just lump everything into “socialism” or “communism” just like the fascists pre-WWII. It’s the intellectual idiots thinking everything is “foreign,” or “other,” because they don’t understand it or want to study anything to understand. I find this stuff interesting and important to know. I guess these folks have no intellectual curiosity, so they don’t care if they don’t know.

  38. Arlo Blundt 2023-05-26 23:17

    Yup–Donald’s on it. Governor Noem and her crack staff just aren’t very deep….this is just part of a talking point from some Republican “think tank” (Based in Texas probably) of hot buttons to push.

  39. All Mammal 2023-05-27 00:13

    Hopefully you scholarly gentlefellas have room for the possibility that Noem simply cannot stand that her younger, blonder, cuter, more athletic, more natural, and now more academically accomplished media spokeswoman southern belle, Amelia Joy, has earned her master’s degree on her own. My initial instinct is that jealousy has fueled her distain for any PYT who can use bigger words and get more male attention than herself. She must never be around perky competition with an academic accomplishment, so she is choking off any vehicle for little hotties to excel. KN wants to hold others back so she can keep the male eyes on her. She is a gender traitor of the worst sort. Ms. Joy will be lucky to flee SD with only a few claw scratches and not KN’s bowie knife sticking out of her back…..

  40. sx123 2023-05-27 06:54

    Libbie indoctrination, Conservative indoctrination, Church indoctrination

    College is expensive and some just aren’t cut out for college, so quit. Some restart later in life.

    Not sure college gradiation rates have much to do with the colleges themselves.

  41. sbfrancais 2023-05-27 07:13

    My bachelor’s degree is in Physics, which I got at Mines in the 90’s. I barely got it done in four years; had to take one course over the Summer to get it all in on time.

  42. Loren 2023-05-27 08:42

    Couldn’t we up the graduation rate by just handing diplomas to those that had a whole bunch of credits, but now have some “life experience,” you know like they did with certain folks? It will help the numbers, and it seems to be all about the numbers. Besides, this is the gov that did not want covid testing because you find more if you test more.

  43. Richard Schriever 2023-05-27 09:13

    “…..to raise graduation rates to 65% by 2028.” This will require the BOR to do aq research study in to the CAUSES for incompletion, which I postulate they will find has NOTHING to do with course content or professorial “agenda” and MUCH to do with the COSTS of attending school full-time. Potential solutions will therefor include greatly reduced tuition and/or greatly increased financial support. I.E., MORE TAXES. It ain’t gonna happen.

  44. grudznick 2023-05-27 10:14

    Goats!!
    🐐 🐐 🐐 🐐

  45. All Mammal 2023-05-27 11:03

    Austin Goss was a precursor for this planned hotline to deter anyone from using disguised phone numbers to call with some irresistible Baba booie tips. Goss’ arrest will not scare immature adults away from doing their whistleblower doodies!

  46. O 2023-05-27 13:25

    I have to agree with the Governor that the University systems have been lessened by the influence of THE RIGHT. That our universities had to grow to survive and lure ever more students into paying is pure greed-capitalism at its core. Selling college as “caveat emptor” shows how free-market capitalism fails the very people who support it financially.

    I also hope that hot line lights up with political science teachers expounding the virtues of tax cuts and trickle-down economics, or history teachers teaching that the Civil War was only an issue of “states rights” (or that states rights ins not dog whistler racism), Let EVERyTHING in college be held up to the light of fact, and inundate the tattle-line with all that unsubstantiated right-wing dogma.

  47. Fed Up 2023-05-27 13:43

    Or is her motivation as simple as retaliation for not getting to select the new BOR CEO?

  48. leslie 2023-05-27 14:19

    Cory, where did Kristi use the word “stink”?

    “Woke” is the derision Repubs have for “snowflakes”. To enrage conservative voters by applying “stink” to America’s higher education system, which her mentor Trump defrauded himself, yet normalizing her social recreation, Kristi’s kill-pic of her bleeding bear on safari is no different than these:

    1.) Trump child holding severed elephant tail and the knife he used. 2.) Or Navy Seal Gallagher holding the body by the scalp of a helpless wounded ISIS soldier, with a slit throat and the knife he used.

    1. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VnAN_n2LLkg/WqEyE5qIbmI/AAAAAAAAW24/Sfoz-1UHU8AOTtfw-D872cC38R7vIGOxgCLcBGAs/s1600/CXkCJL5WEAAl83t.jpg

    2.
    https://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2020/03/01/42d39e9f-88cd-482a-9f2c-c4087753e202/thumbnail/1240×698/7d92ef1cc27d1394598efffe1b90f87a/eg-10.jpg

    Is it “woke” to query these conservative leaders’ motives? Clearly, innocent blood on the killers’ hands. THAT stinks.

  49. ABC 2023-05-27 14:27

    21% of all workers in SD work for state, federal and local government. They’re all sucking from Noems free enterprise tit, eh?

    Rugged individualists living off sales tax and other people’s property taxes.

    Time for these people to grow up , grow a spine and 1 or 2 paid of balls, and pay income tax in South Dakota!
    We had one in the early 40s.

    Many rugged types like Noem are living off the Government Teat, in her case, her own.

  50. e platypus onion 2023-05-27 16:59

    magats have controllked South Duhkota for oiver 40 years, the educational problems they claim are sombad are because of magat policies, not liberal wokeness.

  51. DaveFN 2023-05-27 17:26

    Donald Pay and Arlo Blundt

    Noem needn’t in any way be a scholar of 20th century philosophies meant to subvert power structures in order for her to piggy-back herself on wider efforts for her to be able to conduct what is effectively an ideological culture war. That philosophies exist is threat enough for her to bristle from her literal Christianity background. Ideological wars need no concrete acts for provocation: a strawman is good enough, however weak (take CRT as an example).

    Noem is dangerous because she’s in a position to align herself with the big boys such as Hillsdale with whom she can share and implement like agendas. These conservative think-tanks have plenty of knowledgeable scholars aware of 20th century thought and have set a formidable backfire to the proliferation of theories emanating from the life of the mind. The major conservatives do the heavy lifting; Noem carries out their bidding and implements their monoculture in our little State of South Dakota. Not that it’s at all a very difficult task as we continue to see. Academe itself has been so weakened over the decades that Noem thinks she’s on a restorative mission as well as an ideological crusade.

    Do note that within the last 50 years intellectual currents in critical theory and politics have moved from away from making meaning (hermeneutics), and have focused on disrupting and suspending meaning, then to sustaining suspended meaning, to what is currently a withdrawl from interpretive meaning-making altogether. Major schools of critical theory have been instrumental in this sequence of thought, one which effectively leaves the world up for grabs for its creation anew by the younger generations something which is a fundamental threat to conservative religion and those in power. There are very deep intellectual undercurrents to what is the surface phenomenon of “woke” in popular discourse.

  52. Arlo Blundt 2023-05-27 18:13

    DaveFN…thank you for your thoughts..I had not thought of the Neo-Cons taking on deconstructionism and the thoughts of the French…who are always nominally suspect. Yes, I believe, with you, Governor Noem is on a “restorative mission and an ideological crusade,” though I believe with her limited background and restricted vocabulary that she could not explain it as such. Primarily she is on a political campaign to achieve fame within the Republican Party. I believe that is the limit of her philosophy : Fame and Popularity=Fund Raising.

  53. Bonnie B Fairbank 2023-05-27 19:29

    DaveFN
    Reminds me of the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s.

  54. Richard Schriever 2023-05-27 21:45

    Donald, “…..they don’t care if they don’t know…..” But, they DO care that anyone else might “know” something in some way other to the way they “know” things. It is otherness they abhor.

  55. larry kurtz 2023-05-29 21:46

    That Augustana’s president has yet to weigh in on Mrs. Noem’s petulance on this matter remains a mystery.

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