College Administrator: "It's come to my attention you've assigned The Real Anthony Fauci, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to your class"
College Administrator: "It's come to my attention you've assigned The Real Anthony Fauci, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to your class"
In defense of assigning The Real Anthony Fauci and Plague of Corruption, books that confront, among others, Big Pharma.
This past week, a chair from another department on campus where I work took it upon herself to contact the chair of my department and make a formal inquiry into the suitability of my academic right to assign the book The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to my upper-division college course titled Children in Families and Communities. This was the second formal inquiry I have received for assigning a book to this class in the past two years. The first came after I assigned Plague of Corruption, by Dr. Judy Mikovitz, spring semester 2021.*
Why the sudden interest in the books I assign to my class? This was new. Since the fall of 2001 when I was hired, no one has ever expressed any interest in what material I assigned to my classes. Every semester, like all other faculty on campus, I submit my course syllabi pro forma. The CSU hired me, based on my academic background and teaching experience at other institutions, to teach what I thought was important. I had proven myself during the competitive hiring process in 2001. And, for the next 20 years.
It appeared Administrators and I agreed on “what was important to teach” for 20 years, until covid arrived.
Some background:
When covid arrived, I paid close attention to the work of John Ioannidis, MD, DSc, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health, statistics, and biomedical data science at Stanford University. In August 2020, he and colleagues published a paper titled “Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed” (this paper was later updated and published in International Journal of Forecasting). Their early estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population for covid-19 were 0.05% to 1%. As Dr. Ioannidis pointed out, a population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. Dr. Ioannidis’ more recent research found his early covid case fatality estimates high. Early observations reported globally suggested the majority of those dying with covid were elderly with comorbidity.
Dr. Ioannidis' statistical data, and the early reports on covid related deaths, strongly suggested covid was similar to the flu, and that the focus of attention should be on those over age 70 (especially those with comorbidity).
It therefore surprised me when lockdowns, masks, and a rushed, experimental, zero-liability covid vaccine were mandated in most U.S. states, including California where I live and work. Many questioned if these policies were warranted, and if, for example, naturally acquired immunity would be equal to or more robust than taking EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) vaccines against a respiratory illness (it was). People wondered if submitting to covid vaccines increased one’s chances of getting covid (it did). Many pointed out vaccines injected via intramuscular routes were physiologically incapable of preventing infection and transmission of respiratory illnesses and licensed vaccines were only available for influenza virus. Vaccines against the other pathogens, such as covid (SARS-CoV-2), were either in clinical trials or in preclinical stages of development.
There were many questions about mandating face masks, people wondered if they worked and if their harms outweighed any benefit. As it turns out, pooled results of randomized controlled trials on face mask efficacy did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection.
Although it may be difficult for those who have spent their lives indoctrinated daily by Big Pharma commercials (“brought to you by Pfizer”), others who see through the sophisticated commercial sales pitches of companies with long criminal rap sheets and histories of valuing profit over people, tend to want to step back and think things through before injecting EUA vaccines into themselves multiple times.
Clear thinking people know vaccines are a drug, like any other drug, with many ingredients and side effects. Clear thinking people demand informed consent and engagement with their personal doctor who knows their health history. Clear thinking people demand vaccine package inserts (that list ingredients and side effects) and the published FDA approval process for any pharmaceutical product they put in their bodies. If we are not able to engage in a cost-benefit analysis with our physician about an experimental, zero-liability pharmaceutical product, who owns our body?
As a "my body, my choice" health privacy advocate, I was particularly alarmed by the lack of confidentiality and informed consent that came with mandatory covid vaccines (we were essentially mandated to enter an ongoing experimental vaccine trial). Mandated experimental covid vaccines made a mockery of the Nuremberg Code since no one was informed of the covid vaccine ingredients and since the vaccine mandate continued even as injuries and deaths immediately following it mounted. Our health was placed in the hands of private, for-profit companies rushing to meet the global demand for a zero-liability vaccine. What an economic bonanza.
Coercive mandated government covid vaccines, available in parking lot drive-through injection sites staffed by recent EUA hires, combined with covid vaccine incentive programs that would make Saturday Night Live writers blush (get a shot and get free: french fries, ice cream, beer, money, you know, because: health), created an atmosphere so extreme and desperate many began to ask questions they had never before considered.
Unfortunately, because the covid vaccine was approved as an EUA product, no package insert information was required and it did not need the approval of the FDA. Those who preferred to take a wait-and-see approach to the mandated EUA covid vaccine, and engage in a cost-benefit analysis for themselves and their family, became critical of their government for rushing them into it to keep their job, attend school, or travel. Was it fair to mandate a vaccine that had no vaccine insert listing the ingredients and possible side effects? Was it fair to force an injection that had no FDA approval?
According to the “Pfizer documents,” released last year by court order following a FOIA request filed by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, myocarditis and pericarditis were “important identified risk[s]” highlighted in Pfizer’s safety database on June 18, 2021. Pfizer knew their covid vaccine had dangerous side effects including death. It was therefore no surprise to Pfizer that immediately after their experimental covid vaccine was unleashed on a trusting public desperate to help in any way they could “to protect grandma,” that the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Reaction System (VAERS) tracking adults and children started exploding with reports. At the same time, medical scientists began publishing their findings in refereed medical and scientific journals on the unprecedented, catastrophic injury and death data coming in caused by covid vaccines. The studies on myocarditis and pericarditis in young males as side effects of covid vaccines could not have been clearer.
As a sociologist, I was familiar with the term “regulatory capture.” Regulatory capture in the case of the pharmaceutical industry describes the phenomenon in which regulators (e.g. HHS, NIH, and FDA) who are charged with protecting the health of the public with their tax dollars, instead protect the interests of the privately owned multinational companies they regulate. What else could explain why it took two decades and hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths to fine those responsible $26 billion? How could the U.S. government be so negligent in its oversight of the pharmaceutical industry that it took lawsuits that led to the largest criminal fine in U.S. history ($2.3 billion)? If our regulatory agencies were working for Americans, why were we not informed that Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine safety data, collected between December 1, 2020 - February 28, 2021, included a not-made-public eight-page Appendix listing already known adverse events due to their covid-19 vaccine (see pages 30-38)?
I was also alarmingly aware of economic ties between U.S. government bureaucrats and well-heeled pharmaceutical companies including $95,640,438,163 in penalties applied to pharmaceutical companies since the year 2000. It became clear to me, at this juncture in history, that I needed to scrupulously review the logic and science of government covid-19 mandates. I quickly learned that raising questions about covid-19 lockdowns, forced masking, and mandatory experimental, zero-liability vaccines was threatening to some, including CSU East Bay student journalists writing for our campus newspaper The Pioneer (see here, and here).
I was not anti-vaccine. I dutifully took my innocent child in for all 72 zero-liability, CDC recommended childhood vaccines. 72!
Witnessing what appeared to be a harmful and potentially corrupt mandated covid vaccine rollout, I was forced to think more critically about all vaccines. I reflected back on all the vaccines (drugs) I allowed to be injected into my newborn and developing child and wished I had not blindly trusted the CDC and instead did my due diligence including a cost-benefit analysis for each vaccine on the childhood schedule. I especially wish I had considered the added risks of giving a child a vaccine before age three while their immune system is still developing. I also wish that I had known that among the many vaccine ingredients, aluminum adjuvants are know to be a neurotoxin and can harm the developing brain.
Thankfully, there has been much recent research critically reviewing the vaccine ingredients found in free-from-liability vaccines on the CDC childhood immunization schedule. Fortunately, according to Neil Z. Miller, from 1999 through 2002, several vaccines containing mercury were phased out of the childhood vaccine schedule and the production of childhood vaccines with thimerosal ended in 2001. However, vaccines with thimerosal, not yet past their expiration date, remained available on the market for sale until January 2003. Read that again. For another two years, after the CDC removed thimerosal from the childhood immunization schedule because it was determined to be toxic, infants continued to receive thimerosal-laced vaccines. Furthermore, although the CDC removed thimerosal from the U.S. vaccine market in 2001 for children under age six, they kept thimerosal in the influenza (flu) vaccine for all ages and in vaccines for children over age six.
As my critical thinking about U.S. covid-19 policy bled into my social media (Twitter) I began to observe and experience Orwellian levels of censorship. I witnessed revered medical doctors such as Peter McCullough, MD, and Robert Malone, MD, and esteemed scientists such as Judy Mikovits, PhD, and Harvey Risch, MD, PhD, all of whom were internationally recognized scholars at the top of their fields, kicked off social media for questioning EUA government decisions in their peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. I even experienced censorship from Twitter for merely tweeting their published academic journal findings and for tweeting a direct quote from Anthony Fauci. My Twitter account was shut down multiple time in 2020 and then shut down permanently in February, 2021** because I had the gaul to share refereed science that questioned lockstep, global lockdowns and forced experimental, zero-liability clot shots. With no access to my Twitter account, I began writing on Substack about covid-19, including on: women’s menstrual irregularities post-covid vaccine; ivermectin and censorship; the covid-19 vaccine and clotting; and the U.S. funded Wuhan bioweapons lab.
In short, a lot of information from a lot of credible sources was being censored from the public by powerful players, including the federal government and the “Virality Project” out of Stanford University (which reviewed and coordinated censorship on YouTube/Google, Twitter, Facebook/Instagram, Medium, Tiktok, and Pintrest, as Matt Taibbi has recently exposed in his Twitter Files: The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine).
The background description I have provided is meant to offer a sense of what I was thinking when I decided to assign The Real Anthony Fauci, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to my class. In response to my decision to assign this book to my class, an Anonymous Administrator (a department chair on campus) formally raised these concerns to my department chair:
The book does not support the course description.
The book does not support the course Student Learning Outcomes.
The book is controversial and has no relation to course subject matter.
Although academic freedom protects an instructor’s right to select the materials to be used in a class… individual rights may be limited….
Teachers must educate, not indoctrinate, students.
Here is my reply (I have modified it for clarity):
Hi _____ (my department chair),
I assigned chapters from the book The Real Anthony Fauci and related course materials (the documentary Medical Racism: The New Apartheid and lecture notes) to students in my Children in Families and Communities class (a class I have taught successfully for 20+ years at this university) because these course materials are covered under the course description and Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). I previously assigned this book and related course materials when I taught this course fall semester 2022. It went very well.
The Real Anthony Fauci, if you have not yet read it, is a critical examination of Dr. Anthony Fauci's tenure and power as a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) presiding over the health and welfare of all U.S. children in families and communities. During his 50-years at the NIH, Dr. Fauci oversaw U.S. industries that impact the health of all Americans, such as the pharmaceutical industry (for example, allowing foster children in the U.S. and children in Africa to be placed in dangerous clinical pharmaceutical trials that often resulted in their harm and sometimes in their death), and the agricultural industry (for example, giving the green light to glyphosate, known to negatively impact human health, that continues to be found in U.S. public school lunches).
The book's two main questions are:
1) Has the health of American children in families and communities improved under Dr. Fauci's 50-year tenure at the NIH?
2) What impact has U.S. regulatory capture by powerful corporations had on the health of children in families and communities during Dr. Fauci's 50-year tenure at the NIH?
The book is meticulously researched (with 2000+ citations), and focuses on U.S. health and welfare policies directly impacting all American families. It is also a NYT bestseller with over one million copies sold and excellent reviews volunteered by the public on Amazon.
I can't think of anyone in the U.S. who has had a bigger impact on the biological, psychological, and socio-cultural development of U.S. children than Dr. Fauci. (Course SLO #1)
The book fits perfectly in a 3-week section of the semester. In this course, students first read a general introductory textbook on children, families and communities that superficially covers all the topics in the course description. Their second assigned reading is Dr. Bruce Perry’s The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. This book covers the biological impact of trauma on the developing brain and the psychological and social fallout of this trauma from a micro perspective.
The Real Anthony Fauci provides a perfect transition from a micro focus on children in families and communities from a biological, psychological and social perspective to a macro focus on children in families and communities from a biological and socio-cultural perspective.
The Real Anthony Fauci also provides a perfect transition from a macro focus in the U.S, to the final assigned book for the class, Half the Sky, which examines the global conditions of children in families and communities in developing nations.
In short, The Real Anthony is an important link in the course that bridges the micro to the macro and then the U.S. to the developing world.
If you would like, I can provide examples of student reflection papers (SLO #2) and student responses (SLO #2) from when I taught the course fall semester 2022 (during which time I received no complaints or concerns from students, faculty or administrators). I’ll happily furnish examples of the ways in which students responded critically and thoughtfully to The Real Anthony Fauci assigned chapters and related materials (SLO #4).
The Real Anthony Fauci and its related course materials specifically cover the course topics: family policy, and power. It short, it covers SLOs #1, #2, and #4. The other three books assigned for the course also cover these SLOs as well as SLO #3.
To answer briefly:
Yes, the book The Real Anthony Fauci and related class materials are defendable by the 21-22 CSUEB Statement on Academic Freedom, specifically sections 4.2, 11, and 12.
No, the book is not "professionally contestable" as outlined in section 12.
Yes, I am aware of this new policy.
No, I am not “indoctrinating” students by assigning the book and related course material.
The Real Anthony Fauci is excellent reading for this class and there is no evidence I have ever taught material that could be considered "indoctrinating" students. I assign material based on my academic expertise. I encourage lively debate on all readings and course materials. I assigned The Real Anthony Fauci because, like all the other course material I assign, it is excellent and important cutting edge research. I introduce course material in a neutral manner.
To address the notion of "indoctrinating" students, I offer as an example another text I have assigned in the past: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx to my class Theories of Human Development. (Oddly, I have never received a formal inquiry or complaint for assigning this text that I may have been jailed for during the McCarthy era.) As a sociologist, I believe Marx posits an important human development theory. Others teaching the course, from other academic perspectives, may disagree. Is it controversial to assign this book? To some, yes. To others, no. Does assigning The Communist Manifesto imply I am indoctrinating my students to become communists? To some, yes. To others, no. Am I indoctrinating my students by assigning a book that is controversial to some? No. I am simply doing my job as an intellectual introducing students to perspectives I believe, based on my experience and expertise as a sociologist, are important for them to be exposed to in order to contribute to their educational experience in the course subject area. (I also assign summaries of the work of Adam Smith and Thomas Piketty in my Theories of Human Development class, among many other theorists.)
Due to this inquiry from an Anonymous Administrator, I've turned to CSUEB’s professor of history emeritus Hank Reichman’s work on academic freedom and have found it to be invaluable. I am well within my rights to assign books such as Dr. Judy Mikovits The Plague of Corruption and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s The Real Anthony Fauci. I find these "inquiries" about my assigning these books a troubling sign of the times and evidence of the attempt to censor dissenting scientific viewpoints in the classroom. According to Hank and the AAUP, however, academic freedom allows “freedom in the classroom to teach your subject according to the standards of one’s discipline as one understands it.”
All best,
Lynn
P.S. I love this quote and hope you do, too:
In 1902, John Dewey wrote: "Any attack, or even any restriction, upon academic freedom is directed against the university itself. To investigate truth; critically to verify fact; to reach conclusions by means of the best methods at command, untrammeled by external fear or favor, to communicate this truth to the student; to interpret to him its bearing on the questions he will have to face in life--this is precisely the aim and object of the university. To aim a blow at any one of these operations is to deal a vital wound to the university itself."
*I began a tenure-track teaching position fall semester 2001. I had never experienced an inquiry about material I had assigned to a course before spring semester 2021. Beginning February 7, 2021, I had to vigorously defend assigning Dr. Judy Mikovits’ Plague of Corruption to my class Children in Families and Communities after receiving an email from a CSU East Bay administrator due to two student complaints. This administrator argued, “Many do consider Dr. Mikovits' work to lack academic rigor,” and “The dean's office was made aware of this as well and they are quite concerned about the use of this material.” (Ironically, I had already assigned Plague of Corruption to both my summer 2021 and fall semester 2021 Children in Families and Communities classes without incident. The students found the book captivating and informative and participated in much class debate.)
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Here is my reply to this administrator on February 8, 2021, who argued Dr. Judy Mikovits’ Plague of Corruption lacked ‘academic rigor’:
Dear _____ (Administrator),
Thank you for your email.
I strongly disagree with any suggestion that Plague of Corruption by Dr. Judy Mikovits lacks 'academic rigor.'
I stand by assigning this text based on peer-reviewed science and course objectives. The author has 101 peer-reviewed articles on this topic. Her peer-reviewed articles have received 3,934 academic citations.
Here is her link on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Judy_Mikovits
There is also 20 years of auspicious peer-reviewed science backing Dr. Mikovits’ position. Links to different perspectives on this topic are posted in the course.
The assigned textbook was a bestseller last year, it currently has 5,942 reviews on Amazon with a 4.5 star average rating, it was written by a PhD who worked at the National Cancer Institute for 20 years, her co-author is a lawyer. The credentials of the two authors are more distinguished academically than many books I've assigned in my courses in the past.
This text covers many different topics that directly impact children in families and communities from a human development perspective, it is written by one of the United States's top scientists and is accessible to non-scientists. Our 2-week Unit that begins today focuses on biological perspectives on human development, children, families and communities. (The rest of this course focuses on sociological, psychological and anthropological perspectives on human development, children, families and communities.)
Students in all of my courses, for the last 20 years at CSUEB, as you can see from all of my student evaluations and course syllabi, are free to respond to all assigned material in any way they wish (as long as they are respectful). This is clear on the syllabus and BB Discussion Board: students know I take no stand on any topic we discuss. Lively debate is encouraged. I consider the classroom to be a place to openly discuss topics pertinent to the course from all perspectives.
I'm surprised two students this academic year have gone directly to you without giving me a chance to respond to their question/concern within 24 hours; this has never happened before in my 20 years at CSUEB. We are living in unprecedented times, I have worked and continue to work extremely hard with our students with kindness and empathy during these times.
Thanks again and take care, I hope this email addresses your concerns.
Lynn
Here is some more information about this book/topic that we cover for the next two weeks (from February 2021):
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The current March 2023 screenshot of Plague of Corruption on Amazon:
Carl Sagan on Charlie Rose:
Carl Sagan: "Science is a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the Universe ... If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan who comes along. It’s a thing Thomas Jefferson stressed, “it wasn’t enough,” he said, “to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights, the people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education otherwise we don’t run the government, the government runs us."
April 7-8, 2023 Twitter censorship update:
April 9, 2023: It appears today people on Twitter can now again see my pinned tweet with the link to this Substack essay. Tomorrow, who knows?
April 10th, 2023: Twitter censorship continues:
Thank you for doing your bit for academic freedom, Lynn. That takes courage in these times.
Well done. Thank you for standing uo.