PSC President James Davis

Dear Commons Community,

James Davis, President of the CUNY Professional Staff Congress, sent a letter to the membership yesterday, reminding faculty that: “Whether you yourself prefer to teach in-person, remote, or hybrid, the point is that you and your department should make that determination, not CUNY central.”  His letter is in response to CUNY Chancellor Matos’ directive to college presidents “encouraging them to attain 60 percent of all Fall course offerings be listed as either in person or hybrid and 40 percent listed as remote”

President Davis is right to remind the faculty of their prerogatives especially as we move out of the past seventeen months of the pandemic during which faculty governance was pushed aside at many of our colleges and universities. 

His entire letter is below.   

Tony

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Dear Colleagues,

In the last week of May, Chancellor Matos reminded CUNY college presidents about a “flexible goal” that he was “encouraging” them to attain: that 60% of Fall 2021 course offerings at each college be listed as either in person or hybrid, and 40% listed as remote. “I think this goal is even more important now,” he continued, “given the recent announcement by the DOE that all NYC K-12 classes will be in-person next semester, the Governor’s announcement of mandatory vaccination for in-person classes at SUNY and CUNY, and the daily news about more institutions, businesses and agencies returning to ‘normal.’” The Chancellor also indicated that he had received “hundreds of emails from students” requesting more in-person classes.

Some college presidents interpreted the Chancellor’s encouragement as a directive, instructing Deans and department chairs to change course modalities to meet this target. Of course, it is easy to understand why. All of us are eager – faculty, staff, and students – to return to something like “normal,” and many of us who could not have envisioned a safe return to campus even a few months ago may now feel that it is possible and desirable. However, I’m writing to urge PSC members to work with their chapter and governance leaders to resist such unilateral directives from the administration. Changes to course modality should be a matter of department decision-making, not handed down by fiat. The Chancellor’s “flexible goal” should be treated as just that, and since some college Presidents are not complying in order to hit the arbitrary 60/40 target, it is clear that resistance in this case is not futile.

Changes across the board to teaching modality at this late date have implications for health and safety, faculty and staff workload, student expectations, and faculty governance.

Health & Safety

A cookie-cutter approach to teaching modality does not account for the different states of readiness for occupancy across the campuses or on any one campus. The Chancellor’s blanket expectation that each college offer 60% of courses either in-person or hybrid may be easily fulfilled at one campus without compromising the safety of the campus community, but not at others. Health and safety should determine the percentage of in-person + hybrid course offerings, not an arbitrary metric demanded across the board.

Workload

For some, changing teaching modality over the summer is a simple proposition: revert back to the in-person way of teaching one’s courses. But for others it is not that simple, particularly if a course originally developed to teach remotely is changed to hybrid or in-person. Modality changes are not just different methods of “delivering” the same content. In-person, remote, and hybrid are pedagogically distinct forms of instruction, requiring fundamentally different preparations by both faculty and staff. Contingent faculty are particularly vulnerable to pressure – overt or implied – to change teaching modality in order to retain an appointment.

Student Expectations

CUNY students have been registering for Fall 2021 since March. To be sure, as state and federal guidelines have changed, everyone’s expectations for what Fall semester could look like have also changed. But if the university administration continues to treat teaching modality as a fluid, open-ended matter, students will not have a fixed point of reference around which to organize their lives. It may well be, as the Chancellor says, that hundreds of students have contacted him to request additional in-person course offerings this Fall. But thousands of students have already registered for courses to be taught in a particular modality. They have other responsibilities to coordinate. While changes to modality this summer may be welcomed by some, they will be an inconvenience, if not a prohibitive obstacle, to others. If students clamor for more in-person courses and the university seeks to accommodate them, colleges should be encouraged to open additional in-person sections rather than change the modality of existing courses.

Faculty Governance

A dangerous precedent could be established if CUNY central is allowed unilaterally to set the balance of in-person, hybrid, and remote instruction. Recommended policies and practices for decision-making about teaching modality went out the window during the pandemic. Traditionally at CUNY, teaching modality has been handled within academic departments, the subject of a negotiation between department chairs and instructors about how best to accommodate the needs and interests of students and the skills of instructors. By driving nearly all instruction online in one fell swoop, the pandemic effectively removed these normative parameters, and the question now is how will they be restored. Will academic departments reclaim the authority that was relinquished during the pandemic to make decisions about teaching modality? Will these decisions be made solely on the basis of budgetary implications, or will pedagogical and workload considerations be taken into account?

These are the fronts on which the PSC is working to stabilize teaching modality in the face of CUNY’s pursuit of managerial flexibility. You can help by urging your college administration to resist the Chancellor’s “encouragement” to achieve an arbitrary benchmark for your Fall 2021 offerings. Whether you yourself prefer to teach in-person, remote, or hybrid, the point is that you and your department should make that determination, not CUNY central.

In solidarity,

James Davis

PSC-CUNY President

RiShawn Biddle

Dear Commons Community,

RiShawn Biddle, a senior fellow with FutureEd, a nonpartisan think tank, and the editor of Dropout Nation, has a guest essay in today’s New York Times making the case that Black and Brown families have benefited from remote learning. Entitled, Don’t Kill Remote Learning. Black and Brown Families Need It, Biddle comments that “Remote instruction has kept this Black man — along with my wife and 7-year-old son — safe from Covid over the last year, even if it hasn’t been easy on anyone. Each day, as my son sits at his desk in our home near Washington learning about bar graphs on a laptop screen, I am comforted by the knowledge that he’s not sitting in a poorly ventilated classroom at risk of getting sick. “ 

He goes on to comment about health and school disparities and that “School districts shouldn’t add to the burdens of the families already suffering from educational and health disparities. Remote learning should remain available even after Covid is no longer an epidemic.”

He makes a good case for retaining remote learning as an option.

The entire essay is below.

Tony

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The New York Times

Guest Essay

Don’t Kill Remote Learning. Black and Brown Families Need It.

June 7, 2021

By RiShawn Biddle

Remote instruction. Virtual learning. School-by-Zoom. Whatever you want to call it, it has kept this Black man — along with my wife and 7-year-old son — safe from Covid over the last year, even if it hasn’t been easy on anyone. Each day, as my son sits at his desk in our home near Washington learning about bar graphs on a laptop screen, I am comforted by the knowledge that he’s not sitting in a poorly ventilated classroom at risk of getting sick.

While my wife and I managed to get vaccinated, I also know that vaccine inequity has left many Black and Latino communities like mine, already the hardest hit by this pandemic (and often lacking health care to start), without access to inoculations they and their children need. This includes neighbors of mine who have no choice but to work in person because of the nature of their jobs.

(Vaccine hesitancy, a legacy of systemic racism, was feared to be the initial problem for Black and Latino communities. But as the Kaiser Family Foundation reported last month, the percentage of Black and Latino adults who are delaying or refusing vaccination is dropping. Even among the vaccine hesitant, concerns such as taking time off from work, out-of-pocket costs, and inability to get vaccines are major barriers.)

Remote learning has also been helpful to parents I work with whose children suffer from chronic illnesses such as asthma and diabetes.

Which is why announcements in the last month by politicians such as the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, and Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey that remote learning won’t be available for the next year are bad news for a majority of the country’s Black, Latino and Asian students and their parents who wish to keep virtual learning as an option. Eliminating remote learning, which many of these families support, exacerbates already-existing educational and health care inequities. New York City and other districts should figure out how to keep remote learning as an option.

Despite 88 percent of all school buildings nationwide having been reopened, according to the U.S. Department of Education, the reality is that a majority of families of color (and even a significant number of white households) still opt for their kids to learn virtually. Polling has consistently shown support for remote learning among nonwhite families. As a recent example, 59 percent of nonwhite parents polled in May by the National Parents Union said they wanted both in-person and remote options for the next school year.

Black, Latino and Asian families will concede that school-by-Zoom can be a hot mess. Decades of federal neglect of broadband, as well as struggles by districts to roll out technology in a timely manner, have meant that students have been shortchanged at various points in the last year. But these families are also realistically assessing the risks they and their children still face from Covid — and the long odds of proper ventilation and mitigation in the oft-neglected school buildings in their communities. Many school buildings in Black and brown communities were poorly ventilated long before the pandemic. Asbestos and terrible conditions have also been constant problems. While the federal American Rescue Plan Act devotes some of the $123 billion allocated to schools for building improvements, growing evidence that school districts are buying unproven air purifiers, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s belated admission that the coronavirus spreads by airborne transmission, have further heightened their longstanding distrust.

While adults can be vaccinated, most students (especially those under age 12) cannot. They will not likely be able to get inoculated until later this year, when school is underway.

Youths under age 19 now account for 24 percent of Covid cases versus 10.6 percent last October, according to the American Association of Pediatrics. Studies over the last year suggest that Black and Latino youths, because of disparities caused by systemic racism, are especially vulnerable to infection. Black and Latino youths account for nearly 60 percent of Covid deaths among youths under 18, according to data from the C.D.C.

Join Michael Barbaro and “The Daily” team as they celebrate the students and teachers finishing a year like no other with a special live event. Catch up with students from Odessa High School, which was the subject of a Times audio documentary series. We will even get loud with a performance by the drum line of Odessa’s award-winning marching band, and a special celebrity commencement speech.

The more transmissible new coronavirus variants are concerning. Because children often exhibit no symptoms — between 50 percent and 70 percent of students in Israel who tested positive for the virus were asymptomatic, according to a study from last October conducted by that nation’s health department — they can unknowingly spread infection to other students and to their parents at home.

The potential for spread to adults is troubling when you consider vaccine equity. Prioritization rules and distribution efforts have not adequately supported communities such as Prince George’s County, Md., where I live. Partly as a result, by late May across states, 29 percent of Black adults and 32 percent of Latino adults had received at least one dose of vaccine versus 43 percent of white counterparts. The result is that Black and Latino communities are most likely more vulnerable to outbreaks and spread than white communities right now. This is clearly being seen in Washington, where Black people now account for 82 percent of all new Covid cases, versus just 46 percent last year, according to Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Black and Brown families like mine hope conditions, both in schools and surrounding communities, improve by the start of the next school year. But we know all too well that things improve in America only after so many lives are lost from doing the wrong things.

And even after this pandemic fades into history, health disparities will continue to loom as a major reason families embrace remote learning.

Children suffering chronic illnesses such as asthma and diabetes can use remote instruction to continue learning without missing days of school and falling off track toward graduation. Students with asthma, who make up about 10 percent of all youths in classrooms, miss more than 10 million school days annually, according to Attendance Works, a nonprofit that focuses on school attendance. Black children are more likely to have asthma, with 14.3 percent diagnosed in 2018 versus 5.6 percent of white children.

Thanks to the pandemic, school districts have already invested heavily in remote learning. They may as well keep it in use. Some districts — notably Los Angeles Unified, Houston and Fairfax County, Va. — are planning to offer virtual options next year. There is no reason remote learning is not integrated into regular classrooms, as it is being done now through hybrid instruction. That way, Black and brown students can keep learning and still stay safe.

School districts shouldn’t add to the burdens of the families already suffering from educational and health disparities. Remote learning should remain available even after Covid is no longer an epidemic.

Dear Commons Community,

The University of Arizona acquired a troubled for-profit online institution, Ashford University, last August to create a new online mega-university that would extend the university’s reach, particularly into the market of working adults. The success of the endeavor may hinge in the first few years on ambitious revenue goals in a challenging environment for enrollment.

The forecasts, which one observer described as “rosy,” are also evidence of the growing pains that public institutions have encountered in the first few years after taking over for-profit colleges, both before and during a historic pandemic.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“The University of Arizona Global Campus is the nonprofit organization that was created after the University of Arizona agreed to take over Ashford’s operations, with the new entity finalizing the sale last December. The university and Arizona Global Campus are led by different chief executives and governed by different boards, but the nonprofit considers itself to be an affiliate of the traditional public university. In its first full fiscal year of operation, in 2021-22, Arizona Global Campus is projecting that it will generate more than $415 million in net tuition revenue, according to the university’s communications with the Internal Revenue Service. Come 2022-23, Arizona Global Campus anticipates its net tuition revenue will grow to $433 million.

Such an increase would represent a marked improvement over the recent financial performance of Ashford, as reported by Zovio, its former owner and the online-program manager of the new Arizona Global Campus. Zovio generated $384.3 million in net tuition revenue from July 2018 to June 2019, when it still controlled Ashford. The idea that the new entity would generate at least $30 million more during a similar 12-month period drew an incredulous response from Phil Hill, a partner at the ed-tech consultancy MindWires.

“Somehow [Arizona Global Campus is] going to be making more revenue than Ashford did in its last two years without any massive new investment?” Hill asked. “This one is more than just rosy projections. It almost comes across like they believed the rosy projections.”

A Zovio spokesman said the company would defer to Arizona Global Campus to provide comment on the disclosures. Officials at Arizona Global Campus did not respond to repeated requests, by email and phone, for comment.

Recent disclosures by Zovio also suggest enrollment struggles lie ahead for America’s newest mega–university, at least in the short term. In May, Zovio alerted shareholders to difficulties with enrollment at Arizona Global Campus, referring to an unspecified “decrease in average weekly enrollment for the three-month period ended March 31, 2021,” compared with the same period of the previous year.

An official at Arizona Global Campus told Higher Ed Dive that enrollment at the new online institution “has been impacted by the time it takes for a new brand to gain traction,” but declined to offer more detail.

Shareholders were also briefed on Zovio’s plan to lay off approximately 65 employees as a way to reduce spending and shore up cash reserves. Job cuts “centered primarily on administrative, non-student-facing functions to ensure the company is able to maintain the necessary resources to support our university partners,” Zovio reported in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

It remains to be seen whether the University of Arizona Global Campus can duplicate the success of other large online universities.  Maybe in the long run.  Not likely in the short run.

Tony

Jennifer Granholm

Dear Commons Community,

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm yesterday on CNN’s State of the Union program called for more public-private cooperation on cyber defenses and said U.S. adversaries already are capable of using cyber intrusions to shut down the U.S. power grid.

“I think that there are very malign actors who are trying,” she said. She added: “Even as we speak, there are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally.”

Granholm noted, without mentioning the company by name, that Colonial Pipeline Co. was hit in May with a crippling cyberattack by a ransomware group. Colonial temporarily shut down its gasoline distribution networks in the South before paying $4.4 million to the hackers. She urged energy companies to resist paying ransom.

“The bottom line is, people, whether you’re private sector, public sector, whatever, you shouldn’t be paying ransomware attacks, because it only encourages the bad guys,” she said.

Granholm even spoke in favor of having a law that would ban paying such ransom, though she said, “I don’t know whether Congress or the president is at that point.”

Asked whether American adversaries have the capability now of shutting down the U.S. power grid, she said: “Yes, they do.”

Something to think about!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last week, some of us awaited a report from US intelligence officials about UFOs appearing in the skies.  The report  generated  interest especially since US Navy pilots reported seeing an increased number of the unexplained objects.  Maureen Dowd in her column this morning reviews  the intelligence report and throws in a couple of digs.  Here is an excerpt.

“And yet not since Michael Rennie’s Klaatu and his all-powerful robot, Gort, landed their flying saucer on the Mall in the 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” has the capital been so riveted by the possibility of aliens hovering.

Carbon-based life-forms are eagerly awaiting a report by intelligence officials about aerial phenomena lighting up the skies in recent years, mysterious objects witnessed and recorded by Navy pilots.

After reading The New York Times story on what the report will say, Luis Elizondo, who once ran the Pentagon’s secret program on U.F.O.s, tweeted, “If The New York Times reporting is accurate, the objects being witnessed by pilots around the world are far more advanced than any earthly technologies known to our intelligence services.”

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that a government that couldn’t get it together to prevent a primitive mob from attacking the seat of government on Jan. 6 can’t figure out a series of close encounters.

Could it be that we are not the center of the universe? The truth, if it’s out there, certainly isn’t in the report.

As Julian Barnes and Helene Cooper wrote in The Times, intelligence officials said they have found no evidence that the mysterious sightings are alien spacecraft. But they have also found no evidence that they’re not.

“The report determines that a vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology, the officials said,” according to The Times. “That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret.”

Intelligence and military officials were worried that China or Russia could be engaging in hypersonic chicanery.

And since the U.S. has lied about stealth technology in the past, we can’t exclude the possibility that our government is messing with us.

The Navy pilots who saw the aerial vehicles were spooked, The Times said, reporting that “the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.”

Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, told The Times, “These things would be out there all day” at such high speeds that “12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”

What has it come to that the only thing we can all agree on in Washington is something that used to be the definition of loony?

Unlike Jimmy Carter, who claimed to have seen a U.F.O. in Georgia in 1969, former Presidents Obama and Trump have no firsthand experience. However, they are open to the possibility.

“My entire politics is premised on the fact that we are these tiny organisms on this little speck floating in the middle of space,” the man christened Spock told Ezra Klein.

Trump recently told Dan Bongino, “I’m not such a believer, but some people are. So I don’t want to hurt their dreams or their fears.” Earth to Donald: After five years of stoking fear and hurting dreams, it’s a little late.

Some argue that, if it were aliens, they would have the technology to buzz our planes without being detected.

One Redditor, SentientHotdogWater, disagrees: “If we flew drones over a wildlife sanctuary to observe monkeys we wouldn’t identify ourselves to the monkeys, but at the same time we wouldn’t really be too concerned if the monkeys saw one of the drones.”

In sci-fi movies, aliens are often concerned with three things: they want to mate with us, eat us or warn us. In “Species” and “Dude, Where’s My Car?” the aliens take the form of femme fatales.

In the “Twilight Zone” classic “To Serve Man,” aliens professing peace present officials with a big book titled “To Serve Man.” But then it turns out, after they set up a flight to their planet, that “To Serve Man” is actually a cookbook.

In “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the alien gives earthlings an ultimatum: Give up your bellicose ways or “Earth will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.”

We can only speculate what aliens want from us, if they’re getting closer and closer to landing.

They may want to learn why Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema seem to have so much power they don’t deserve. Or maybe they’re alarmed to hear that Donald Trump is heading back to the Oval in August.

I checked with one of our true living experts, David Duchovny of “The X-Files,” to see how it will play out. “I know nothing ;),” he emailed back with a wink.

If the aliens are watching and haven’t exterminated us yet, perhaps they are willing to step in and lend a hand.

I say, aliens, show yourself. Beam down! Time to serve man!”

Klaatu barada nikto!

Tony

Ever Forward

Dear Commons Community,

In 2019,  my wife and I visited France and had the privilege of going to the American D-Day Memorial sites in Normandy – Utah Beach, Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach and the American Memorial Cemetery where there are more than 9,000 American casualties buried.

Ever Forward is the bronze statue that sits at the entrance to Omaha Beach.  

The Memorial Cemetery is a place of serenity with its thousands of crosses.  At 5:00 pm every evening, taps are played as the American flags are lowered (see video below).

I especially remember my two uncles John and Anthony DeMichele, both of whom were in Normandy in World War II.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Thursday CNN interviewed two capital police officers (Aquilino Gonell and Byron Evans) on what happened during the January 6th insurrection.  Their comments especially those by Sgt.  Aquilino Gonell are heart-wrenching.  The video above says it all.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Facebook announced yesterday that Donald J. Trump’s suspension from the service would last at least more two years, keeping the former president off mainstream social media for the 2022 midterm elections.  The company also said it would end a policy of treating posts from politicians differently from those of other users.

The social network said Mr. Trump would be eligible for reinstatement in January 2023, before the next presidential election. It will then look to experts to decide “whether the risk to public safety has receded,” Facebook said. The company barred Mr. Trump from the service after he made comments on social media that rallied his supporters, who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but it had not given a firm timeline about when or if the suspension would end.  As reported by the New York Times.

“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols,” Nick Clegg, the vice president of global affairs at Facebook, wrote in a company blog post.

If reinstated, Mr. Trump would be subject to a set of “rapidly escalating sanctions” if he committed further violations, up to and including the permanent suspension of his account, Facebook said.

Facebook also said it was ending a policy of keeping posts by politicians up by default even if their speech broke its rules.

For years, Facebook and other social media companies had said they would not interfere with political speech because it was in the public interest. During Mr. Trump’s presidency, the companies did not rein in his inflammatory language as he attacked enemies and spread misinformation. They changed their stance after Mr. Trump’s use of social media on the day of the Capitol attack.

Facebook’s rethinking of how to treat political speech has implications not only for American politics but also for world leaders such as President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, who have been active on the platform.

Yet Facebook’s moves, which create a more specific framework for how it handles political figures, are unlikely to satisfy its detractors and may reinforce what some see as the company’s disproportionate power over online speech.

“There are many people who believe it was not appropriate for a private company like Facebook to suspend an outgoing president from its platform, and many others who believe Mr. Trump should have immediately been banned for life.” Mr. Clegg said. “We know today’s decision will be criticized by many people on opposing sides of the political divide — but our job is to make a decision in as proportionate, fair and transparent a way as possible.”

He said the moves were a response to criticism that the company had not provided sufficient insight into its decision-making, and he said Facebook was putting into place a system of protocols and sanctions to be applied in exceptional cases such as Mr. Trump’s.

For Mr. Trump, who has been permanently barred on Twitter, Facebook’s action means he will be muted from the mainstream platforms during at least the 2022 midterm election cycle. Mr. Trump, who before the bans used social media as a megaphone to reach his tens of millions of followers, has found it more difficult to communicate with those supporters — and loom even larger over the Republican primary field. He started a blog called “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” about a month ago but shut it down this week after it gained little traction.”

This is a good move by Facebook.  Trump used its platform to promote an insurrection and should be held accountable.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The conservative magazine, National Review, has an article this morning reporting that former President Donald Trump is delusional in his belief that he will be returning as president in August.

“The scale of Trump’s delusion is quite startling,” National Review senior writer Charles C.W. Cooke wrote on the magazine’s website.

Cooke said “an array of different sources” confirmed a report earlier this week by New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who said on Twitter that Trump has been sharing the popular new QAnon talking point. 

But Cooke went even further, saying Trump not only believes he’ll be put back into the Oval Office but also that he will be gifted with a Republican majority in the Senate, believing that two Democrats will be booted from Congress and replaced by the GOP candidates they defeated. 

He cautioned conservatives against downplaying or dismissing the report. 

“This is not merely an eccentric interpretation of the facts or an interesting foible, nor is it an irrelevant example of anguished post-presidency chatter,” he wrote. “It is a rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government.” 

Trump, he wrote, is “so unmoored from the real world that it is hard to know where to begin in attempting to explain him.”

Trump has been “unmoored” from the real world for quite a while.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Vice President Mike Pence said yesterday that he wasn’t sure that he and former President Donald Trump would ever see “eye to eye” over what happened on Jan. 6 but that he would “always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years.”

Pence, speaking at a Republican dinner in the early voting state of New Hampshire, gave his most extensive comments to date on the events of Jan. 6, when angry Trump supporters broke into the Capitol building, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” after the vice president said he did not have the power to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“As I said that day, Jan. 6 was a dark day in history of the United States Capitol. But thanks to the swift action of the Capitol Police and federal law enforcement, violence was quelled. The Capitol was secured,” Pence said.

“And that same day, we reconvened the Congress and did our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” Pence continued. “You know, President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office. And I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye to eye on that day.”

It was a rare departure for Pence, who spent four years standing loyally beside his boss amid controversy, investigation and impeachment. It comes as Pence considers his own potential 2024 White House run and as Republicans, some of whom were angry at Trump in the days after the Jan. 6 insurrection, have largely coalesced back around the former president.

Pence praised Trump several times during his nearly 35-minute speech at the Hillsborough County Republican Committee’s annual Lincoln-Reagan Awards Dinner in Manchester. He tried to turn the events of Jan. 6 back around on Democrats, saying they wanted to keep the insurrection in the news to divert attention from Biden’s liberal agenda.

“I will not allow Democrats or their allies in the media to use one tragic day to discredit the aspirations of millions of Americans. Or allow Democrats or their allies in the media to distract our attention from a new administration intent on dividing our country to advance their radical agenda,” Pence said. “My fellow Republicans, for our country, for our future, for our children and our grandchildren, we must move forward, united.”

He accused Biden of campaigning as a moderate but becoming the most liberal president since President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He said the administration forced through Congress “a COVID bill to fund massive expansion of the welfare state” and was pushing a “so-called infrastructure bill” that was really a “thinly disguised climate change bill” funded with cuts in the military and historic tax increases.

“I just say enough is enough,” he said, adding that “we’re going to stand strong for freedom.”

Pence also hit upon several favorite themes of conservative Republicans, emphasizing the need for states to shore up voter integrity around the country. He praised law enforcement as heroes, saying, “Black lives are not endangered by police. Black lives are saved by police every day.”

He also pushed back against “critical race theory,” which seeks to reframe the narrative of American history.

Its proponents argue that federal law has preserved the unequal treatment of people on the basis of race and that the country was founded on the theft of land and labor. But Republicans have said concepts suggesting that people are inherently racist or that America was founded on racial oppression are divisive and have no place in the classroom.

“America is not a racist country,” he said, prompting one of several standing ovations and cheers during his speech.

“It is past time for America to discard the left-wing myth of systemic racism,” Pence said. “I commend state legislators and governors across the country for banning critical race theory from our schools.”

His choice of states, including an April appearance in South Carolina, is aimed at increasing his visibility as he considers whether to run for the White House in 2024.

Trump is increasingly acting and talking like he plans to make a run as he sets out on a more public phase of his post-presidency, beginning with a speech on Saturday in North Carolina.

Since leaving office in January, Pence has been doing work with the Heritage Foundation and Young America’s Foundation. His team said he plans more trips, including stops in Texas, California and Michigan.

Along with his visits to South Carolina and New Hampshire, Pence has been hitting the fundraising circuit. He is set to speak next week at another fundraiser hosted by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, will travel to North Carolina for a Heritage Foundation donor event, and will then head to California, where he will take part in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s speakers’ series, a Republican National Committee donor retreat and a Young America’s Foundation event, according to aides.

Pence is trying to straddle the fence between Trump and his own convictions about what happened on January 6th when five people died during the insurrection.

Tony