RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/fix-free-speech-or-no-higher-ed-act-reauthorization/

Today, the National Association of Scholars released a statement signed by over 100 prominent educators and public figures concerned with higher education. That statement calls on Congress to include protections for campus free speech in the next reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Only by doing so, says the statement, can Congress “cease subsidizing unlawful behavior by public colleges and universities.” In other words, Congress needs to stop funneling money to colleges and universities that promulgate unconstitutional speech codes and so-called free-speech zones.

The Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 must periodically be reauthorized and updated by Congress. This is important because Title IV of the Act sets the ground-rules by which institutions become eligible for federal student loans and grants. You can’t get a Pell Grant or a federal student loan unless you attend a Title IV eligible school. Today, many or most Title IV eligible schools fail to protect, and even flagrantly violate, the free-speech rights of their students. HEA must not be reauthorized without fixing this. Public universities that stifle free speech should lose their eligibility for federal financial assistance, while private colleges must at minimum make their free-speech policies clear and open (with the implication that they will thereby become contractually obligated to stick by them).

The NAS statement calling on Congress to include free-speech protections in its coming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act has been signed by prominent educators and writers such as Emory’s Mark Bauerlein, the University of Chicago’s Rachel Fulton Brown, George Mason’s F. H. Buckley, Chapman Law School’s John Eastman, Claremont McKenna’s Charles Kesler, UT Austin’s Robert Koons, the University of Oklahoma’s Wilfred McClay, Hillsdale’s Paul Rahe, and Ohio University’s Richard Vedder. Figures such as president of the Leadership Institute Morton Blackwell, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Charlie Copeland, president of the Independent Women’s Voice Heather Higgens, and president of the Independent Women’s Forum Carrie Lukas have signed as well. Think-tankers with education expertise such as the Hudson Institute’s John Fonte and the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Tom Lindsay have also signed on. (I was a signatory as well. And note that organizational affiliations are included for identification purposes only.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/henry-kissinger-shouted-down-at-nyu-addresses-yales-wfb-society/

There’s one encouraging point to emerge from the frenzy on the nation’s campuses.

Every year, the William F. Buckley Jr. Society at Yale, founded by Lauren Noble, honors a public figure who was “disinvited” from a college campus. The speaker might have been shouted down at the podium, or his invitation might have been rescinded before carnage could ensue.

Past honorees include George Will, Charles Murray, Raymond Kelly, and Peter Thiel, each of whom has been kicked off at least one campus. Will had suggested in a column that colleges were making their students hypersensitive and inclined to feel like victims. (What could have given him that idea?) Murray had written in a book that racial differences in intelligence might to some extent be hereditary. Former NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly supported the “racist” stop-and-frisk policy. And Peter Thiel was forced to leave a 2014 speech at UC Berkeley by students shouting “No police state!” and “Black lives matter!” But it’s not clear what the students thought Mr. Thiel had to do with any of that.

This year, the honoree was Henry Kissinger, shouted down at NYU by students who called him a war criminal and a Nazi. Which is ironic, considering that in the days of the actual Nazis, Kissinger was serving in the 84th Infantry Division and receiving the Bronze Star for tracking down Gestapo officers. Ho hum.

And while there is something predictable in students’ childish glee at expunging popular conservative writers from their campi, an attack on the 95-year-old Kissinger seems like an attack on learning history — they might as well throw their textbooks out the window.

https://quillette.com/2019/04/19/cowardice-at-columbia/

On Thursday 11 April, shortly after 11pm, a black Columbia student named Alexander McNab walked through the gates of Barnard college—the undergraduate all-women’s school at Columbia University—after ignoring a security guard’s request to show his student ID. In search of a midnight snack, McNab got all the way to the library canteen before a public safety officer confronted him and asked for his ID a second time, a request McNab once again refused.

Several more officers had arrived on the scene and were continuing to request ID when McNab began yelling. What happened next, depicted in the video below, has become the subject of a national scandal: two officers pushed McNab’s upper body onto the countertop, at which point McNab finally handed over his ID. Public safety proceeded to verify that he was indeed an active Columbia student, at which point they left him alone.

Administrators reacted to the incident by placing the six public safety officers involved on paid leave until outside investigators reach a conclusion about their conduct. In the meantime, administrators have already reached theirs: racism. College deans sent an email to the student body—with the subject line “Addressing Racism on Our Campus”—in which they noted the “continued legacy of anti-black racism” and lamented that “such incidents continue to occur so close to home.”

On the contrary, the McNab affair involved neither police nor brutality. Public safety officers (who don’t carry guns) used the minimum amount of force necessary to get McNab to comply with their request that he identify himself. They pushed him against a countertop for 20 seconds before letting him go. I challenge those who believe this was excessive to name an alternate course of action which would have compelled an unknown man to produce identification.