RUTHFULLY YOURS

“All men are trash.” — Esme Allman.

Allman is a young woman who, although a student at one of the finest universities on earth, considers herself to be a multiply oppressed victim and who sees the world around her as swarming with oppressors. She has been so well-schooled in the idea that whites are always the oppressors and dark-skinned people always the victims that when she sees a fellow British subject rooting for his own nation’s side in a war against jihadists, her first and only thought is to brand him an “Islamophobe” — this, even though the enemy in that war are men who would force her into a burka or consider her, as an infidel, deserving of rape and/or death.

So it is that Robbie Travers, whose only offense is believing in freedom and opposing a totalitarian ideology, has found himself in hot water — a real victim of a mentality that is all about power and dogma even as its pretends to be devoted to “dignity and respect” for all.

Robbie Travers is a 21-year-old law student at the University of Edinburgh and an articulate, insightful contributor to Gatestone as well as other websites. In his essays, he has illuminated the topsy-turvy values that dominate contemporary British political discourse – as exemplified by the refusal of the Speaker of the House of Commons to invite President Trump to address Parliament and the refusal of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to ban Al Qaeda from Britain as a terrorist organization.

Now, Travers has become the victim of the very forces about which he has written. In April, after the US Air Force carried out a successful anti-ISIS action, he posted a comment on Facebook:

“Excellent news that the US administration and Trump ordered an accurate strike on an Isis network of tunnels in Afghanistan. I’m glad we could bring these barbarians a step closer to collecting their 72 virgins.”

It was no different from a British subject during World War II celebrating the invasion of Normandy. But Travers’s comment offended first-year history student Esme Allman, who filed a complaint with the university. In it, she charged that Travers had violated the student code of conduct and accused him of “blatant Islamaphobia [sic]” and of putting “minority students at risk and in a state of panic and fear.”

As a result of Allman’s complaint, the university is now investigating Travers on “hate crime” charges. A spokesman for the university explained that it is “committed to providing an environment in which all members of the university community treat each other with dignity and respect.” Travers, for his part, has described Allman’s complaint as retaliation for a social-media posting in which he had drawn attention to a comment by Allman that “all men are trash.”

Ever since Charlottesville, the tyrannical left has been on the rampage, trying to purge anyone and everyone who had an improper thought. Well, except for Margaret Sanger, apparently. I guess she’s cool.

That’s the mentality at work at the University of California-Berkeley, where students have been battling with administrators to purge the name of a past university president from one campus building. From The College Fix:

Barrows Hall is named after the university’s president from 1919 to 1923, David Barrows, an anthropologist who served as superintendent of schools in Manila when the Philippines became a U.S. colony, according to the University of California Academic Senate’s biography in memoriam.

The Daily said his academic work was informed by “white supremacist ideology.” In 2015 the Black Student Union demanded the name’s removal among other high-priced demands, calling Barrows an “imperialist by way of anthropology [who] participated in perpetuating American colonialism.”

In all fairness, I suspect most academics in the United States during the first quarter of the 20th century were informed by so-called white supremacist ideology.

However, the brave warriors at Berkeley have another name in mind to grace Barrows Hall. Who is this outstanding individual more worthy of recognition?

A cop killer:

The BSU insisted that Barrows Hall be renamed after Black Panther Assata Shakur, a convicted cop killer who escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba. Shakur is on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists.

You just can’t make this crap up, folks. You just can’t.

A man who served as a military officer, an anthropologist, an explorer, and a university president is someone of such poor moral standing that he must be erased from history, whereas a convicted and escaped cop killer is an ethical choice. CONTINUE AT SITE

On Sept. 8, 1992, the first charter school opened, in St. Paul, Minn. Twenty-five years later, some 7,000 of these schools serve about three million students around the U.S. Their growth has become controversial among those wedded to the status quo, but charters undeniably are effective, especially in urban areas. After four years in a charter, urban students learn about 50% more a year than demographically similar students in traditional public schools, according to a 2015 report from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

The American cities that have most improved their schools are those that have embraced charters wholeheartedly. Their success suggests that policy makers should stop thinking of charters as an innovation around the edges of the public-school system—and realize that they simply are a better way to organize public education.

New Orleans, which will be 100% charters next year, is America’s fastest-improving city when it comes to education. Test scores, graduation and dropout rates, college-going rates and independent studies all tell the same story: The city’s schools have doubled or tripled their effectiveness in the decade since the state began turning them over to charter operators.

More than 80% of their students are African-American, and an equal percentage qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. But on the most important metrics—graduation and college-going rates—New Orleans became the first high-poverty city to outperform its overall state in 2015 and 2016.

Or consider Washington. In 1996 Congress created a Public Charter School Board for the capital. After 20 years, its 120 schools educate 46% of the city’s public-school students. As in New Orleans, the board closes charter schools in which kids are falling behind, while encouraging the best to expand or open new schools.

The competition from charters helped spur Washington’s mayor to take control of the failing school district and initiate profound reforms. The district is improving rapidly. Yet my analysis of available data suggests the charter sector still performs better. The difference with African-American and low-income students is dramatic, even though charters receive between $6,000 and $7,000 less per pupil annually than district schools do.

This new model’s effectiveness has inspired other cities. A decade ago, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet, frustrated by the traditional bureaucracy, worked with the school board to embrace charters. They gave them space in district buildings and encouraged the successful ones to open new schools. Then they began creating “innovation schools,” with some of the freedom to operate that helps charters succeed. Last year 42% of Denver students attended charters or innovation schools.

When these efforts began, Denver had the slowest academic growth of Colorado’s 20 largest districts. By 2012 it had the fastest. Today its students—almost 70% of them qualifying for subsidized lunch—are approaching the state average on standardized tests in elementary schools and exceeding them in middle schools. CONTINUE AT SITE

Rabbi Shlomo Elkan hadn’t heard of Oberlin College before heading there in 2010 to establish a Chabad House, which functions as a campus center for Jewish students. “Rural Ohio wasn’t on my radar,” the 34-year-old rabbi, who grew up in Atlanta and received his rabbinical training in New Jersey, tells me. But a third of students at Oberlin are Jewish, and the Corn Belt seemed a quiet place to raise a family. Little did he know.

The rabbi and his wife, Devora, quickly drew regular attendance to services at their small home, but Oberlin was boiling with political debate. It was a loop playing out on campuses across the country, under the banners of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The presumption around many quads was that to be Jewish meant you were part of the privileged, oppressor class.

“At first the questioning and conflict seemed natural. That’s what college is about, with kids seeking new identities, communities, even religious narratives,” says Rabbi Elkan, one of 200 Chabad rabbis posted at U.S. colleges. “But in the last several years we noticed hard lines forming around students to show their progressive stripes. That put many in the uncomfortable position of having to denounce Israel and their own Jewishness or stay silent when others did so.”

Early last year Oberlin rhetoric professor Joy Karega was exposed for promoting conspiracy theories and sharing anti-Semitic images on Facebook . Ms. Karega wrote that Islamic State is “a CIA and Mossad operation.” She also posted memes about Jews’ controlling the world’s banks, media and the U.S. government. These themes could have been ripped from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The Oberlin administration initially defended Ms. Karega, citing academic freedom. But it relented and fired her in November. Some accused the school of caving to Jewish alumni by ousting the popular African-American teacher. Amid the noise, a Jewish professor’s home was vandalized with references to ovens; numerous students transferred; and Oberlin landed 11th on a Jewish newspaper’s Worst Colleges for Jewish Students list.

Donors pulled back, including one who had pledged $350,000 to relocate Oberlin Chabad to a 6,000-square-foot campus residence. The unfinished property—the site of a former YMCA—sits in mid-repair, covered with construction wrap. “That one was tough,” Rabbi Elkan says, noting his current home has one bathroom to accommodate his six children, plus the dozens of students who pile in each Sabbath. CONTINUE AT SITE