RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://• https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/free-speech/2021/09/back-to-burning-books-again/

The Ontario Catholic School Board’s decision to burn books deemed politically incorrect, a move prompted by Canada’s activist answer to fauxboriginal Bruce Pascoe,  became a hot issue in this month’s Canadian election.  Although the book burning began in 2019 and has just come to light it represents yet another powerful warning about the dangers of totalitarian cancel-culture and mind control.

What occurred in Canada is just one example of how widespread and virulent cancel-culture has become.  Targets include Tintin and Asterix, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Noddy, Thomas the Tank Engine and six children’s books written by Dr Seuss. All are considered guilty of either sexism, racism or cultural appropriation. Adult books are also targeted including Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird for having using the ‘N’ word, Moby Dick for killing whales and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for privileging the love between a boy and girl (condemned as promoting heteronormativity).

Couched in terms of impartiality and balance, critics argue such books are offensive and discriminatory. The reality is cancelling children’s stories like Snow White — out of favour because the Prince fails to get informed consent before kissing the sleeping maiden– is as dangerous as it is absurd. Stories and books written years ago are unfairly judged and cancelled because of today’s censorious, politically correct view about what is acceptable.  Like the moralistic puritans of old, cultural-left activists refuse to allow or entertain anything that fails to conform to their strict, inflexible ideology.

Stopping students reading literature now deemed politically incorrect in the belief they will be corrupted and converted automatically into racist, sexist and homophobic bigots also ignores that the overwhelming majority of young people are smart enough and independently minded not to be conditioned.

https://www.nationalreview.com/author/brittany-bernstein/

A majority of college students support shouting down speakers with whom they don’t agree, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

Sixty-six percent of students said they supported speaker shout downs, an increase of 4 percentage points over last year, the study found. Meanwhile, 23 percent said they support going so far as to use violence to stop a speaker, an increase of 5 percentage points from last year.

Wellesley College and Barnard College, both of which are elite women’s colleges, had the highest number of students supporting the use of violence, at 45 percent and 43 percent respectively.

Sean Stevens, a senior research fellow in polling and analytics for FIRE told National Review in a recent interview that the shift is likely reflective of the national political climate of the last year.

The country was rocked by months of rioting and counter-protests beginning in summer 2020 with the murder of George Floyd. Protests for various causes persisted through the general election in November, culminating in the deadly January 6 Capitol riot when a mob of former President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.

Stevens noted that the FIRE study results echoed findings from similar studies by the American National Election Studies and other outlets that have asked Americans about the acceptability of violence and have seen upticks in their data as well.

The results come as part of FIRE’s 2021 college free speech rankings. FIRE, a non-partisan, non-profit group that focuses on protecting free speech rights on U.S. college campuses, worked alongside College Pulse and RealClearEducation to survey over 37,000 students at 159 of the country’s largest and most prestigious campuses.

FIRE then compiled a list of free speech rankings assessing a school’s free speech climate based on seven main components: openness to discussion of controversial topics, tolerance for liberal speakers, tolerance for conservative speakers, administrative support for free speech, comfort expressing ideas publicly, whether students support disruptive conduct during campus speeches, and FIRE’s speech code rating.

The top five colleges for free speech, according to the rankings, included Claremont McKenna College, University of Chicago, University of New Hampshire, Emory University and Florida State University. The worst five colleges were Boston College, Wake Forest University, Louisiana State University, Marquette University and DePauw University, which ranked last.

Public schools largely performed better than private schools, accounting for just five of the bottom 30 schools on the list.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/21/ivy-league-detention-centers/

When a 10 percent transmission rate is 150 percent higher than a college or university’s rate of admission, when it is improbable that adults will contract COVID-19 from teens but almost impossible for teens to avoid rejection from the adults (so-called) in the room—the adults who decide whom shall enter the classrooms at Harvard or Princeton or Columbia—the life of the mind is dead. 

Or, in the spirit of and to paraphrase William F. Buckley, I would rather be judged by the first 40 people in a jury pool than by the 40 people who judge applicants to Harvard College.

I would rather be a defendant in a criminal trial, free to have my lawyer examine prospective jurors, than submit my fate to a jury whose biases are no secret and whose deliberations are a sham. 

I question this jury’s ability to deliberate, except to say the jury’s silence is deliberate: that its results lack evidence, that record-low acceptance rates do not prove an incoming class is the most learned and literate and civic-minded class in the history of Harvard or Princeton or Columbia; that this class has no class, that it is a monoculture more discriminatory than the finals clubs or eating clubs of the past, proud of its hatred and unwilling to study or emulate the best of the past.

To know the consciousness of this class is to understand the power of false consciousness.

What this class fails to convince others to believe is that all other classes are unfit to lead and are too unintelligent to learn. What this class believes about itself is that it has a mandate to rule, based not on the consent of the governed, but according to the consensus of those who demand to govern everything.

This belief, the belief that a so-called meritocracy is meritorious, is a threat to freedom and democracy.

What, after all, do meritocrats know about democracy in America, or democracy, or America?

The question is rhetorical, while questions abound about this class’s fluency in the rhetoric of Americanism. That this class is not conversant in the language of Adams or Jefferson is no surprise. That this class is ignorant of the lyricism of Lincoln and deaf to the mystic chords of memory is no accident.

The cultural illiteracy of this class is of a piece with the moral illiteracy of the jury responsible for this class. 

The two are illiterate in a tangible way, for they do not revere that which they do not know to respect. 

They see places to study, not paradises to behold, for they do not admire the architecture or honor the names engraved in stone, never stopping to hold America in their hands, never reading the works of great men or walking in humility toward works of greatness, never looking to the lights inside the Memorial Rooms of Harvard’s Widener Library or the New Lights of Princeton’s Firestone Library or at the words in lights outside Columbia’s Low Memorial Library.

To these armories of liberty, students and jurors shrug.

Because of these students and jurors, a nation weeps.

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/09/21/as_colleges_moved_online_to_combat_the_pandemic_a_plague_of_self-censorship_raged_on_110636.html

If a tree falls in the wilderness and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? That could be the start of an interesting philosophical conversation. On the other hand, if there’s an interesting philosophical conversation to be had—does it stand much of a chance of actually happening in today’s college classroom? As the newly released 2021 College Free Speech Rankings reveal, the answer depends on which college you’re attending.

The past year in higher education has been defined by COVID-19. The pandemic has altered students’ lives and forced many to adapt to online learning. But the quality of the education students receive is being impacted by a different sort of contagion—an epidemic of fearful silence.

More than 80% of American college students in our latest survey say that they self-censor in the classroom, on campus, and online.

The 2021 College Free Speech Rankings represent the largest survey of free speech on campus ever conducted. This year we surveyed more than 37,000 students at more than 150 U.S. colleges and universities. RealClearEducation produced the 2021 College Free Speech Rankings in collaboration with the research firm College Pulse and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The rankings are presented via an easy-to-use, interactive website, where parents and students can compare schools side by side and see how their favorites compare in the area of free speech.

This year, Claremont McKenna College—a small liberal arts college in Southern California—received the No. 1 ranking. Rounding out the top five are the University of Chicago, the University of New Hampshire, Emory University, and Florida State University.

It’s worth noting that 17 of the top 25 are public colleges or universities. On the flip side, 20 of the bottom 25 are private institutions. So, if you’re looking for a better environment for free speech, your local State U might be the best place to start your search.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/noem-must-fix-south-dakota-standards-fiasco/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=4

Hard-left activists have taken over the writing of K-12 history and civics standards in ruby-red South Dakota. Governor Kristi Noem’s administration has belatedly attempted to set things right, but the troubled standards are nowhere near fixed. While public attention has been drawn to the controversy, the press has done little to explain what is actually in the new social-studies standards or how the process ran off the rails. The resignation of two “workgroup” members from the committee drafting the new standards shortly before the release of the final report has also spurred public interest. The picture that emerges from an examination of public documents, as well as conversations with committee members, is disturbing.

While Noem deserves credit for an important move to curb politicization of South Dakota classrooms (more on that below), she bears significant responsibility for the current mess. Noem has positioned herself nationally as a tough-minded conservative, yet she’s handed control of South Dakota’s Department of Education to squishy establishment types only too happy to allow leftist professors, bureaucrats, and their hand-selected teachers to run the show. That said, the real bad actors in this story are at the South Dakota Department of Education, which has blatantly defied the governor’s wishes.

Here’s the bottom line. Unless Noem throws out the current, hopelessly compromised draft social-studies standards, replaces the state education bureaucrats responsible for this fiasco, and puts thoughtful conservatives in charge of the standards revision process, South Dakota’s schools are poised to become playthings of the Left.

https://quillette.com/2021/09/17/how-social-justice-extremists-spawned-a-generation-of-progressive-antisemites/

In 2019, the Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) division of Stanford University’s Student Affairs department launched a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training program with a mandate to instruct students about institutional racism. Instead, the program provided a case study of how radicalized forms of social-justice indoctrination can fuel antisemitism.

Earlier this year, Dr Ron Albucher, a Stanford psychiatrist and a former CAPS director, along with his colleague Sheila Levin, an eating-disorder specialist in the same department, filed complaints with federal and state civil-rights agencies regarding what they alleged to be “severe and persistent anti-Jewish harassment.” “Unfortunately, what we found was that the very program meant to help build an inclusive environment for all members of the Stanford community was, in fact, perpetrating the invidious discrimination it sought to eliminate,” wrote the complainants in an open letter published by the Stanford Daily last month.

The dialog-based seminars organized by CAPS were primarily aimed at addressing racial injustice suffered by individuals classified under broad categories, including black, indigenous, and people of color. The organizers used these categories to break participants up into racially segregated “affinity groups.” Albucher and Levin were assigned to the group designated under the label “whiteness accountability.” In the sessions, the pair alleges, seminar committee members “maligned and marginalized Jews by castigating them as powerful and privileged perpetrators who contribute to systemic racism.” Meanwhile, seminar moderators “intentionally overlooked antisemitic incidents” happening on campus.

On one occasion, the DEI group came together for a special session to discuss the “Zoom Bombing” of a Stanford University-wide virtual town hall meeting, which was marred by participants posting racist and antisemitic messages, invoking the N-word and images of swastikas. According to Albucher and Levin:

In the discussion of this event … DEI committee leaders decided to omit the swastikas, stating that they did not want antisemitism to dominate the discussion since Jews are wealthy business owners. When more swastikas were discovered in [Stanford] Memorial Church, DEI facilitators said we would discuss this incident only if time permitted. Yet, there was no further mention of this blatant expression of antisemitism. Failing to even acknowledge the very images used to promote Jewish genocide, especially during a DEI training, is deeply concerning.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/09/17/universities-are-turning-into-ideology-mills/

Peter Boghossian was assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University until he felt forced to resign last week. His resignation letter went viral – it was a righteous blast against the growing intolerance on his campus.

Much of the trouble began in 2018, when Boghossian, with fellow academics James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, revealed they had successfully published scores of fake academic papers to highlight the degradation of scholarship in the woke era. This led to disciplinary measures from his superiors. And once he became known as a critic of wokeness, he was harassed by students, too. Eventually, after 10 years at Portland State, Boghossian had finally had enough.

spiked caught up with him to find out what he thinks is going wrong on campuses across the West.

spiked: Why did you resign from Portland State University?

Peter Boghossian: I resigned because the university prevented me from doing what it had hired me to do: to teach philosophy.

Over time, the university became less of a symposium and more of a church. It became less of a place where people went to engage with ideas, to think through issues and to try to figure out what was true. And it became more of a place where the catechism reigned. More of a place where there were right answers to moral questions. People at the university felt that they knew the answers and they tested you on them. I just couldn’t maintain my integrity there any longer.

spiked: In your resignation letter, you spoke about being harassed by students. How did you become a target?

Boghossian: I started asking questions. Ideologues don’t like questions. I didn’t receive answers, or when I did they were flippant or dismissive. People looked at me as if I had some kind of moral problem, as opposed to just not having the right information. It was very bizarre. They thought that I had to be a bad person, because I was asking questions.

If you read the Platonic dialogues, Socrates doesn’t paint his critics as bad people. In fact, he says explicitly that people act the way they do because they don’t have perfect information. So it was very unusual to see people run out of my class screaming and freaking out.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/death_to_america_tweets_kansas_university_student_body_president.html

“Death to America.”

Shout the Iranian mullahs? No, so says the University of Kansas student body President, Niya McAdoo. And she has no plans to apologize.

Both the @KUPresident and the student senate Twitter account retweeted a September 3rd post reading, “Happy Friday everybody. Death to America.” Replete with a laughing emoji. Because there’s nothing funnier than that.

Ms. McAdoo sent out a follow-up tweet saying, “The more you read American history, the more the whole ‘Death to America’ line sounds less like a terrifying, chaotic sentiment, and more like a perfectly rational, if anything remarkably reserved, statement.”

Yes, death to unborn babies, the unvaccinated, infidels, and America. Who could disagree? (Outside of maybe unborn babies, the unvaccinated, infidels, and Trump-loving troglodytes.) 

Although I do wonder what she’d say if conservatives and patriots pledged, “Death to pro-abortionists, the vaccinated, those who disagree with us, and America-haters?”

Incredibly, the university has no plans to investigate McAdoo for her comments. Nor will Twitter ban her. Its moronic—and vile — thought arbiters are too busy banning folks who still believe in freedom and personal autonomy, i.e. “hate speech.” (Like, for example, me. I’ve been banned for months now. And for a post I didn’t even make and know nothing about.) Threaten to stand up to leftist thugs and Twitter will ban you, possibly for life. Vowing “Death to America,” however, is perfectly okay.