RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/academia-producing-men-and-women-without-chests-jack-kerwick/

“Learning, then, demands fortitude, an intestinal fortitude, in fact, to meet ideas that clash with one’s own certainties, and engage civilly with those who advance those ideas. When, however, the university promulgates and enforces with an iron hand an orthodoxy, thus, immunizing students from any and all ideas that conflict with that orthodoxy, it promotes softness, weakness, shallowness.”

At the risk of sounding redundant, the public nevertheless needs to be reminded of just how politicized—and, thus, intellectually flaccid—academia has become.

Real Clear Education recently published its “2019 Survey of Campus Speech Experts.” The report identifies those colleges and universities that are “best” and “worst” for “free speech and viewpoint diversity.”  That of the 22 invitees—“academics, pundits, and policy experts”—who accepted the invitation to participate in this study the vast majority (though not all) are right-leaning is instructive, for Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to express concern that professors will inject their politics into the classroom.

As a Pew Research Center study informs us, 79% of Republicans have this concern compared to only 17% of Democrats who do so. A comparable disparity exists between the 75% of Republicans versus the 31% of Democrats who are concerned that colleges are determined to shield students from perspectives that they may find offensive.

Yet Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to be concerned with viewpoint diversity precisely because it is the leftist ideology associated with Democrats that has long since prevailed in academia.

The panelists consistently ranked University of Chicago as the best of institutions when it comes to “speech climate.”  They just as consistently ranked Yale University as the institution in “most need for improvement” when it comes to this subject.

The panelists offered their thoughts as to why they ascribe as much importance as they do to the campus speech climate.  Below is a small, select handful of particularly noteworthy comments that represent the shared judgments of the entire panel:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/11/how_fordham_university_lost_to_radical_palestinians_in_court.html

Coinciding with the 2019 National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) conference held in Minnesota this past weekend, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) released an alarming report that exposes the toxic ideology that characterizes this radical campus group. The ISGAP report confirms what observers of radicalism in higher education have documented for years: that while SJP purports to be a group whose mission is to achieve a peaceful and just resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by supporting Palestinian self-determination, in fact, as the report put it, “SJP is steeped in an ideology that has roots in racist and antisemitic extremism.”

That toxic campus radicalism has meant that administrators, supporters of Israel, pro-Israel speakers, and Jewish students and organizations have experienced the caustic side-effect of SJP’s presence on campus.  As SJP grew more aggressive in its demonstrations and behavior, it occasionally, though rarely, has been sanctioned or restrained.

Finally, in 2016, one university, Fordham University in New York, cognizant of SJP’s history of poisoning dialogue on campuses and promoting a campaign of libels, defamation, and lies against Israel and Jewish students, reversed the decision of the student government to allow SJP to become a recognized student organization and decided that SJP, based on its sorry record at other universities, had no place at Fordham.  Dean Keith Eldridge, aware of SJP’s methods and ideology, bravely decided that “while students are encouraged to promote diverse political points of view, and we encourage conversation and debate on all topics, I cannot support an organization whose sole purpose is advocating political goals of a specific group, and against a specific country [emphasis added], when these goals clearly conflict with and run contrary to the mission and values of the University[.] … The purpose of the organization as stated in the proposed club constitution points toward … polarization.”

SJP immediately sued Fordham, in Awad v. Fordham University, 2019 WL 3550713, asserting that the decision to block it from becoming a recognized student organization was, as the judge ultimately found in reversing the dean’s decision in  2019, “arbitrary and capricious,” and “it must be concluded that [Dean Eldridge’s] disapproval of SJP was made in large part because the subject of SJP’s criticism is the State of Israel, rather than some other nation,” and that “his only articulated concern was that SJP singled out one particular country for criticism and boycott.”

In fact, Fordham’s instincts were well founded in that the dean knew, based in SJP’s record elsewhere, of its pattern of radicalism, misbehavior, toxic speech, and overtly anti-Semitic behavior.  That radicalism has been problematic, particularly since research by the AMCHA Initiative, an organization that tracks anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism at universities, “indicate[s] a significant increase in actions which directly harm or threaten Jewish students, including physical and verbal assaults, destruction of property, harassment discrimination and suppression of speech, at schools with an SJP or similar anti-Zionist chapter.”  Equally serious is the report’s findings that SJP’s presence resulted in “incidents of Israel-related anti-Semitic harassment increase[ing] 70%.”

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/12/the-daily-northwestern-apology-is-a-harbinger/

“Wait until they get into the real world,” has long been the cliche, uttered knowingly by elders greeted with news of campus madness. It’s time to retire that sentiment. Far from being tempered by the harsh realities of post-college life, graduates are increasingly shaping the so-called real world into a version of their campuses, importing far-left standards into newsrooms and boardrooms.

This is why it’s important to watch what’s happening on campuses. A particularly striking example comes to us this week courtesy of the students at Northwestern University. The staff of The Daily Northwestern issued an apology on Sunday for its coverage of a Nov. 5 speech by Jeff Sessions.

We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night — along with how we plan to move forward.

One area of our reporting that harmed many students was our photo coverage of the event. Some protesters found photos posted to reporters’ Twitter accounts retraumatizing and invasive. Those photos have since been taken down.

“Ultimately,” they wrote, “The Daily failed to consider our impact in our reporting surrounding Jeff Sessions. We know we hurt students that night, especially those who identify with marginalized groups.”

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/09/stem-ming-the-slide-of-our-educational-system/

Recently we ran across several fascinating articles about civics, liberal arts, and climate hysteria that raise basic questions about the content taught at too many of our educational institutions: Has our society lost sight of the fundamental purpose of education, and is the result less resilient, less capable adults?

While there is no doubt that a significant aspect of schooling is still about learning the “three-Rs,” the ultimate goal must be that of teaching people how to reason, critically evaluate data, perform accurate risk assessments, and communicate effectively. Sadly, few of these critical skills are being imparted by today’s secondary and post-secondary institutions. Instead, young people are often confused or diverted by questionable social media sources with many agendas, but that is a subject for another day.

It is no accident that STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) programs produce the most lucrative jobs and careers. After all, it is impossible to be competent in these fields without the skills of analysis, logical reasoning, and the ability to interpret data. This is not axiomatic in many other fields of study. In fact, at some institutions and in some fields, the principal “educational” goal is merely to instill passion and ideology.

American Greatness senior contributor Julie Kelly recently observed: “K-12 school textbooks now are filled with dire predictions about anthropogenic global warming, and college campuses administer nonstop brainwashing on the subject while dedicating enormous amounts of publicly funded ‘research’ to give an academic mooring to climate hysteria.”

Often, the driver is “wokeness,” social justice, or the politically correct fad du jour. After all, what can we learn from old, dead, white guys like Aristotle, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, or George Orwell, if instead we can watch videos of profane, postmodern poet-philosophers or teenage environmentalist sock-puppet Greta Thunberg?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/higher-educations-enemy-within-11573251941?emailToken=

Judge Cabranes serves on the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He was Yale’s first general counsel, and later served as a trustee of Yale, Columbia and Colgate universities. This is adapted from remarks delivered Oct. 18 to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which bestowed on him its Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education.

American higher education seems to be in a permanent state of crisis. Almost monthly, a federal court has occasion to reprimand some college or university for improperly chilling speech, even as some students continue to complain that campuses are too friendly to the wrong kind of speakers. Many institutions have cut back on faculty hiring, even as the cost of tuition grows. Two basic, and mutually reinforcing, phenomena are behind the chaos on campus.

First, colleges and universities have subordinated their historic mission of free inquiry to a new pursuit of social justice. Consider the remarkable evolution of Yale’s mission statement. For decades the university said its purpose was “to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.” The language was banal enough, but nevertheless on the money. In 2016, however, Yale’s president announced a new mission statement, which no longer mentions knowledge. Instead, Yale is now officially “committed to improving the world” and educating “aspiring leaders”—not only through research, but also through “practice.”

Second, American colleges and universities have been overwhelmed by a dangerous alliance of academic bureaucrats and student activists committed to imposing the latest social-justice diktats. This alliance has displaced the traditional governors of the university—the faculty. Indeed, nonfaculty administrators and activists are driving some of the most dangerous developments in university life, including the erosion of the due-process rights of faculty and students, efforts to regulate the “permissible limits” of classroom discussion, and the condemnation of unwelcome ideas as “hate speech.”

How did the university lose its way? How did this new alliance of activists and administrators supplant the faculty?

https://www.jns.org/canadian-university-student-newspaper-publishes-anti-israel-editorial/

The paper also refused to publish a letter to the editor on the basis that pro-Israel students are not entitled to be part of a “dialogue that gives a platform to ideas which dehumanize a group of people.”

The newspaper at McGill University in Montreal, The McGill Daily—one of Canada’s largest student papers—published an editorial this week falsely describing Zionism as a “colonial movement,” a “racist attitude” and “a violent practice,” and advised students who wanted to learn more about Zionism to refer to a leading BDS website for more information.

The Monday editorial also expressed outrage at the school’s administration, which had stepped in to apply pressure on the editorial board to publish a letter to the editor written by two Jewish pro-Israel law students decrying the paper’s anti-Semitic description of Zionism. According to the Daily’sown constitution, it is required to publish all letters it receives.

Regardless, the editors refused to publish the letter on the basis that pro-Israel students are not entitled to be part of a “dialogue that gives a platform to ideas which dehumanize a group of people.”

After McGill administrators threatened to pull Daily funding over the issue, the paper’s editors capitulated and published the letter, titled “Response to McGill Daily on Zionism,” which also appeared in Monday’s issue. It pointed out that “there’s a reason why the vast majority of Jews around the world (especially those at McGill) identify as Zionist, and it’s not because they’re violent, racist, colonialists; it’s because they actually understand what Zionism is and through their lived experiences, understand why it’s necessary.”

https://mailchi.mp/peaceandtolerance/boston-university-anti-semitism-scandal-heats-up?e=c4e6370125

In these times of rising anti-Semitism, I have just learned that Boston University is considering appointing Sarah Ihmoud, a terrible anti-Semite to a tenure track position in its sociology department. I understand that letters of concern and alarm submitted to the president, provost, and others have been met with a “none of your business” type of response, together with assurances that the process is being handled “based on peer evaluation of a candidate’s scholarly and professional achievements within the appropriate discipline and according to established disciplinary criteria… consistent with our established criteria and processes.”  The quote is from a form letter being sent out by President Brown. 
 
In point of fact, I have learned from colleagues on the law school faculty, where I taught in the BU Defenders Program, that nothing about this potential hire is being handled in accordance with established criteria and processes. The hire is being considered as an accommodation to a recent law faculty hire — Ihmoud is his wife. The position was not advertised, and there was no applicant pool, as required by BU’s established — and written — practices and processes.
 
What is worse is that her “scholarly” achievements are works based on viciously defamatory and easily refuted assertions about Israel. For instance, she writes in In the Absence of Justice, a report she co-authored with Shaloub-Kevorkian, another rabid anti-Semite who claims that Israelis sell Palestinian body parts, do medical experiments and test weapons on Palestinian children — see http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23511, that

Existing studies on gendered aspects of military occupation in East Jerusalem reveal that even in times of death, women are stripped of dignity and security, and their safe burial is jeopardized by the militarized regime (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2013). Women are prevented from safely reaching health professionals and finding a safe place to give birth, and face humiliation in Israeli hospitals during treatment, operations, giving birth, miscarriages and more (ibid.). Gendered violence was also apparent when examining the effects of surveillance over women, mainly in relation to the immense security devices and cameras in and around homes, schools and streets (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2015). Sexual and psychological abuse and harassment of women at checkpoints, by Israeli soldiers was also another factor affecting women. harassment by Israeli soldiers, including being made to undress when crossing checkpoints, was found to have increased women’s sense of loss of their bodily integrity and added to their humiliation and oppression (ibid., p. 63).