RUTHFULLY YOURS

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).

Be sure to read the BU Law Professor’s letter to BU’s President.

I could inundate you with dozens of new articles on this subject every day. I won’t do so daily but I will periodically so the subject doesn’t fade from your consciousness. And please don’t fall for the outright lies about Israeli oppression of Palestinian Arabs. That’s nothing more than the evolution of anti-Semitism into a new form the way deadly viruses and bacteria have genetically changed themselves over the years as they become resistant to then available cures.  

Most American Jews are in a state of denial about this because it hasn’t affected them personally yet (despite the armed guards outside their synagogue entrances) and many Americans are either totally unaware of what is happening because it doesn’t affect them at all or, if they are aware of it, are willing to say it’s not good, but not willing to do a whole lot about it because it doesn’t really mean much in their daily lives. But one day they’ll come for the Christians (it has already begun) and then perhaps they get more active.

The Jews’ best allies in this war are Evangelical Christians, whom Jews on the right side of the political spectrum love and share many values with. Jews on the political left are too married to the left’s political doctrine of “social justice,” still thinking of themselves as having to right the world’s perceived wrongs – many of which are total baloney – because they were once the persecuted, and refusing to see and acknowledge that their supposed allies in those battles are now their anti-Semitic enemies. 

This Jew hatred isn’t driven by the extreme political right. They are truly a fringe element of our society. It is driven by the political left and the Muslim world – and most especially Muslims on college and university campuses around the country  Academia has been its petrie dish and now the deadly germ nurtured there has escaped into broader western culture – right into the House of Congress and one of the two major British political Parties, to cite but two highly visible examples amongst hundreds around the world every day. DPS

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

In 2001, psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple wrote Life at the Bottom.  He had “little hesitation in saying that the mental, cultural, emotional and spiritual impoverishment of the Western underclass [was] the greatest of any large group of people he had encountered anywhere.”  This he stated unequivocally despite his work in some of the poorest societies in Africa, the Pacific, and Latin America.

I have damnable empirical evidence that this impoverishment is truly hurting young Americans.

I may grade up to 100 papers per week, and it is getting to me.  It is not because of the poor grammar or awkward syntax.  It is not that the majority of students cannot compose a paper with clear-cut transitions and logical organization.  It is not because they have a limited vocabulary base or that they have no comprehension of the nuance of the language.  No, that has sadly become standard.

It is getting to me because I too often read such items as the following from a young girl who was sexually abused by her stepfather.

Throughout my life I lived without a father figure since my dad left me at a young age for my little sister that he was expecting from another women [sic].  I think I need no man to protect me or keep me safe when I can do that on my own without any help.  I won’t allow any man to get near me to even protect me.

…or this from a young man:

My father is a cruel man, a liar, a cheater and a deserter.  Living without a biological father was difficult but I marched on forward and realized I don’t need him.

…or…

You can never love someone too much because once they [sic] are gone you will lose yourself as well.

…or…

I would like to find a way to have the ability to forget about depression.

…or this from another young man:

I was in a relationship for a year with a person who would abuse me physically and mentally.  There would be times where I would cry because of the pain and she would either slap me or punch me in the chest and tell me to man up.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/11/01/new-report-on-anti-semitism-at-columbia-university-barnard-points-to-a-hotbed-for-hate/
The 33-page dossier “reveals the disturbing truth about anti-Semitism at one of the highest-regarded universities in the United States.”

The American NGO Alums for Campus Fairness released a comprehensive report last week that documents what ACF describes as “systemic anti-Semitism and an ingrained delegitimization of Israel” at Columbia University and its sister school, Barnard College.

The 33-page dossier documents more than 100 incidents that have made Columbia and Barnard “a hotbed for hate” since the 2016-17 academic year.

The catalog categorized each act into one of these categories: anti-Semitic expressions, meaning language, imagery or behavior that would be considered anti-Semitic according to the guidelines outlined by the US State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism; incidents targeting Jewish students and staff; or activity related to the anti-Israel BDS movement.

In one such incident, Students for Justice in Palestine held a “die-in” on the Columbia campus in May and released a statement that condoned terrorism, denied the right to Jewish self-determination, and accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/SJP-has-ties-to-terror-is-antisemitic-force-on-campus-report-606415

BAD, BAD, BAD – Harvard, Columbia, Stony Brook, Georgetown, Brandeis, Penn State, Rutgers, Temple, University of Illinois, University of Minnesota, University of Chicago, University of Washington, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Florida State, University of North Carolina, University of Georgia, University of Florida, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Texas at Austin and numerous universities in Canada.DPS

The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is an “antisemitic force on campus,” according to a new 96-page report about the organization. 

The document, published by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in advance of NSJP’s annual conference being held November 1-3, tracks the history of the organization and highlights how NSJP “promotes antisemitic rhetoric” and is “associated [with] violence and terror, ideologically and politically.”  
The study, titled “National Students for Justice in Palestine and the Promotion of Hate and Antisemitism on the University Campus: The Threat to Academic Freedom,” is authored by Charles Asher Small, David Patterson and Glen Feder.

“For centuries, the most violent antisemitic attacks on Jews, including expulsions and pogroms, were rationalized by a need to bring justice to other groups,” said ISGAP chairman Natan Sharansky. “Today, the new antisemitism is brought to the world of academia under the pretext of justice for Palestinians.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/the_pronoun_police_are_out_to_destroy_children.html

In the olden days, students would learn that avoiding shifts in person is critical in producing clear and cogent writing.

Not anymore.

Instead, October 16, 2019 marked International Pronouns Day, because “asking someone their [sic] lived pronouns and using them affirms that person’s gender identity and is a major way of respect.  Being referred to by the wrong pronouns especially affects transgender and gender nonconformng individuals.”

O Brave New World.

In order to promote the cause of pronoun use, one needs to accept the premise that it is  patently incorrect to think of biological sexual identity as comprising a boy or a girl.

Rid yourself of this view, because according to the purveyors of pronoun plurality, “we also live in a culture that uses ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ interchangeably.  However, these two aspects that contribute [to] one’s sexuality and identity are actually two separate entities.  As we come to understand how different people understand the various facets that make up how we think about gender, we come to realize that there are many ways to look at these aspects of identity.  One way to simplify the many components of gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, and biological sex is by using the Genderbread Person model, created and illustrated [b]y Sam Killerman, author of itspronouncedmetrosexual.com and LGBT advocate.”