RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2019/02/10/public-

Bad teaching is a common explanation given for the disastrously inadequate public education received by America’s most vulnerable populations. This is a myth. Aside from a few lemons who were notable for their rarity, the majority of teachers I worked with for nine years in New York City’s public school system were dedicated, talented professionals. Before joining the system I was mystified by the schools’ abysmal results. I too assumed there must be something wrong with the teaching. This could not have been farther from the truth.

Teaching French and Italian in NYC high schools I finally figured out why this was, although it took some time, because the real reason was so antithetical to the prevailing mindset. I worked at three very different high schools over the years, spanning a fairly representative sample. That was a while ago now, but the system has not improved since, as the fundamental problem has not been acknowledged, let alone addressed. It would not be hard, or expensive, to fix.

Washington Irving High School, 2001–2004

My NYC teaching career began a few days before September 11, 2001 at Washington Irving High School. It was a short honeymoon period; the classes watched skeptically as I introduced them to a method of teaching French using virtually no English. Although the students weren’t particularly engaged, they remained respectful. During first period on that awful day there was a horrendous split-second noise. A plane flew right overhead a mere moment before it blasted into the north tower of the World Trade Center. At break time word was spreading among the staff. Both towers were hit and one had already come down. When I went to my next class I told the students what had happened. There was an eruption of rejoicing at the news. Many students clapped and whooped their approval, some getting out of their seats to do a sort of victory dance. It was an eye-opener, and indicative of what was to come.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272797/slippery-slope-speech-suppression-cuny-david-seidemann

Reprinted from jamesgmartin.center.

Public universities morally should and legally must uphold free speech. Unfortunately, the university where I’ve taught for 43 years has a very bad record, and matters are getting worse.

The City University of New York (CUNY) has a long history of speech suppression, as a sampling of legal cases at its various campus units reveals. For example, in 2007, a federal appeals court ruled that the College of Staten Island’s president violated students’ First Amendment rights when she nullified a student election; in a 2017 court settlement, Queens College administrators agreed to reverse their arbitrary decision to deny official recognition of a pro-life group litigation.

The administration of Brooklyn College has been particularly aggressive in suppressing speech. This is illustrated in a series of court cases involving students who were attempting to stop the college from collecting a mandatory fee in support of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), an off-campus, liberal lobbying group.

In 1996, the college arbitrarily canceled a referendum on the issue. A New York court ordered it reinstated. In 1997, the college blocked a similar referendum based on the (risible) claim that the students running it had libeled NYPIRG in a campaign poster by portraying the group as a rat. The college agreed to rescind that decision in a federal court stipulation. In 1998, the college refused to allow students to even start petitioning for a referendum, but a federal court ordered the college to permit petitioning. In 2001, the college refused to allow students all the allowed time for petitioning. That too was reversed in a federal court stipulation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/diversity-delusions-at-north-carolina-11549829141?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s

Harvard isn’t the only university defending its discriminatory admissions policies in court. Its nonprofit adversary, Students for Fair Admissions, filed a similar complaint against the University of North Carolina in 2014. UNC’s initial defense, submitted last month, is a case study in the willful ignorance underlying the racial-preference regime in higher education. Above all, schools like Harvard and UNC have deliberately ignored the negative effects of preferences on their supposed beneficiaries.

UNC told the court it needs to employ racial double standards in admissions because “certain classes, fields, or areas of campus” lack black and Hispanic students. Though UNC didn’t elaborate, the subjects deficient in underrepresented minorities undoubtedly include science, technology, engineering and math—the so-called STEM fields.

UNC has it backward: Racial preferences aren’t the solution to black and Hispanic underrepresentation in STEM, they are a cause of it. Admitting students with academic qualifications significantly below those of their peers puts them at a disadvantage, whatever their race. Students who are catapulted by preferences into schools for which they are academically mismatched struggle to keep up in classrooms where the teaching is pitched above their level of preparation. Studies have shown that African-American and Hispanic freshmen in preference-practicing schools who intend to major in STEM switch into softer majors at a high rate once they realize their fellow students are much better prepared to do the work. Had those students enrolled in schools that matched their level of preparation, they would be more likely to graduate with a STEM degree.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272807/down-kang-jong-un-lloyd-billingsley
Down With Kang Jong-Un! Pushing back against UCLA diversity dictator Jerry Kang.

UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity Diversity and Inclusion is a specialist in “implicit bias” theory but shows a distinct preference for politically correct groups of the Left. Meanwhile, professors of a certain ethnicity and conservative political profile are ostracized for championing free speech. Even their staff and student supporters come under fire.

1.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272686/diversity-lysenkoism-rules-ucla-lloyd-billingsley

2.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272720/king-kang-makes-ucla-safe-jew-hatred-lloyd-billingsley

3.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272745/king-kang-rampage-lloyd-billingsley

As a UCLA student, Keith Fink won a national debating championship defending the proposition that “illegal aliens” are inimical to the United States. Today, as he noted in his recent video, that would be a “microaggression,” that would trigger warnings and of course be “summarily dismissed.” The way UCLA dismissed Fink should serve up a warning to students, parents and policymakers alike.

UCLA teaching assistant Justin Gelzhiser, a PhD candidate, wrote a letter in defense of Fink. After Fink’s departure, longtime communications department manager Jane Bitar told Gelhizer he was the subject of a sexual harassment complaint. As he told the Daily Bruin, they would report the claim to the Title IX office if he didn’t leave his teaching position. The department, Gelhizer said, “wanted to get rid of me because they had just got rid of Fink.”

The Title IX department did investigate the harassment claim, which turned out to have some existential problems. Fink called it “a fiction” and notes that Bitar also violated the mandatory reporting requirements. For that lapse, she would suffer no consequences.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272745/king-kang-rampage-lloyd-billingsley

Editors’ note: At the end of the 1960s at UCLA, the Black Panthers and the US organization battled for control of the new Black Studies program. In time, Chicano Studies, Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies also gained official recognition. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the University of California system rejected academically-qualified students and accepted others based on race and ethnicity. In 1996, voters responded with the California Civil Rights Initiative, which banned racial and ethnic preferences in state education, employment and contracting.

Twenty years later, UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity Diversity and Inclusion is a specialist in “implicit bias” theory but shows a distinct preference for politically correct groups of the Left. Meanwhile, professors of a certain ethnicity and conservative political profile are ostracized for championing free speech. Even their staff and student supporters come under fire.

Below is Part III of Frontpage Mag’s 4-part series by Lloyd Billingsley on this state of affairs at UCLA.

[Read Part I: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272686/diversity-lysenkoism-rules-ucla-lloyd-billingsley)

Read Part II: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272720/king-kang-makes-ucla-safe-jew-hatred-lloyd-billingsley

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden won ten NCAA national championships, including a record seven in a row. As a student at UCLA, Keith Fink was something of an academic John Wooden, winning three national debating championships. After earning a law degree, Fink returned to the campus in 2008 as a professor, in the same department as his college debate coach Thomas Miller. Fink became popular with students, with good reason.

Jewish students Negeen Arasteh and Shahab Naimi, for example, sought out Fink’s classes because he is “one of the best teachers at UCLA.” Students of all backgrounds and disciplines packed classes such as “Sex, Politics and Race: Free Speech on Campus.” In all his classes, Fink championed what he calls “fundamental American values,” such as free speech and due process. Politically correct campus bosses didn’t like it.

As professor Fink told Frontpage last year, “They are all afraid of a vocal, rational intelligent conservative who can provide a check on the progressive narrative they seek to indoctrinate the students with and empowers the students with knowledge of their rights on how to fight against the UC when their rights are being violated.” Jerry Kang, UCLA Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and his commissars responded by slapping restrictions on Fink’s class sizes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-curious-time-for-insidehighered-to-lose-interest-in-campus-speech/

Colleges have a free speech “problem.” From high-profile instances at Missouri, Yale, and Middlebury, to more recent events at UC Berkeley and Sarah Lawrence College, we’ve seen college leaders allow the campus left to harass speakers, silence debate, and drive conservative views and values from the academy.

This state of affairs is one reason why InsideHigherEd’s annual survey of college and university chief academic officers has been especially useful. Since 2015, this survey has been the only annual snapshot that captures what senior college administrators think about trigger warnings, free speech, and academic freedom — and thus the only reliable way to gauge changes in their actions or attitudes. In light of the contretemps of the past year, many were eager to see what campus leaders had to say.

Unfortunately, in the latest survey, released last week, those questions had been neatly scrubbed from the survey. Yep, one of the nation’s primary news outlets covering higher education decided that now would be a propitious time to stop asking about academic freedom and free speech on campus.

What might appear to be simply a curious case of bad timing is emblematic of a larger problem with the higher ed-industrial complex — a tendency to sweep under the rug those developments which raise uncomfortable questions about the orthodoxies and agendas pervading campus culture. This dynamic was on full display last fall in the lawsuit that Students for Fair Admissions has mounted against Harvard’s admissions policies, when all the quarreling factions of academe responded by finding a way to link arms in the cause of race-based admissions.

The survey did find time to ask whether conservative and liberal students feel welcome in classrooms on their campus. Four percent of provosts expressed reservations about whether liberal students feel welcome; 12 percent expressed concerns about whether conservative students do. Given that surveys of students have indicated that half of them report having censored themselves in class for fear of what will be said in response, this kind of question provides a useful, sometimes laughable, window into the self-serving bubble that campus mandarins occupy.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/29/duke-universit

Middlebury College is widely renowned for their top-quality, immersive foreign language learning programs. Central to the Middlebury curriculum is the infamous language pledge, a promise which all students must take to use for communication only the language one is studying for the duration of the program. Whether during the summer in idyllic Middlebury, Vermont, or overseas at one of the school’s satellite locations, hundreds of students every year commit themselves to Middlebury’s infamous language pledge, immersing themselves in the culture of the target language and internalizing all the subtle cues and linguistic patterns that occur over water cooler talk, gossip, run-of-the-mill transactions, etc.

Fulfilling one’s obligations under the language pledge is difficult. Most people process their emotions and thoughts by speaking about them. Living in a strange, new place with all of the emotional turmoil that brings can be overwhelming, especially when one lacks the vocabulary to articulate one’s experience. In rare moments of longing, the average Middlebury student might call home and speak in his native tongue for awhile. But those instances of quiet desperation are understood to be private.

The language pledge is as much a matter of respect for the other people in the room as it is a personal commitment to self-improvement. Speaking the language of the host country notifies the people of that country of one’s regard for their culture, time, and welcome. Thus, a certain intimacy may be achieved with friends of completely different backgrounds through speaking the host language. As for classmates, staying true to the language pledge in public and private settings communicates to them that their learning process is of as much value as one’s own. The shared experience of stumbling toward fluency also lends to the development of comradery among fellow students.

Ultimately, Middlebury Language School graduates are generally regarded as the best in the field. The positive outcomes of immersing oneself in the target culture cannot be overstated. From the national security perspective, Middlebury Language Schools are fantastic tools of cultural diplomacy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/guns-metoo-israel-human-rights-and-trump-11548806463

Editor’s Note: This is the first edition of Future View, a WSJ Opinion series allowing college students to sound off on politics, culture and global affairs. In this installment, contributors share opinions that are unpopular among their peers. Next we ask, “What’s one issue on which President Trump and the Democrats can compromise?” Click here to submit responses of fewer than 250 words by noon ET Feb. 5. The best responses will be published on Feb. 6.

Women Need the Right to Bear Arms

If you don’t support Second Amendment rights, you can’t claim to be a supporter of the #MeToo movement. In the fall of 2016 I was a senior at my dream university in Philadelphia. What started as an ordinary day ended up being the worst of my life: I was violently raped. At the time I was a law-abiding gun owner, but I couldn’t bring my gun with me to my gun-free university. That senseless rule left me defenseless. I was just months away from being the first in my family to graduate from college, but I was forced to drop out due to the emotional trauma stemming from my assault.

Unfortunately, there are times when women in particular need to have a reliable means of self-defense. There are times when seconds count and no one is there to save us. If you won’t respect our right to bear arms and let us have a reliable means of self-defense on college campuses, you have no right to tell us you stand with victims of sexual assault.

–Savannah Lindquist, Tidewater Community College and Old Dominion University, majoring in psychology.

Israel Is Powerful. That Doesn’t Make it Wrong

Why do my peers oppose Israel? Not because college students are anti-Semitic, but because most hold one truth to be self-evident: Powerlessness implies moral legitimacy. The Israelis are powerful; the Palestinians are not. As such, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is merely a struggle between victim and oppressor, and nobody wants to support the oppressor.

Accordingly, campus pro-Israel groups often try to portray Israel as a victim, too—a victim of international bias and unprovoked aggression from its Arab neighbors. This strategy, however, has failed. It will continue to fail because even though Israel may be under threat, it isn’t powerless. Israel’s army is strong and its technology is advanced. But power doesn’t automatically imply moral turpitude; and conversely, powerlessness does not guarantee goodness. In other words, might does not make Israel right, but it certainly does not make Israel wrong, either. Indeed, Israel strives for justice and peace. But students can’t see that when they allow the popular morality of power to obscure the truth.

–Benjamin Simon, Stanford University, intends to major in philosophy and religious studies and computer science.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272686/diversity-lysenkoism-rules-ucla-lloyd-billingsley

Editors’ note: At the end of the 1960s at UCLA, the Black Panthers and the US organization battled for control of the new Black Studies program. In time, Chicano Studies, Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies also gained official recognition. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the University of California system rejected academically-qualified students and accepted others based on race and ethnicity. In 1996, voters responded with the California Civil Rights Initiative, which banned racial and ethnic preferences in state education, employment and contracting.

Twenty years later, UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity Diversity and Inclusion is a specialist in “implicit bias” theory but shows a distinct preference for politically correct groups of the Left. Meanwhile, professors of a certain ethnicity and conservative political profile are ostracized for championing free speech. Even their staff and student supporters come under fire.

Below is Part I of Frontpage Mag’s 4-part series by Lloyd Billingsley on this state of affairs at UCLA.

January 17, 2019, marked 50 years since the Black Panthers and the US organization shot it out in room 1201 of Campbell Hall at the University of California at Los Angeles. Panthers John Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter perished in the gun battle over control of fledgling black studies programs on the UCLA campus. Also at stake was control of the larger Black Power movement of the sixties.

US stood for “us,” black people, as opposed to “them,” the oppressive white people, but the rival Panthers called the group “United Slaves.” They were black nationalists founded by Hakim Jamal, formerly known as Allen Donaldson and a cousin of Malcolm X. Another US founder was Maulana Karenga, formerly known as Ron Karenga and Ronald McKinley Everett. Karenga is the creator of Kwanzaa and is now professor of Africana studies at Cal State Long Beach. The Black Panthers were more of a Marxist cast and made common cause with white radicals.

One of them was New Left stalwart David Horowitz, a red diaper baby born to Communist parents, as he outlined in Radical Son. Horowitz raised money for a Black Panther school in Oakland, but in late 1974 the Panthers murdered Betty Van Patter, the bookkeeper Horowitz recommended. The brutal crime showed the true nature of the Panthers, who had murdered many others, including member Alex Rackley, only 19, after making a recording of his “trial.” For David Horowitz, Van Patter’s murder signaled the need to depart from the left.