RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/i

John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, has been the subject of withering criticism of late, but I’m grateful to him. Yes, he shouldn’t have refused to write a recommendation for a student merely because the semester abroad program she was applying to was in Israel. But at least he exposed what the boycott movement is about, aspects of which I suspect some of its blither endorsers are unaware.

We are routinely told, as we were by the American Studies Association, that boycott actions against Israel are “limited to institutions and their official representatives.” But Cheney-Lippold reminds us that the boycott, even if read in this narrow way, obligates professors to refuse to assist their own students when those students seek to participate in study abroad programs in Israel. Dan Avnon, an Israeli academic, learned years ago that the same goes for Israel faculty members seeking to participate in exchange programs sponsored by Israeli universities. They, too, must be turned away regardless of their position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When the American Studies Association boycott of Israel was announced, over two hundred college presidents or provosts properly and publicly rejected it. But even they might not have imagined that the boycott was more than a symbolic gesture. Thanks to Professor Cheney-Lippold, they now know that it involves actions that disserve their students. Yes, Cheney-Lippold now says he was mistaken when he wrote that “many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel.” But he is hardly a lone wolf in hyper-politicized disciplines like American Studies, Asian-American Studies, and Women’s Studies, whose professional associations have taken stands in favor of boycotting Israel. Administrators looking at bids to expand such programs should take note of their admirably open opposition to the exchange of ideas.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/universities-spend-how-much

Ohio State employs 88 diversity-related staffers at a cost of $7.3M annually. The University of Michigan has 93 diversity-related staffers who make a total of $11 million per year. Meanwhile, high-priced diversity bureaucrats aren’t improving diversity on campus. What is going here on? Watch the latest episode of Campus Roundup to find out. SEE VIDEO ON DIVERSITY https://www.thecollegefix.com/universities-spend-how-much-on-diversity-campus-roundup-ep-24/

https://www.thecollegefix.com/columbia

As part of Columbia University’s New Student Orientation Program, first-year students participated in a mandatory activity called “Under1Roof.”

Columbia’s schedule book for orientation describes it as a dialogue that aims to “foster inclusive communities by engaging with the social identities we all bring to campus.”

Under1Roof took place in August, and is a “required program” that is “specifically created for all incoming first year students in Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science,” according to its website.

An incoming Columbia student who attended the program this year told The College Fix that students were asked to write down and explain the categories of identity that they belong to and are most “aware of,” selecting from choices like race, class, gender and sexual orientation.

They were also asked to speak about how they felt their identities “limited their opportunities or access in coming to campus.”

During the experience, each student was given nine sticky notes and asked to write on each one how they identify themselves according to categories that make up “social identity,” including race, ethnicity, immigrant status, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious/spiritual identity, and “additional identities,” as well as anything people wanted to add, such as an athlete or artist, the student said.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-end-of-education/

The 19th century legacy of Horace Mann and his influence on public school education is still being debated. His intentions were noble and his argument for civics and citizen-making as a function of democratic schooling had much to recommend it. But opening the public schools to government control has proven to be a Pandora’s Box of incurable ills. There can be little doubt that its latest manifestation, Common Core, is nothing short of a recipe for the uniform and partisan dumbing down of the current generation.

A figure no less significant and undeniably harmful in his widespread influence on public education is the Leftist social thinker John Dewey, especially in Democracy and Education. It has taken a hundred years to ruin American education, dating from Dewey’s so-called child-centered and “progressive” revolution in American public pedagogy in the early 1920s, through the turbulent 1960s during which empowered student radicals took over the universities, on to the self-esteem movement that flattered the student into believing that self-love was more crucial than self-improvement, to the present moment in which both public and university education has traded honest teaching, academic rigor and merit-based instruction for social justice, politically correct groupthink, anti-white and anti-Western passions, feminist madness and left-wing partisanship.

In The End of Education, published some twenty years ago, Neil Postman mounts a multi-pronged attack on the failures of the education machine, dethroning the idols of “Economic Utility, Consumership, and Technology.” One may or may not agree with his argument, which appears somewhat dated in the present environment. But he is certainly on target in exploding the fetish of “Tribalism and Separatism” as gods in the pantheon of Multiculturalism. He cites Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s 1991 tour de force The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (a must-read), which partially skewers “our reversion to undiluted tribalism” and the ulcer of identity politics. Following Mann, Postman’s main point is that teachers and students need “a narrative to provide profound meaning to their lessons.” Unfortunately, the narrative currently in play is “a terrible story” advancing the “frightening” thesis that “evil inheres in white people … of European origin [and] Goodness inheres in nonwhites,” among many other reductions of our Judeo-Christian heritage. What is called “emancipatory knowledge” — an alias for Social Justice gospel — must replace “Eurocentric knowledge.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/sessions-on-campus-speech-rules-time-to-put-a-stake-in-its-heart/

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a Justice Department forum on higher education today that limiting free speech deemed offensive on college campuses “has gone too far” and “it’s time to stand up to the bullies on campus, bullies in our culture.”

“As Americans, we know that it’s far better to have a messy and contentious debate than to suppress the voices of dissenters, even though on occasion we might forget these values,” Sessions said. “…Defending the Constitution, defending civil rights, doing justice compels this Department of Justice to defend the right of speech, expression, religion, press, petition and assembly, and defend these rights we will. And the most important time to defend a valued right is when it is being attacked or eroded.”

Sessions cited a survey that found 40 percent of colleges and universities “maintain speech codes that substantially infringe on constitutionally protected rights.”

“Of the public colleges surveyed, which are legally bound by the First Amendment, fully one-third had written policies banning disfavored speech,” he added.

He lashed out at small “free speech zones” on campuses and rules against activities that could “disturb the comfort of persons” attending school there.

“If disturbing someone’s comfort is the standard for banning speech, then anybody can stop anyone else from speaking their mind by acting offended. This is nowhere close to a legitimate First Amendment standard,” he said, citing in his examples of DOJ involvement a statement of interest filed in May in a lawsuit against the University of Michigan. “The university sought to forbid harassment and bullying and actions motivated by bias. They also forbade speech that is interpreted to be demeaning, bothersome or hurtful. But the rules did not give clear definition about what any of these terms mean.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271354/new-academic-year-americas-colleges-jack-kerwick

A new academic year is upon us and, already, the world of Higher Education is being true to form.

For example, the University of Maryland-College Park created a new “diversity” group intended to carve out a “safe space” for those white students who are interested in sharing their reflections on their encounters with “racial and ethnic minorities.”

The school assigned to the group quite the catchy label: “White Awake.”

According to Campus Reform, a watchdog site, this “support group” will assist white students who “sometimes feel uncomfortable and confused before, during, or after interactions with racial and ethnic minorities.”

According to the description: “This group offers a safe space for White students to explore their experiences, questions, reactions, and feelings. Members will support and share feedback with each other as they learn more about themselves and how they can fit into a diverse world.”

After Campus Reform published its article on “White Awake,” the University of Maryland decided to change the name of its most recently created “diversity group.” “White Awake” is no more. In its place is the “Anti-Racism and Ally Building Group.” The description reads: “Do you want to improve your ability to relate to and connect with people different from yourself? Do you want to become a better ally? Members will support and share feedback with each other as they learn more about themselves and how they can fit into a diverse world.”

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, SJ Miller, a “faculty associate” who, in spite of being a teacher, is not recognized as a “professor,” wants to “liberate gender identity.” Self-identifying as “agender,” Miller expressed desire for this objective in a paper—“Reframing Schooling to Liberate Gender Identity”—that he had published in a journal known as Multicultural Perspectives.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/americans-dont-like-racial-preferences-education/

This is not news, being quite in line with many earlier polls, but the time and place are rather propitious, with the Harvard affirmative-action case going to trial in a month. A new survey, by Boston’s public-radio station no less, asked this question: “The Supreme Court has decided colleges can use race as one factor in deciding which applicants to admit. Do you agree or disagree with this ruling?” And 72 percent of those surveyed said they disagreed with the Court’s ruling, with only 24 percent agreeing. (Indeed, the only group that the station identified as having more supporters than critics of the Court’s decision was those with a graduate education, and among them by only 49 to 45 percent. This proves, by the way, that the more time you spend on today’s campuses, the worse your judgment becomes.)

A few days ago, I happened upon a letter of August 17 in the Chronicle of Higher Education calling upon Professor Judith Butler to step down as president-elect of the Modern Language Association. I was pleased to suppose that at least some professors of literature were expressing shock, outrage, and indignation at the news that a fanatical Israel-hater, Israel-boycotter, Israel-slanderer, and would-be destroyer would soon accede to the presidency of America’s largest professional organization of college teachers of literature and language. I had in fact expected that droves of MLA members, especially Jewish ones, would react by heading for the exits.

(True, MLA has in the past elected some very unfit presidents. In the late sixties Louis Kampf (MIT) was the first to be elected to represent “leftist” professors. He would express, for teachers who never liked literature much in the first place, a rationale for their hostility: literary studies were both a result and an instrument of oppression. In later years, when “Palestine” became the leftists’ “revolution du jour,” Edward Said, a member of the PLO executive committee, was elected president. But Said was virtually a Zionist compared with the Jewish Butler; also, unlike her, he could write English prose. In 1997 Butler, a stupefyingly opaque writer, won the annual Bad Writing Contest conducted by the journal Philosophy and Literature.)

But I was wrong. The Chronicle letter calling for Butler to step down was written by an Illinois associate professor of “Israeli Literature and Culture” named Rachel Harris. Yet it expressed not the slightest concern about how an organization presided over by someone whose febrile imagination depicts Israel as the devil’s own experiment and aligns herself with Hamas might interfere with (or even impede) her own scholarly work and impose an MLA boycott of the country on whose existence Harris’ writing depends.