RUTHFULLY YOURS

Students at the University of Michigan, beware. If you say anything politically incorrect or out-of-line with the political and social orthodoxy on your campus, you may get a knock on your dorm room door from the university’s equivalent of the Thought Police, and be forced into a re-education camp. Or you may be suspended or thrown out of school, potentially damaging your educational prospects and your entire future professional career.

If this sounds like an exaggeration, consider a new lawsuit filed in federal court in Michigan by Speech First, Inc., against the president of the University of Michigan, other senior university officials, and the entire board of trustees. Speech First is a nationwide membership organization of students, faculty, and alumni (including students at Michigan) dedicated to preserving First Amendment rights on college campuses.

That is a very tough job these days when so many students and administrators don’t believe the First Amendment should apply in their dormitories, their classrooms, or anywhere else on campus (or off campus, for that matter).

Don’t be surprised if what I am about to describe sounds like a scene out of George Orwell’s 1984, where the Thought Police would arrest any citizen criticizing the regime or otherwise disagreeing with the official view on everything from politics to culture. And they used surveillance that included informers and electronic devices like cameras and microphones.

Identity politics has engulfed the humanities and social sciences on American campuses; now it is taking over the hard sciences. The STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math—are under attack for being insufficiently “diverse.” The pressure to increase the representation of females, blacks, and Hispanics comes from the federal government, university administrators, and scientific societies themselves. That pressure is changing how science is taught and how scientific qualifications are evaluated. The results will be disastrous for scientific innovation and for American competitiveness.

A scientist at UCLA reports: “All across the country the big question now in STEM is: how can we promote more women and minorities by ‘changing’ (i.e., lowering) the requirements we had previously set for graduate level study?” Mathematical problem-solving is being deemphasized in favor of more qualitative group projects; the pace of undergraduate physics education is being slowed down so that no one gets left behind.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), a federal agency that funds university research, is consumed by diversity ideology. Progress in science, it argues, requires a “diverse STEM workforce.” Programs to boost diversity in STEM pour forth from its coffers in wild abundance. The NSF jump-started the implicit-bias industry in the 1990s by underwriting the development of the implicit association test (IAT). (The IAT purports to reveal a subject’s unconscious biases by measuring the speed with which he associates minority faces with positive or negative words; see “Are We All Unconscious Racists?,” Autumn 2017.) Since then, the NSF has continued to dump millions of dollars into implicit-bias activism. In July 2017, it awarded $1 million to the University of New Hampshire and two other institutions to develop a “bias-awareness intervention tool.” Another $2 million that same month went to the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University to “remediate microaggressions and implicit biases” in engineering classrooms.

Fascinating numbers from a new study by Mitchell Langbert. And its results just go to further reinforce the Freedom Center’s call for intellectual diversity in academia.

The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free—having zero Republicans. The political registration in most of the remaining 61 percent, with a few important exceptions, is slightly more than zero percent but nevertheless absurdly skewed against Republican affiliation and in favor of Democratic affiliation. Thus, 78.2 percent of the academic departments in my sample have either zero Republicans, or so few as to make no difference.

A Cornell student delivered a thesis lecture in her underwear in order to combat systemic oppression.

Sorting out the tangled jumble of ideas that together define feminism can be a head-scratching experience. “We aren’t just sexual commodities,” some of them say, as they strip down to their lingerie.

An “I’m Spartacus” moment took place at Cornell University the other day, but because it was led by a young woman who grew up in a sex-drenched culture, it was more like an “I’m Victoria’s Secret” moment.

“Strip, everybody,” said senior Letitia Chai after removing her clothes down to her bra and panties to deliver her thesis. The Cornell Daily Sun reports that 28 of 44 students present doffed their clothing in solidarity.

Chai was reacting to the systematic oppression of being asked whether it was a great idea to deliver a lecture on the refugee crisis while wearing skimpy cut-offs. The professor of the class, “Acting in Public: Performance in Everyday Life,” was trying to do Chai a favor; college boys, like boys in general, are easily distracted by the sight of female flesh and are less likely to process what a woman is saying when they’re leering at her body parts.

Moreover, to the extent a college professor’s job is to prepare young people for the real world by gently nudging them away from teen habits and toward the way adults who take their careers seriously behave, the pedagogue was providing Chai with useful counseling. A year at Cornell costs a bit more than $70,000, and it is axiomatic that a degree from such an Ivy League university is mainly seen, these days, as a method for enhancing students’ value on the job market. College students need to be taught extremely basic skills like how to write an email, so it isn’t obvious that they understand that they shouldn’t show up for a job dressed like their last gig was prowling Eighth Avenue asking men, “Want a date?”

Progressives dominate all but a few corners of American academia, but apparently they want it all. Witness the political and media assault on George Mason University, an island of intellectual diversity in Northern Virginia that has committed the sin of accepting money from conservative donors.

A public university with some 36,000 students, George Mason has made a mark in economic debates through its Mercatus Center. This has caught the attention of an outfit called UnKoch My Campus, which claims that donors like Charles and David Koch inappropriately influence university decisions. The demand is for “transparency” but the real goal is to silence conservative views.

George Mason recently released hundreds of pages of public records in response to requests by Transparent GMU, the local UnKoch affiliate. They include contracts and correspondence related to a $30 million donation in 2016, the largest in school history. Ten million dollars came from the Koch Foundation, and $20 million from an anonymous donor represented by attorney Leonard Leo. Mr. Leo is also a vice president of the Federalist Society, the non-secret network of conservative lawyers.

Cue the outrage. Among the horrors supposedly uncovered by UnKoch is that one condition of these gifts was that George Mason rename its law school after Antonin Scalia. UnKoch wants everyone to know that the Great Scalia was “one of the most ideological and polarizing Supreme Court Justice [sic] in history.” OMG, as the kids say. The New York Times ran a nearly full-page story on the documents.

Does anyone say “department store” anymore? If you’re a Millennial or maybe even a tad older, you may not even be aware of what a department store is. If you’re thinking, Walmart or Target, or even Kohl’s, think again.

Until the 1970s or so, department stores were grand affairs; multi-story edifices, arranged in “departments,” and organized by floor. You needed to take an elevator, usually operated by a real person, to get to the floor that stocked whatever you were looking for. And as the elevator approached a floor, the operator would shout out the stops like a train conductor: “Fourth floor, kitchen appliances! Fifth floor, ladies lingerie!”

These days, you won’t find too many department store elevator operators, but even if you could, Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of political theory at King’s College London, recently showed that it’s no job for an amateur. A lot can go wrong just calling out the floors.

While attending an academic convention, Ledbow was riding in a hotel elevator―not in a department store elevator―with other passengers, including a number of women. Instead of saying the number of the floor he wanted to another passenger to press, Lebow quipped “Ladies Lingerie” as his floor choice.

Anyone who’d ever taken an old-fashioned department store elevator ride would have gotten the joke, and probably chuckled. Anyone not schooled in department store lore but possessed of good manners and an unexcitable mind probably would have ignored the comment, or thought this guy wandered into the wrong building. And that would be the end of it.

But that was just the beginning of it for Simona Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College. Sharoni was also on that elevator, and Lebow’s seems to have crack ruined her whole day.

Sharoni didn’t think Lebow was only joking. She couldn’t imagine anyone having the temerity to “make a reference to men shopping for lingerie while attending an academic conference.”

Right. Who does that? But still . . . what’s the problem?

Whether you like the joke or not, this should have been handled between the two professors without involving a bureaucracy.

Last month, a King’s College professor told a harmless joke on an elevator during an International Studies Association conference — and now, he’s facing disciplinary charges.

According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Richard Ned Lebow was on a crowded elevator when Simona Sharoni, a professor of gender studies at Merrimack College, asked him what floor he needed, and Lebow jokingly answered, “ladies’ lingerie.”

Seems harmless, right? At the very least, nothing to write home about, right? Apparently not. Sharoni got so offended by the joke that she filed a complaint with the International Studies Association.

“I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that we froze and didn’t confront him,” she wrote in the complaint.

It gets worse: ISA actually determined that Lebow’s joke had violated the group’s code of conduct.

After finding out he was under investigation, Lebow attempted to resolve the matter himself — adult-to-adult and bureaucracy-free — by writing to Sharoni. He didn’t exactly apologize but he did insist that he “certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable,” adding that what he had said was simply a “standard gag line” that he’d heard often when he was young in the 1950s.

‘The most important indication of bias is your own feelings,” the University of Michigan advises students. It then urges them to report on their peers, anonymously if they prefer, “and to encourage others to report if they have been the target or witness of a bias incident.”

The Bias Response Team is there, ready to investigate and mete out justice. More than 200 American campuses have established similar administrative offices to handle alleged acts of “bias” that violate no law. A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against the University of Michigan is the first in the nation to challenge the constitutionality of these Bias Response Teams.

The case is brought by Speech First, a membership group primarily made up of college students, alumni and their families. It alleges that Michigan’s student code and Bias Response Team violate the First Amendment by threatening to penalize protected expression. “Even apart from any punishments that may result at the end of the process,” the lawsuit argues, the team’s existence has a chilling effect on speech. Speech First seeks a permanent injunction prohibiting the Bias Response Team from investigating students.

University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen said the Bias Response Team has operated “for a number of years, and we have certainly not seen it chill speech here.” Team members include top administrators and campus law enforcement. Despite repeated inquiries, no one from the team was available to answer questions.

Students found responsible for a “bias incident” face discipline, which ranges from training sessions to suspension or expulsion. As for what constitutes bias, that’s vague—unconstitutionally so, argues Speech First. The existence of an offended party can be sufficient to prove “bias.” The team warns potential offenders that bias “may be intentional or unintentional.” Similarly, the student code prohibits “harassment,” which it defines as “unwanted negative attention perceived as intimidating, demeaning or bothersome to an individual.” Here, subjective perception serves as evidence.

What if the expression of a controversial or unpopular opinion bothers someone? Under the University of Michigan’s rules, “the most sensitive student on campus effectively dictates the terms under which others may speak,” Speech First says. Since April 2017, students have reported more than 150 bias incidents. These include complaints about social-media posts, drawings, comments, phone calls and even “intentional item placement”—whatever that means. The Bias Response Team has also investigated speech or other expression even when it occurred off-campus.

These details come from the bare-bones bias-incident log the university publishes online. I wanted a deeper look, so two years ago I requested a year’s worth of bias reports and the notes from any investigation or response. The university thwarted this inquiry by imposing a fee of more than $2,400 for the public records. But the log shows that in one reported incident of verbal bias in the classroom, the Bias Response Team said it referred a university employee to administrators who “shared concerns with the academic department involved.” In several other cases, the Bias Response Team determined that some reported acts of verbal bias could constitute sex discrimination under Title IX, referring them to the Office of Institutional Equity.

Even if the Bias Response Team doesn’t officially discipline an alleged bias offender, its handling of the incident can chill speech, as a recent case at the University of Northern Colorado illustrates. Adjunct professor Mike Jensen had asked his students to read Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s “The Coddling of the American Mind” and debate controversial subjects, including gay marriage and transgender issues. CONTINUE AT SITE

This past week (April 30-May 3), the University of California at Irvine endured another week of anti-Israel activities sponsored by the Muslim Student Union (MSU) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The week’s theme was “Nakba”, the Arabic word for catastrophe, which represents the “catastrophe” of 1948, when Israel became a state, and the Arab world launched an (unsuccessful) attack against Israel. Thousands of Arabs living in Israel left the territory at the urging of the Arab armies. Since Israel was victorious, those who had left, thinking they would return after the Arab victory, became refugees. Thus, it was Nakba week, and for the SJP/MSU, it was another public relations catastrophe.

Only one speaker was announced, and the rest of the activity centered around the so-called “apartheid wall”. The days were marked by loud, angry chanting on the part of the SJP/MSU and behavior meant to be intimidating. The Israeli group, Reservists on Duty, was on-hand to answer any questions as to the truth about Israel. As happened last year, their presence angered the SJP/MSU. Finally, on Thursday night, the College Republicans invited the Reservists to speak at their regular meeting. As might be predicted, the event was disrupted by about ten persons who apparently came from off-campus. It marked the third May in a row that pro-Israel events were disrupted. As usual, no arrests were made.

What follows is a day- by-day account of the events. If you hit the links, you can see photos and videos.

Day One (Monday)

Around 11 am or so, this writer dropped by the so-called “apartheid wall” near the library. I chatted briefly with one of the representatives of Reservists on Duty, ex-IDF soldiers, most of whom are American-born. I noted immediately that the pro-Palestinian forces all had their faces covered with Palestinian scarves and other paraphernalia. It made them look like real, bonafide Arab terrorists. What kind of impression could this possibly have on other students? I took photos of two of them, a male and female. The male, seeing my camera, quickly darted behind the wall. He was too late. Later in the week, this individual would play a prominent part in the events.

Barry Forman (MD, PhD) is a research scientist, former department director and holder of over 20 patents in the field of gene regulation and drug discovery. In recent years he has been a concerned observer of anti-Semitic and islamist activity in his community and beyond.

As Americans, we support everyone’s right to freedom of speech and to peacefully protest, but we are also aware that disruption is distinct from protest. Interference with a public event deprives those in attendance of their own right to free speech and assembly. When this line is crossed, protestors become disruptors. In California, disrupting public events is a violation of penal code 403.

Yet here we are, another day, and another illegal anti-Semitic disruption has occurred on a UC campus. On May 3, an event sponsored by the UC Irvine College Republicans was disrupted by pro-Palestinian thugs and captured on video. Note that the disruptors had no interest in hearing the speakers or engaging in dialogue. They invaded the event approximately 40 minutes after it started (see 1:20:00 mark on the video) and began disrupting it shortly thereafter. Notice the use of a bullhorn (in a small classroom) in violation of UC Irvine policy. Also notice that the police do little for an extended period of time while observing the law being broken. The disruptors are eventually removed from the room, but the illegal disruption continues as shouting from outside continues to interfere with the audience’s ability to hear and to field questions.

I complained to the police on two occasions after the disruptors were removed from the classroom. Each time the police requested that I move away from the event because they could not hear me speak. In so doing the police unwittingly acknowledged that CA penal code 403 was being violated, yet they allowed the violation to continue. The police had sufficient resources present to ask—and if necessary, force—the disruptors to move sufficiently far from the meeting so as to not interfere. Doing so would have ensured that both sides could freely exercise their constitutional rights. By failing to do so, the police and UC Irvine facilitated a violation of the CA penal code, not to mention the attendees’ right to free speech.