RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

This past weekend, at the college at which I teach philosophy, I had the honor of presenting a student of mine—I’ll refer to him by his first name, Mike—with an award in academic excellence.

In the nearly 20 years that I’ve been teaching in my discipline, I’ve taught at a diverse array of colleges and universities: institutions that are small and large, public and private, religious and secular, research-oriented and teaching-oriented, and which span from Texas to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Over this time, I’ve taught literally thousands and thousands of students, several of whom were especially bright, committed, and capable.

Yet it is the student upon whom, on behalf of our department, I bestowed this prestigious award that enjoys the distinction of being the best philosophy student that I have ever taught.

In my prefatory remarks, I of course made mention of those of his many virtues that distinguish him in this regard. However, I noted as well that by way of these very same intellectual and character excellences, Mike exemplified as much as any student of my acquaintance ever has the kind of person for whom a classical liberal arts education was intended and that it was meant to produce.

The liberal arts have fallen on hard times, I declared from the stage of the auditorium in which the awards ceremony was held. Thankfully, though, my student Mike has resurrected my hope that all is not lost.

This was on Saturday morning. My hope remains. But when, a mere 24 yours later, I turned to The College Fix, an excellent student-run campus watchdog publication, it was tested once more.

Usually I regret whenever I’m flipping through channels of the car radio and come across NPR’s pretty consistent litany of liberal and leftist commentators. So, I was amazed when I stumbled upon this show just now on my local NPR station. I heard the words University of Nebraska and hesitated to move on because a good friend graduated from there, so I was curious.An hour radio show traced in detail the gross attacks by a faculty member upon a conservative student and the outcome: the faculty member was banned from teaching, the attempted coverup emails by the admin at U of Nebraska was exposed, and the state legislature may pass a free speech bill over the protests of the usual opponents of free speech for anyone but themselves. Yes, this triumph for free speech and students’ rights on campus is out of the ordinary on campuses and in states and media dominated by the liberal left, but it can be a portent if enough determined conservatives and others of good conscience act. The lengthy article upon which the NPR story is based appeared in, again of all places, the liberal Chrinicle of Higher Education. It is a MUST read. Here it is: “How a tiny protest at the U of Nebraska turned into a proxy war for the future of campus politics: State Of Conflict”BRUCE KESLER

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/state-of-conflict

The first month of the fall semester had not gone as Hank M. Bounds, president of the University of Nebraska, had hoped. It was shaping up to be a tough budget year, for the school and the state, and he had hoped to press the case for how valuable the university was to the state.

Instead, the president was sitting across from a Lincoln-area radio host as he delivered a monologue on what it means to call someone “Becky.” The host seemed to be paraphrasing entries pulled from the website UrbanDictionary.com: It was slang for a white woman. Some definitions mentioned sex acts.

“Some say that goes beyond intimidation,” said the radio host gravely, “that that even borders on hate speech.”

In late August, there had been an incident. A graduate student and members of the English department had confronted a 19-year-old undergraduate over politics. Words were exchanged, including the one the radio host was now trying to define. The whole thing had lasted about 20 minutes and had made barely a ripple on campus. But thanks to a cellphone video, a web-savvy political organization, and a group of suggestible lawmakers, it soon sent shock waves across Nebraska. People were talking about how the changing landscape of American politics posed a threat to them, to their state, and to their children.
This story is part of a collaboration with This American Life.
It was reported with producer Dana Chivvis. An audio version of this story will air early in May. It will be available for download on the This American Life website and as a podcast.

The most underappreciated political story of our time is the changing content of K-12 textbooks in history, civics, social studies, and related subjects. Yes, I said political story. Why are Millennials so receptive to socialism? Why are today’s Democrats dominated by identity politics? Why have movements on the political right shifted from a constitutional conservatism symbolized by the Boston Tea Party to a populist nationalism? All these changes, and more, are connected to what today’s history textbooks are, and are not, teaching. Yet we’ve barely noticed the link.

Almost any Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. history textbook has more influence on American politics than 90 percent of the books reviewed in our leading newspapers and political magazines. Yet when was the last time you read a review of a high school history textbook? Never, I’ll bet. That’s partly because these thousand-page monstrosities are tough to read, and even tougher to judge for anyone but professional historians. And with growing academic specialization, even historians find it difficult to assess an entire text.

Liberals needn’t bother keeping track of history textbooks because they’re the ones who write them. But conservatives have dropped the ball on this issue so essential to their survival. Conservative politicians, institutions, and donors focus far more on short-term electoral politics and policy than culture. History textbooks don’t even register. Over the long haul, that’s a recipe for political exile and social ostracism.

Conservatives saw the tip of the enormous textbook iceberg earlier this April when a radio host tweeted out pictures a Minnesota student had sent her of an AP U.S. history (APUSH) textbook. The student had photographed pages of the not yet formally released update of James W. Fraser’s By the People, an APUSH textbook published by the international education giant Pearson. Those pages covered the 2016 election and the Black Lives Matter movement. Their blatantly partisan bias set off a conservative media firestorm. (I commented here, and Joy Pullman’s important take is here.)

Essentially, Fraser’s updated text portrayed conservatives as bigots, Trump as mentally unstable, and the Black Lives Matter movement as a reasonable response to a police force acting like an “occupying army” in a “mostly African-American town.”

It was hit job as history.

On April 22, 2018, Miki Cammarata, the Vice President for Student Development at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, released an email. Cammarata condemned a social media video featuring a William Paterson student, Jasmine Barkley. Cammarata called Barkley’s comments “abhorrent and racially charged.” “We are disgusted,” Cammarata wrote. Barkley’s statement “does not reflect our values.” “University staff are investigating.”

In the video, Jasmine Barkley asks, “Is it appropriate for me to say the word n—–, if it is in the lyrics of a song and I’m singing the lyrics, or is it not appropriate for me to say n—–? Let me know.” Barkley’s video is eleven seconds long.

A Twitter user who self-identifies as “Seun the Activist, Son of the Most High,” aka Seun Babalola, tweeted the video at 8:57 a.m. on April 22. Cammarata’s response appeared three hours later. Also on April 22, Nicole DeFeo, International Executive Director of Delta Phi Epsilon, Barkley’s sorority, promised “swift, decisive action.” In 1984-style language, Barkley was “disaffiliated immediately.”

On Monday, April 23, the Beacon, the William Paterson school newspaper, posted an open letter from Barkley. “I am not a racist. I believe in equality … I posed a controversial question.” Barkley quoted TV personality Lenard McKelvey, aka Charlamagne Tha God.

McKelvey, in a 2013 interview, said, “Until we stop using the word n—–, we can’t get mad at nobody else for using the word … If something’s bad, it’s bad, period. It can’t be good when I do it and bad when you do it … If you really want to make a stand against the n-word, stop using it. Teach people how to treat you. People are going to treat you how you treat yourself.” Protesting when whites use the n-word is hypocritical, he said. If Malcolm X or Martin Luther King returned, they would not be shocked at whites using the n-word; they’d be shocked at blacks using the n-word. “Is this what we died and marched for? Is this what we got beat with sticks and had dogs sicced and got sprayed with hoses for y’all to be walking around and carrying yourselves like this?”

“Freaky Friday,” the song Barkley’s friend was singing along to, does indeed contain the n-word, repeated eleven times. “Freaky Friday,” as do many popular rap and hip hop songs, refers to women as “bitch,” including the singer’s mother, and “hos,” or whores. It also refers to “pussies.” In the video, nearly naked white women advertise the black singer’s worth by writhing against him. “Freaky Friday” includes graphic references to male anatomy, for example, “his dick staying perched up on his balls.” The f-word is repeated ten times.