RUTHFULLY YOURS

These days the California State University Fresno isn’t getting attention for its world-class agricultural college or for its top-rated nursing program. Instead, it’s getting noticed for its hard-left professors tweeting outrageous insults about President Trump, or violating students’ free-speech rights. First was the adjunct history professor who last year tweeted “Trump must hang.” A month later a public-health professor got into an argument with pro-life students, then started defacing their approved chalk messages with his foot because they weren’t in a “free speech” area—an idea patently unconstitutional.

This week, an English professor tweeted that ex-First Lady Barbara Bush, who died on April 17, was a “racist” who raised a “war criminal,” and that she “was happy the witch was dead.” The predictable conservative media storm of dudgeon followed, turning an obscure academic mediocrity into a left-wing heroine and free-speech martyr.

Way to go, guys. Next time try ignoring whatever juvenile tweet-tantrum comes from someone desperate for attention and spurious “Resistance” credibility. Professors saying stupid things is a dog-bites-man story.

Nor will all the coverage accomplish anything. Forget demanding that she be fired. As she bragged in a follow-up tweet, “sweetie i work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. i will never be fired” [sic throughout]. Apart from exaggerating her salary, she is right. Professors in the Cal State system are not just protected by tenure, but by a powerful union that the system usually doesn’t think is worth the time and money challenging. I know our provost here at Fresno State implied otherwise, claiming a tenured professor can be fired. But that’s a sophistic sop to media critics and disgruntled donors. The tweet was issued on the professor’s own twitter account, and the message is political speech of a sort long protected by the First Amendment and by the idea of academic freedom, which in the politicized university is very elastic. The only way for a tenured professor to get fired is to be convicted of a felony or to find her job eliminated by budget cuts. And firing a “woman of color” like a self-proclaimed “Palestinian” Arab is an even longer shot.

2017 was a bad year at Fresno State. 2018 looks to be even worse.

In the winter of last year, Lars Maischak had tweeted, “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and the higher, the better. #TheResistance.”

The next day he inquired, “Has anyone started soliciting money and design drafts for a monument honoring the Trump assassin, yet?”

Toward the end of the week, he proposed the mass murder of Republicans, “Justice = The execution of two Republicans for each deported immigrant.”

Maischak was a history adjunct at Fresno State whose topics had included, “Marx and Hegel for Historians.”

President Castro eventually clarified that calls to murder the President of the United States and millions of Republicans, “do not reflect the position of the University.”

Castro failed to clearly condemn Maischak’s murderous tweets. Instead Maischak took a voluntary leave “conducting research off campus”. His university faculty page appears to be active.

Had an adjunct called for the murder of Obama, the reaction would have been very different.

Now, Randa Jarrar, a tenured Muslim professor in Fresno State’s Department of English, responded to Barbara Bush’s death by calling the deceased 92-year-old woman a “racist”.

“I’m happy the witch is dead,” she gloated. “Can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise.”

Two professors, one in California and one in New Jersey, are reportedly under investigation by their employers for behavior that at a minimum is rude and arrogant and that, some hope, could cost them their jobs. I believe that both are exemplars of the moral hazard that accompanies the exalted status accorded professors, often aggravated by the practice of granting tenure.

Tuesday evening, following news of the death of Barbara Bush, Professor Randa Jarrar, who teaches creative writing at Fresno State University, violated the norms of decency when she tweeted:

…and followed up with tweets obviously intended to inflict emotional pain on the family survivors:

To top it off, she tweeted a taunt that she is invulnerable thanks to her status as a tenured professor.

Imagine finding this quote in your kid’s history book, calling you a racist, angry bigot because you voted for Trump:

Trump’s voters saw the vote as a victory for the people who, like themselves, had been forgotten in a fast-changing America–a mostly older, rural or suburban, and overwhelmingly white group. Clinton’s supporters feared that the election had been determined by people who were afraid of a rapidly developing ethnic diversity of the country, discomfort with their candidate’s gender, and nostalgia for an earlier time in the nation’s history. They also worried about the mental stability of the president-elect and the anger that he and his supporters brought to the nation. [Emphasis added]

This gem was found in the high school AP History book entitled By the People, A History of the United States, published by Pearson Education. Source sent photographs of the material to WNOW radio program “The Joe and Alex Show.” The book pulls no punches when it comes to criticizing Christians as terrified bigots. “Those who had long thought of the nation as a white and Christian country sometimes found it difficult to adjust.” The book continues on, calling Trump an outright racist. “Trump tapped into a sense of alienation and ‘being left behind’ that many voters–most of all white poor and working-class voters–felt. But quite unlike Sanders, Trump was also extremely anti-immigrant, especially attacking Muslim immigrants.”

But if that’s not bad enough, don’t worry! It gets worse!

“Most thought Trump was too extreme a candidate to win the nomination, but his extremism, his anti-establishment rhetoric, and, some said, his not-very-hidden racism connected with a significant number of primary voters.” CONTINUE AT SITE

In another example of how pretentious the modern college generation can be, the protesters who disrupted a speech by Duke president Vincent Price to alumni this weekend are miffed that they were admonished by school officials, and not those in attendance who had dared to voice their displeasure.

On Saturday, demonstrators crashed the stage while Price was speaking, shouting “President Price get off the stage” and “Whose University? Our University!” and then listed demands which include training staff to deal with undocumented students, and nixing “medically unnecessary surgery on intersex infants” in the Duke Health System.

Angered alumni booed, used profanity, and even turned their backs to the activists as they spoke.

According to The Chronicle, the protesters were “surprised by the extent of the alumni’s negative reactions.” SeniorBryce Cracknell said he was “disappointed that the administrators focused more on stopping the students than angry alumni” (emphasis added).

“Instead of actually going to the alumni and saying ‘that’s not appropriate’ or removing them from the space, they were more worried about us,” he said.

From the story:

The students regrouped outside on the steps of the Chapel to provide further explanation of their 12 demands. Several supportive alumni joined them, even offering suggestions for how to update their manifesto, Walk noted.

“I think when we walked out all of us were kind of shaken by the negative feedback, but so many alumni came up to us and were like, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for continuing this work,’” Walk said.

Back inside the auditorium, David Henderson, Trinity ‘68, connected the students’ protest to the 1968 Vigil [see here] in a comment to Price during the Q&A session after his speech.

“Nobody in the administration thought that what we did was appropriate. In history it has come to be enshrined,” Henderson said. …

In a group statement, the protesters condemned any potential punishments.

“What an incredible irony it would be if in the midst of celebrating a history of activism, Duke is considering punishing the current generation of organizers on campus and the student groups, faculty and alumni that support us,” they wrote.

I was talking with an ex-university professor recently who told me that he was very happy to be retired. He said he was glad to be out of the hornets’ nest, away from a world so filled with political correctness that it was difficult to get through the day. Life on campus, he said, is rife with so many non-issue “issues” that it’s like walking barefoot on sidewalks littered with broken glass.

He related how he once told a fellow professor that she “looked very nice today,” meaning that she had selected a particularly nice outfit. Rather than thank him for the compliment, the professor took him to task for being sexist and going out of his way to objectify her as an object (a piece of meat) to be admired.

“You wouldn’t say the same thing to a male colleague,” she scolded. The male professor was taken aback and told her that she was wrong. “I do say the same thing to male colleagues. I do it all the time.” The professor also happened to be gay, so he wasn’t thinking about female objectification (the meat factor) when he said what he said. Welcome to university life in 2018, where every word out of your mouth has to censored, and where even paying a colleague a compliment can get you into hot water.

The ex-professor told me another story, of when his university invited a well-known woman speaker to lecture to students. While the speaker’s presentation was flawless and held the audience spellbound, during the Q and A a well-dressed young man stood up and said that the speaker had disparaged African Americans.

“I compliment you on a good talk, however you made one gross mistake that is offensive to the African American community,” he began. The speaker asked in a soft voice what the offensive remark was.

“In your introduction, you described yourself as being the ‘black sheep’ of your family,” the student said. “The use of the word black in this instance connotes negativity and undesirability and as such it casts a poor light on African American students. It is racist.”

Yes, she was right up there with the Ku Klux Klan.

The speaker swallowed hard, not quite sure what she should say when another woman professor in the audience stood up and complimented her on a stellar lecture and added that she was certainly entitled to express her views anyway she wanted to, including using any word she felt was appropriate. Common sense won out in this instance — the easily triggered student who called the speaker a racist became so unpopular on campus that he eventually transferred to a school outside the United States. CONTINUE AT SITE

At NYU, administrators threatened the protesters’ financial aid, and the woke warriors went back to their rooms.

Spare a thought for those knights of social justice, the student protesters. Motivated by the yearning for a better world, they sacrifice their time and energy in service to their ideals. They display courage, stamina, determination, and creativity in coming up with rhymes in their chants.

Except if you tell them they’re jeopardizing their financial aid or their housing. Then they fold immediately.

The extent of student fortitude was mapped out in a natural experiment conducted at New York University last week, when students vowed to occupy a student center around the clock (it normally closes at 11 p.m.) until their demands for a meeting with the board of trustees were met. A photo in the Village Voice showed seated students blocking access by taking up most of the space on a stairway. The underlying ideals appeared to be the usual dog’s breakfast of progressive fancies — something about divesting from fossil fuels, and also allegations of unfair labor practices.

NYU administrators showed little patience for the activists disrupting the proceedings at the Kimmel Center for University Life. But how to dissolve the protest? It turned out that there was no need to bring in the police. Ringing up the students’ parents was all it took. The phone calls advised parents that students who interfered with campus functions could be suspended, and that suspensions can carry penalties of revoked financial aid or housing. The students “initially planned to stay indefinitely,” notes the Voice’s report. “Instead, the students departed within forty hours.”

So the intended public display of solidarity with the oppressed classes and the besieged earth itself ended meekly. It was like the thrilling climax of Spartacus as reimagined by the writers of Veep: “I’M SPARTA — wait, what? Do I like my one-bedroom with eat-in-kitchen in Greenwich Village? Why do you ask?”

Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of Edwin Black’s April 11, 2018 keynote address in the Michigan Capitol Rotunda for that state’s official Holocaust Commemoration.

Today, I come not just to mourn nor to scorn but rather to warn our world, that is, the world of today whose memories are still whistling and bristling with the torments and tribulations of a generation now passing before our eyes. But also, for the world of tomorrow — and the day after — pulsed by a generation whose torments and tribulations may yet be in store. The outrages are audible just over the horizon. But in many cases the horizon is speeding toward us like an unstoppable tsunami preparing to crash.

Many of us dwell in the dark past hoping to immunize our future from the maniacal and ideological fires that immolated six million Jews and so many others— and left a world’s hands and souls smoke-singed in the process. The Holocaust was unique among history’s great cruelties, for it was a 12-year international persecution and murder machine perpetrated in the glare of broad daylight as well as the dim of night… emboldened by its own German Ministry of Propaganda advertising it and amid incessant media coverage that bled across the front pages of newspapers, crackled into regular radio reports, flickered in newsreels, and even saddened the whispers and diaries of children hiding in an Amsterdam attic. The world knew.

With study, revelation, and investigation, many now understand how we got here. Make no mistake. The Germans did it. Their allies and accomplices did it. Hitler did it.

But Hitler had help.

Der Fuhrer adopted the Jew-hating ideology of Henry Ford, whose car company distributorships mass-circulated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Dearborn Independent so often quoted and lionized by Hitler. Nazism was driven by the American pseudoscience of eugenics that called for the elimination and even the chamber gassing of so-called inferior social groups, a murderous medical discipline developed in America by our great universities in the first two decades of the twentieth century, but then transplanted into Nazi Germany and even into Mengele’s Auschwitz laboratory by the million-dollar charitable programs of the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation. Hitler’s troops dismounted their WWI-era horses and stormed into Poland and the rest of Europe in a never-before-seen Blitzkrieg, driving the Blitz truck and flying JU-88 bombers both manufactured under corporate camouflage by General Motors under the direct supervision of its offices in Detroit. And it was up to IBM—the solutions company—to organize all six phases of the Holocaust: identification, exclusion, asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination. With its advanced punch card technology, IBM knowingly conducted the census to identify the Jews, religious or not, made the railroads run on time, and pinpointed Jewish bank accounts to seize. Every concentration camp had its own IBM customer site. The infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number before it morphed into other serial systems.

“If you’ve read Marx, there’s really no reason to read Howard Zinn,” notes author Daniel Flynn, but many have read Zinn’s million-selling A People’s History of the United States. As Rutgers history professor David Greenberg notes in a 2013 New Republic article headlined “Agit-Prof,” Zinn’s famous book is “a pretty lousy piece of work.” Even so, it gets great reviews within a circle of Marxist academics such as Eric Foner, leftist rockers such as Rage Against the Machine, and actors such as Matt Damon, who in Good Will Hunting tells his psychiatrist that A People’s History will “knock you on your ass.”

For Howard Zinn, America was evil and capitalism bad – except for his lucrative publishing deal, and prestigious professorship at Boston University. Zinn was pretty quiet about the Soviet Union and what he might have done during the Stalin-Hitler Pact, but Mao Tse-Tung’s China was the closest thing to a “people’s government.”

In 2010 Zinn passed away at 87 during a swim in Santa Monica. The New York Times noted that the “proudly, unabashedly radical” professor’s A People’s History of the United States, “inspired a generation of high school and college students to rethink American history.” Zinn’s handlers set about transforming the rotting corpse of his work into the keystone of America’s history curriculum.

“Howard Zinn is no longer just for washed up actors like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon,” wrote Daniel Greenfield in 2012. “His neo-Communist propaganda is being wedged deeper and deeper into the educational system, because teaching kids to hate America is the new education.” Zinn contended that the Constitution was devised solely to formalize the inferior position of blacks, the exclusion of Indians, and the establishment of supremacy for the rich and powerful.

A protestor’s sign put it, ‘Rule of law = white supremacy, violence against [people of color], violence against immigrants.’ These were law students protesting the rule of law.

The latest “non-platforming” of a speaker at a purported academic institution happened to my good friend and sometime co-author Josh Blackman at City University of New York Law School two weeks ago, when he attempted to give a lecture on the importance of free speech on campus. As he wrote on his blog in an epic post accompanied by copious pictures and video, once publicity for the event began after spring break, enraged students began planning a protest.

When Josh asked his host, the president of CUNY’s Federalist Society chapter, why his classmates were up in arms, he got the explanation that “first, that this is a Federalist Society event; and second, they saw a few of your writings (specifically a National Review article praising Sessions for rescinding DACA and ACA), and instantly assume you’re racist; and third, our event being titled about free speech is reminiscent of events that claim free speech just to invite people like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter.”

Indeed, that sentiment resulted in Josh being greeted with assorted signs. Some attacked him personally: “Josh Blackman you are not welcome here” and “Pronouns matter, Josh Blackman does not.” Others went after the Federalist Society, which some smeared was “founded to uphold white supremacy.” Still others took on the Constitution itself: “The First Amendment is a weak shield for white supremacy” and “The First Amendment is not a license to dehumanize marginalized people.”