RUTHFULLY YOURS

Race advocates and the media are greeting a new Government Accountability Office report on racial disparities in school discipline as a vindication of Obama administration policies. The GAO found that black students get suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students nationally, a finding consistent with previous analyses. The Obama Education and Justice Departments viewed that disproportion as proof of teacher and principal bias. Administration officials used litigation and the threatened loss of federal funding to force schools to reduce suspensions and expulsions radically in order to eliminate racial disparities in discipline. The GAO report, which implicitly rubberstamps the Obama approach, comes just as Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos is evaluating whether to rescind Obama’s school discipline directives. DeVos should go forward with that rescission: the administration’s policies were fatally flawed, as is the GAO report that attempts to justify them.

The GAO report ignores the critical question regarding disciplinary disparities: do black students in fact misbehave more than white students? The report simply assumes, without argument, that black students and white students act identically in class and proceeds to document their different rates of discipline. This assumption of equivalent school behavior is patently unjustified. According to federal data, black male teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at nearly 10 times the rate of white male teenagers of the same age (the category “white” in this homicide data includes most Hispanics; if Hispanics were removed from the white category, the homicide disparity between blacks and whites would be much higher). That higher black homicide rate indicates a failure of socialization; teen murderers of any race lack impulse control and anger-management skills. Lesser types of juvenile crime also show large racial disparities. It is fanciful to think that the lack of socialization that produces such elevated rates of criminal violence would not also affect classroom behavior. While the number of black teens committing murder is relatively small compared with their numbers at large, a very high percentage of black children—71 percent—come from the stressed-out, single-parent homes that result in elevated rates of crime.

Can you imagine a public university banning free speech and threatening arrests over flyers exposing anti-Semitism and warning about a student group funded by terrorists that promotes their propaganda?

But that’s exactly what happened to the Freedom Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“Disciplina Praesidium Civitatis” is the Latin motto that circles the seal of the University of Texas. The University of Texas system motto is a latinized quote from the second president of the Republic of Texas, “A cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.”

The University of Texas at San Antonio disgraced the motto by banning any flyers and posters from the David Horowitz Freedom Center under threat of criminal prosecution. The threatening letter from UTSA contains a “criminal trespass warning” to “the David Horowitz Freedom Center and its members”.

“You are barred and forbidden from entering or remaining on any UTSA properties. If any member of your organization returns, they are subject to arrest,” the public institution has threatened

At the University of Texas at San Antonio the guardian genius of democracy is behind bars. Its administration is protecting Hamas front groups while suppressing free speech and civil rights.

President Taylor Eighmy celebrated the unconstitutional threats of arrest against the Freedom Center. “Freedom of expression is vital to institutions of higher education, but we cannot tolerate speech that violates our freedom of expression policies,” the head of a taxpayer-funded institution warned.

Freedom of expression means something very different at the UTSA than it does everywhere else.

Many who emerge with a Bachelor of Arts degree rightly earn and confirm the poor reputation that degree now confers. They come out knowing nothing, and many plunge black into the schools, this time as teachers, to pass on nothing. It is a depressing sort of carousel.

The History Curriculum has attracted a great deal of controversy since its inception in 2013. Former Prime Minister John Howard addressed his concerns with the scope of the curriculum in Quadrant. Kevin Donnelly and Mervyn Bendle have done the same. Nonetheless, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has trundled along, barely missing a step, despite an inquiry launched by the Abbott government, forging a national curriculum largely informed by the Melbourne Declaration of 2008.

This paper will deal solely with History, and how ACARA’s curriculum has contributed to what is, in my view, a corruption of the discipline in schools. Many of the problems in the History Curriculum are to be found elsewhere; the interested reader will find plentiful examples in the English Curriculum, for instance.

I will look at two things. Largely, I will look at how we teach history at present. What we teach has been covered extensively elsewhere, so I will spend only a little time on it.

How we teach history

“We are not concerned about the narrative of events, or the retelling of history,” I have heard so many times I have lost count, “we are interested in skills.”

Thus, history teaching is not about content—a dirty word among the ACARA curriculum gurus—but is instead about skills. What good is knowledge to students? Who cares if they can recount the events of 1066, or the fall of the Roman Republic, or the Pacific Campaign? What relevance will it have to their daily lives, to their future role in the workforce? But skills: now, there’s a word we can get behind. Everybody likes skills. What could be of better utility?

We have become, even among our educated classes, a post-learning society. Ostensibly, the internet has been the vehicle of this shift in consciousness; with information on anything easily obtained, we have no need to carry it about in our own skulls any longer. Of course, information is not the same as knowledge, and without knowledge, wisdom is difficult to obtain. Sending unformed young minds to the internet for knowledge is like sending them to a sewer for fresh water. I am no longer startled by the abject lack of general knowledge among everybody under the age of fifty. Once, we might have said they knew a lot about a little, or a little about a lot; now it seems they know very little about very little. ACARA’s unwieldly response to this shift is to turn learning history into the learning of abstract skills, transferable everywhere—the best response to the interconnected world. It is, in essence, to swallow more of the same poison. The antidote is rigour, but rigour won’t be found in the utilitarian and progressive model of teaching.

The Board found Jane’s claim that the oral sex wasn’t consensual to be untrue, writing in their decisions that Jane “demonstrated consent through her actions.” The Board could also not determine that anal sex occurred (John says the two did not have anal sex). So even though two-thirds of Jane’s claims were found not credible, they still bought her third claim that she initially consented to vaginal intercourse but withdrew her consent at some point during the act.

The Board claimed that Jane’s “actions throughout the process are consistent with a traumatic event such as she described in her statement,” except they found most of her statement to be not credible, and the only traumatic event she allegedly went through was withdrawing sex after she initiated and consented to that sex (again, a story that she changed during the investigation).

John’s attorney, Andrew Miltenberg of Nesenoff & Miltenberg, told the Federalist that there’s only one explanation for how his client could be indefinitely suspended even with facts like these.

“Having litigated on behalf of dozens of accused males on college campuses throughout the country, and represented dozens of others in campus proceedings, I’m especially struck by the complete absurdity of the Title IX process at Syracuse,” Miltenberg said. “There is no credible explanation for the Conduct Board to dismiss two claims but uphold a third — other than a presumption of guilt that was made at the outset of this investigation.”

John is suing Syracuse for Title IX and due process violations, as well as breach of contract.
Ashe Schow is a senior contributor to the Federalist and senior political columnist for the New York Observer. She also contributes to a weekly segment on the Enough Already podcast. She has previously worked for Watchdog.org, the Washington Examiner and the Heritage Foundation.

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a neighbor who revealed to me that, insofar as she would like to exercise her right to bear arms, she doesn’t consider herself especially “liberal.” For this reason, she would eventually like to leave our painfully blue state of New Jersey.

Yet during the course of our exchange, she also shared that her daughter is away at college. I responded: “I hope that she doesn’t come home hating you.” I was half-joking, of course, but only by half. It was then that I told her that, being an academic dissident, I make it my mission to inform otherwise uninformed parents of what their children can expect to experience during their time in today’s university.

A glance at a couple of recent events from two schools, one secular, the other Catholic, suffices all too easily to leave an indelible impression of the contemporary academy:

At George Washington University, just days after much of the Christian world celebrated Easter, a training session was held for faculty and students. The purpose of this “diversity workshop” is to expound upon the thesis that Christians “receive unmerited perks from institutions and systems all across our country.”

The seminar is titled: “Christian Privilege: But Our Founding Fathers Were All Christian, Right?!” According to the seminar description, Christians have “built-in advantages” over non-Christians.

Upon their completion of the workshop, participants should be able to “describe what is meant by privilege overall and white privilege especially;” “describe the role of denial when it comes to white privilege;” “differentiate between equality and equity;” “list at least three examples of Christian privilege;” and “list at least three ways to be an ally with a non-Christian person.”

Over at Providence College, a Dominican-founded, Roman Catholic institution, the school has succumbed to what Anthony Esolen, one of its former faculty members, characterizes as the “Totalitarian Diversity Cult.” Esolen is a practicing Catholic, a scholar who famously translated Dante’s Divine Comedy, who left Providence nearly a year ago because of what he insists is its abandonment of its Catholic Christian mission.

Below is the Freedom Center’s new pamphlet, “SJP: Neo-Nazis on Campus,” which sheds light on the extreme depths of Jew-Hatred promoted by the organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). As the pamphlet documents, members of SJP have been caught praising Hitler, calling for a second Holocaust and wishing death upon Jews — all while spreading the propaganda of the terrorist group Hamas, whose stated mission is to exterminate the world Jewish population. The pamphlet is part of the Freedom Center’s campaign, Stop University Support for Terrorists.

There are two components of the Palestinian war to annihilate Israel: terrorism and propaganda,” writes author Caroline Glick. The organizations that Palestinian terrorists have created and funded on American campuses, most particularly Students for Justice in Palestine, function as political and propaganda fronts for their parent organizations, which blow up pizza parlors and weddings in the Jewish state. The relationship between terror and terrorist propaganda is exemplified in the coalition of campus organizations which over the past fifteen years have employed funds from the terrorist party Hamas to launch an all-out political assault on the Jewish state and to create a climate of hatred towards Jews and students who support Israel on campus.

While Hamas operatives in the Middle East launch rockets at Israeli civilian targets and dig terror tunnels under Israeli kindergarten classrooms, their supporters at American universities have a no less sinister mission: to spread lies that portray Israel as a criminal state, and thus to justify its destruction. The terrorist movement on American campuses has inspired an outpouring of neo-Nazi hate by falsely portraying the Jews as “colonial-settler” occupiers of a fictional state called “Palestine.” Members of Students for Justice in Palestine even openly praise Hitler and wish for another Holocaust. Witness the following tweets from Nancy Salem who is an alumna of the University of Texas and was an SJP activist supporting the Hamas-inspired and funded Boycott Israel movement there.

“@DictatorHitler: How many Jews died in the Holocaust? Not enough’ @PrincessLulllu @thearabgirl HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA”

“@DictatorHitler: Gassed a Jew, I’m sweating #Heil’ OMG.”

“Have a safe trip Lulu. I love you baby girl! See you in 3 weeks! Kiss the Palestine ground for me and kill some jews! <3 #IMissYouAlready.”[1] Nancy is not alone. Yousef AlYassir, a student at the University of Houston who was a member of his high school’s chapter of the Muslim Students Association, shared his insights on twitter as well: “F**K THE JEWS F**K EM ALL KILL ALL THE JEWS ATTA BOY HITLER”

Mr. Wood, a senior at Williams College, is a former Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal.

‘White people need to be checked, Zach. End of discussion.”

I was talking with an Ivy League historian, a fellow African-American, about “white privilege.” I asked if his goal was to antagonize or to promote dialogue.

“Do you know who I am?” he demanded. “I’ve been helping black people longer than you’ve been alive. I’m telling you what I know: Lecturing these white kids is only the beginning.”

Is it really necessary to be so aggressive?

“Listen, I don’t give a damn. I’m not interested in negotiating with racists.”

I tried to close the conversation cordially, saying I’d have to reflect on the issue. But when I extended my hand, he looked at it, looked up at me, and then walked away.

Does white privilege exist? Sure. If you’re white and you excel at academic or other cognitively demanding endeavors, for example, the light of your success is never dimmed by speculation about whether you benefited from affirmative action.

White privilege has become the target of many initiatives in higher education. The goal, advocates say, is to fight racism and promote justice. Yet the practice often doesn’t seem constructive. In my college career, I’ve spoken to many peers and professors who insist adamantly that any conversation about race in America should begin and end with the accusation of white privilege. The aim seems to be to establish guilt, not build understanding.

As I see it, the main goal of discussing white privilege should be to promote a more complex and nuanced view of the world so that, for example, it would be difficult for one of my white peers to drive through the Washington neighborhood where I grew up and say: “What’s wrong with those people?” People of all races should aim to understand the range of attitudes and perspectives on race that make the issue a difficult one. CONTINUE AT SITE

Last month, a small group of protesters at Lewis & Clark College law school tried to shut down visiting lecturer Christina Hoff Sommers, a libertarian feminist critical of feminist dogma on “rape culture,” the pay gap and other issues. They chanted, shouted, played loud music and sang, “We will fight for justice until Christina’s gone.” Appalled commentators deplored the intolerance, but then came a spate of “nothing to see here” articles. Free speech on campus is doing fine, progressive pundits scoffed; it’s absurd to paint a few left-wing students as a danger to freedom when we face right-wing authoritarianism in government.

But it should be possible to be against more than one threat at a time. And the climate on college campuses in recent years is very much a threat to the principles of a free society.

The “no problem” argument is based mainly on a poll, the General Social Survey, which shows steadily rising support for allowing “offensive” speakers a platform, especially in the under-35 age group. But it’s not clear how relevant that survey is to present-day campus speech battles. Its examples of controversial speakers include a homosexual (absurdly dated) and an atheist (ditto). On the one item that is relevant to current controversies — allowing a speech by a racist — support has dropped, notably among young adults.

Another supposedly reassuring poll, the Gallup-Knight Foundation survey, found that 70% of students felt it was more important for colleges to have “an open learning environment” with diverse viewpoints, even at the cost of allowing offensive speech, than to create a “positive” environment by censoring such expression.

Only apologists determined to avert their eyes and cover their ears could deny with a straight face that higher education in America today nurses hostility to free speech.

Sporadic eruptions of that hostility have made the headlines. Last year, in early February, violent protests swept across the University of California, Berkeley against right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, causing the university to cancel his speech. In March, Middlebury College students disrupted a talk by the distinguished American Enterprise Institute social scientist Charles Murray and assaulted his host, Professor Allison Stanger, sending her to the hospital. In April, fear of more violence compelled UC-Berkeley to rescind an invitation to the acerbic conservative columnist Ann Coulter. Last fall semester, student efforts to shut down speech on campus skyrocketed.

Less overt forms of hostility to free speech on campus run deeper. Colleges and universities teach students that free speech is merely one among many values. Campus authorities encourage students to expect that schools will silence, or at least cordon off, offensive opinions. In the humanities and social sciences, professors routinely exclude from class discussion, syllabi, and departmental offerings ideas for which a good case can be made but with which they disagree.

Some want to believe that controversies over campus free speech are a tempest in a teapot. While acknowledging that walling off students from disfavored opinions for four or five years may instill bad intellectual habits, the optimists suppose that once these graduates take their place in the real world they’ll quickly discover that the Constitution provides broad protection for speech, including the expression of, say, conservative convictions that university majorities often deem appalling and degrading. The hope is that hostility to free speech nursed on campus stays on campuses.