RUTHFULLY YOURS

In 2010, as part of my research for The Victims’ Revolution, a book about the parlous and ever-proliferating phenomenon of identity studies in universities, I attended a Queer Studies conference at Humboldt University in Berlin. One of the stars of the event was Susan Stryker, a male-to-female transsexual who was born in 1961, raised in Oklahoma, received a Ph.D. in history at Berkeley, and at the time of the Berlin event was a high-profile professor at Indiana University, to which she commuted regularly from her home in San Francisco. At her session in Berlin, the deep-voiced, broad-shouldered, square-jawed Stryker spent the first few minutes serving up a jumble of standard-issue leftist comments about various aspects of postwar America; she then settled down, for a while anyway, on a single topic: the Tea Party, which she described as fascist and racist, but nonetheless saw as promising because it at least represented a “non-elite” reaction to America’s “neo-liberal” capitalist establishment.

As I pointed out in my book, Stryker’s open contempt for liberal democracy and jejune enthusiasm for a movement she claimed to consider totalitarian came off as thoughtless and insensitive, especially given that we were in a lecture hall overlooking the Unter den Linden in what had once been a part of Communist East Berlin, and, before that, a part of the capital of Hitler’s Third Reich. When an audience member stood up and confessed that Stryker’s admiration for “right-wing populist racists” made him uneasy as a German, Stryker, obviously not grasping his point (and not really pausing, I think, to take it in), obtusely reiterated that any resistance to capitalism – even if it took the form of fascism – filled her with hope.

The other day, contemplating the recent rise of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other violent forms of anti-democratic fascism in the guise of anti-fascism, I wondered what Stryker was up to these days. First I looked at her Facebook feed, from which I could see at once that she’s still engaged in “resistance.” Indeed, you might say that “resistance” is her mantra. I perused her Facebook postings going as far back as the morning of November 9, 2016, when she described Donald Trump’s election victory the night before as a “nightmare” and a “disaster” and declared that she had always known “never to underestimate the power of white settler economic grievances, or of fragile white masculinity, when it is channeled into racism and xenophobia.” Trump’s victory, she maintained, clearly marked the start of an era of hate and oppression, and while “I fully expect some of that hate and oppression to fall on me as a white queer/trans person,” she wrote, “my heart is truly broken for my friends in this country who are Muslim and Latinx [sic: the point of the “x” is to indicate that one is including both Latinos and Latinas], who are brown and black, who are immigrants, who speak English with an accent. Already today I am hearing from friends who are afraid to go to work or even to go outside.” In the midst of this political cataclysm, Stryker found consolation in one thing and one thing alone: the act of “contemplating the possible shape of the new resistance movements.”

Resistance! “The current state of affairs,” she has since written, in reference to the Trump presidency, “calls for many forms of resistance.” On January 13, she referred to herself on Facebook as following a “’daily act of resistance regimen.” After pondering many other names for the resistance movement against Trump, she decided that the best option was “The Resistance.” In late January, she took part in the mass act of resistance that effectively shut down San Francisco International Airport to protest Trump’s temporary immigration restrictions. On January 30, she wrote: “There are so many individual battles to fight, why not just one big collective ‘no’ to the new regime? Sooner rather than later while we have momentum from the Women’s Marches and airport occupations? What if millions of people took to the streets and demanded a new government that reflects the ideals of the majority?”

Soon afterward, she promoted the idea of a nationwide general strike to be held on February 17, writing: “C’mon all you pink pussy hat ladies, airport occupiers, taxi drivers, bodega owners, and Yiannapoulos speaking-event distruptors [sic] – let’s shut this country down for a day. Gather your tribes and posses and family members and get everybody to call in sick, not go to class, and not buy stuff. Do nonviolent civil disobedience by occupying a federal building. Hold a sanctuary campus rally at your school. Use the day to make calls jamming the phone lines in elected officials offices letting them know you oppose whatever outrage the Trump regime will be perpetrating in two weeks. Make Pennsylvania Avenue impassible [sic].”

Students at the University of California, Berkeley have been getting a lot of practice at protesting lately. Apparently, some of them think they’re not getting enough practice though, so they decided to look for other reasons to demonstrate. At least that’s the only real reason I’ve come up with for their latest nonsense.

From Campus Reform:

Leftist students at the University of California, Berkeley recently attempted to shut down their own mid-term exam, demanding a take-home exam in its place.

As seen in a video posted on YouTube, four students demanded a “take-home essay with significant time to prepare” instead of the scheduled in-class exam, though Professor Harley Shaiken adamantly refused their request.

“This is a campus that is truly related throughout Latin America to the notion of free speech,” Shaiken said, followed by laughter from the protesters, who went on to claim that their “well-beings are being put on the line because of the emotional, mental, and physical stress that this university is compounding with what is already going on in [their] everyday lives.”

“Have you ever checked ‘unlisted’ or ‘undocumented immigrant’? I don’t think so!” one protester shouted at Shaiken, who wrote about and advocated for improved workers’ rights in Mexico, specializes in labor issues, and was presented in 1991 with the Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of California, San Diego.

Yet the protesters claim that he is unqualified to teach a class on labor issues in America and Mexico because he’s a white man, and went on to ask Shaiken to check his privilege.

In short, a white professor wants them to take their midterms in the same manner as practically every other professor in the nation wants, and thus he’s wrong because he’s “white.”

Frankly, Shaiken was right to refuse their demands.

If these students are taking a class on labor issues in the U.S. and Mexico, it means this probably isn’t their first college class. By now they know that midterms are the norm in many classes throughout the college. They know how this works.

Instead, they’re trying to bully him because he’s a white man teaching on a somewhat ethnic topic. They’re demanding he “check his privilege” because they expect the white man to capitulate to their insane demands, and the fact that he won’t is taken as proof of his racism. His credentials are irrelevant to the social justice jihadi. All that matters is that he’s white and therefore wrong.

And these are the same people trying to understand the rise in racism?

“Science has sometimes been used to rationalize both atrocity and inaction in its face. But conflating science with its abuse has become a favorite trope of extremists on the left. It’s a cheap rhetorical trick, and not, dare I say, very logical.Science creates space for the free exchange of ideas, for discovery, for progress. What has postmodernism done for you lately?”

Ms. Heying is a former biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Who would have guessed that when America cleaved, the left would get the National Football League and the right would get uncontested custody of science?

The revolution on college campuses, which seeks to eradicate individuals and ideas that are considered unsavory, constitutes a hostile takeover by fringe elements on the extreme left. Last spring at the Evergreen State College, where I was a professor for 15 years, the revolution was televised—proudly and intentionally—by the radicals. Opinions not fitting with the currently accepted dogma—that all white people are racist, that questioning policy changes aimed at achieving “equity” is itself an act of white supremacy—would not be tolerated, and those who disagreed were shouted down, hunted, assaulted, even battered. Similar eruptions have happened all over the country.

What may not be obvious from outside academia is that this revolution is an attack on Enlightenment values: reason, inquiry and dissent. Extremists on the left are going after science. Why? Because science seeks truth, and truth isn’t always convenient.

The left has long pointed to deniers of climate change and evolution to demonstrate that over here, science is a core value. But increasingly, that’s patently not true.

The battle on our campuses—and ever more, in K-12 schools, in cubicles and in meetings, and on the streets—is being framed as a battle for equity, but that’s a false front. True, there are real grievances. Gaps between populations exist, for historical and modern reasons that are neither honorable nor acceptable, and they must be addressed. But what is going on at institutions across the country is—yes—a culture war between science and postmodernism. The extreme left has embraced a facile fiction.

Postmodernism, and specifically its offspring, critical race theory, have abandoned rigor and replaced it with “lived experience” as the primary source of knowledge. Little credence is given to the idea of objective reality. Science has long understood that observation can never be perfectly objective, but it also provides the ultimate tool kit with which to distinguish signal from noise—and from bias. Scientists generate complete lists of alternative hypotheses, with testable predictions, and we try to falsify our own cherished ideas.

Science is imperfect: It is slow and methodical, and it makes errors. But it does work. We have microchips, airplanes and streetlights to show for it.

In a meeting with administrators at Evergreen last May, protesters called, on camera, for college president George Bridges to target STEM faculty in particular for “antibias” training, on the theory that scientists are particularly prone to racism. That’s obvious to them because scientists persist in using terms like “genetic” and “phenotype” when discussing humans. Mr. Bridges offers: “[What] we are working towards is, bring ’em in, train ’em, and if they don’t get it, sanction them.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Shouts. Interruptions. Orchestrated chanting. The predictable convulsions of the contemporary university when a conservative comes to town. This time it was U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, speaking to students, faculty, and others gathered at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government last Thursday night. She joined former FBI director James Comey and current attorney general Jeff Sessions as the third cabinet-level official in the span of a week whose visit to a college campus was met with protests, caterwauling, and the now-rote charges of “white supremacism.”

Against this increasingly threadbare backdrop, DeVos delivered what is probably her best speech to date. It was a constructive, serious address from someone whose remarks have not always met that standard. DeVos spoke thoughtfully — at times, even eloquently — about how school choice empowers families, creates room for a healthful diversity, and is wholly consistent with the historic aims of public education.

DeVos rejected the false dichotomy that insists that the case for school choice rests on jeremiads against traditional public schools. She observed: “Education is not a binary choice. Being for equal access and opportunity — being for choice — is not being against anything.” She emphasized the stakes that can be obscured by abstraction: “It’s important for all of us to remember that we’re not just talking about abstract theory or some wild social experiment here. This is about putting people — putting parents and students — above policies and politics.”

She spoke measuredly about American educational performance: “We’re in the middle of the pack, at best, compared to other nations.” She argued that neither students nor the cause of public education are well served by squabbling over the particulars of anachronistic delivery systems. by broadening our vision of public education:

We can rethink school. And, I posit, we do that by embracing the future of education as one that fully integrates “choice” into every decision we make. Not choice translated as vouchers, or charter schools, or private schools, or any other specified delivery mechanism. No. Choice translated as giving every parent in this great land more control, more of a say in their child’s future. More choices. The future of choice lies in trusting and empowering parents — all parents, not just those who have the power, prestige, or financial wherewithal to make choices.

And she adeptly used her Harvard setting to challenge narrow, doctrinaire notions of what constitutes “public” education. As she put it:

The definition of public education should be to educate the public. That’s why we should fight less about the word that comes before “school.” I suspect all of you here at Harvard, a private school, will take your education and contribute to the public good. When you chose to attend Harvard, did anyone suggest you were against public universities? No, you and your family sat down and figured out which education environment would be the best fit for you. . . . Instead of dividing the public when it comes to education, the focus should be on the ends, not the means.

A brawl broke out in an “Empathy Tent” at the University of California, Berkeley last week, marking the official start of college riot season. Last week Attorney General Jeff Sessions braved protesters at Georgetown Law Center, where he promised to intervene in campus free-speech cases and urged students and universities to “stand up against those who would silence free expression by violence or other means.” The targets of suppression have ways to hold colleges and rioters to account using civil-rights statutes and common-law torts.
Illustration: David Gothard

Administrators often “coddle” and “encourage” censorship, Mr. Sessions observed. That’s nothing new. After the Civil War, white students at what is now Washington and Lee University in Virginia attacked blacks associated with the Freedmen’s Bureau. The college president, Robert E. Lee, offered pieties and looked the other way. In response to similar incidents, Congress safeguarded civil rights with legislation known as anti-Ku Klux Klan acts.

Public universities are subject to the full sweep of the anti-KKK laws, as well as more recent civil-rights statutes. At San Francisco State University, Jewish students have filed suit under Section 1983 of the federal civil-rights law, alleging disruption of their events violates the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The First Amendment requires public universities to treat speech neutrally, regardless of the message. Administrators may not tell police to stand down in the face of a “heckler’s veto.”

In 2013 at New York’s University at Buffalo, police let counterprotesters shut down a pro-life demonstration. This June the university settled, paying the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and promising to refrain from viewpoint discrimination in the future.

But universities are responsible only for taking reasonable precautions. A target of last semester’s antispeech riots, Bret Weinstein, was mobbed and hounded out of Evergreen State College after refusing to comply with a college-sponsored “Day of Absence” in which white people were “asked” to stay off campus. While Mr. Weinstein claimed that Evergreen State violated his right of free speech, the college could have argued that it acted reasonably because violent antispeech protests were still novel and Mr. Weinstein was physically threatened in class only once. He and his wife, also an Evergreen professor, settled their claim for $500,000 and an agreement to resign. Public universities now have notice of their duty to provide security, which UC Berkeley and the University of Utah just fulfilled for conservative writer Ben Shapiro.

Private universities have no First Amendment obligation to provide a forum for speech. But many riots purport to attack white “supremacy” or “privilege,” and if private universities act with deliberate indifference to racially motivated attacks, they may be liable to students or speakers. Colleges are subject to antidiscrimination statutes such as Section 1981, an anti-KKK act that would cover student and speaker contract rights. If they accept federal funding—and all but a handful do—they are also subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Institutions are not the only prospective defendants. Campus rioters themselves may be liable under Section 1985(3), which covers private conspiracies and targets those who, like masked Antifa attackers, go in disguise—“a common tactic also used by the detestable Ku Klux Klan,” as Mr. Sessions noted. The statute applies most clearly to racially motivated physical attacks or efforts to exclude persons. Evergreen State is a classic case: After disrupting Mr. Weinstein’s class, students detained the college president and apparently posted photos of themselves brandishing baseball bats on Facebook . Some faculty members demanded disciplinary action against Mr. Weinstein and later assembled with masked Antifa members who attacked counterprotesters. CONTINUE AT SITE

As revealed in recent congressional testimony, Students for Justice in Palestine is a campus front for Hamas terrorists. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. The report and posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop University Support for Terrorists. Images of the posters that appeared at UNC and other campuses may be viewed at www.stopuniversitysupportforterrorists.org.

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill:

UNC-Chapel Hill has supported the Hamas inspired and funded BDS movement on its campus in multiple ways, promoting apps that help consumers boycott Israeli products and inviting BDS proponents such as disgraced former University of Illinois Professor Stephen Salaita to campus. During his address, Salaita accused Zionists of making phony claims of anti-Semitism to hide Israel’s purported war crimes. UNC’s SJP chapter has also invited Laila Al-Arian, daughter of infamous University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, to campus. Sami Al-Arian is the number two leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, responsible for over 99 murders in the Middle East, who pled guilty to charges of terrorism. At a campus event, his daughter promoted the idea that her father was forced into a guilty plea. UNC SJP has celebrated “Israeli Apartheid Week” and has held numerous events to promote Hamas propaganda on campus including a “Vigil for Palestine” which claims to commemorate victims of the “Israeli Occupation” and screenings of films that vilify Israel such as “Occupation 101.”

Supporting Evidence:

In March 2016, UNC SJP hosted Laila Al-Arian, daughter of Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of Southern Florida who was indicted and pled guilty in 2006 of conspiring to aid the terrorist organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The event also involved a screening of the film, “USA vs Al-Arian.” The film was promoted by SJP this way: “Is Al-Arian a threat to national security or is his First Amendment right to free speech at the heart of this case? At this time of heightened anti-Muslim rhetoric and sentiment, the film USA vs. Al-Arian is a sober reminder of the vulnerability of Arab Americans and Muslims living in the US and all of our civil rights.”

In March 2016, UNC SJP re-posted a link from anti-Israel activist Noura Erakat which celebrated the GS4’s decision to divest from Israel, thereby supporting the Hamas backed and funded BDS movement:

“G4S announces plans to drop its Israeli subsidiary to extract itself from ‘reputationally damaging work’ over the next 12-24 months. Translation: they’re about to divest from Israel. They’ll also divest from juvenile detention centers in the US and UK. What a tremendous success for a 4-year campaign. Mabruk to all the fierce ones who laid these tracks! #BDS #AnotherOne #Onward”

In December 2015, UNC SJP shared a video on social media about Israel’s security fence, which reduced Jewish deaths from terrorist attacks by more than 1,000 in its first year, labeled it an “Apartheid Wall” and falsely claimed that its key purpose is not security but rather to occupy more Palestinian land.

On November 18, 2015, UNC SJP hosted a screening of the anti-Israel film “Occupation 101” which falsely claims that Israel is occupying Palestinian land. According to the Amcha Initiative, “The film contains several anti-Semitic themes, including that Israel is guilty of ‘ethnic cleansing;’ that Israel’s actions against the Palestinians are a form of colonialist aggression; and that Jews in America wield excessive power over American foreign policy.”

On October 29, 2015, UNC SJP held a “Vigil for Palestine” to commemorate the Palestinians killed as a result of the “Israeli Occupation,” making clear that SJP takes the Hamas perspective that Israel is the aggressor in the Middle East rather than the victim of constant terrorist threats from the Palestinians. The event description states: “Since October 1, 52 Palestinians have been killed and over a 1,000 have been injured as a result of the Israeli occupation. Please join us in commemorating the lives of the dozens of Palestinians who have died in this month alone. This is an opportunity for students and community members to mourn and to remember the victims of this violent military occupation. The recent spike in violence exposes the ugly reality of the occupation and the incredible harm it does to those who have to endure it.” Of course there are no Palestinian deaths as a result of “Israeli occupation.” They are casualties of a terror war that Arabs have waged against Israel since 1948.

It’s impossible to parody the left these days.

For example, the University of California-Berkeley has created an “empathy tent,” as the campus continues to be inundated with protests. Even more hysterically, a fight broke out in the aforementioned “empathy tent.”

So much for empathy. Members of opposing political groups clashed Tuesday inside a so-called “empathy tent” on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.

At least four people were arrested, police said.

The empathy tent was reportedly in place to offer protesters a calm place to unwind amid the choas around them. But the tent ultimately offered little respite — and nearly toppled during clashes between conservative students and leftist activists, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“It’s tough, but we do what we can to foster dialogue,” said Edwin Fulch, who reportedly used the tent for talks about the virtues of meditation and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Yes, it’s hilarious and a bit ironic that this happened. Unfortunately, it’s also indicative of the nature of political discourse these days.

Politics has moved from “the art of the possible” to being a bloodsport. The desire to compromise is dead, killed by constituencies that view compromise as surrender, where even the mere hint that you might be willing to work with the other side gets you targeted by your own party.

What happened in that “empathy tent” was someone who wanted both sides to sit down and talk found out that at least one side wasn’t interested. Yes, it sounds like it came from a Mel Brooks movie. I do know that such things are going to happen more and more often unless people take a step back and recognize that our system doesn’t work when people act like this. Instead, it simply bogs down.

While I tend to prefer gridlock to senseless legislation that only makes our lives more complicated, I also know that gridlock isn’t anyone’s ideal way of governing. Add laws, repeal them, whatever. We need active discussion and effort for anything positive to happen.

We don’t need “empathy tents.” We need some grownups who are willing to recognize that not everyone who opposes you is evil.

You know how low the bar is when you read the proud statement that no one has been murdered in a NYC high school sine 1992. You also know how meaningless a 73% high school graduation rate is in a school where more than half of those graduates were chronically absent in their senior year. The middle school that feeds into that high school had a pass rate of 13% on the statewide reading test and 5% in math. Simply put, 87% of the students who couldn’t read at an 8th grade level and 95% who couldn’t do 8th grade math were promoted into high school and subsequently shoved out with diplomas regardless of academic competence This Bronx high school with the lofty title of The Urban Assembly Wildlife Conservation School is headed by a non-profit organization that also runs 20 other schools in New York, all with pretentious claims to professional aspirations in law, justice, global commerce, media studies, environmentalism etc. It’s in the news today because it appears that one of the eponymous wildlife was actually inside the school and stabbed two fellow students, killing one and hospitalizing the other.

On its website, The Urban Assembly lists three pages of prestigious partners from the public, private, not-for-profit and higher education sectors – such impressive names as the Office of the Bronx D.A., JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Brooklyn Law School – even the New York Yankees. Will these partners look more closely at the 20 other schools supervised by this group now that the shocking failure rates on standardized tests give the lie to that inflated high school graduation rate? The murder has spurred demands for metal detectors in these schools but there should be an equal demand for mental detection on the part of overseers and the Chancellor of Education What is the point of a Board of Advisors and support from the community if they are not challenging the lack of achievement in the most basic tools of learning – reading and math? You can’t have a future in any career if you can’t read or count. And who is checking the budgetary expenses of schools with glaring disparities between test results and graduation rates? This is a red flag even for do-gooders suffering from cognitive dissonance and especially for politicos who have been steadily pushing the scandalous crisis in education under a thickly piled rug.

Whoever thought pronouns, those innocuous little words that take the place of other nouns in the English language, would ever cause so much of an issue? It was pretty simple when I was a kid. If someone was a girl, you used “she” and if the person was a boy, you used “he.” Today, however, that’s problematic. Are you misgendering someone by assuming — because they have long hair, a dress, and boobs — they’re a girl?

So, to solve this “problem,” some have started stating their preferred pronouns so everyone will know what to use at any given point.

At The Ohio State University, this has become a thing among the student government, but one student is outright refusing. From The College Fix:

Nick Davis is someone who likes to stand up for common sense and his personal beliefs.

[…]

Today, he continues to buck left-leaning tendencies at the state’s flagship campus. Recently Davis, a member of the Undergraduate Student Government’s General Assembly, declined to put his preferred gender pronouns on his name tag.

Of the 40 student senators, Davis is the only one who did not go along with adding it.

The “He/him/his” “She/her/hers” additions to the name tags were not required. Nor, Davis said, did he think it was needed, at least in his case.

“I don’t think it is necessary when it comes to myself personally,” he told The College Fix.

He went on, “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s safe to assume it’s a duck. I look like a male, I sound like a male, it’s safe to assume I’m a male.”

Seems fair enough.

While Davis doesn’t appear to be catching much of a backlash over his stance (at least not yet) this whole thing is stupid.