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The University of Oslo Rewards a Promising Apologist by Bruce Bawer

By on September 14th, 2017

A Master’s Degree in Whitewashing Islam

I routinely find the website Document.no to be more reliable on the facts than the state-owned TV and radio stations or any of the big private (but, in many cases, state-supported) dailies.

The idea that there are Muslims who seek to turn Europe into an Islamic colony is, of course, no “conspiracy theory.” Jihad and the caliphate are core Islamic doctrines. For over a decade, however, Norwegian academics and intellectuals have accused those commentators, who face up to the reality of these doctrines, of “peddling paranoia.”

I wonder if anyone asked how a statement of opinion can violate “fundamental human rights.”

In Norway, where the mainstream media systematically bury or whitewash news stories that might reflect badly on the nation’s misguided immigration policies, its failed integration policies, or on Islam, a handful of small but heavily trafficked websites serve a vital function: getting out information that is being suppressed and providing a forum for opinions that are being silenced.

Perhaps the most prominent of those websites is Document.no, founded in 2003 by Hans Rustad, who still serves as editor and publisher. It is an intelligent, serious, and responsible site, whose contributors tend to know more about the above-mentioned subjects — and to be better writers — than the staffers at the major Oslo newspapers. I have yet to read a bigoted word by a contributor to Document.no, and I routinely find the site to be more reliable on the facts than the state-owned TV and radio stations or any of the big private (but, in many cases, state-supported) dailies.

For countless Norwegian citizens, Document.no is essential reading. For the nation’s cultural elite, however, it is anathema — a major chink in an otherwise almost solid wall of pro-Islam propaganda.

So it is no surprise to learn, via Universitetsavisa, the student newspaper at the University of Oslo, that a Religious Studies student there, Royer Solheim, has written a master’s thesis on Document.no, in which he describes it as a locus of “hate rhetoric,” “Islamophobia,” and “conspiracy theories.” Nor is it a surprise that he was graded an A.

Solheim describes the thesis itself as “a qualitative study based on a critical discourse analysis of a Norwegian Islamophobic website, document.no.” His conclusion:

“The Eurabia conspiracy theory permeates the Islamophobic discourse on the website. The Eurabia theory is based on an idea that Arabs or Muslims are increasing their influence and are in the process of turning Europe into an Islamic colony.”

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How a Democratic New York City Councilwoman Became a Crusader for School Choice Shocked by her firsthand experience of the city’s failing public schools, the author put her career on the line to do something about the problem. By Eva Moskowitz

By on September 13th, 2017

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from The Education of Eva Moskowitz: A Memoir. It is reprinted here with permission.

I was hopeful my Education Committee’s hearings would contribute to real changes in the teachers’-union contract, which had expired in May 2003 and was now being renegotiated. Throughout 2003 and 2004, the city held firm, refusing to sign a contract that preserved “lockstep pay, seniority, and life tenure,” which, said Chancellor of New York City Schools Joel Klein, were “handcuffs” that prevented him from properly managing the system. In June 2005, however, the United Federation of Teachers brought 20,000 teachers to a rally at Madison Square Garden, where Randy Weingarten demanded a new contract and Mayor Bloomberg’s prospective Democratic opponents in the upcoming mayoral election spoke. The message was obvious: Sign a new contract or we’ll back your Democratic opponent. In October, the city capitulated, signing a new contract with none of the fundamental reforms sought by Klein.

This development accelerated a shift in my views on public education. I already supported charter schools, but I’d nonetheless held the conventional view that most public schools would and should be district run. I’d begun, however, to question that view. Every year, more children attended charter schools and you didn’t have to be Einstein to see that there would come a day when most did if this trend continued. Maybe, I thought, this wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe a public-school system consisting principally of charter schools would be an improvement.

This change of heart wasn’t sudden. I didn’t go to sleep one night believing in traditional public schools and wake up the next morning believing in charters. Rather, my views on school choice evolved gradually from profound skepticism, to open-mindedness, to cautious support, and were the products of decades of experience with public schools as a student and then as an elected official.

At the very first school I attended, PS 36 in Harlem, I saw just how poorly some students were being educated. Through my work with Cambodian refugees in high school, I saw that good public education was largely reserved for those who could afford expensive housing. As a council member, I increasingly came to understand how the public-school system’s design contributed to segregation and inequality.

While it won’t come as news to most readers of this book that schools in poor communities tend to be worse, understand that there is a difference between reading about this in the newspaper or a book and coming face-to-face with a mother who is desperate because she knows her son isn’t learning anything at the failing school he is attending. Understand that there is a difference between knowing in the abstract that there are schools at which only 5 percent of the children are reading proficiently and actually visiting such a school and seeing hundreds of children who are just as precious to their parents as mine are to me but who you know won’t have a fair chance in life because of the inadequate education they are receiving. Firsthand experiences like these cause you to reexamine your views carefully, to make absolutely certain they aren’t based on faulty assumptions or prejudices or wishful thinking.

As a council member, I’d also become increasingly aware of the school system’s dysfunction. In this book, I’ve recounted some of what I saw: textbooks that arrived halfway through the school year; construction mishaps; forcing prospective teachers to waste half a day getting fingerprinted. Know, however, that these are just a few selected examples of a mountain of evidence that came to my attention from 100 hearings, 300 school visits, and thousands of parent complaints that came to me as chair of the Education Committee.

Moreover, even at their best, the district schools weren’t innovative or well run, a point made by the late Albert Shanker, who was head of the American Federation of Teachers:

Public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve; it more resembles the communist economy than our market economy.

While I was already convinced that the district schools weren’t in good shape, preparing for the contract hearings was nonetheless an eye-opener for me. Interviewing principals, superintendents, and teachers helped me understand just how impossible it was for them to succeed given the labor contracts, and how job protections created a vicious cycle. Teachers felt they’ve been dealt an impossible hand: their principal was incompetent or their students were already woefully behind or their textbooks hadn’t arrived or all of the above. They didn’t feel they should be held accountable for failing to do the impossible so they understandably wanted job protections. However, since these job protections made success even harder for principals who were already struggling with other aspects of the system’s dysfunctionality to achieve, they too wanted job protections. Nobody wanted to be held accountable in a dysfunctional system, but the system couldn’t be cured of its dysfunction until everyone was held accountable.

Some felt the problem was that the people entering the teaching profession tended to be weak, but I’d seen plenty of idealistic and intelligent teachers on my school visits. The system’s dysfunction, however, took its toll on them. Some became so dispirited or went to a suburban school; others burned out and became mediocre clock punchers; some heroically soldiered on, but even they barely became the teachers they could have been.

Others claimed the solution was to increase education funds and reduce class size. There are limits, however, to how much we can afford to spend on education, and it’s not clear it would make much of a difference anyway. Take PS 241, which is co-located with one of our schools. In the 2014–2015 school year, it had an average size of just 12.7 students and spent $4,239,478 on one hundred kids, $42,394 per student, but only two of those students passed the reading test that year.

In order to have any chance at fixing this system, I came to believe, we needed to radically change the labor contracts, which in turn required having elected officials who were willing to disagree with the United Federation of Teachers and stand up for children. I hoped to advance that goal by showing that even if you were independent of the United Federation of Teachers, you could survive politically. Obviously, that plan failed and the result was the opposite of what I’d hoped. Elected officials were more afraid of the United Federation of Teachers than ever and would tell Chancellor Klein, “I ain’t gonna get Eva’d.”

— Eva Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools. She served on the New York City Council from 1999 to 2005. © 2017 HarperCollins Publishers

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Student Writer Wonders: Could Antifa Do More Harm Than Good? A “proud liberal” suspects Antifa might be going a little too far. Mark Tapson

By on September 13th, 2017

A Texas-based website called StudyBreaks.com, which features writing from “exceptional students” across the country, has posted an essay by Eric McInnis of Arcadia University which poses the burning question, “Could the Leftist Group Antifa Create More Harm Than Good?”

To reasonable people who pay attention to the news, it would seem patently obvious that the violent anarchists of Antifa have already created a lot of harm and zero good, but that’s not how McInnis, and no doubt many other leftists, see it.

“The rise of nationalism and fascism in America has easily been one of the scariest movements within 2017,” begins McInnis, who describes himself as “a proud liberal who leans into certain socialist ideals and policies.”

He is concerned that since Donald Trump’s “infamous election, far-right extremists have moved away from the dark caves where they belong and flaunt their blatant racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia for the world to see. It’s obvious at this point that America needs a hero, and one group named Antifa seems to have answered the call.”

Let that sink in: this student believes that the masked thugs ganging up on innocent bystanders (because they, and not actual Nazis, are Antifa’s primary targets), beating them with poles and bike locks, and destroying property simply for the thrill of anarchic destruction are the heroes America needs. Not the patriot citizens eager to Make America Great Again, but the domestic terrorists chanting, “No Trump, no wall, no USA at all!”

But even for “proud liberals” like McInnis, Antifa is taking things to an uncomfortable extreme: “[W]hile it’s wonderful [!] to see people stand up and fight back against such oppressors, the main question going on in my mind, as a liberal, is whether Antifa’s violent and destructive tactics are something to admire or something to concern.”

If you have to puzzle over that, it’s time to rethink a great many of your life choices.

Still, though, McInnis leans toward admiration of Antifa because their noble cause is just: “[I]f they’re attempting to defeat people that hold a disgusting and hateful ideology, there should be nothing to complain about, right?” After all, “it’s important to remember their actions are nowhere near as dangerous or reprehensible as their foes.”

But as “a supporter of… peace, tolerance and understanding,” McInnis feels that the anarchists need to rein things in a little. Why? Not because they are insanely, indiscriminately violent and seek the destruction of the United States,” but because “their actions could very well lead to an eight-year Trump presidency.”

And for Eric McInnes and so many other “proud liberals,” nothing could be worse than two terms of a President who wants to make America great again.

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Campus Censorship: Orwell Ignored by Robbie Travers

By on September 13th, 2017

What about the delicate sensibilities of those of us who find censoring offensive?

Where are the “safe spaces” for those who would ban banning?

Anyone should be able to criticise or question just about anyone. We should not care — or even know — what minority group, if any, someone belongs to. That would be racist.

When you hear the quite horrific stories of censorship and dangerous restrictions on expression at universities in the US, the UK and Europe, your first reaction might be to laugh at how infantile the nature of political discourse in the student world has become.

Cardiff Metropolitan University banned the use of the word “man” and related phrases, to encourage the adoption of “gender neutral” language. It is the equivalent of the “newspeak” about which Orwell warned: “Ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda”.

Currently, longstanding expressions carrying no prejudice are now used as the trappings of often fictitious “oppressions.”

City University in London, renowned for its journalism school, is apparently banning newspapers that do not conform to the current student body’s various political biases. If the Sun, Daily Mail and Express are such bad publications, why not allow students to read them and make up their own minds? Perhaps students do not trust their peers to make up their own minds? What if they make up their minds the “wrong” way? To suggest that the brightest and best at our universities cannot contend with a dissenting argument should probably be at least slightly concerning.

There seems to be a growing consensus among student populations that certain views should not be challenged, heard or — if one does not hear them — even known.

A culture has also emerged at universities of promoting “safe spaces”. These ostensibly aim to be free of prejudices such as racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and other bile. But all too often, we have seen them filled with exactly these prejudices – anti-whiteness, anti-maleness and of course anti-Semitism, as even some of Britain’s leading universities are “becoming no-go zones for Jews”.

We have seen the staff of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo slaughtered by ISIS terrorists for mocking Mohammad, and banned from Bristol and Manchester University, apparently because some students might find it offensive. What about the delicate sensibilities of those of us who find censorship offensive? Especially of a publication that has stood up to religious fanaticism and paid the ultimate price? Where are the “safe spaces” for those who would ban banning?

At the University of Edinburgh, a student official was silenced for raising her hand — as if a raised hand were a “thought crime” tantamount to physical violence. Yet, as Sigmund Freud said, “The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilisation.”

Does mean, then, that many campuses are going back to pre-civilisation? Last year, the magazine Spiked found that 90% of British universities hold policies that support censorship and chill free speech. In February, riots to disrupt a speech at University of California, Berkeley caused $100,000 worth of damage — but only one person was arrested.

Do the advocates of suppressing speech not see — or care — where silencing free speech leads? You set a precedent that allows further silencing, which, in turn, creates ever-expanding censorships. One imagines that especially universities should be the institutions that protect the exchange of ideas.

Historically, contrarian views — such as those of Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Darwin, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, Servetus, Oldenburg, Domagk and Freud — have been essential to shaping our culture. They have reversed accepted practices and opened minds. Where would our culture be without the freedom to question, be creative or even at times offend?

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Another Obama Policy Betsy DeVos Should Throw Out A 2014 guidance letter on racial disparities in school discipline has helped create classroom chaos.By Jason L. Riley

By on September 13th, 2017

When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced last week that the Trump administration would revisit its predecessor’s “guidance” on adjudicating accusations of campus sexual assault, she added that “the era of ‘rule by letter’ is over.” Well, not quite. A second instance of the Education Department’s overreach under President Obama, this one involving discipline in public schools, remains firmly in place.

In 2012 the Education Department released a study showing that black students were three times as likely to be suspended and expelled as their white counterparts. Two years later, the department issued a “Dear Colleague” letter warning school districts to address this racial imbalance, or else. The letter said that even if a disciplinary policy “is neutral on its face—meaning that the policy itself does not mention race—and is administered in an evenhanded manner” the district still could face a federal civil-rights investigation if the policy “has a disparate impact, i.e., a disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race.”

The threat worked. Fending off charges of discrimination can be expensive and embarrassing, so spooked school districts chose instead to discipline fewer students in deference to Washington. The Obama guidance didn’t start the trend—suspensions were down nearly 20% between 2011 and 2014—but the letter almost certainly hastened it. The effects are being felt in schools across the country, leaving black and Hispanic students, the policy’s theoretical beneficiaries, worse off.

After the Los Angeles school district, where more than 82% of students are Latino or black, ended suspensions for nonviolent offenses, the district reported that the number of students who said they felt safe in school dropped to 60% from 72%. When Chicago curbed suspensions, students and teachers felt the increased disorder. And following New York City’s reforms making it more difficult to keep disruptive kids out of the classroom, the schools that showed increased fighting, gang activity and drug use tended to be those with the highest percentages of minority students.

Somehow racial balance in the rates of suspension and expulsion has become more important than school safety. As Max Eden, my colleague at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in a March report, these policies turn the focus toward the well-being of the bullies rather than their victims. “Advocates of discipline reform often say that they are concerned that a suspension may have negative effects on the student being disciplined,” Mr. Eden wrote. “They are largely unconcerned about the potential of discipline reform to increase classroom disruption and schoolhouse disorder—and the harmful consequences of that disorder for well-behaved and engaged students.” When you diminish a teacher’s and a principal’s authority to discipline students, you undermine their ability to do their job. Disorder only begets more disorder; students who misbehave and face no consequences soon have imitators.

Yet civil-rights activists, liberal academics, policy makers and others calling for fewer suspensions—come what may—insist that what explains imbalances in school discipline is racism, not varying rates of misbehavior. Never mind that these disparities persist in schools with black and Hispanic principals, teachers and administrators, who would have no reason to single out minorities for punishment unless the behavior warranted it. Arne Duncan, the education secretary under Mr. Obama when the “Dear Colleague” letter was issued, said in 2014 that racially uneven discipline is “not caused by differences in children” and that “it is adult behavior that needs to change.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Prof Tweets That He’d ‘Be OK if #BetsyDevos Was Sexually Assaulted’ The now-deleted tweet was a response to Devos’s plans to rein in Title IX on college campuses. By Katherine Timpf

By on September 11th, 2017

A professor at Austin Community College tweeted that he would “be OK if #BetsyDevos was sexually assaulted” because of her intentions to change the guidelines for how colleges handle sexual assault.

Rob Ranco, who is an adjunct professor of paralegal studies, posted the tweet on Friday. It has since been deleted, but not before a screenshot was obtained by Campus Reform. It stated, in full:

“I’m not wishing for it… but I’d be ok if #BetsyDevos was sexually assaulted. #SexualAssault #TitleIX”

Ranco then followed it with what seems to be some attempts at explanation:

“Perhaps Betsy doesn’t understand how horrible rape is. She’s made the world more dangerous for my daughters. I need her to understand.”

“Yes, @twitter. My words were harsh. I don’t wish harm on anyone. I wish there’s some way #BetsyDevos would understand and care about others.”

He also jokingly tweeted that “Twitter trolls are now due process experts! Priceless. #TitleIX”.

Ranco’s tweets, of course, have faced a lot of criticism. His account (@RancoLaw) is not on Twitter anymore and a spokesperson from the school issued a statement to Campus Reform saying that the school “does not condone these comments and their sentiment.” I’ve got to say, I’m really wondering just what in the hell this guy could have been thinking.

Now, I do understand that there are a lot of problems with the way that we treat victims of rape and sexual assault in this culture. It’s disgusting, but it’s true: There are far too many people who would rather just write off all accusers as being opportunistic liars than actually try to understand what it must feel like to be in a rape victim’s position — to understand, for example, how issues like shame and/or power dynamics might prevent a woman from reporting her assault to the police. It’s very, very important to educate people on this issue. It’s also important, however, to acknowledge the plain and simple fact that current Title IX guidelines have created a few problems of their own.
As Reason’s Robby Soave points out, people who are critical of Betsy DeVos for wanting to alter the guidelines should stop and think about the fact “that every crazy Title IX case she referenced actually happened.” Rape is a serious issue, which is exactly why it should be handled in a serious manner — for the sake of everyone involved. After all, as Soave explains, campus kangaroo courts not only force the accused to act as their own defense attorneys, but they also can force victims to have to act as their own prosecutors. It allows for situations such as what happened at Stony Brook in New York, where an accuser had to face and question her alleged rapist herself, without the assistance of a lawyer or even her own therapist.

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Berkeley to offer counseling to snowflakes triggered by Shapiro visit By Rick Moran

By on September 11th, 2017

Former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro is scheduled to speak at the University of California-Berkeley campus on September 14, But even before Shapiro utters a word, the university is offering “counseling” to students who might be offended by a speech given on campus by someone they disagree with.

Berkeley has kicked off a “Year of Free Speech” where officials want to “teach” students how to debate unpopular speakers. But even this appears to be too much for the snowflakes.

LA Times:

“We are deeply concerned about the impact some speakers may have on individuals’ sense of safety and belonging,” Alivisatos said in the memo posted on the university’s website. “No one should be made to feel threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or for what they believe.”

The memo drew scorn from conservative websites, including the Daily Wire, where Shapiro serves as editor-in-chief. The site called the measures extreme and criticized them as a sign of the university’s intolerance.

This is fine, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, the school believes that Shapiro isn’t the one being “threatened” and that it’s the snowflakes who they believe are being “harassed” by Shapiro’s visit.

Campus Reform:

Alivisatos’ email also mentions the all-too typical “[some] speech this is antithetical to our values” and points to a campus free speech forum which took place last evening. At that forum, Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society’s john powell (yes, lower case) collided over the extent of the First Amendment.

Chemerinsky (rightly) noted “All ideas and views can be expressed on campus, no matter how offensive,” whereas the best powell could muster was to say the US Supreme Court has been made unjust decisions in the past.

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Professor Trump’s Lessons for Higher Education By Ken Masugi

By on September 10th, 2017

Following some elite campus visits with his daughter, the morose father lamented that one cannot simply opt out of college. Such a defiance of convention did not seem feasible socially or economically. Like all men of sense, he is among those flabbergasted by former Princeton President Woodrow Wilson’s eagerness to make his students “as unlike their fathers as possible.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/10/professor-trumps-lessons-higher-education/

Today’s college administrators have gone well beyond Wilson’s edict. It seems that the default position on campus today is to surrender common sense and the most obvious moral scruples, allow questionable social habits, and yield to one’s youthful passions and impulses. All this misery comes at an enormous cost to the parents.

Parents no longer can be deluded by expressions such as the “old college try.” The current successors of Woodrow Wilson are more in line with the pseudo-Socrates of Aristophanes’ Clouds—a man whom the horrified father sees as a charlatan who would gladly allow his son to rape his mother, just after the twerp has assaulted him. The dread and dismay facing parents and prospective students is the same today as it was in 4th century B.C. Athens.

Don’t kid yourself that a great reputation or even a religious affiliation will protect your son or daughter. A venerable and distinguished priest and professor, now retired, said about Georgetown University that its only guarantee is that freshmen will graduate as moral relativists. Similar debunking applies to most any university today.

The corrupting temptation of higher education, as it is of any business enterprise, is to flatter the passions of the consumers and accommodate their appetites. Such an attitude means that actual dedication to the good of the students will be subordinate to the good of the institution.

The great question remains: Who will educate the educators?

The way to think about choosing a university might be clarified by reflecting more on the political career of Wilson, who in 1912 was elected president of the United States, just two years after leaving Princeton (and having served as governor of New Jersey in between). Based on his scholarship of applying scientific principles to politics, Wilson enacted a revolution in political practice known as Progressivism, which is rooted in a rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and promotion of rule by bureaucratic experts.

Wilson succeeded all too well. The problem of life in the modern world is our deference to experts: Experts on the Mideast who led us into futile wars; experts on poverty who increased it; experts on race who stoked and aggravated racism; experts on immigration who weakened the bonds of citizenship; the list goes on. One man was unfazed by the experts and defied their minion strategists and was elected president, largely (or should I say, “bigly”) through relating directly to the people. He bypassed the experts.

This is flabbergasting: Can Donald Trump of Trump University notoriety really teach us about choosing the right school? The example is indeed instructive, though not in the way his critics wish. If false advertising is a cause for legal action, America’s “respectable” colleges and universities are the most under-litigated class in the country.

After all, how many colleges advertise or even admit in their catalogs to suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, post-graduation debt, “gut” courses that make no serious demands, or give an honest accounting of the professional accomplishments of their graduates? Far more widespread are slick packaging of slim pickings and meager accomplishments. If I may flash my own badge of expertise, I served for several months in higher education assessment for the State of Virginia, when I rejected some preposterous programs trying to pass as universities. Higher authority overruled my objections, and the pseudo-schools allowed to offer courses for college credit. Trump U is more the rule than an exception in American higher education, and may even have been more honest.

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UCI Teaches Students a Lesson in Protecting Free Speech, Disciplines Anti-Israel Goons This is how you keep the exchange of ideas unfettered and unthreatened By Liel Leibovitz

By on September 10th, 2017

On May 10, 2017, a group called Students Supporting Israel hosted five Israel Defense Forces reservists at the University of California, Irvine. Midway throughout the discussion, forty members of Students for Justice in Palestine, a group vehemently opposed to the Jewish state, broke into loud and derisive chants, disrupting the event. Panelists and Jewish audience members alike were escorted out of the building by campus security, their safety at risk.

This, sadly, is hardly news these days; assaults like these happen regularly on college campuses across the nation whenever anyone challenging the steely dogmas of the regressive left shows up and urges a free and unfettered debate. What is new is the refreshing response of the university’s administration: This week, the university announced that it will sanction SJP with disciplinary probation for two years, during which the group must meet regularly with the Dean of Students to discuss the importance of free speech as well as consult with the administration before hosting any campus event of its own. “Any further violations of university policy,” read the university’s statement, “may result in suspension or a revocation of the organization’s status.”

UCI, read the statement, “welcomes all opinions and encourages a free exchange of ideas–in fact, we defend free speech as one of our bedrock principles as a public university. Yet, we must protect everyone’s right to express themselves without disruption. This concept is clearly articulated in our policies and campus messaging. We will hold firm in enforcing it.”

Amen to that. And if elected officials of all stripes want to help public universities enforce the most sacred of all academic cornerstones, the ability to speak and listen without malice and without being silenced, let them begin by demanding that a commitment to protecting free speech be made a pre-condition for any and all federal funding. The alternative is much too costly for our struggling democracy to afford.

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Does Condemning Islamic State Jihadis Constitute “Hate Speech”? by Denis MacEoin

By on September 9th, 2017

Being a student used to be an uncomfortable experience, during which the fantasies of adolescence were exposed to rational, well-informed, and evidence-based argument. But the cults of political correctness, unbounded gender definitions, Islamophobia-obsession, and anti-Semitism, among other afflictions, have undermined the educational process in the USA and Europe.

If Travers has identified anti-Semitism and signs of radicalization on campus, he has, not just the right, but the duty to expose them to the public eye.Robbie Travers, a third-year law student of 21, has made a mark for himself in Scotland at the prestigious Edinburgh University. Apart from his many other activities, Travers has published articles on the Gatestone Institute site here, as well as for other outlets. He has written on subjects such as anti-Semitism in Europe, the “Fake News” censorship industry, Britain’s Labour Party as a haven for racists, shari’a councils, the assault on free speech, and more. An outspoken young man, he has become one of the best-known figures in the university. Although openly gay and a supporter of a centrist, Tony Blair-ish position in politics, he has frequently come into conflict with fellow students on the radical left, with Muslim students, and with anyone who can be upset by anything that smacks of a challenge to their complacent politically correct sensitivities. He is not afraid to call out radicals and expose them to criticism and factual information that so many modern students (and lecturers) are loath to hear.

On September 6, Robbie’s face appeared across the British media, from the conservative Times to the leftist Independent, to the populist tabloids, the Express, the Mirror, the Daily Mail, and the Sun. Travers had been accused of hate speech and was being investigated by the university, who could well sanction him. What sort of “hate speech” was that? Well, in a nutshell, he had referred to the jihadist fighters of Islamic State (ISIS) — who variously burns or drowns people alive in cages, and sometimes in acid, or kills 250 children in dough-kneaders — as “barbarians.”

You did not read that wrongly. It is now “racist” and “Islamophobic” to insult or ridicule the world’s most unspeakable terror gang, who, among other atrocities, behead innocent men, women and children, rape innocent women, and sell harmless women as sex slaves to grunting murderers and pedophiles. One could not make this up.

Here is what seems to have happened. Travers writes often on Facebook and Twitter, and many left-wing students are possibly outraged by his views on matters such as Islam. Here, for example, is a post on his Facebook page on August 31. I very much doubt if anyone here would find anything offensive in it:

“I propose a toast to the Western world. Unfashionable in today’s climate of moral relativism, but the UK, USA, Israel and other nations play a major role in shaping our world for the better. Whether it be standing against autocratic regimes, whether it be celebrating the freedoms of minorities & those who do not share the opinion of the majority.

“Our democracy has never faced a graver threat than the inhuman & theocratic peril posed by malignant, autocratic, and fascistic branches of Islamism. If we are to see our democracy continue from strength to strength, we must fight to defend our precious and treasured freedoms, rights and protection of minorities as much as jihadis struggle to destroy these just and tolerant values they despise.”

On April 13, he posted something shorter:

“Excellent news that the US Administration and Trump ordered an accurate strike on an IS network of tunnels in Afghanistan. I’m glad we could bring these barbarians a step closer to collecting their 72 virgins.”

It is hard to see how there is anything remotely racist or “Islamophobic” about that. ISIS fighters come from a variety of races and they have attacked and killed many Muslims. But that is exactly what one intolerant student activist claimed it was. Esme Allman, a second-year history student from inner-city London and the former black and ethnic minority convenor of Edinburgh’s student association (who also calls herself not just a feminist but also a “womanist”) was not an admirer of the positions Travers had taken on several subjects.

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