RUTHFULLY YOURS

Depending on the institution of one’s choice, those who are planning to enter college for the first time in the fall may be expected to read an assigned book over the summer. That is, many schools have a “common reading program,” a program designed to insure that incoming students read the same book before embarking upon their college career.

As the National Association of Scholars has amply demonstrated in its recent “Beach Books Report (BBR),” the ideological indoctrination of college students can’t begin quickly enough.

The BBR is a study of 348 institutions of higher learning. This includes 171 public four-year schools, 81 private sectarian schools, 70 private nonsectarian institutions, and 26 community colleges. Fifty-eight of these schools were identified by U.S. News & World Report as among the top 100 universities in the country, while 25 are among the top 100 liberal arts colleges. The colleges and universities covered by the BBR report are located in 46 states and Washington D.C.

What the study found is that colleges “rarely assign” classic texts, making “the common reading genre…parochial, contemporary, and progressive.” In fact, 75% (271) of the common reading books were published between 2010 and 2016 while 94% (327) were published between 2000 and 2016.

The books were all published during the lifetime of the students.

As for the most popular subjects and themes, anyone who knows anything at all about contemporary academia won’t be surprised by the BBR’s findings.

For the academic year 2016-2017, the study’s authors ascribed to the common readings 576 subject labels that are divided into 30 subject categories. “The most popular subject categories,” it states, “were Civil Rights/Racism/Slavery (74 readings), Crime and Punishment (67 readings), Media/Silence/Technology (34 readings), Immigration (32 readings), and Family Dysfunction/Separation (31 readings).”

The BBC also broke the readings down into 251 theme labels and 18 theme categories. That most of these “register the common reading committees’ persisting interest in ‘diversity,’ defined by non-white ethnicity at home and abroad,” is hardly unexpected to readers of this column. Some other findings, though, while anything but shocking, are nevertheless telling.

“Many common readings discuss books of which a film or television version exists, an increasing number are graphic novels [what used to be called “comic books”] or memoirs, many have a protagonist under 18 or simply young-adult novels, and a significant number have an association with National Public Radio (NPR).”

Comic books; young-adult novels; books based on popular films and TV shows and associated with NPR—this is much of the stuff of common reading programs.

The BBR summarizes its findings: “The themes register most strongly the common reading genre’s continuing obsession with race, as well as the infantilization of its students, its middlebrow taste, and its progressive politics.”

Indeed. This past academic year, “the most popular themes were African-American (103), Latin American (25), Protagonist Under 18 (25), African (15), and Islamic World (13).”

For the last three consecutive years, “Racism/Civil Rights/Slavery and Crime and Punishment were the two most popular subject categories,” and “African-American themes were…the most popular theme [.]” These subjects and themes became even more popular this past year than they had been in the two preceding years.

The “top books” for common reading illustrate this trend. The most routinely assigned text is Bryan Stevenson’s, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. This is a work of nonfiction. The theme is “African-American” and the subject categories are “Civil Rights/Racism/Slavery” and “Crime and Punishment.”

Then there is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ memoir, Between the World and Me. The theme is “African-American,” and the subject categories are “Civil Rights/Racism/Slavery” and “Crime and Punishment.”

More than two months after Charles Murray went to Middlebury College in Vermont to give a lecture and was shouted down and roughed upon his leaving, school authorities have concluded their review of the incident and will not suspend or expel any students involved.

The school announced that 67 students had received various slaps on the wrist. The 8 masked demonstrators who violently attacked Murray and a professor from the school when they were trying to leave could not be identified, so police will take no action.

Inside Higher Ed:

While the department said that “it had identified a number of other people who were in the crowd of more than 20 people outside the event venue, on consultation with the Addison County State’s Attorney it was determined that there was insufficient information to charge any specific person who participated in damaging the car or interfering with or blocking the car’s progress as it exited the parking lot.”

Ever since the Murray visit, Middlebury has been subject to national scrutiny over how it would punish those involved. Some have argued for tough punishments, while others have said that no punitive sanction would be appropriate. Murray is the co-author of The Bell Curve, a book widely denounced as racist for its conclusions on race and intelligence, but he was not planning to speak about that book. Stanger was the professor selected to lead questioning of Murray. While she defended his right to speak, she never endorsed his views.

Middlebury policy permits protests of speakers but not activities that prevent someone from speaking. While many were involved in doing just that (and were seen on social media doing so), still others were involved in what has widely been seen as a more serious incident after the talk, when Stanger was attacked outside and the car carrying her and Murray from the event was attacked. Middlebury announced early on that it asked the town police to investigate that part of the incident. In addition, college officials said early on that they believed some of those involved in the more violent portion of the protest were not students or otherwise affiliated with the college.

Middlebury officials have refused to answer detailed questions about the punishments, citing privacy issues with regard to the students. But they have indicated that they expected to have different punishments for different groups of students, depending on their level of involvement.

The college’s announcement Tuesday said of the more serious “college discipline” punishment that some received that it “places a permanent record in the student’s file. Some graduate schools and employers require individuals to disclose official college discipline in their applications.”

So ends one of the more shameful episodes of suppressing free speech on campus in recent history. What made this incident so damaging was the actual, physical violence that erupted following the event’s cancellation that was reminiscent of Nazi storm troopers suppressing opposition speech. The irony of referring to Murray as a “fascist” as many protesters did was lost on the troublemakers whose knowledge of history is deficient as were their manners.

If colleges were serious about enforcing the free exchange of ideas, they would have suspended most of those 67 students and expelled others. Until universities show these fascists that they are serious about protecting free speech, the suppression of opposing viewpoints will continue – and get worse.

A former Diablo Valley College professor who was identified by online sleuths as the “anti-fascist” protester who assaulted a Trump supporter at the so-called “Battle of Berkeley” last month has been arrested and taken into custody.

Eric Clanton, who had reportedly been under investigation for weeks, is being held on $200,000 bail after being booked into Berkeley City Jail Wednesday evening.

Via the East Bay Times:

He was arrested on suspicion of use of a firearm during a felony with an enhancement clause and assault with a non-firearm deadly weapon.

No date was immediately listed for upcoming arraignment hearings.

A former Diablo Valley College staff directory Web page said Clanton, who earned a bachelor’s degree at California State University, Bakersfield, and a master’s degree at San Francisco State in philosophy, worked at the school since 2015, teaching an “introduction to philosophy with a background in teaching ethics, critical thinking, and comparative philosophy East/West” with “primary research interests” of ethics and politics.

Employee records for 2015 and 2016 listed Clanton as a lecturer with the California State University system and a philosophy instructor with the Contra Costa Community College District, according to Transparent California.

Berkeley police were not immediately available to confirm any connection between Clanton’s arrest and social-media-fueled accusations within the last month about attacks during at least one of a series of protests earlier this year.

The altercation in question took place when Antifa agitators crashed a pro-Trump, free-speech demonstration dubbed “the Patriots Rally” on April 15. The assault, captured on video, shows a protester in a face mask bludgeoning a young man in the head with a U-shaped bike lock, leaving him bleeding profusely. The attacker quickly disappeared back into the crowd. CONTINUE AT SITE

You might expect Yale University President Peter Salovey to be hanging his head in shame after allowing radical students to run former administrator Erika Christakis off campus because she dared to defend free expression. Specifically, in 2015 Ms. Christakis suggested that instead of having the university ban Halloween costumes that some students didn’t like, perhaps offended students should simply try to ignore them. You would be wrong.

Mr. Salovey’s Yale not only chose not to support Ms. Christakis and her husband Nicholas in the face of screaming, threatening campus bullies. (The couple stepped down from their administrative posts in 2016.) Now the university has decided to underline its commitment to unwritten limits on free speech by handing out awards to two of Yale’s most prominent Christakis critics.

At its annual Class Day ceremony, Yale awarded its Nakanishi Prize, “to two graduating seniors who, while maintaining high academic achievement, have provided exemplary leadership in enhancing race and/or ethnic relations at Yale College.”

Yale stated that Alexandra Zina Barlowe “has focused her scholarship on issues of land usage, cooperative economies, and reparations in the American South.“ According to the university:

She is described as a fierce truthteller who illuminates the challenges affecting her communities, rooting them in history and context in order to promote a deeper understanding of them. Her peers say of her “Lex never fights for just one issue. Her moral imagination operates with the knowledge that issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. are all interconnected.”

Lex has also worked tirelessly to build bridges among organizations and individuals, pushing relentlessly for a more equitable and just campus — and world — through her activism. Serving as past President and Social Justice Chair for the Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY), a Communication and Consent Educator (CCE), and an organizer for the group Fossil Free Yale, she brings womanist, feminist, anti-racist work to the fore with academic rigor and a deep integrity, and she has, by example, taught her peers, faculty and administrators about inclusive leadership.

Yale also honored Abdul-Razak Zachariah, claiming he “has worked to improve Yale’s racial and ethnic relations through his academic work, both within his Sociology major and in the Education Studies program.”

The school seems to view the events of 2015 as some kind of triumph, instead of the offense they represented against the basic idea of a university. And as Ms. Christakis has written, it is not just a problem at Yale:

For seven years I lived and worked on two college campuses, and a growing number of students report avoiding controversial topics — such as the limits of religious tolerance or transgender rights — for fear of uttering “unacceptable” language or otherwise stepping out of line. As a student observed in the Yale Daily News, the concept of campus civility now requires adherence to specific ideology — not only commitment to respectful dialogue.

In the months leading up to and immediately after the election of Donald Trump, one could honestly observe that the Left has never been more fair — or, more accurately, more “Fair.”

The “Fair” referred to in this instance is Georgetown professor Christine Fair, who this week is being hailed in many quarters for confronting notorious “alt-right” leader Richard Spencer in a D.C.-area gym last weekend where he was working out alone.

According to Fair’s account in the Washington Post, she walked up to Spencer and accosted him, saying, inter alia, “I find your presence in this gym to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable.” When a woman who witnessed Fair’s challenge attempted to step in and stop her from verbally abusing Spencer, she told her, “You’re actually enabling a real-life Nazi.” (For the record, Spencer denies that he is a Nazi and refers to himself as an “identitarian.”) The general manager approached Fair and asked her to leave in response to her tirade. Afterward, when Spencer’s identity was revealed, his gym membership was revoked — while Fair, who even by her own account was harassing Spencer, went unpunished. (One should note that Christian bakers are not allowed to be so choosy about the clientele of their establishments.)

Let’s stipulate that Richard Spencer is a man who has embraced values that are anathema to America’s, and that his vision is quite obviously not one that conservatives or Republicans share. But Fair publicly claims that Spencer’s very presence in the gym, because of his political views, creates an oppressive environment, which is a much more dramatic and potentially dangerous claim. If you are still cheering on Professor Fair, consider the case of another Spencer — Robert Spencer (no relation to Richard), a persistent critic of political Islam and a favorite of Steve Bannon and other figures in the Trump administration.

After he spoke to a large audience last week in Reykjavik, Iceland, a leftist approached him as he was dining with companions and managed to slip a combination of MDMA (“Ecstasy”) and Ritalin into his drink, causing him to become ill to the point that he was hospitalized. Fortunately, police seem to have identified the perpetrator. But despite Spencer’s relative prominence and the dramatic nature of the crime, this political poisoning attracted almost no attention from the mainstream media.

As Spencer put it ruefully, “The lesson I learned was that media demonization of those who dissent from the leftist line is a direct incitement to violence. By portraying me and others who raise legitimate questions about jihad terror and Sharia oppression as racist, bigoted ‘Islamophobes’ without allowing us a fair hearing, they paint a huge target on the backs of those who dare to dissent.”

Dozens of University of California students and workers peacefully assembled at a recent UC regents meeting in San Francisco, but it wasn’t to protest Milo Yiannopoulos, David Horowitz, Ann Coulter or even Donald Trump. The target was Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California.

“Arrest Napolitano! Arrest Napolitano!” and “Janet Must Go!” were the rallying cries, and along with their placards the protesters brought along some facts.

While beating the drum for tuition and fee hikes, president Napolitano has amassed a secret slush fund of $175 million, which she used to shower perks on already overpaid staff and even to renovate the houses of UC chancellors. That’s why the protesters wanted her arrested. The state auditor reported that Napolitano’s office “intentionally interfered” with their investigators, which could be construed as an obstruction of justice.

“Shame on you Janet Napolitano,” said UC Santa Barbara graduate student Hannah Kagan-Moore during the public comment. “Shame on the office of the president for padding your own pockets!” Other students called the regents “hypocrites” and “greedy,” but the regents weren’t having it.

Regents chair Monica Lozano, formerly of U.S. Hispanic Media, talked of “changing the culture” but was uncritical of Napolitano. “There has been no criminal activity and no slush funds,” responded regent Sherry Lansing. The former movie executive blasted “distortions” in the media, hailed Napolitano’s “wisdom and integrity,” and proclaimed, “her leadership has been incredible.”

Regent Bonnie Reiss, an attorney who produced president Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration ceremony, complained of “salacious” newspaper headlines. “Seeing how some in the press have characterized it as a slush fund or a secret fund hurt my heart,” Reiss lamented.

UC regent Norm Pattiz was “delighted when I found out we had a chance to have Janet Napolitano as our president.” Pattiz was “still delighted” after the audit, but protesting students might have wondered why he was still a University of California regent.

Last year, during a commercial for a memory-foam bra, Pattiz asked television writer Heather McDonald, “Wait a minute — can I hold your breasts?” and referred to his hands as “memory foam.” In another audio clip Pattiz offered critiques of pornographic films and that got the attention of the student press.

“If you want a porn connoisseur making decisions about our school’s academic, administrative and yes, sexual harassment policies, then by all means, Pattiz should remain a regent,” editorialized the Daily Bruin. “But if he has any remaining respect for himself and the institution he works for, he must resign.”

It didn’t happen. The eager Pattiz with the memory-foam hands is still a UC regent and “still delighted” with president Janet Napolitano.

In similar style, Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, also a UC regent, criticized the audit as too strict and opined that president Janet Napolitano was doing a good job. Media sycophants also had the president’s back.

A University of Maryland student was viciously attacked on social media for praising freedom in the U.S. compared to her native China.

Breitbart:

Shuping Yang, a graduate of the University of Maryland from Kunming city in southwest China, compared the air in China to the “sweet, oddly luxurious” air in America, and even went a step further to praise the U.S. for its democracy that allows “free speech,” the Daily Mail reported.

“I grew up in a city in China where I had to wear a face mask every time I went outside, otherwise I might get sick. However, the moment I inhaled and exhaled outside the airport, I felt free,” the theater and psychology double-major said, recounting her experience arriving in the U.S.

“I would soon feel another kind of fresh air for which I will be forever grateful. The fresh air of free speech. Democracy and free speech should not be taken for granted. Democracy and freedom are the fresh air that is worth fighting for,” Yang added.

Needless to say, her remarks went immediately viral in China and elicited a storm of opposition from both citizens and the government.

“Is it appropriate to despise her home country while speaking as a school representative?” one user of the Chinese social media site 163.com wrote.

“You better not come back to China. China won’t be able to nurture a talent like you,” another user wrote.

“Is she trying to flatter the US by saying our country is flawed?” another user questioned.

The People’s Daily, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, also accused Yang of “bolstering negative Chinese stereotypes,” according to the Washington Post.

The University of Maryland defended Yang’s right to speak from her perspective.

“To be an informed global citizen, it is critical to hear different viewpoints,” the university wrote in a statement Monday.

The university also linked to Yang’s apology on the Chinese social media site Weibo.

“I love my country and home town and I’m proud of its prosperity,” Yang wrote in the apology, which has been shared more than 66,000 times.

We sometimes forget that despite its economic success, China is still a Communist country that stifles free speech and actively censors different viewpoints that don’t toe the official line. It has enlisted the help of American technology companies to help it police the internet – including social media sites – to regulate the thinking of its citizens.

Ms. Yang expresses sentiments common to immigrants from countries with oppressive governments. Freedom in America is beyond imagining for most of them, and when confronted by the reality of American liberty, their joy is hard to contain. We’ve seen this for decades when people from behind the Iron Curtain made their way to America. After years of being immersed in propaganda about how bad America is, they end up being amazed at the freedom in our society.

Failed presidential candidate and scion of the tassel-loafer set John Kerry has made a fool of himself at Harvard, unspooling his thoughts for the student body at a commencement Wednesday.

“I’m often asked what the secret is to have a real impact on government,” he said. “Well, it’s recently changed.”

“I used to say, either run for office or get a degree from Harvard Kennedy School. With this White House I’d say, buy Rosetta Stone and learn Russian,” he joked. The audience cheered.

It’s incredible what passes for humor among the toffs of the yacht club set with the legacy admissions. It’s also remarkably similar in elitist to his insult to U.S. troops stationed in Iraq who couldn’t possibly get into universities, as he claimed in 2006:

Kerry said, “You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Does Kerry really think learning the language of Russia is an elementary thing, a stupid man’s pursuit, compared to attending Harvard’s Kennedy School? Is he serious in claiming that learning any foreign language from scratch is easier than for some legacy admission to get into Harvard and bee-ess his way around the Harvard seminar table sounding lofty and important in his pretentious bow tie?

I’m calling him light in the loafers in that one, a lazy man’s claim on humor becaused he really never tried to learn any foreign language and never knew of any crisis in the Russian language aspect of scholarship, of which there is. For Kerry, the status of getting into Harvard amounts to more intelligence and a right to rule than the effort required to learn an actual foreign language, all because it comes through a commercial software program that anyone can buy. So gee, if anyone can buy one, it’s must be unimportant to the likes of Kerry. Hence, his disdainful insistence that Trump start with Rosetta Stone.

How much of the Russian language does Kerry know? How much did Obama know? How much did Ben Rhodes know? The answer was a big fat zero. Obama knew no foreign languages, it’s highly unlikely the creative writing major Rhodes had the discipline to learn one, and as for Kerry himself, his only foreign language is French, which is one of the easiest ones for a native English speaker to master. Kerry also had the advantage of learning it immersion style, not through hard study, because he was raised in France as a child, an opportunity most American kids don’t get. Color us unimpressed.

And if the Democrat “narrative” is what he is pushing — that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, why would learning Russian and presumably becoming more sympathetic to Russia as a natural result, advance Kerry’s ‘bad Russians’ narrative? Such is the inchoate character of this clubby poofter.

The president of Dartmouth College announced in an email to faculty on Monday that a recently appointed dean of faculty has declined the position following widespread outcry over his support for academic boycotts of Israel.

Professor N. Bruce Duthu’s appointment in March came under heavy criticism after it was revealed that he co-authored a 2013 declaration backing boycotts of Israeli universities for the council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA).

President Phil Hanlon said that Duthu will remain at Dartmouth as a professor of Native American studies.

Duthu, who was set to assume the position of dean of the faculty of arts and science in July, also stepped down as associate dean of the faculty for international studies and interdisciplinary programs.

The decision to appoint Duthu, an advocate of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, to a top administrative post raised questions about Dartmouth’s commitment to academic freedom. BDS aims to restrict engagement with Israel, academic and otherwise, until it accedes to a number of unilateral Palestinian demands, and many of its leaders have affirmed that they seek Israel’s destruction. The campaign was rejected by the president of Dartmouth and many other university heads, including former President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers, who warned that academic divestiture and boycott movements singling out Israel were “anti-Semitic in effect if not intent.”

In a faculty-wide email on May 3rd protesting Duthu’s promotion, Dartmouth Economics Professor Alan Gustman noted:

The chant of the BDS movement, from the river to the sea, is anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and profoundly anti- Jewish. It refers to sweeping the Jews out of Israel. Where else do we find movements advocating action against the academic institutions in any country but Israel, including many truly bad actors in the world?

BDS is singling out Israel – the one country in the world that has a majority Jewish population. Indeed, this movement has become a cover for many anti-Semites who like nothing better than to once again be free to exercise their prejudices. It also is important to understand, especially when evaluating the significance of appointing a BDS advocate as the Dean of the Faculty, that BDS is not just a statement of beliefs or a philosophical movement: it is a statement of action.