RUTHFULLY YOURS

Read :NGO IN HIS OWN WORDS

Fired for Reporting the Truth Simply tweeting video of a Muslim student characterizing his religion on an interfaith panel cost me my job. By Andy Ngo http://www.nationalreview.com/node/447563/print

At an interfaith student panel at Portland State University in April, a Muslim student responded to a question by confirming that it is ok in many Muslim countries to kill non-Muslims. A reporter for the student-run newspaper on campus tweeted out the video of this comment, an act for which he was fired. The newspaper stated that the main reason for the firing was because the video was run at a conservative news outlet—even though it was done without the reporter’s knowledge.

The reporter, Andy Ngo, is a graduate student in political science at Portland State University. Until this incident, he was also a reporter and multimedia editor for the Portland Vanguard, the student-run newspaper on campus. On April 26, the campus hosted a free student panel discussion, “Unpacking Misconceptions,” which it billed as “a panel & discussion on different Religions, Spiritualities, and Worldviews.”

Ngo writes that he began recording video with his cell phone when the Muslim student on the panel was asked about a verse in the Koran that allows Muslims to kill non-Muslims. The Muslim student answered:

I can confidently tell you, when the Koran says an innocent life, it means an innocent life, regardless of the faith, the race, like, whatever you can think about as a characteristic. And some, this, that you’re referring to, killing non-Muslims, that [to be a non-believer] is only considered a crime when the country’s law, the country is based on Koranic law — that means there is no other law than the Koran. In that case, you’re given the liberty to leave the country, you can go in a different country, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. So you can go in a different country, but in a Muslim country, in a country based on the Koranic laws, disbelieving, or being an infidel, is not allowed so you will be given the choice [to leave].

Ngo was not there on an assignment for the Vanguard, merely as a student with an interest in the event. He proceeded to tweet the video of the Muslim student’s answer from his personal Twitter account.

Ngo says that his tweet was shared with the editor-in-chief of the Vanguard shortly after the event concluded with no negative feedback. It was only four days later, when Breitbart ran a story based on his public tweets, that Ngo was called in for a meeting with the editor-in-chief and the managing editor of the Vanguard. Ngo did not contribute to the Breitbart story, and in fact, it ran without his prior knowledge. CONTINUE AT SITE

There is no denying the left-leaning political bias on American college campuses. As data from UCLA’s Higher Education Institute show, the professoriate has moved considerably leftward since the late 1980s, especially in the arts and humanities. In New England, where my own university is located, liberal professors outnumber their conservative colleagues by a ratio of 28:1.

How does this bias affect the education we offer? I’d like to think that we left-leaning professors are able to teach the works of conservative thinkers with the same seriousness and attention that we devote to works on our own side of the political spectrum—but do we?

It is hard to be optimistic about this challenge in the wake of recent episodes of campus intolerance for views on the right. Would-be social-justice warriors at Middlebury College transformed the mild-mannered political scientist Charles Murray into a free-speech hero, and campus appearances by the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald and the right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter have been handled badly, turning both women into media martyrs.

Most colleges, of course, host controversial speakers without incident and without much media coverage. In March, for instance, Franklin & Marshall College gave a platform to the Danish editor who published cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. There were protests and arguments but no attempt to silence the speaker.

Academics worried about attacks on free speech have felt the need to respond, and they have articulated sound principles. Princeton professors Robert P. George and Cornel West recently attracted lots of supporters for a statement underscoring that “all of us should seek respectfully to engage with people who challenge our views” and that “we should oppose efforts to silence those with whom we disagree—especially on college and university campuses.”

The issue, however, isn’t whether the occasional conservative, libertarian or religious speaker gets a chance to speak. That is tolerance, an appeal to civility and fairness, but it doesn’t take us far enough. To create deeper intellectual and political diversity, we need an affirmative-action program for the full range of conservative ideas and traditions, because on too many of our campuses they seldom get the sustained, scholarly attention that they deserve.

Such an effort can take many different forms. In 2013, Wesleyan decided to join Vassar College in working with the Posse Foundation to bring cohorts of military veterans to campus on full scholarships. These students with military backgrounds are older than our other undergraduates and have very different life experiences; more of them also hold conservative political views.

One notable episode illustrates how this program has contributed to broadening discussion on campus. A student named Bryan Stascavage, who had served almost six years as a U.S. Army military intelligence analyst in Iraq and Haiti, came to Wesleyan to study social sciences. In the fall of 2015, he published an op-ed in the student newspaper questioning the Black Lives Matter movement, which enjoys widespread support here. He asked whether the protests were “actually achieving anything positive” because of the damage done by the extremists in their ranks.

The essay caused an uproar, including demands by activists to cut funding to the school newspaper. Most students, faculty and administrators recognized that free speech needed to be defended, especially for unpopular views. They rose to the challenge of responding substantively (if sometimes heatedly) to Bryan’s argument.

‘I don’t want to be in an environment where everybody thinks the same as me, because you just don’t learn that way.’

—Wesleyan student Bryan Stascavage

As for Bryan himself, he felt that he had “field-tested” his ideas. As he told the PBS NewsHour in an interview about his experience at Wesleyan, “I don’t want to be in an environment where everybody thinks the same as me, because you just don’t learn that way.”

At Wesleyan, we now plan to deepen our engagement with the military. We have been working with the U.S. Army to bring senior military officers to campus, and starting next year, the first of them will arrive to teach classes on the relationship between military institutions and civil society. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings/analysis#.WRbfQsYpCUk

The Free Speech University Rankings (FSUR) is the UK’s first university rankings for free speech. We survey British universities, examining the policies and actions of universities and students’ unions, and rank them using our traffic-light system. Read our analysis below and get clued up on the bans and bureaucracy stifling free debate.

Data accurate up until January 2017.

“Why is There So Much Politics in Arabic Class?”
I’ve been browsing the Spring 2017 issue of the Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin. It’s clear that along with all the other socio-political stances that comprise the often bizarre and contradictory (women’s rights, Islamophilia) package deal of ideologies and attitudes of the Left, an anti-Israel default position is integral to that publication.

Regular readers of my blog may remember that not so very long ago I exposed the sympathetic publicity given by the Bulletin to visiting professor and alumnus (class of ’06) Sa’ed Atshan, who deplores Israel’s very existence.

The current Bulletin assures us that he has again

“completed his annual class trip with his Swarthmore students to Israel and Palestine. He’ll continue to inspire future generations as as assistant professor of peace and conflict studies.”

There’s plenty regarding Atshan by Canary Mission here

Under the heading “Global Thinking” the current Bulletin has a feature article by staff writer Elizabeth Slocum about another anti-Israel activist, Missoula, Montana high school Arabic teacher Brendan Work (’10).

Beneath the title “Speaking the Same Language: His immersion in Arabic became a lesson in empathy” Slocum tells us:

‘Brendan Work ’10 jokingly tells his students that they are learning “an enemy language.”

“They sometimes ask, ‘Why is there so much politics in Arabic class?’” says Work … “Well, when you’re learning Spanish or French, there just isn’t an international conflict with the U.S. that involves those speakers now.”

This is important context for his students, who must work through so much history and tension tied up in the study of the language through class discussions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq War, and Syrian refugees. He seeks to offer them a point of view beyond bias or preconceived notions that he honed as a reporter. [Emphasis added here and below]

“I knew I wanted to find employment at the intersection of Arabic and journalism,” says Work, who studied the language at the College as a comparative literature major. “I was looking for the big story, so I bought a one-way ticket into the occupied territory,” at a time when Palestine was submitting its statehood bid to the U.N.

Work secured a job at a small press agency in Bethlehem where he improved his language skills …before heading into the field as a reporter and photographer. As Work detailed the struggles of those in the conflict zone, he realized the Arab narrative was often told from a limited perspective.

For example, while covering a planned protest near the West Bank wall on the day of the statehood bid, a clash escalated and a Palestinian teen was struck by a tear-gas canister. (A Reuters photographer captured an image of Work aiding the boy moments after the violence.) Denied access to the nearest hospital because it was on the other side of the wall, the youth ultimately lost his eye. Later, out of concern, Work met with the teen’s parents…

“Their thinking was, ‘Resistance is our reality. In America, I thought, protests happened out of a sense – rather than a reality – of injustice.”

Last Monday, I appeared at the University of Buffalo at the invitation of the courageous students of Young Americans for Freedom. They have to put up with campus Left-fascist thuggery on a daily basis, while I was able to leave Buffalo the morning after the event.

I say I “appeared,” because to say “I spoke” would be exaggerating a bit. Rather, I spoke a few sentences and made a couple of points in between being screamed at by Leftist and Islamic supremacist fascists who think they’re opposing fascism.

The Spectrum, the student newspaper of the University at Buffalo, reported:

Robert Spencer couldn’t speak for more than 30 seconds without students shouting and cursing at him.

…

Spencer planned to speak to students about “the dangers of jihad in today’s world” but constant heckling from the crowd made it near impossible for him to complete a full sentence.

Indeed. The raucous student mob, of course, believes it represents the side of all that is good and righteous. These students have been hoodwinked into thinking that “Islamophobes,” rather than jihad terrorists, are killing people around the world.

For example, one man held a sign that read “Queers Against Islamophobia.” The crowd booed lustily when I attempted to read from Islamic authorities about Islam’s death penalty for homosexuality. Even to read from Islamic sources is hate, apparently, at the University at Buffalo — unless, of course, one endorses such penalties rather than oppose them.

By shutting down any discussion of the motivating ideology of the jihad threat and consigning it all to the realm of “hatred” and “bigotry,” the student mob at the University of Buffalo enables that threat to grow. One day, the Leftists who screamed, heckled, and booed as I tried to speak may very well experience the consequences of their actions, carried out by those with whom they thought they stood in solidarity.

The Spectrum article did capture one thing I managed to say:

The attempt to silence someone who has a differing viewpoint was a “quintessentially fascist act, and you are manifesting it in a wonderful way tonight,” said Spencer.

There was also this:

Spencer frequently discusses terrorism by Muslims as being religiously motivated, an argument that has put him in the cross-hairs of American Muslims who say his interpretation of Islam is dangerously inaccurate and perverts their faith.

Those American Muslims have a big problem on their hands, because in reality, I offer no interpretation of Islam at all. I only report on how Muslims interpret Islam, which all too often involves justifications of and exhortations to violence. They are anxious to silence me because they don’t want Americans to know how jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify hatred, violence, and supremacism. CONTINUE AT SITE

We are living in weird times:

The state of Texas has to pass a law to get some county officials to follow the law;

Harvard University approved a “black only” graduation; and

A school in Detroit is holding a prom for Muslim girls: With the goal of creating a “safe space” in mind, a Detroit school has set out to hold a girls-only prom to celebrate traditional Muslim customs.

It’s being created for girls who would otherwise be prohibited by their ultraconservative Muslim families from going to regular proms, where attendees are allowed to have fun and dance with members of the opposite sex in good old American tradition.

Hamtramck High School’s girls-only “Princess Prom” was first organized in 2012 by a group of five Muslim girls to give them the opportunity to go to a “safe space” prom.

In 2016, 230 girls showed up. This year, they’re expecting at least 250 attendees.

Let me show respect for Muslim traditions. I understand that prom nights, or the way that some girls dress up, may violate some of their religious principles.

However, this is a public school district. I thought that we settled that issue back in the 1950s when President Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas!

What about a prom for ultraconservative Catholic families who want their daughters and dates in a separate environment away from talk about Roe v Wade or same-sex marriage opinions? Or Jewish kids?

The left’s silence about all of this is the other story. Where is the outrage and editorials?

With all due respect to the parents of these young girls, they should send their daughters to a private school if they want this kind of special treatment. Again, it’s a public school and no one gets a special prom.

As if we needed another example of civility gone off the rails at America’s institutions of higher learning, the treatment given Education Secretary Betsy DeVos this week at Bethune-Cookman University deserves special mention.

Edison O. Jackson, the president of Bethune-Cookman, a historically black institution of higher education, invited Mrs. DeVos to be the schools commencement speaker. As she began, many students screamed at her and turned their backs to the stage. So it went for nearly the whole speech.

President Jackson, let it be noted, defended the Secretary at her side, and the school’s faculty stood onstage in solidarity with him.

The irony here is that Mrs. DeVos has dedicated her adult life to improving educational opportunities for inner-city black children, specifically so they can qualify for a higher education and the lifetime of benefits that brings.

We are reaching the limits of political polarization when it turns this self-defeating.

DePaul University in Illinois, the largest Roman Catholic university in the United States, prohibited posters with the slogan “Gay Lives Matter” to advertise a presentation by a gay reporter on Islamic discrimination against LGBT people across the world.

“Using the same look/brand as BLM [Black Lives Matter] pits two marginalized groups against each other,” Amy Mynaugh, director of the Office of Student Involvement at the Catholic university, said in an email rejecting the posters. “It doesn’t appear that Turning Point has any connection to the Black Lives Matter movement and this seems to simply be co-opting another movement’s approach.”

The posters were printed to advertise for an event with the campus group Turning Point USA, entitled “Dictatorships and Radical Islam: The Enemies of Gay Rights.” The speaker, James Kirchick, is an openly gay reporter and author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age.

The anti-Israel group DePaul Students for Justice in Palestine announced its members would protest the event. Kirchick captured a profanity-laced Facebook tirade declaring outrage against the event.

The Facebook user MK Okay characterized Kirchick as “a white, Zionist, neoliberal journalist” who would “speak on sh*t he knows nothing about.” Announcing a protest, MK declared, “Not in our f**king name will you pretend to define our safety, and where danger comes from.”

It gets better. “Not in our f**king name will you continue to demonize Islam and Muslims and ignore the radical Christian right,” the Facebook user continued. “Because we all know & see what the real danger here is – and we all know & see how this is f**ked.” Sure. Because there are so many members of the “radical Christian right” throwing gay people off of buildings…

This selective outrage merely solidified a disturbing trend among the Left. In order to emphasize the “oppression” of Muslims, liberals downplay and perhaps even ignore the deaths and sufferings of LGBT people in the Muslim world. Conservative Christians need to show more charity to LGBT people, but they aren’t stoning them and throwing them off of buildings. CONTINUE AT SITE

Colleges have declared for the enemy in the all-out war on truth and freedom. Why are American taxpayers forced to fund these hotbeds of anti-Americanism and antisemitism? http://pamelageller.com/2017/05/dartmou.html/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

The pro-Israel community at Dartmouth College is still reeling following a decision by school leadership to appoint as their new head of faculty a leading supporter of the movement to boycott Israel and Jewish academics.
Now this.

Dartmouth College announced Wednesday evening that it will be hosting a lecture by virulently anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour, days after an office at the school declined to co-sponsor an event featuring a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces.

This, in the wake of the outrage that CUNY invited Sarsour to keynote their commencement ceremony. This is what the left does. No matter how wrong and evil, they hunker down. We never see this on the right. They don’t stand by their people; they run.

Stand up against the norming of evil. Join us in our protest against hatemonger Linda Sarsour on May 25th. RSVP here. Speakers include:

Milo Yiannopoulos, free speech activist, “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet.”
Assemblyman Dov Hikind, 48th Assembly District
John Guandolo, Counter-Terror Expert, Founder of UnderstandingTheThreat.com.
‘Lauri B. Regan, Endowment for Middle East Truth and National Women’s Committee of the Republican Jewish Coalition
David Wood, Acts 17 Apologetics

Antisemitic bigot Sarsour is an outspoken critic of Israel who furiously supports the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Hamas-inspired initiative that uses various forms of public protest, economic pressure, and lawsuits to advance the Hamas agenda of permanently destroying Israel as a Jewish nation-state.

Vis-a-vis the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, Sarsour favors a one-state solution where an Arab majority and a Jewish minority would live together within the borders of a single country. In October 2012 she tweeted that “nothing is creepier than Zionism.”

There is a place in America where civil rights don’t exist.

The First Amendment doesn’t apply. Neither does the Sixth Amendment. (Never mind the Second.) Not only Freedom of Speech, but Freedom of Association (NAACP v. Alabama) is under fire.

Snowflakes. Oversensitive. We’ve all heard those accusations leveled at college students. Are millennial college students really an oversensitive generation? Or are they right to be oversensitive.

Two types of people are sensitive; the entitled and the endangered. It’s reasonable to be paranoid about subtle social nuances if you live in a totalitarian state where the wrong word or look will be punished. Where someone is always watching for even the most minor acts of political incorrectness.

College students are afraid. And they should be.

The average college campus with its speech codes, thought policing, violent protests and kangaroo courts has no resemblance to anything else in the United States of America.

Colleges are totalitarian states. And they are the blueprints of the left’s plan for the entire country.

Individuals have no rights on campus. Intersectional tribes do. The way that these tribes negotiate conflicting rights is a mix of Kafka and Orwell. In Orwell’s homeland, Oxford University’s Equality and Diversity Unit (a name that could easily have leaped from the pages of 1984) warned students that failing to make eye contact was a racist microaggression. The usual sensible responses accomplished nothing. Then autistic students complained that the microaggression guidelines were themselves a microaggression against students with disabilities. And the “Unit” quickly apologized and retreated.

The absurdity of the situation reeks of old Soviet anecdotes. But the same system exists in the United States.

An individual’s right to free speech on campus derives from his membership in a group. What might be dangerously offensive from a white man is fully legal when coming from a Latino woman or a Muslim man.

Not just the speech, but the evidentiary process is fundamentally different based on group membership. Hysterical panics by favored minority activists lead to quick and illegal sanctions against students and faculty with no regard for the facts. Facts, like truth, are viewed as favoring white males.