RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thespectator.com/topic/behind-anger-young-american-hamas-apologists/

EXCERPTS

For the last twenty-five years or so, I have been writing (off and on) on the topic of anger in American life. In one of my books, A Bee in the Mouth, I examined a revolution in American attitudes towards anger. From very early in the English colonization through World War Two, Americans regarded anger as a dangerous force, to be kept under control. The admirable man (and woman) was someone who, when provoked beyond all reason, still kept his cool. He might have to fight, but he would fight with a clean purpose. To be angry beyond self-control was a sign of weakness. Gary Cooper in High Noon was an ideal type; Edward G. Robinson’s character Rico in Little Caesar was the antitype: bloodthirsty, self-pitying, consumed with resentful pride.

All this went into reverse in the years after World War Two. It was an era in which our cultural elites discovered both existentialism and psychoanalysis. Existentialism lauded the “authenticity” of unfettered anger. Psychoanalysis taught us that repressing anger is “unhealthy.” Other factors came into play as well: grievance-based protest politics, the sexual revolution, the Sixties, et cetera. Not suddenly or instantaneously, but gradually and step by step, Americans began to feel that anger could be a good thing. It was empowering to the individual and a tool for “social justice.” It was a scourge of the “hypocrisy” of the middleclass. It was “liberating.”

I would say it took civilization several thousand years to learn how a society could master its darkest impulses. The ancient Greeks failed the test, as anyone who reads the blood-soaked pages of the Peloponnesian Wars knows well. And learning how to suppress rage was never a guarantee that the monsters would always stay away in the forest or under the bed. Nazism and communism showed us that the demonic was always there waiting for its opportunity to burn civilization to the ground and to turn otherwise decent people into murderous brutes.

Which brings me to today. I am not speaking about the intoxicated evil of the young men unleashed by Hamas on Israeli civilians. Those killers are not a case study in the breakdown of civilization, but rather instances of the atavistic savagery of people raised to be piranhas: frenzied, gleeful, sated only by pure evil. They provide no lesson in the breakdown of the norms of self-control, since their only measure is loyalty to a fanatical cause.

https://www.meforum.org/65316/us-house-approves-reporting-on-foreign-funds-to

American universities will no longer be able to count on a complacent federal bureaucracy and weak legislation to avoid disclosing foreign gifts and contracts, if a House vote two days ago becomes law.

The Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act – the DETERRENT Act (H.R. 5933) – passed the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday in a bipartisan vote of 246 to 170. Introduced by Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA) and co-sponsored by Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and 25 other members, the bill significantly strengthens key provision of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.

For decades, many universities have ignored requirements to report foreign gifts or contracts of over $250,000. Legislation lacked the teeth to hold academe accountable, allowing parts of the education bureaucracy to ignore violations of the law. Even if universities complied, they did not need to disclose the purposes for which the funds would be used – a loophole that allowed foreign states such as Qatar and China quietly to fund potentially disreputable projects or individuals.

The Middle East Forum (MEF) has long advocated for greater transparency in the billions of dollars flowing annually to academe from overseas. It especially sounded the alarm about funds from Qatar, a major state patron of Hamas – a danger that Congress has now highlighted after years of MEF’s research drove home this point.

“The fundamental problem with Section 117 is the lack of a serious enforcement mechanism and penalties for those who violate it. It requires far too little disclosure as to what foreign dollars are used for,” says Cliff Smith, MEF’s Washington Project director. “This bill addresses both of those problems and helps ensure that watchdog groups, journalists, and citizens have the information they need in order to know if our universities are falling under malign foreign influence.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-big-university-fail

Forget Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, now in theaters: if you want to watch an epic drama of vanity and failed leadership that ends in catastrophe, just tune in to the hearing held this week by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Summoned to account for the surging anti-Semitism on their campuses, the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania delivered a masterclass in obfuscation. When New York representative Elise Stefanik asked them whether calling for the genocide of the Jewish people violated the codes of conduct of their respective institutions, for example, all three presidents responded by saying that—well, it’s complicated.

“It is a context-dependent decision,” Penn’s Liz Magill answered, driving Stefanik—and anyone else watching with half a heart and a brain—to wonder just what was so difficult or context-dependent about cheering for the murder of every Jewish man, woman, and child.

The hearing made headlines, and rightly so. But it would be a mistake to focus on the trio’s failure to sound remotely empathic when discussing the safety and wellbeing of their Jewish students. The problem with Harvard, Penn, MIT, and others isn’t merely that these previously august institutions condone, or at the very least tolerate, anti-Semitism. It goes much deeper, and you could sum it up in three letters: DEI—or diversity, equity, and inclusion, the ongoing effort to regulate a host of policies pertaining to race, sexual orientation, and other identity markers.

Consider Harvard. Our nation’s most lauded university is currently home to 7,240 undergraduate students and 7,024 administrators, or nearly one administrator for each young adult. Some of these officials, it’s possible, are doing important work. But if you’re wondering what the rest are up to, you needn’t look much further than the Crimson, the university’s long-running student newspaper. Recently, the Crimson reported on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, created on the recommendation of the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. The Visual Culture and Signage task force’s 24 members, including nine administrators, toiled for months and interviewed more than 500 people before delivering a 26-page report that included recommendations like one urging Harvard to “clarify institutional authority over FAS visual culture and signage.” This farce ended the only way it could have—with the minting of a new administrative post, the FAS campus curator, and a new committee, the FAS Standing Committee on Visual Culture and Signage, to help facilitate the curator’s all-important work.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/harvard-english-department-offers-a-course-on-taylor-swift/

Harvard’s English Department has just announced a new course, to be taught by Professor Stephanie Burt — né Stephen Burt — on the life and work and miracles of Taylor Swift, a pop country singer well known for her garish and skimpy costumes, her semi-obscene pelvic thrusts this way and that way, and her very public romance (it has already lasted two whole months) with tight end Travis Kelce, complete with air kisses thrown between them at his football games and her concerts, to the delight of tens of thousands present for these premeditated displays of true-blue love. Already, hundreds of Harvard students have signed up, hoping to be selected to take this course. It may be the most oversubscribed course in the history of Harvard’s English Department.

The English Department — or rather, Professor Stephanie L. Burt, who created the course and will be teaching it — describe the course here.

In 2009, you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” on the radio, in grocery stores, and on TV. Harvard English professor Stephanie L. Burt ’94 still remembers the first time she heard it, describing it as so much “better” and “more compelling” than all the other pop songs that were playing at the time.

Fourteen years later, and Burt is still a diehard Swiftie. Her interest in Swift has followed her to the classroom. Next semester, Harvard’s English Department will debut the course “Taylor Swift and Her World,” taught by Burt. In this class, students will earn college credit for their deep dives into Swift’s lyrics, music, and influence, dissecting her catalog and reading a host of authors Burt finds relevant to understanding Swift’s artistry.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20195/hamas-students-for-justice-in-palestine

Many pro-Hamas demonstrations that have been taking place on US campuses since Hamas launched its war on Israel on October 7, when more than 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded and raped, pillaged, murdered and kidnapped their way through the small communities of southern Israel, have reportedly been led by a radical organization known as National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP).

According to a 2018 monograph… NSJP was founded in 2010 by leaders of American Muslims for Palestine and the US Palestinian Community Network, two organizations linked to US-designated terror organizations.

The letter [to nearly 200 university presidents] cites the NSJP toolkit document: “The toolkit refers to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel as ‘the resistance.’ This was followed by statements at campus events where students proudly declared ‘We are Hamas,’ and ‘We echo Hamas.'”

Material support for a terrorist organization is a serious matter, too dangerous to leave for university presidents to solve. They frequently appear more concerned about placating the radical elements on their campuses.

Many of these academic institutions receive federal funding. However, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” Title IV also covers “violations based on religion.”

If a university allows material support for a terrorist organization, or discrimination against Jews, its federal financial assistance should be cancelled at once.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dei-drives-campus-antisemitism-harvard-ivy-ackman-israel-bds-b19ebd12?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Tuesday’s House hearing on campus antisemitism ratcheted up the pressure on American universities: counter the anti-Israel vitriol that exploded in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack or risk losing philanthropic and government support. The leading approach is sure to fail: doubling down on the ideologies and practices that led to the pro-Hamas fever in the first place.

Bill Ackman, the hedge-fund manager leading a Harvard donor revolt, told CNBC on Nov. 6 that he hadn’t previously read Harvard’s DEI statement. Though he had assumed DEI was “for all marginalized groups,” once he read the statement, he realized that “the DEI program at Harvard is limited to specific groups and exploits others.” Instead, Mr. Ackman suggested, DEI should cover all minorities, including Jews and Asians.

Jon Huntsman Jr. halted his contributions to the University of Pennsylvania on Oct. 15 to protest its leaders’ silence in the face of “hate,” which higher ed was “built to obviate.” An open letter to Penn President Liz Magill initiated by alumnus Marc Rowan called for mandatory antisemitism awareness training across the university. The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has demanded that Penn add modules on antisemitism to the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion trainings.

College leaders are happy to oblige. As Ms. Magill told lawmakers Tuesday, Penn has created an Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism and a University Task Force on Antisemitism. Since antisemitism is “interconnected” to “other forms of hate,” Ms. Magill explained in a Nov. 1 message, Penn is also rolling out a presidential commission on Islamophobia. The university must do better to “reject hate in all its forms,” she said on Nov. 1.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-next-battle-over-racial-preferences

Near the end of July, New York State assemblywoman and Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn took to the Daily News op-ed page to condemn the city’s eight specialized high schools, where a student’s score on a single standardized test determines who gets in—and the student bodies are disproportionately Asian. “New York City’s public specialized high schools are coveted as an equalizing springboard to success,” Bichotte Hermelyn wrote, “but in reality, they are overwhelmingly segregated, thanks to the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) being the sole admission factor.”

Of the more than 22,000 New York City students who took the SHSAT for the 2022–23 academic year, 31 percent were Asian American, 25.8 percent were Latino, 20.7 percent were black, and 17.1 percent were white. Yet just 3.2 percent of black test-takers and 5.7 percent of Latino test-takers received offers to attend the schools, compared with 52.5 percent of Asian American test-takers and 27.8 percent of white test-takers.

The racial imbalance among enrolled students is most pronounced at the three oldest and most elite of the schools—Stuyvesant High School (Stuyvesant), Bronx High School of Science (Bronx Science), and Brooklyn Technical High School (Brooklyn Tech). For the 2021–22 academic year, Asian Americans accounted for 72 percent of Stuyvesant’s student body, 63 percent of Bronx Science’s, and 60 percent of Brooklyn Tech’s. Results from previous years tell a similar story. “I propose getting rid of the current test,” Bichotte Hermelyn wrote. “It’s time to rewrite the laws in New York City and change the paradigm to end segregation in high schools.”

The assemblywoman said nothing explicitly about Asian Americans, but many within Gotham’s Asian American community viewed her proposal as tacitly anti-Asian. One day after the Daily News op-ed, the assemblywoman’s photo, along with her comments about the selective schools, appeared on the front page of several local Chinese newspapers. “AM Bichotte resurrects anti Asian racism by using the end of AA as her excuse to attack admissions to NYC Specialized High Schools,” tweeted Yiatin Chu, founder of the New York political club Asian Wave Alliance. And several elected officials released statements backing the specialized high schools, the SHSAT, and their Asian constituents, who consider a child’s admission to one of the schools as a ticket to advancement.