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EDUCATION

College Students Backtrack on Hamas, Rush to Hide Connections and Pro-Hamas Statements By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/13/college-students-backtrack-on-hamas-rush-to-hide-connections-and-pro-hamas-statements/

Less than a week after Israel was struck by a devastating mass invasion by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, American college students who initially voiced support for the terrorists have now been forced to recant their statements for fear of being canceled.

As Just The News reports, perhaps the biggest example thus far is the story of Ryna Workman, the president of NYU Law’s Student Bar Association. Workman, a black woman who identifies as “non-binary,” had applied for a job with the law firm Winston and Strawn; after she had initially been accepted, the firm then sent out a public statement revoking her job offer after she stated that Israel “bears full responsibility” for the terrorist attacks, which she described as “Palestinian resistance” and “necessary.”

Elsewhere, students at Harvard are now facing backlash after over 30 student groups signed onto a public letter denouncing Israel as an “apartheid regime,” calling the Jewish state “the only one to blame” for the violence. Three days after the attacks, the list of signatories was removed, although archived versions still exist which include the full list.

After the list’s publication, Harvard alumnus and hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman said that “a number of CEOs” had approached him to ask if Harvard would reveal the identities of the student groups, “so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members.”

Members who defend “inconceivably despicable acts” against civilians should “not be able to hide behind a corporate shield,” Ackman added.

ACT Test Scores Fall to 30-Year-Low By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/12/act-test-scores-fall-to-30-year-low/

A new report shows that the average high school student’s ACT college admissions test scores have fallen to their lowest point in 30 years, reflecting an ongoing decline in the quality of education in the United States after the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.

As Fox News reports, the average scores for the American College Testing (ACT) exams have fallen for the last six years in a row, with the decline becoming noticeably faster in the years during and after COVID. The average score in 2023 was 19.5 out of 36, which comes out to a percentage of 54%. In 2022, the average score was 19.8.

Furthermore, the average scores for reading, math, and science all fell below benchmark levels that are necessary for students to have a chance at succeeding in their first year of college. The only score that remained above the benchmark was English, which nevertheless also saw a decline compared to last year.

“The hard truth is that we are not doing enough to ensure that graduates are truly ready for postsecondary success in college and career,” said Janet Godwin, CEO of ACT Inc., the nonprofit organization of the same name which administers the tests.

At least 1.4 million American students took the ACTs this year, which is an increase from the number of students who took them last year. But that number is still below the levels seen before the pandemic. Out of those 1.4 million, only about 21% – roughly 294,000 – reached their benchmark levels for success in college. Of those who succeeded, ACT Inc. determined that there was an approximately 75% chance of students achieving a score of C or higher in the corresponding college courses, and a 50% chance of achieving a B or higher.

Godwin also emphasized the importance of the tests despite numerous college campuses increasingly turning away from standardized test scores as a factor in the admissions process. Some universities, such as the University of California system, are outright ignoring an applicants’ ACT or SAT scores, even if the scores are submitted in the application.

“In terms of college readiness, even in a test-optional environment, these kinds of objective test scores about academic readiness are incredibly important,” said Godwin.

Hamas and Amoral Clarity Support for Hamas killers by the college DEI crowd reveals the real moral and intellectual rot in higher ed By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/12/hamas-and-amoral-clarity/

One unexpected blowback from the medieval Hamas’s barbaric murdering of hundreds of Israeli civilians is the revelation of current global amorality.

More than 20 Harvard university identity politics groups pledged their support to the Hamas murderers—to the utter silence for days of Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment.

But the overt support for Hamas killers by the diversity, equity, and inclusion crowd on a lot of campuses exposes to Americans the real moral and intellectual rot in higher education.

Democratic Socialist members of the new woke Democrat Party openly expressed ecstatic support for Hamas’s bloodwork.

Their biggest fears were not dead fellow Americans or hostages, or some 1,000 butchered Jewish civilians. Instead they were fearful that righteous Israeli retaliation might destroy the Hamas death machine.

Palestinians for years fooled naïfs in Europe and the Obama and Biden administrations into sending billions of dollars into Gaza.

These monies were channeled to tunnel into Israel, to obtain a huge rocket arsenal, and to craft plans to wipe out Jews.

The Biden administration has blood on its hands.

As soon as Biden took power, he resumed massive subsidies to radical Palestinians, canceled by the prior Trump administration.

He ignored warnings from his own state Department that such fungible moneys would soon fuel Hamas terrorism.

His administration dropped sanctions against Iran, ensuring that Tehran would enjoy a multi-billion-dollar windfall to be distributed to Israel’s existential enemies—another fact well known to the Biden administration.

If the Biden administration had announced overtly that it was rabidly anti-Israel, it would be hard to imagine anything it could have done differently from its present nihilist behavior.

Marc Rowan: University Donors, Close Your Checkbooks Trustees, myself included, have sat in silence as our schools were taken over by ideologues. It’s time to wake up. By Marc Rowan

https://www.thefp.com/p/marc-rowan-university-donors-close

While Hamas terrorists were slaughtering Israeli Jews, university administrators were figuring out how to spin it. Do not just take my word for it; read their statements. Across academia, administrators issued statements on behalf of their institutions expressing a repulsive moral equivalence between victims of terror and the perpetrators of that terror. The antisemitic rot in academia is unmistakable.

At the University of Pennsylvania, where I sit on the Wharton School’s Board of Overseers, leaders have for too long allowed this kind of anti-Jewish hate, which sanitizes Hamas’s atrocities, to infect their campuses. There must be consequences.

I call on all UPenn alumni and supporters who believe we are heading in the wrong direction to close their checkbooks until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott Bok resign.

It took less than two weeks to go from the Palestine Writes Literary Festival at the University of Pennsylvania to the barbaric slaughter of innocent civilians in Israel. Foreshadowing Hamas’s massacre, speakers at the gathering—hosted by various university departments and affiliates—advocated ethnic cleansing of Jews, referred to them as “European settlers,” and repeated various blood libels.

UPenn President Elizabeth Magill and Board Chair Scott Bok permitted UPenn to sponsor this conference and failed to condemn its hate-filled calls for violence. This is not a matter of free speech, but University-sponsored hate speech. 

Words and ideas matter. They mattered in the motivation of Hamas terrorists slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent civilians and kidnapping more than a hundred in their goal to annihilate Jews. In our viral, online world it is especially dangerous when once-fringe ideologies receive a stamp of legitimacy—especially from our elite academic institutions, which hold a special place in our society. By sponsoring the spread of the violent ideologies expressed in the Palestine Writes conference, they normalize and give their imprimatur to what would otherwise be considered morally reprehensible.

Exodus of the Wrongthinkers from American Universities Colleges used to encourage the exchange of challenging ideas. Now faculty members who challenge students’ beliefs are being forced to leave the profession. By Francesca Block

https://www.thefp.com/p/exodus-of-wrongthinker-university-professors

One sentence in a blog post almost ruined Thomas Smith’s career.

“If you believe that the coronavirus did not escape from the lab in Wuhan, you have to at least consider that you are an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot of Chinese cock swaddle,” commented Smith, 65, a law professor at the University of San Diego.

He wrote it back in 2021, in a piece questioning the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic on his personal legal blog, which usually received only a few hundred visitors per day. 

But the backlash was swift. Smith estimates 60 students submitted a formal complaint to the administration and accused him of being racist, using derogatory language, and promoting conspiracy theories with “detrimental consequences.” Smith later updated his post to clarify that his ire was directed at the Chinese government, not its people.

A week later, Robert Schapiro, the dean of San Diego’s law school, announced an investigation into Smith in an email to the student body, stressing that “University policies specifically prohibit harassment, including the use of epithets, derogatory comments, or slurs based on race or national origin.”

So Smith hired an attorney known for defending other “cancelled” professors across the country. The university’s in-house counsel investigated him for two months, and ultimately concluded that the blog post was protected by the school’s academic freedom policies. Smith kept his job, but the ordeal left a sour taste in his mouth. 

“I felt anxious, I felt angry, I felt hurt, and I felt done,” Smith tells me with a nervous laugh. 

He said he loved to teach, but lately he’d been struggling to get published in prominent legal journals due to his traditionally conservative ideas arguing against DEI and ESG policies in corporate America. He also found himself self-censoring in his classes so as not to inadvertently offend his students or colleagues. 

But the attempt to cancel him in 2021 was the last straw. 

To hell with this, he thought. In November 2022, he submitted his formal plans to retire. 

Smith is now one of five right-leaning professors out of the 40 faculty at the University of San Diego School of Law who will retire after the spring of 2025. The others include civil rights and labor law scholar Gail Heriot, constitutional law professors Larry Alexander and Steven Smith, and criminal law expert and former law school dean Kevin Cole. 

Ben Sasse’s Letter on Israel to Jewish Gators A model of moral clarity, compared with the mush from the Ivy League.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ben-sasse-statement-israel-university-of-florida-hamas-gaza-3cd633e2?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

In the face of Hamas’s atrocities, some U.S. college administrators at first said little or issued equivocating mush, such as what Dartmouth College put out Tuesday in its “Statement on the Israel-Gaza War.” A notable exception: University of Florida President Ben Sasse.

Here’s what Mr. Sasse wrote Tuesday in an email addressed to “Jewish Gator Alums,” which deserves to be quoted at length:

“I will not tiptoe around this simple fact: What Hamas did is evil and there is no defense for terrorism. This shouldn’t be hard. Sadly, too many people in elite academia have been so weakened by their moral confusion that, when they see videos of raped women, hear of a beheaded baby, or learn of a grandmother murdered in her home, the first reaction of some is to ‘provide context’ and try to blame the raped women, beheaded baby, or the murdered grandmother. In other grotesque cases, they express simple support for the terrorists.

“This thinking isn’t just wrong, it’s sickening. It’s dehumanizing. It is beneath people called to educate our next generation of Americans. I am thankful to say I haven’t seen examples of that here at UF, either from our faculty or our student body. . . .

“In the coming days, it is possible that anti-Israel protests will come to UF’s campus. I have told our police chief and administration that this university always has two foundational commitments: We will protect our students and we will protect speech. This is always true: Our Constitution protects the rights of people to make abject idiots of themselves. . . .

“When evil raises its head, as it has in recent days, it is up to men and women of conscience and courage to draw strength from truth and commit ourselves to the work of building something better—to the work of pursuing justice and pursuing peace. That is what we aim to do through education, compassion, and truth here at the University of Florida.”

Young Jews Brace for ‘A Day of Global Jihad’ At our institutions of higher education, the quads are alive with hate. By Maya Sulkin

https://www.thefp.com/p/young-jews-brace-for-a-day-of-global-jihad?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

I was a deeply unpopular student at Columbia for a simple reason: I was a Zionist. When I posted photos on Instagram of swastikas graffitied across campus, I received private messages telling me I was “attention-seeking.” When I hosted pro-Israel events, commenters online accused me of blood libel. 

I left Columbia earlier this year in part because of this bullying. And now, after more than 1,300 Jews were slaughtered by Hamas in Israel, the hatred that once hid behind my Instagram DMs is appearing in broad daylight right at my alma mater, an Ivy League bastion that has educated politicians, CEOs, and Nobel Prize winners. 

On Wednesday, female Columbia student Maxwell Friedman, 19, was arrested and charged with assault after she beat an Israeli student with a stick outside the school’s main library. 

The following day, hundreds of students gathered outside Columbia’s Alma Mater statue to cheer on the mass genocide of Jews. (In this, they were merely echoing the views published by tenured professor Joseph Massad, who described the scene of “Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence” as “awesome.”) 

For hours, students encircled the quad, waving Palestinian flags and chanting the ten rally cries sanctioned by on-campus activists, including “End the Zionist occupation” and “Stop defending apartheid.” 

Many covered their faces, pulling sweatshirts over their heads in the face of cameras. A few wore N95 masks, sunglasses, and hats all at once. Earlier, one of the student groups behind the event, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, encouraged participants to cover their faces “for safety from doxxing.” 

If We Had to Be Governed by the Harvard Faculty… Here’s a list of possible candidates. James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-we-had-to-be-governed-by-the-harvard-faculty-6e5426ed?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Observing unhinged campus reactions to Saturday’s murderous barbarity, some commenters on social media have been recalling William F. Buckley, Jr.’s opinion that he would rather be governed by the first series of names in a telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard. Certainly one must be extremely wary of consenting to be governed by Harvard students. But not all of their instructors would necessarily oppress us.

On Tuesday afternoon the Journal published this disturbing report from Harvard doctoral student J.J. Kimche:

The university’s “Palestine Solidarity Groups,” a collection of some 30 student groups, issued a statement exculpating the terrorists for their acts of murder, rape, kidnapping and mayhem. “We, the undersigned student organizations,” it began, “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” The signatories—groups such as the Harvard Islamic Society and Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine—made clear that they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with this “resistance,” fashionable doublespeak for those feverishly working to wipe Jews off the face of the earth. Harvard isn’t alone: Some 50 student organizations at the University of California, Berkeley declared their “unwavering support for the resistance in Gaza.”
Most Jewish students have harbored mixed feelings toward pro-Palestinian groups on our campuses. Some sympathize with their cause; others see them as hostile; most ignore them. By and large, we have been happy to regard members of such groups as fellow travelers on the journey of learning and discovery, with whom we share spaces and engage in respectful classroom discussion. But during a moment of stunning moral clarity—such as the live-streaming of masked terrorists gleefully machine-gunning Jewish families—one would expect fellow students of all political persuasions to unite in horror and condemnation. The deepest political differences can be tolerated if we all abide by a basic framework of decency.
Not only have our fellow students failed to condemn this proto-genocide; they have justified and celebrated it.

Kids as Young as Kindergarteners Will Be Allowed to Use Cannabis at School if Michigan Passes New Law The legislation would legally allow students with approved conditions to consume medical marijuana in the form of edibles, beverages, and other low-THC products on school premises By Sandra Rose Salathe

https://people.com/kids-cannabis-school-michigan-if-law-passes-8348098

Michigan K-12 students may soon be permitted to use medical marijuana and CBD-infused products at school under a new bill presented last week.

Proposed by Democratic representatives in the Michigan House, the legislation would legally allow students to consume edibles, beverages and other low-THC marijuana products on school premises or buses.

The administration of these products would be overseen by a designated school staff member. Only students with clear written authorization detailing the timing and purpose, such as for emergency relief or symptom prevention, could use them.

“What it does is allow medical marijuana pediatric patients to have their medication in the schools the same way anyone else has their medications stored,” Michigan State Rep. Jimmie Wilson Jr., told CBS News. “The same way, whether it be in a nurse’s office or an administration office, they would go up and access their medication the same way anyone else would, and they would go back to class.”

The new initiative aims to increase accessibility to medical marijuana for eligible students.

In addition, the bill showcases Michigan’s evolving stance on drug policies, aligning with both its legal and illegal drug environment. For example, a bill introduced in September aimed to decriminalize psychedelic plants, and there was a recent revision to the drug-testing policy for new hires this month.

State Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) expressed his intent to broaden the dialogue regarding specific substances and their place in society.

Israel-bashers headline Jewish center’s speaker series at Temple University I wonder what historian Murray Friedman would think of what his center has become in the hands of his successors. Moshe Phillips

https://www.jns.org/israel-bashers-headline-jewish-centers-speaker-series-at-temple-university/

While attention has been focused on the anti-Israel literary festival at the University of Pennsylvania, harsh critics of Israel are also being featured just across town—at Temple University’s American Jewish Studies Center, also in Philadelphia.

The line-up of speakers during the 2023-24 academic year at Temple University’s Feinstein Center for American Jewish History features one critic of Israel after another. It seems that you have to be angry at the Jewish state in order to qualify to be part of the series.

One of the speakers who already delivered their talk was Eric Alterman, whose latest book, We Are Not One, depicts Israel as an oppressor and derides American Jews for supporting it.

Speaking at Tel Aviv University last year, Alterman announced his personal break with Israel. “I’m sorry; I’m abandoning you and your colleagues,” he declared. “I’m going to devote my attention to rejuvenating American Judaism. Those are my people. I used to have in my will Israeli peace groups, I’m changing my will and I’m funding American Jewish scholarly and charitable institutions.”

In a recent issue of the Jewish Review of Books, a prominent Jewish scholar questioned some of the distortions in Alterman’s book. Alterman responded by denouncing the reviewer as “chief of [the magazine’s] pro-Israel thought police.” That kind of slur gives you a sense of his temperament.

To discuss the current judicial reform debate in Israel, the Feinstein Center chose Gilat Bachar. She’s one of the leaders of a legal initiative to reclassify Israeli anti-terror actions as “policing” (rather than combat) so that more Palestinian Arabs can sue the Israeli government.

It’s interesting to note that nine years ago, Bachar chose to serve as an intern at the extremist HaMoked center, which defends Palestinian Arab terrorists. Does that disqualify her from speaking about Israeli affairs at the Feinstein Center? No. But it does give you a sense of her orientation when she talks about Israeli legal controversies.

Another Feinstein speaker is Talia Lavin. She was forced to resign from the staff of The New Yorker after she falsely accused an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of having a Nazi tattoo. It was actually the symbol of his platoon in Afghanistan, where he risked his life to keep terrorists from coming to the United States to maim and kill innocent people like Lavin.