RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/a_peek_into_how_educrats_indoctrinate_our_children.html

As a lifelong conservative and a retired teacher, I welcome all efforts to wrest control over education from the leftist educrats. I long for a day when we can send our kids to public schools and know they are being educated, not indoctrinated. But indoctrinated they are and one of the main vehicles is the seemingly innocuous “Advisory” module.

As parents, we send our children to public schools to learn English, math, science, history, and other subjects deemed desirable by our society. Our schools also teach propaganda aimed at transforming America into something like the America that President Obama longed for when he said he wanted to transform America during his administration.

Recently, conservative groups critical of Obama’s vision have challenged those school boards and politicians suspected of trying to help Obama transform America. The defeat of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and opposition to Critical Race Theory show that parents and taxpayers are wising up to the leftward march of American Public Education.

As I said, I support wresting control of American Public Education from the leftist educrats. Even as we celebrate the victory of Governor Youngkin and the attention on CRT that is making the news on a regular basis, however, we must not underestimate the educrats’ power. They will not go away quietly. They are true believers and they expect that conservatives will lose interest in this fight.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/harvards-jew-hate-ronn-torossian/

Last month, Harvard Law School deemed Israel in a report to the United Nations as “an apartheid regime.” They issued a 22 page report claiming that Israel systematically discriminates against Palestinians and suppresses their civil and political rights.” Harvard’s report “finds that Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank are in breach of the prohibition of apartheid and amount to the crime of apartheid under international law.”

Now, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard University, has  endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. They also expressed support for Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, a student group that annually hosts an “Israel Apartheid Week” on campus. The editorial says, “We are proud to finally lend our support to both Palestinian liberation and BDS — and we call on everyone to do the same.”

One wonders if those behind said editorial of boycotting the Jewish state are concerned for their job prospects as they would be, say if they endorsed the KKK or any other form of racism. This is pure and unmitigated hatred and antisemitism. And its politically acceptable at Harvard apparently. 

At Harvard Law School there is a spring 2022 class on “Law, Human Rights, and Social Justice in Israel and Palestine” taught by Ms. Salma Waheedi, who has signed a letter to “express solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom and self-determination. Israeli state violence has devastated Palestinian life through a combination of warfare, territorial theft, and violent displacement. Unwavering US financial, military, and political support has fueled an apartheid system that institutionalizes the domination and repression of Palestinians.”

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/at-harvard-facts-are-for-losers?token=

There is no one writing more lucidly today on the subject of Jews and Jew-hatred than Dara Horn.

I find myself constantly recommending her essays—especially this one, called The Cool Kids—and her recent book, People Love Dead Jews. As I wrote my own book about antisemitism, these two sentences from Dara helped me frame my own thinking: “Since ancient times, in every place they have ever lived, Jews have represented the frightening prospect of freedom. As long as Jews existed in any society, there was evidence that it in fact wasn’t necessary to believe what everyone else believed, that those who disagreed with their neighbors could survive and even flourish against all odds.”

In other words, where liberty thrives, Jews thrive. But where liberty is under siege, Jews will inevitably be, too.

I find myself constantly returning to that theme as I am bombarded by news of historically high antisemitism here in America, and as I read, last week, of the Harvard Crimson’s decision to endorse the boycott movement against Israel. That’s the subject of Dara’s essay today, which we are thrilled to publish. — BW

“…Twenty-five years later, I still remember the theatrics involved with becoming an editor at the Harvard Crimson, the newspaper produced by Harvard undergraduates every day for the past century and a half. The newspaper’s office had a room upstairs called the Sanctum, so named because only those who had jumped through the paper’s prescribed journalistic hoops were allowed to enter—and then only for Sunday night editorial meetings, at which the coming week’s worth of unsigned editorials were debated and approved under strict secrecy. Newly minted editors were welcomed into the room with the question, “What are your politics?” One’s answer determined the side of the room where one would sit for these debates.

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/65000-fake-students-enrolled-in-the?s=w

Every few days, Professor Kim Rich looks through new student registrations for the Los Angeles Community College District, including at Pierce College where she teaches criminal justice, and sees hundreds of newly created fake student enrollments.

In our conversations with Rich, she told us that It’s been going on for months.

Hackers enroll the fake students and collect up to $900 million in financial aid and Covid-19 aid each semester. However, no one seems to know for sure the sheer scale of the fraud.

These fake students, usually created by bots, open new accounts using easy-to-spot fake names like Barack Obama, Donald Trump or duplicate first names — Clifford Clifford, Jordan Jordan, Sidney Sidney, Kamara All of the above and fivethousandonehundredseven — names with questions marks or names with numbers.

New fake accounts are created, the fake students enroll in classes, taking seats away from actual students hoping to enroll in those classes. The fake accounts also “qualify” for financial aid.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/03/dc-school-gives-anti-racism-fistbook-to-4-year-olds-asks-them-to-out-racist-family-members/

At a public elementary school in Washington D.C., teachers and other staff members forced “anti-racism” curriculum on students as young as four years old, and even went so far as to ask the children to out allegedly racist family members.

As reported by Fox News, a letter signed by Danielle Singh, principal of Janney Elementary School, and dated from November 30th confirms that students were forced to participate in an “Anti-Racism Fight Club.” The event was hosted by a speaker named Doyin Richards.

“As part of this work, each student has a fist book to help continue the dialogue at school and home,” Singh confirmed in the letter, with a link to Richards’ presentation. “We recognize that any time we engage topics such as race and equity, we may experience a variety of emotions. This is a normal part of the learning and growing process. As a school community we want to continue the dialogue with our students and understand this is just the beginning.”

Richards’ book, the “Anti-Racism Fight Club Fistbook for Kids,” declares that “White people are a part of a society that benefits them in almost every instance,” and that “it’s as if White people walk around with an invisible force field because they hold all of the power in America.”

“If you are a White person, White privilege is something you were born with and it simply means that your life is not more difficult due to the color of your skin,” Richards says in the book. “Put differently, it’s not your fault for having White privilege, but it is your fault if you choose to ignore it.” The book also says that “anti-racism” involves being “loud, uncomfortable, confrontational and visible to ensure change is made.”

The book then demands that the students ask them to find racism in themselves, then asks about family members.

“Just because someone is older than you doesn’t mean that they’re right all of the time,” the book continues. “Parents need to stop making excuses for that behavior if they truly believe in anti-racism. Who in your family has racist beliefs? Do you think you can change their ways? What is your strategy for dealing with them?”

Parents have already taken to the district’s online forums to complain about the material, with one anonymous commenter claiming that their child was traumatized by the unknown contents of the lesson.

“Anyone else’s Kindergarten kid freaked out by an anti-racism assembly today? My kid needed to sleep with a light on and the door open tonight,” said the comment. “Anyone know what specifically was talked about? My kid couldn’t relay much except that she was scared.”

In a statement responding to the leaked reports, DC Public Schools claimed that the “fistbook” was never shared with students.

“DC Public Schools provides joyful and rigorous academic experiences for our students and is committed to advancing educational equity,” the district’s statement said. “In December, a resource link with this content was shared in a parent newsletter at one of our schools. It is not part of our DCPS curriculum and was not shared with students.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/open-letter-editorial-board-harvard-crimson-richard-l-cravatts/

“In short, you have given credence to Bertrand Russell’s observation that “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

On April 29th, in a breathtaking display of tendentiousness and a misreading of history and fact, you published an editorial in the Harvard Crimson entitled, “In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanction and a Free Palestine,” an outrageous column replete with slanders against the Jewish state that called for the Harvard community to commit itself to the corrosive BDS campaign against Israel.

You suggested that the editorial was inspired by the April demonstrations and programming of the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (HCPSC) which, as part of Israeli Apartheid Week, “installed a colorful, multi-panel ‘Wall of Resistance’ in favor of Palestinian freedom and sovereignty.” Additionally, you heaped praise on the childish mock wall and suggested that “art is a potent form of resistance” and that you were “humbled by our peers’ passion and skill” in creating such an activist masterpiece.

Even more importantly, you contended, fallaciously, “The admittedly controversial panels dare the viewer to contend with well-established, if rarely stated, facts [emphasis added].” What are examples of those “well-established facts” you alluded to? One panel announced in capital letters, for example, that “Zionism is: Racism – Settler Colonialism – White Supremacy – Apartheid,” mendacious slurs that echo the UN’s notorious 1975 Resolution 3379 that proclaimed that Zionism is racism.

Framing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a matter of race, as this foolish display did, and accusing Israel of maintaining a system of apartheid, is something that Israel-haters are fond of doing, even when the charge is patently false. The accusation of apartheid was given even more support last year with the publication of reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both obsessive, perennial critics of Israel, that redefined apartheid in a way that it could be used to slander Israel—reports that you, in fact, alluded to in your editorial. The puerile accusation of white supremacy against Israel is as grotesque and unhinged as is the oft-repeated claim that Israelis are the new Nazis, committing genocide against the Palestinians, and both are not only counter-factual but are also forms of anti-Semitic expression described in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism.

Of course, your claim that the “facts” on the HCPSC mock wall are “well-established” is only true inasmuch as these are facts that live in the minds of progressives and anti-Semites who promiscuously and carelessly throw around words without attention to their actual meaning and import. Progressive thought, such as is apparent in this editorial, involves allowing emotions to define things instead of facts.

https://www.nysun.com/article/antisemitism-comes-to-harvard-in-both-intent-and-effect?utm_content=The%20Evening%20Sun

During my presidency of Harvard 20 years ago I warned that “serious and thoughtful people are advocating measures that would be antisemitic in their effect if not their intent.” 

In light of the recent exhibition by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee in Harvard Yard and the resounding endorsement of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions by the Harvard Crimson, it is clear to me that antisemitism is being practiced in both intent and effect.

To be clear at the outset, free expression must be sacrosanct in an academic community. The PSC and the Crimson have every right to express their view no matter how upsetting it may be to others. Academic freedom, though, does not mean freedom from criticism or the right to have contemptible views treated with respect. It is no shield against moral bankruptcy.  

This has long been recognized at Harvard as, say, when Drew Faust was president and deemed a student-led Black Mass — a ritual performed by satanic cults to parody the Catholic Church — to be abhorrent and a fundamental affront to academic values of inclusion even as she ruled out any suggestion that event be banned. 

Likewise when controversial conservative scholar Charles Murray was invited to speak at Harvard, a variety of communications were sent to students labeling him a practitioner of racist pseudoscience.

So there is nothing “anti-First Amendment” about calling out antisemitism. Indeed not identifying and attacking antisemitism in our midst would be a major moral failing, especially when it comes in conjunction with proposals to instrumentalize the university by having it engage in antisemitism.

The question that remains is whether the BDS agenda enthusiastically embraced by the PSC and the Crimson is in fact antisemitic. The Crimson and other BDS proponents ​​condemn antisemitism and note that there are people of Jewish descent who support BDS. That is true.

It’s also true that President Trump asserts firmly that he is not racist and can point to prominent African-American supporters and to having received more than a million votes from African Americans. At Harvard we don’t consider such assertions “arguments.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/academic-diversity-quotas-are-real/

Who should be the custodians of science? For centuries, scientists themselves have been. Now, their custodianship is under threat.

Science has long operated as a sort of guild, with the guild managing its own practice and traditions. This holds for the guild’s continuity: admission of aspiring members to the guild is controlled by the guild itself. For the sciences, aspiring members must clear a competitive series of hurdles: apprenticeship (graduate school), journeyman (post-doctoral fellow and assistant professor), then full membership (tenured professor).

For the past few decades, science’s stewardship has been shifting into the hands of an arriviste managerial class with no idea what science is or any real respect for it. Their aim is to seize control over the hiring of new faculty. No longer will admission to the science guild be based on assessed merit and mastery, but on de facto hiring quotas based upon race, gender, and sexual proclivity.

The new quota system is being implemented through the “diversity statement,” which demands an applicant express fealty, not to the guild, but to the new managerial class. The guild’s standards for admission — once a sign of mastery — are thereby subordinated.