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Classical music under assault in academia Paul Mirengoff

Posted By on March 30th, 2021

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/03/classical-music-under-assault-in-academia.php

Oxford University reportedly is under pressure to stop, or at least curtail, the teaching of sheet music, musical notation, and even the classical music that was scored upon it. The rationale is that all of this is “too colonial,” and that Beethoven, Mozart, and music in general are “complicit in white supremacy.”

It’s not just students and BLM groups that are pushing this insanity. In fact, professors seem to be leading the charge. According to this report:

The proposals put forward by one faction of academics to address so-called “white hegemony” include rethinking the study of instructive ­musical symbols because it is a ­“colonialist representational system.”

Their document states teaching notation that has not “shaken off its connection to its colonial past” would be a “slap in the face” for some students. Music writing studies have been ­earmarked for rebranding to be more inclusive and diverse.

In addition:

[T]he rebel professors. . .believe skills such as learning piano or conducting orchestras, should no longer be compulsory. They allege the repertoire “structurally centres white European music”, which causes “students of ­colour great distress”.

Almost all of the professors behind this movement reportedly are White.

What do they propose to replace “sheet” and “classical” music courses with? Special topics According to this report:

These special topics would include “Introduction to Sociocultural and Historical Studies,” or “African and African Diasporic Musics,” “Global Musics,” and “Popular Musics.” So instead of studying the history of western music, which has been evolving and changing for thousands upon thousands of years, students will study what is happening in music right now.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s Rule By Decree: How Far Can He Go?

Posted By on March 30th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/30/joe-bidens-rule-by-decree-how-far-can-he-go/

President Joe Biden’s candidacy was built on the idea that he was an old, experienced, centrist in Washington, someone who could bring two sides together. So far, with his penchant for issuing “executive orders” to fundamentally change America, he’s governing precisely as a socialist dictator would. Is that what Americans voted for?

Never mind talk of Biden’s clear symptoms of age-related dementia as he stumbles, fumbles and mumbles his way through his presidential duties. Even at 78, Biden is still our nation’s chief executive and commander in chief. He has power, and he plans to use it.

He’s already issued more than 50 executive orders, including 22 reversals of previous Trump policies. Even his aides have gotten in on the imperious act: Last weekend one of Biden’s public relations people physically interfered with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s efforts to film the conditions of migrants at the U.S. border. Is this the Soviet Union?

Biden’s ready to do more — a lot more. PJ Media noticed this gem from White House spokesperson Jen Psaki’s press conference last week, in reference to gun control.

“We are considering a range of levers, including working through legislation, including executive action … he as vice president was leading the effort on determining executive actions that could be taken on gun safety measures, it’s something that he has worked on, he’s passionate about, he feels personally connected to. But there’s an ongoing process and I think we feel we have to work on multiple channels at the same time.”

But it won’t just be gun control. No, he has plans for lots of “executive actions” to bring about a major reshaping of American civic, political and cultural life, whether Americans like it or not.

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Biden’s Border Crisis, Up Close His policies endanger vulnerable migrants by encouraging them to make perilous illegal crossings.Jillian Kay Melchior

Posted By on March 30th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-border-crisis-up-close-11617057522?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Sixty-five adults and 152 children clambered aboard smugglers’ rafts to cross the Rio Grande near Roma, a border town of 10,000. One Honduran woman hobbled on board on crutches. A human trafficker had broken her leg assaulting her in Mexico, but she was determined to get to the U.S., so she paid the $3,500 coyote’s fee and struggled onto the flimsy vessel. The group also included a mother cradling her 6-month-old daughter. It was March 16, a balmy evening. Around 8:45 p.m., hell broke loose.

Border Patrol agents came on the crossing, accompanied by a Texas special-operations group. The smugglers grabbed the dark-haired baby girl and hurled her into the deep water. They capsized the rafts, sending panicked migrants flailing into the dark currents. “They did that to distract law enforcement so it would become a rescue operation,” says Lt. Christopher Olivarez, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

American authorities managed to rescue the baby, and a photo shows a Texas officer cradling the little girl. Her tiny arms stretch toward him, and her striped shirt and yellow polka-dot pants are soaked. The authorities also saved the woman with the broken leg and helped parents and children reach the shore. The Department of Public Safety incident report records no fatalities or serious injuries. But the smugglers escaped.

President Biden has criticized Donald Trump’s immigration strategy as inhumane and vowed to treat migrants compassionately. Yet his policies have created perverse incentives for vulnerable migrants to enter the U.S. in dangerous ways. Those policies enrich the Mexican cartels that extort, kidnap, rape and exploit Central American migrants.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The China-Iran Axis Beijing gains influence and helps Tehran evade U.S. sanctions.

Posted By on March 30th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-china-iran-axis-11617059716?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Anyone who thought the world would warm to U.S. interests once Donald Trump left the scene has received a rude awakening in the last two months. The latest sign is the weekend’s pact between China and Iran, an example of U.S. adversaries uniting to advance their strategic ambitions.

The two sides signed what they described as a 25-year “strategic partnership” that amounts to a significant deepening of ties. China will invest several hundred million dollars in a variety of Iranian projects, including nuclear power, ports, and oil and gas development. In return China will get a steady supply of Iranian oil. The two will also deepen their defense cooperation as China will transfer some military technology.

Apologists for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are saying this doesn’t add up to more than the status quo, and thus shouldn’t interfere with renewed U.S. courtship of Iran. Don’t believe them. This is a big deal that advances the strategic interests of both sides—at the expense of the U.S. and stability in the Middle East.

The deal helps Iran dodge American sanctions, and the cash infusion will ease economic pressure on the ruling mullahs. Iran will have a long-time buyer for its oil exports that were reduced by U.S. sanctions. The foreign-exchange income, if that’s how the payments are made, will finance the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and proxy forces in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

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A Near Call: Whether the Left Will Implode or Triumph Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 30th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-near-call-whether-the-left-will-implode-or-triumph_3754081.html?utm_source=partner

Here’s a question that I do not know the answer to: “Is the Left on the Cusp of Permanent Triumph, Or Is It Committing Suicide?”

That’s the title of an essay by Francis Menton at his blog Manhattan Contrarian.

Menton points out that the sudden acceleration of “cancel culture” and social media “de-platforming” are only two arrows in the Left’s quiver of intimidation.

Another weapon—more bludgeon than arrow, perhaps—ratchets up the Left’s “coercive suppression of dissent” to new, Soviet or Chinese Communist levels of ferociousness.

One main tactic is the universalization of diversity imperatives. The whole “diversity” gambit was always noxious because it never had anything to do with fostering genuine diversity—which requires a sedulous fostering of dissenting opinion and open debate about contentious issues.

On the contrary, the diversity racket was always about enforcing conformity and ideological purity.

The difference now is that what had been confined to a few administrative proclamations and particular “consciousness raising” classes has metastasized and is poised to dictate the emotional and ideological weather of entire institutions.

This development was possible only because of the Left’s “long march through the institutions.” It began in the 1960s with a handful of outside agitators.

It gained steam in succeeding decades as activists slipped into more and more positions of power—administrators as well as faculty. The puzzle was completed and fully weaponized when the government stepped in and backstopped the radicals.

Bureaucratic Instruction

They didn’t necessarily look like radicals. Many of the examples that Menton adduces are just ordinary academic administrators who, in embracing the poison of woke ideology, have trampled all over the ideals of individual rights, due process, and fostering an atmosphere where substantive, fact-based argument, not racial grievance mongering, could thrive.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Part 2: Whatever Happened to Writing? By David Solway

Posted By on March 29th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/03/27/part-2-whatever-hap

In Lee Child’s thriller Personal, his audacious hero Jack Reacher lays down the four attributes of good spycraft: hard work, attention to detail, lateral thinking (“outside the box,” as the phrase has it) and unconventional or creative adaptations to circumstance. These are precisely the traits that characterize the mindset and practice of the good writer in any field or genre. Apart from the pragmatic aspects of, let us say, writecraft, one may add, as Ernest Hemingway did in A Moveable Feast, a moral component as well. “All you have to do is write one true sentence,” Hemingway said. “Write the truest sentence that you know.” The rest follows.

Honesty of purpose in Hemingway’s terms and fidelity to craft in the Lee Child/Jack Reacher sense entail both the writer’s fealty to himself or herself and commitment to the reader. These are the qualities that are demonstrably missing, for instance, in propaganda, in hortatory manuals of self-improvement, in government reports, in social media’s verbal expulsions, in academic jargonfests, and in almost all contemporary journalism.

I have begun to notice that many Internet writers and even notable scholars whom I’ve long respected have begun writing ever shorter paragraphs, culminating in the forlorn, one sentence taglet, a sort of stichometry catering to the growing problem of attention deficiency. Moreover, these sentences are often pimpled with typos, attesting to an author’s lack of diligence—I recall one well-known writer who wrote “the Pubic wars” for “the Punic wars,” without noticing. Another common solecism is the jagged or wrenching transition from one sentence to another, obscuring the thought. Of course, everyone is prone to such errors, and this writer is not exempt—to err is human—but the question here is one of frequency, of an all too casual unawareness or lack of care. The best one can say of such writing is that it may be serviceable, but it does not stride on the page with athletic confidence. It exhibits neither grace nor muscle. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Meet The New Pentagon ‘Diversity Chief’ Who Compared Trump To Hitler By Gabe Kaminsky

Posted By on March 29th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/29/meet-the-new-pentagon-diversity-chief-who-compared-trump-to-hitler/

The U.S. Special Operations Command’s newly-hired “chief of diversity and inclusion” shared anti-Trump memes on Facebook, namely one that likens the former president to Adolf Hitler.

Upon the Defense Department’s announcement of the hiring of Richard Torres-Estrada, several volatile posts were dug up. A comparison photo of Hitler and Trump Photoshopped next to each other, holding Bibles in the air, has caught the most eyes. Torres-Estrada posted it on June 2, 2020.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson discussed Torres-Estrada’s post in a segment on Friday. “The point is, they’re the same,” Carlson said, saying clearly what the diversity director was trying to communicate. “So, this is the guy who now oversees hiring for the SEALs.”

“The Pentagon is now the Yale faculty lounge, but with cruise missiles. That should concern you,” Carlson said, harping on the extent to which the military has gone fully woke.

Carlson’s description of the military comes weeks after the Department of Defense went fully partisan and condemned Carlson for his critique of the department for introducing a flight suit for pregnant women. For some odd reason, the Defense Department decided to get involved in political affairs, and press spokesman John Kirby directed his staff to issue communications in response to the Fox News host’s claim. This is most certainly a violation of the department’s Principles of Information philosophy, which says the agency will not engage in “propaganda” or function like a public relations firm.

Torres-Estrada posted one photo of Trump on July 8, 2020, surrounded by quotes smearing him, and a “missing” sign of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Feb. 19, 2021.

“Looks like the new diversity officer loves celebrating diversity with those who agree with him. Here is what he thinks of the rest of us — Mr. Torres-Estrada was not placed in US Special Operations command by mistake,” tweeted Joe Kent, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces chief warrant officer three.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Third Way on the Place of Critical Race Theory in the Classroom By David Bernstein, Amna Khalid & J.D. Richmond

Posted By on March 29th, 2021

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/03/29/a_third_way_on_the_place_of_critical_race_theory_in_the_classroom_110556.html

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently banned Critical Race Theory (CRT) from being taught in Florida’s public schools. He stated that “Florida’s civics curriculum will incorporate foundational concepts with the best materials, and it will expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like Critical Race Theory and other unsubstantiated theories…we will invest in actual, solid, true curriculum, and we will be a leader in the development and implementation of a world-class civics curriculum.”

CRT, a school of thought that focuses on the effects of race on one’s social standing, is a distinct lens that sees racial disparities embedded in power structures and perpetuated by the people who benefit from them. Drawing on postmodern ideas that humans perceive reality through an array of power structures, animating how we think about race and other social issues, it upholds systemic deconstruction as the only way to progress. To start, marginalized people have special insight into their own plight and should define race and racism for the rest of society. Emotion and lived experience matter as much, or more than, rational discourse.

That said, both the common use of CRT, which is to teach it as established dogma, and the governor’s exclusion of it, strike us as highly illiberal. Perhaps we can draw on Martin Luther King’s wisdom: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.” Like DeSantis, we decry the dogmatic application of CRT as the only way forward, but unlike the Florida Governor, we also see value in CRT as one way to explore social power dynamics. And so we encourage a third way: a pluralistic civics education that teaches Critical Race Theory alongside numerous other approaches to social science and social justice.

DeSantis’s move comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s ban of CRT in September 2020 in Federal agencies. The Biden Administration rescinded the Executive Order in the President’s first week in office. Still, it remains a hot topic, with many Republicans favoring the ban and many Democrats supporting CRT education. Numerous states, especially those with Republican-dominated legislators and governors, are trying to ban CRT altogether.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Charles Jacobs–US Jewish Leaders between Wokeness and Antisemitism

Posted By on March 29th, 2021

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/global-patriot-radio/2021/03/26/conservative-c

One of America’s top Jewish leaders, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) founder Charles Jacobs joins show host Andrew E. Harrod to discuss the state of Jewish-American leadership in the face of rising, multifaceted antisemitism.  Traditionally left-leaning politically, American Jewish communities have often thought of antisemitism as a phenomenon associated with Christian prejudice and extreme nationalism, like the European beliefs that facilated Nazi genocide in Europe during World War II.  By contrast, recent decades, particularly since Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks, have witnessed rising Islamic and leftist antisemitism, with a focus on condemnation of the Jewish state of Israel.  Leftist political proclivities and intersectional alliances of Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), however, have prevented them from correctly analyzing today’s antisemitic threats.  Jacobs will discuss the ADL’s long-developing malaise and possible reforms in Jewish leadership, among other matters.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kamala Harris MIA during border crisis: Where is she? The vice president is reportedly frustrated with ongoing mansion renovations by Angelica Stabile

Posted By on March 29th, 2021

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-during-this-border-mess

The Biden administration is putting out a call for government volunteers to report for duty amid the significant surge at the border, but many are asking, Where is the person deputized to ‘fix’ the line-in-the-sand crisis? 

As the immigration mess at the southern border gets more and more out of hand, Vice President Kamala Harris remains inexplicably silent.

Even after President Biden officially tapped the VP Wednesday to lead in response to border challenges, there aren’t any plans for her to travel south or even address the issue. According to the Office of the Vice President, Harris had no events this past weekend and no mention of border-related activity.

This comes as the Biden administration is now asking for government volunteers to help manage the migrant surge. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has sent memos to agency heads seeking “volunteer deployments” for up to 120 days, Fox News confirmed.

“We are actively working to screen, process and deploy these volunteers while continuing our recruitment efforts and exploration of other avenues to bolster staff resources at the border,” an OPM spokesperson said.In the meantime, while government officials are preparing to volunteer their time to help keep our borders safe, according to CNN, Harris is currently frustrated with the ongoing renovations being made to the vice president’s mansion – forcing her and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to temporarily stay at Blair House, the president’s official guest quarters.