RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/san_francisco_state_university_once_against_embraces_terrorism.html

San Francisco State University (“SFSU”) has a history of overt leftism and anti-Semitism going back at least to the 1970s, so perhaps it’s merely business as usual that the campus is hosting an online event featuring Leila Khaled. Still, even for S.F. State, Khaled is extreme. She is a violently anti-Semitic, anti-Israel member of the hard left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group more radical than the PLO. In 1969, she was part of a team that hijacked a TWA flight with 80 people on board and, in 1970, she attempted to hijack another flight while armed with two hand grenades.

Naturally, Khaled is feted on the left. Although she is still affiliated with the PFLP, which the U.S. and the European Union classify as a terrorist organization, in 2017 she spoke to the European Parliament. While there, she said that the Israelis are worse than the Nazis because they haven’t been punished:

“You can’t compare the actions of the Nazis to the actions of the Zionists in Gaza,” she claimed, later adding, “The Nazis were judged in Nuremberg but not a single one of the Zionists has yet been brought to justice.”

SFSU, although a taxpayer-funded institution, is entirely on board with inviting a member of an anti-Semitic terrorist organization to give a speech:

San Francisco State University’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) is scheduled to host later this month a virtual conversation with a known Palestinian terrorist.

The Sept. 23 event, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, & Resistance: A conversation with Leila Khaled,” will take place via Zoom. It will be hosted by SFSU professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa, the former of whom has a history of anti-Israel activism.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/princetons-confession-of-bias-11600469066?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The folks at Princeton are supposed to be smart. But you have to wonder about the intelligence of inviting federal scrutiny by declaring their own school guilty of racism.

Amid a struggle session with progressive faculty and students this month, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber published an open letter promising to combat “systemic racism” at the school. That’s an eye-opener since Princeton has assured students and the federal government that it doesn’t discriminate. Has the university been lying?

Enter the Education Department, which wants to know. On Wednesday Assistant Secretary Robert King wrote Mr. Eisgruber requesting records related to his confession of bias. “Among other things,” Mr. King writes, “you said ‘[r]acism and the damage it does to people of color persist at Princeton . . .’ and ‘[r]acist assumptions . . . remain embedded in structures of the University itself.’”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that no one on the basis of race should “be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Colleges each year must certify to the Education Department that this is true to receive federal funds.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/brown-universitys-gift-to-the-assad-regime/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first

Is Brown University’s Costs of War Project laundering Syrian government talking points, or is the Assad regime taking advantage of Brown’s research?

A study issued last week by the project made the extraordinary claim that post-9/11 military action by the United States has created 37 million refugees — which is only the most conservative estimate, according to its authors.

While estimating the impact of U.S. military action is a worthy goal, the study’s authors simply blame American policymakers for the actions of their foreign counterparts. The siege of Aleppo, resulting in hundreds of thousands misplaced? That’s part of the U.S.’s tab. The displacement of 4.2 million people in Somalia? Attributable to the U.S. special operations forces there — all 400 of them.

At best, as this is an egregious miscount and a sloppy study. Worse, though, it provides cover to those responsible for refugee displacement not caused by the United States, placing significant responsibility on America for the millions displaced during the Syrian Civil War, not the Assad regime or Russia.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/16/leftist-hostility-makes-university-of-chicagos-intellectual-diversity-pledge-a-joke/

The University of Chicago administration and department heads violate the Chicago Principles by using their powerful positions to impose their far-left political beliefs.

A July statement by the University of Chicago English Department faculty announced “For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black studies.”

The English Department’s move to block other areas of intellectual exploration was picked up this week by major news outlets, creating a lot of negative press for the university. While many were shocked by the English Department’s statement, as a third-year student at the University of Chicago, I was not.

Ironically, the University of Chicago prides itself on what they call the “Chicago Principles,” a mission statement claiming a commitment to protecting free speech and encouraging open debate. The publication of the Chicago Principles garnered the university a lot of media attention, kudos from parents concerned with leftist orthodoxy, and set the University of Chicago apart from other elite universities in its efforts to create an environment of political and ideological tolerance on campus. The principles have even been adopted by other schools. 

Unfortunately, in practice, the University of Chicago is hardly a bastion of free speech and political tolerance. It socially and academically rewards groupthink. This summer university departments and administration officials have imposed their politics on the campus community, further emboldening a left-wing mob of students who routinely bully conservatives into silence.