RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.