EDUCATION Comments turned off

BU Professor Reveals This Week’s New Thing That’s Racist $58,000 to attend Boston University. And this is what you get. Robert Spencer

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/bu-professor-reveals-weeks-new-thing-thats-racist-robert-spencer/

It costs $58,000 a year to attend Boston University, but don’t think that for all that money you’re going to get anything resembling, say, an education. No, Boston University today, like most other American colleges and universities, is dedicated to turning out thoroughly indoctrinated Leftists who will serve as reliable cadres in the fundamental transformation of American society that both Barack Obama and Joe Biden have promised us. That’s why BU employs someone such as Saida Grundy as an assistant professor: a racist apologist for rioting is just the kind of professor the universities want these days. Having one on staff is a big source of prestige.

This is clear from the fact that Grundy’s racist, pro-rioting remarks weren’t just statements she made as an individual, which BU tactfully ignored or even disavowed. Come on, man! This is 2022! On Wednesday, BU proudly tweeted video of Grundy speaking about the George Floyd riots, and saying:

If we’re gonna talk about George Floyd and really understand it, then we need to understand community reactions to it, and we often hear politicians, we hear civic leaders, from inside black communities and from outside of them as well. We hear President Biden say, “You know, I understand your frustrations but don’t destroy property.” Well, when you say that to black people who historically have been property, one of our greatest weapons against injustice was the looting of ourselves as property from the system of slavery. And what we see in communities is they’re reacting to the very racism of what we call property, right? So that’s why I think it’s very important for, you know, people who see reactions in communities to not judge and to not make assumptions about what is good and not good reactions. And not actually re-victimize communities by saying there’s an acceptable and a not acceptable way to react. Listen to them, and then we can say what these communities need.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Open Season on the Jews of France Yet another French Jew is murdered in an anti-Semitic hate crime. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/its-open-season-jews-france-ari-lieberman/

In what has become a disturbing, and all too familiar occurrence in France, another elderly French Jew has been murdered in an unprovoked attack motivated by antisemitism. On May 21, an 89-year-old Lyon resident named René Hadjaj was defenestrated from the 17th floor of the apartment complex where he resided. The perpetrator has been identified as a 51-year-old male of Algerian origin named Rachid Kheniche. Hadjaj was said to have been wearing a kippah at the time of the assault.

French police were quick to dismiss the attack as a dispute between neighbors unrelated to antisemitism. However, watchdog groups quickly alerted French law enforcement authorities to Kheniche’s social media postings where he engaged in antisemitic rants. After viewing the postings, the French prosecutor’s office requested that judges presiding over the case include an antisemitic motive charge as an aggravating circumstance in killing of Hadjaj.

Hadjaj’s murder is eerily similar to the horrific April 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old French-Jewish retired doctor, who was severely beaten and thrown from her apartment to her death. In that case, the killer was a 27-year-old drug dealer and user named Kobili Traore. Halimi, who lived in the same apartment complex as Traore had previously expressed fear of her future killer after enduring his repeated antisemitic threats. During his assault against Halimi, Traore yelled Allahu-Akbar (God is Great) a common Islamist refrain. After killing her, Traore reportedly said that he had just killed The Shaytan, an Islamic reference to Satan.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Immigrant Population Is Growing Rapidly By Mark Krikorian

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-immigrant-population-is-growing-rapidly/

The total foreign-born population reached a record 47 million in April, according to a new report by my colleagues Steven Camarota and Karen Ziegler.

While that’s the largest number ever recorded, and the total number of immigrants is important in itself, the simple fact of a record number is maybe the least interesting finding of the report; after all, a growing population of any kind sets a new record every year.

But the pace of that growth is remarkable. The report, based on the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey, noted that the 47 million number is half-again more than in 2000. Going back further, the total size of the foreign-born population has doubled since 1990, tripled since 1980, and quintupled since 1970. (The total U.S. population has grown only by about half since 1970.)

What’s more, the growth is accelerating. This total number of foreign-born (people living here who weren’t U.S. citizens at birth — legal and illegal, naturalized citizen, green-card, H-1B, whatever) has grown by 2 million just since Joe Biden was inaugurated in January of last year. And two-thirds of that increase under Biden are illegal aliens (1.35 million), which should be no surprise considering the ongoing dissolution of the border. (The Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics both state that illegal immigrants are included in their survey data, though some do get missed.)

In addition to the size of the foreign-born population, the percentage also matters. The foreign-born now account for one in seven U.S. residents (14.3 percent) — the highest percentage since 1910.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ilya Shapiro’s Reinstatement Is a Win for the Political Power of Free Speech, But a Loss for the Value of Academic Freedom By Dan McLaughlin

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ilya-shapiros-reinstatement-is-a-win-for-the-political-power-of-free-speech-but-a-loss-for-the-value-of-academic-freedom/

There are two ways to look at Georgetown University Law Center’s decision to reinstate Ilya Shapiro after a five-month investigation into a tweet. On the upside, Shapiro was not fired, and he will begin teaching at the law school, a visible symbol of vindication over cancel culture. That is a win for the good guys in terms of raw power: Georgetown clearly signaled, in its statement (reprinted in full below), that the dean would have preferred to fire him — whether due to the dean’s own animus or terror of his woke students — but did not feel at liberty to do so given the extensive publicity and the forces rallying to Shapiro’s defense. Thus, he was grudgingly retained with some excuses about technicalities (his tweet preceded his start date) and allowed to return — only after students are off campus for the summer. The cowardly timing suggests that the dean is hoping the whole thing goes away by the fall.

That’s progress! The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is justly crowing at the win. The cry-bullies and rage-mobbers failed because they were resisted. They prefer to work in the darkness, and they fear the light.

The bad news: This was a win for outside pressure, not for internal reform. The law school’s statement validating the mob’s whining contains obvious warnings that political statements disliked by left-leaning students or administrators will be a firing offense. There is not a shred of acknowledgement that academic freedom is actually valued by the law school. The process — 122 days in limbo — was punishment in itself. The message here is clear: Stay in line, or you will go through the same thing — and if you’re not as prominent and respected as Ilya Shapiro, and supported with as much vigor by enough friends of free speech, you may not survive as he did.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Different Outcomes, Not Different Treatment Most studies of alleged discrimination in medical care document racial disparities in clinical results, not biased treatment. Stanley Goldfarb

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/political-distortion-of-medical-research

The political distortion of medical research has a sordid history, but it’s unfortunately not just a thing of the past. Today, a popular narrative has taken hold that a racist medical establishment is the reason that blacks have shorter life expectancies, worse clinical outcomes for many diseases, and even excess maternal and infant mortality. The claim is unsupported by evidence, however, and believing it won’t do anything to improve black patients’ health.

Search for the terms “racism” and “medicine” in the National Library of Medicine database, and thousands of scientific publications appear. Journalists and a growing number of doctors regard this as proof of medical discrimination. But most of these studies do not prove any causality; they merely document disparities in clinical outcomes and medical services for black Americans. Nonetheless, they increasingly serve to justify such discriminatory practices as preferentially reserving scarce Covid-19 therapies for blacks.

A rush to find racism typifies most of the many thousands of opinion pieces, original investigations, and review articles on the topic of clinical outcomes for black patients. That literature supports a media that has eagerly adopted the narrative of racism embedded in American health care. The result undermines the trust in medical care needed for successful patient- physician relationships and diverts scarce resources in combating a nonexistent factor in poor health outcomes.

The rules for conducting robust scientific research require scientists to try to disprove their own theories. One can never absolutely prove a hypothesis correct; one can only show that experiments fail to disprove it. The investigator should begin by doubting the hypothesis and do his best to disprove it with carefully designed experiments. Unfortunately, too many studies on medical racism are carried out by investigators who, following the prevailing political trend, set out to confirm their ideas of a racist health-care system. A biased experiment can easily lead to a desired outcome, and emphasizing some results while ignoring others can lead to a faulty conclusion.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How The White House Fumbled The Inflation Football And Lost The Game

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/03/how-the-biden-administration-fumbled-the-inflation-football-and-lost-the-game/
Wasn’t it not even a year ago we were told that inflation would, in fact, be a “good” thing? That it was “transitory”? Not a serious threat. Now we’re finding that the media, Wall Street economists, Fed officials, but most of all, the Biden administration, were all wrong. Does anyone pay a price for gross incompetence anymore?

Last year, headlines were filled with inflation cheerleaders. We searched the term “inflation is good” and got back 508 million hits.

What’s troubling about this expert consensus is that inflation, now at a 40-year-high, isn’t good for anyone.

It skews business and personal decisions, wrecks family budgets, makes millions of low-income families even poorer, destroys personal thrift and wealth, undermines faith in the economy, distorts financial markets, and discourages investment and innovation.

And, eventually, it destroys real economic growth, undermining the very underpinnings of our prosperity and standard of living. We’re on the way to that now.

Which brings us to our main point: The failure of our “experts,” “elites” and elected officials to attack the root causes of inflation, namely runaway government spending and the Fed’s relentless money printing, based on bogus Modern Monetary Theory, that makes the spending possible.

No one in the Biden administration wants to step forward and accept responsibility for the inflation mess. That’s why it looked almost brave as one person finally stepped forward this week to admit there was a miscalculation.

“I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this week, after he asked about her calling inflation a “small risk” just last year.

Good start. But in the next breath, she fobbed off blame on a host of other factors:

“As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand, but we recognize that now,” she said.

Excuse us, but the causes of our inflation problem were evident even back in 2021.

The administration was repeatedly warned, as we noted, by some of its own party (hello, Larry Summers) about the inflationary impact of $1.9 trillion in added COVID spending, along with the still-alive proposal to spend another $5 trillion on the foolish pork-barrel “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan.

And Yellen knew about the record surge in the money supply in 2021, a clear indication that our economy was headed for soaring inflation. The Fed helped the government print $14.5 trillion in new money from April 2020 to June of 2021, the biggest money supply surge in the nation’s history. It didn’t boost output that much. Inflation was inevitable.

As Fed chief from 2014 to 2018, Yellen must know that latter point. Too bad she comes from the Keynesian school of economics, which denies such self-evident economic truths.

She, as do so many others, seems to have forgotten or ignored the clear lessons of the 1970s, when soaring spending (a 269% real increase in government spending during the decade), and out-of-control money printing to pay our monthly oil bill from the Mideast, set off scary levels of inflation that peaked at close to 15% in 1980.

We’re in a similar place now. Only, our president doesn’t seem to get it.

This week, he basically admitted he didn’t fully understand the baby formula shortage, which has sent prices for formula spiraling as much as 300% in some markets. “I don’t think anyone anticipated the impact of the shutdown of one facility – the Abbott (Laboratories Inc.) facility,” President Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday.

Except, it was his administration that shut the plant in February due to safety concerns, leading to a formula shortage. And Biden was fully apprised of it in a meeting with manufacturers three months ago.

“We knew from the very beginning this would be a very serious event,” said Robert Cleveland, senior vice president for North American operations of the Reckitt Co., as reported by RealClearPolitics.

And contrary to the idea that inflation’s “good,” news in recent days shows just how wrong that is:

Baby-formula inflation is hitting low-income families hardest.
This week, the USDA warned Americans that eggs, a nutritional staple in many households, may soon cost $1 each.
Meanwhile, a new study by The Center Square says that a quarter of all Americans intend to put off their retirement because of inflation.

“Nearly 60% of those surveyed said that inflation has adversely affected their personal finances, of which about one in four said that they have felt a major impact,” according to the Center Square. “As a result of inflation, 36% of Americans have reduced their savings and 21% have reduced their retirement savings. A quarter of Americans will need to delay their retirement.”

Biden has privately raged at aides about inflation, but only to blame others for the catastrophe caused by his own policies. It’s a disaster that could cost his party control of Congress and him the presidential election in 2024, if he runs again.

As our friend Stephen Moore noted, “In this administration, it’s always someone else’s fault. Inflation is now the No. 1 concern of voters, so the White House first blamed COVID. Then Donald Trump’s tax cuts. Then Vladimir Putin. Then meatpackers and the poultry industry, Big Oil and pharmaceutical companies.”

A report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School said that inflation cost the average family $3,200 last year. Newer estimates say inflation could cost families as much as $5,200 this year, according to Bloomberg. That’s quite a cut in a family’s standard of living, especially since wages aren’t keeping up with inflation.

All this was foreseeable by our media and our elected leaders. Those who told us inflation would be a “good thing” were wrong as hell. So were those who told us it would be transitory. Don’t worry, none will be fired.

Worst of all, the White House has once again shown why it is now one of the least popular administrations in modern history: It is incapable of acting in the public interest, and responds only to one side of the political spectrum. But political arrogance has a cost, and we’ll likely see that result in this year’s midterm elections.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Inherent Strength of a Democracy by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18583/strength-of-democracy

In the movie Juarez, a 1939 film that dramatized the life of Benito Juarez, Mexico’s “George Washington,” a screen writer drafted words for the freedom fighter that send a message to every democracy today, “If a Monarch misrules; the people change… If a Presidente misrules; the people change the Presidente…” The film debuted on the eve of World War II when 20th Century “monarchy,” — fascism — had installed itself as one of the most destructive and murderous forces the world had ever endured.

In our current era, when a president’s ad-lib remarks have the means to alter world events, when inflation is forcing Americans to choose between paying the rent and putting food on the table, when our allies wonder whether this administration has the courage and stamina to confront an ever more powerful China, one could easily question the future of our nation.

But as the script from Juarez reminds us, the inherent strength of a democracy over a monarchy is that its citizens have the means to peacefully change their leaders if they suffer through failed leadership. One suspects our enemies abroad may be hoping that we will not exercise that right — from the belief that we are distracted by the continuing aftershocks of COVID or seeking to cope with slashed earning power at the gas pump and the supermarket.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

THE TREACHERY OF THE SQUAD by Paul Schnee:

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

‘SQUAD’ DEMOCRATS INTRODUCE RESOLUTION CALLING FOUNDING OF ISRAEL A ‘CATASTROPHE’

Some people are born to commit shameful acts.

When the resolution was introduced on May 16th. in the House of Representatives by the “SQUAD”, better known as the terrorist caucus of the Democratic Party, calling for the founding of Israel to be designated as a “catastrophe,” out popped the cloven hoof.

It is not only shameful, it is historically wrong. Israel was not “founded” in 1948; it was reconstituted in its ancient and historical homeland where Jerusalem had been its undivided capital a thousand years before Christ and sixteen hundred years before Muhammad. The SQUAD and its fellow travelers must have been very poorly educated.

The claims they submit in favor of Arab Palestinian ownership of the geographical area known as Palestine, and ruled by the Ottoman Empire for almost 400 years prior to its defeat by the allied powers in 1918, are in inverse proportion to the evidence they can provide for them. 

Furthermore, during the entire time the Ottomans controlled the region, no effort was made by Arab Palestinians until to establish their own state until about 1964, yet now they claim that they have always owned the entire region and that Jerusalem is their capital city.  They have even advanced the preposterous notion that Jesus was an Arab Palestinian.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Blinken’s immoral Palestinian-Israeli equivalence Ruthie Blum

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-708472

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken seems to think that his job entails creating moral equivalence where it doesn’t exist. The way in which he approaches Palestinian Authority aggression against Israel is a prime example.

In fairness to Blinken, he was appointed to toe the line of US President Joe Biden and the crew behind him. Luckily for all concerned – other than the Jewish state – America’s top diplomat possesses the right ideological outlook and ambition to fulfill the task with little effort.

The only pushback he encounters emanates from “Squad” Democrats and their apologists, who consider Israel to be a criminal entity and view the Palestinians as its victims. In other words, while Blinken places Palestinian terrorism on a par with Israel’s response to it, the far-left members of his party don’t even bother with the charade of equivocation.

This distinction is moot, however. Nothing short of Israeli suicide will satisfy Squad or Palestinian demands. So, peace of the kind that the Biden administration touts is nowhere on the horizon.

IT IS NOT clear whether Blinken is oblivious to this or merely enjoys going through the motions that playing his prominent role in international relations requires. Either way, the game itself is dangerous for Israel.

“Good to speak with Palestinian Authority President [Mahmoud] Abbas… to discuss maintaining calm and refraining from escalatory actions and the importance of advancing a two-state solution,”
Blinken tweeted on Tuesday.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

My Cancel-Culture Nightmare Is Over After a four-month investigation, Georgetown concludes I wasn’t yet an employee when I wrote an errant tweet. By Ilya Shapiro

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

s://www.wsj.com/articles/ilya-shapiro-georgetown-twitter-kbj-cancel-law-school-supreme-court-appointee-twitter-free-speech-11654211044?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

My long public nightmare is over. Tomorrow I assume my duties as a senior lecturer at Georgetown University Law Center and executive director of its Center for the Constitution. A four-month investigation by the human-resources department and the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action determined that I wasn’t yet an employee when I posted a tweet to which some at the school objected (which the Journal covered from the beginning) and so wasn’t subject to the relevant policies on antidiscrimination and professional conduct.

It was an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone except perhaps the instigators of the Twitter mob that launched this tempest—particularly the first few days, which were truly terrible for me and my family. Although my administrative leave was paid, the uncertainty made it a roller coaster of emotions and instability, a personal and professional purgatory. I’m grateful to the many allies who supported my cause. I found out who my friends are, even if I would’ve preferred not to have had the need to know.

What I achieved was a technical victory but one that still shows the value in standing up for free speech in the face of cancellation. That’s so even when that speech is inartful, as I readily admitted was my criticism of President Biden’s decision to limit his Supreme Court pool by race and sex. Although I apologized for my poor phrasing—some advised “never apologize,” but I take pride in clear communication—I stand by my view that Mr. Biden should have considered “all possible nominees,” as 76% of Americans agreed in an ABC News poll, and that the best choice would have been Judge Sri Srinivasan, who is an Indian-American immigrant.

I’m relieved that now I’ll get to do the job for which I was hired in January. I’m confident that even without the jurisdictional technicality, I would’ve prevailed. After all, Georgetown’s Speech and Expression Policy provides that the “University is committed to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate in all matters, and the untrammeled verbal and nonverbal expression of ideas.” There’s an exception for harassment, of course, but I wasn’t harassing anyone except possibly Mr. Biden.

In any case, I look forward to teaching and engaging in a host of activities relating to constitutional education and originalism. As befitting a center for the Constitution, all students and participants in my programs can expect to be accorded the right to think and speak freely and to be treated equally. A diversity of ideas will be most welcome.