RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/moral-vacuity-pro-palestinian-social-justice-richard-l-cravatts/

In August, Florida State University was one of several universities to have adopted the now widely accepted IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, signaling that university leaders and others outside of academia have begun to see the wisdom of having guidelines by which to identify and, hopefully, eliminate hate from their respective institutions. Not surprisingly, some progressive groups—including even Jewish ones—have condemned the IHRA definition, claiming that it will chill their speech and punish their ideology, even though the use of the definition does nothing of the sort. Israel-haters and anti-Semites can still continue to defame the Jewish state and single it out for opprobrium, condemnation, and slander but now they can be called out for their behavior.

Something called the Progressive Israel Network (comprised of Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Habonim Dror North America, Hashomer Hatzair World Movement, Jewish Labor Committee, J Street, New Israel Fund, Partners for Progressive Israel, and Reconstructing Judaism and T’ruah, left-leaning groups all) felt compelled to announce that, while, of course, they were all for defeating the world’s oldest hatred, they found the IHRA definition to be particularly unhelpful in their relentless quest to demonize Israel and critique the Jewish state. The IHRA definition, they announced ominously, is actually being weaponized to suppress progressive efforts to attack Israel, that the definition “is being misused and exploited to instead suppress legitimate free speech, criticism of Israeli government actions, and advocacy for Palestinian rights.”

IfNotNow, another group whose mission seems to be to hector lawmakers into distancing themselves from Israel and embracing the Palestinian cause without question or conditions, even hosted an event in January to discuss “how the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has been destroying the progressive movement” by “criminalizing the BDS movement and “squashing free speech” of progressives obsessed with signaling their loathing of Israel and their tireless efforts to fight for social justice for the ever-aggrieved Palestinians.

That has meant that students, and left-leaning faculty, as well, are urged to advocate for social and economic goals described in decidedly liberal intellectual formulations such as “social and economic justice,” “distributive justice,” and “the global interconnections of oppression,” this latter view ideal for conflating, at least in liberal imaginations, the shared complicity of America and Israel in their long-term oppression of the indigenous people of the fictive nation of Palestine and the alleged “occupation” of their land.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/stanford-lefties-must-swallow-their-hoover-hate-for-now/

The woke faculty have it in for these fellows. But it’s not going so well for them.

I t gnaws away at Stanford University’s woke faculty: Harbored in their midst is that nominally conservative outfit, the Hoover Institution, which more than a few professors hold as an infestation of the liberal citadel. It is, after all, named after a Republican president — never mind being home to the likes of Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson and H. R. McMaster (and yes, plenty of establishment GOP types, and even a lefty or two). And there’s this: The campus is visually dominated by the striking eleven-story Hoover Tower, which scrapes the Palo Alto sky like some right-hand middle finger. Housing vast and important archives (much of the contents are about the evils of Marxist-Leninism), the tower is crowned by a 48-bell carillon that no doubt triggers faculty and students with the occasional auditory reminder of Hoover’s confounding and unwelcome presence.

Who will rid us of this troublesome think tank and its more Trumpy fellows?

There is no paucity of willing hitmen amongst Stanford’s more fevered and Hoover-obsessed faculty, who of late have mounted a campaign to diminish Hoover’s standing and to bully the institution’s more important and controversial (meaning, from their perspective, notorious) fellows. Of particular focus are the aforementioned Professor Hanson, known well in NR’s precincts and the author of The Case for Trump (word is he also has a weekly podcast); Scott Atlas, a prominent member of former President Trump’s COVID task force (his nondoctrinaire, wrong-partisan stands prompted a hundred-plus of his former colleagues to publish an open letter last September that berated him as a threat to public health); and historian Niall Ferguson, who was accused (projection warning) of suppressing the free-speech rights of students in 2018.

Under the cover of COVID, not wanting to let this crisis go to waste, the plotters plotted. Led by the uber-leftist comparative-lit professor and Twitter junkie, David Palumbo-Liu, over 100 Stanford faculty corralled in late September 2020 to sign an open letter (does anyone at Stanford write closed letters?) attacking the Hoover-Stanford relationship and insisting the Faculty Senate take very public steps:

A closely connected concern which needs to be addressed by the Senate is our relation to an Institute that has a narrow focus and a pre-determined point of view which it is committed to retain and reinforce in all its research. This is not conjecture, it is manifested in the Hoover’s mission statement. . . . This commitment to producing knowledge that constantly validates a specific belief makes the Hoover distinct and is troubling when we find Stanford linked to this kind of guided research. It is antithetical to the open scientific inquiry that drives all research universities.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/ivy-league-wokes-are-biggest-supporters-political-daniel-greenfield/

The Democrats and their media have spent the past few months crying about political violence coming from conservatives, calling for gun control, and militarizing the nation’s capital. All of the agonizing about political violence came after a year in which ‘woke’ Black Lives Matter mobs killed, beat, and burned their way across the country in an orgy of ‘mostly peaceful’ violence.

Even the most modest estimates of political woke terror in 2020 place it at 8 dead, over 700 injured, and over $2 billion in damages. And the year could have ended even more bloodily with the Left prepping for mass protests with “bail funds that could be activated in response to mass arrests” and a fund “for the families of anyone killed in violence on or around Election Day.”

Months before the election, 41% of Democrats suggested that there would be at least a little justification for violence if President Trump won. Those are numbers the media won’t discuss.

While the media continues to promote a phantom conservative threat, it doesn’t want to look at where the violence is coming from in its own ranks. But it will not surprise anyone who remembers the seventies that Democrat support for violence is coming from the Ivy League.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-experts-cited-by-the-new-censors-11614128309?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Two House Democrats from California, Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, launched a frontal assault on the First Amendment this week with a letter to the CEOs of communications companies demanding to know what they are doing to police unwelcome speech.

A Journal editorial notes that “the letter is a demand for more ideological censorship.” The two legislators write: “Our country’s public discourse is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies.”

But it’s clear that they only want to discipline one side. The Democrats claim, “Experts have noted that the right-wing media ecosystem is “much more susceptible…to disinformation, lies, and half-truths.”

The “experts” quoted are three Harvard academics, and the lead author is law professor Yochai Benkler. His take on “right-wing” media is perhaps not surprising given that according to the OpenSecrets website he donates exclusively to left-wing politicians, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).

In any case, Mr. Benkler has assembled an interdisciplinary team at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and purports to have discovered data showing that conservative media is bad.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-speech-coddling-in-chicago-11614125023?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Most college administrators are no doubt exhausted by constant student demands that range from the type of cereal served in the dining hall to the latest intersectional fad. So those running the University of Chicago must be pleasantly surprised by the arrival of Chicago Thinker on their campus this school year. It’s an online journal by conservative and libertarian students who refuse to be canceled.

Their mission statement makes the point: “We demand not to be coddled. Embracing the experience of unfettered inquiry and free expression is precisely the point of these years of intense study: to rigorously confront and challenge our most deeply-held beliefs—and to emerge from the experience as more thoughtful, informed human beings.”

They build on a firm foundation. In 2015 the university released a statement reaffirming its commitment to “free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation.” In 2016 the university’s incoming freshman received a letter informing them that “we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

The Chicago Thinker’s latest posts include stories on the “insane COVID rules and snitch culture” at today’s universities, a definition of conservatism offered “in defiance of egregious caricatures,” and a piece on “how leftism ruined ‘Stargirl,’” a superhero TV series based on the character from DC Comics. Good for the Chicago Thinker—and even more for the university that promises never to coddle the students running the publication.

https://stanfordreview.org/atlas-ferguson-hanson-stanford-free-speech/

What is the purpose of academic freedom?

Is it to allow all kinds of ideas to be expressed and explored, protecting even speech that people in the past considered heretical—protecting free expression that some people today would like to “cancel”? Or is it to allow co-workers in the ideological minority to be personally and selectively disparaged with impunity?

The answer for some faculty at Stanford University would appear to be the latter.

In a recent meeting of the Stanford Faculty Senate, four professors (Joshua Landy, Stephen Monismith, David Palumbo-Liu and David Spiegel) presented and then subsequently published a farrago of falsehoods directed against various fellows of the Hoover Institution. Their complaint was, first, that the Hoover fellows’ views were unapologetically conservative and, second, that they appeared antithetical to the majority of those of the Stanford community—and were therefore properly subject to some sort of institutional and personal censure.

Our faculty accusers failed to achieve both their overt and their implicit goals—creating a faculty-controlled committee to investigate Hoover and intimidating us into silence. Some respected faculty members, including the President, the Provost, and the former Provost all forcefully spoke up for academic freedom in general and defended Hoover in particular. They should be congratulated for doing so in these ideologically polarized times.

Nevertheless, our faculty accusers still succeeded in maligning us as individuals. The impression was left even by the President that we might have “behaved inappropriately” or “spoken untruths.” Unfortunately, this is not the first time such use has been made of the Senate. Indeed, it has happened repeatedly in recent years, for example in February 2019.