RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/yaf-calls-out-ucla-again-for-restricting-the-speech-of-patriotic-students/

Will UCLA and the other far-left indoctrination centers that call themselves our nation’s universities ever learn? Will they ever recall that Americans, including American students, have First Amendment rights? Will they ever admit that even those who dissent from the left’s agenda have a right to be heard and that university administrators, of all people, should respect that right?

Given the left’s consistent taste for authoritarianism, that’s unlikely, and UCLA has just shown this yet again. The intrepid warriors of the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), however, are not letting them get away with it.

Two weeks ago, I wrote an articleabout how YAF had filed suit against UCLA for blocking a lecture I was scheduled to give there on May 15, 2024, entitled “Everything You Know About Palestine Is Wrong.” UCLA officials canceled the event at the last minute and then disingenuously claimed that it had gone on as planned, as they allowed me to come onto campus (under heavy police guard) and speak for a few minutes with the courageous members of the YAF chapter.

That was not what had been agreed upon: I had been scheduled to give an address that was to have been open to the entire student body, and UCLA’s top dogs shut that down. They claimed security concerns, and certainly, the pro-Hamas crowd that was marching through campus would have torn me limb from limb if it had gotten half a chance. To cancel the event, however, was to submit to the heckler’s veto, as well as to reinforce the political proclivities of the UCLA administration and faculty.

That’s why YAF thus filed suit. Mountain States Legal Foundation Senior Counsel James Kerwin explained: “UCLA pretends it cares about freedom of expression, but when push comes to shove, it only allows one side to have its say. That is a violation of the First Amendment. This lawsuit will force UCLA to do what it should have done long ago: treat all viewpoints fairly and stop the campus shout-down mobs.” Yes. And one would think that with that suit in progress, UCLA would think twice about restricting the speech of patriotic students again. You would think wrong.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/15/whats-so-triggering-about-the-canterbury-tales/

Over the past decade, universities have slapped ‘trigger warnings’ on everything from children’s books to entire fields of law. They have warned archaeology students about bones, theology students about the crucifixion and forensic-science students about dead bodies. In 2022, it was reported that over 1,000 books on university reading lists – including classic works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare – warned students about everything from racism and sexism to murder and suicide. Now, The Canterbury Tales can be added to this list of shame.

The Mail on Sunday reported at the weekend that the University of Nottingham is warning students that Geoffrey Chaucer’s epic poem contains ‘expressions of Christian faith’. The Canterbury Tales – as anyone with even a passing knowledge of literature knows – follows a group of pilgrims as they entertain each other with stories on their way to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. In other words, the clue to this being an ‘expression of Christian faith’ is right there in the title. Nottingham’s English literature lecturers must think students are stupid.

How on Earth did our once learned institutions end up in such a ridiculous situation? Trigger warnings took off on American campuses a decade ago before quickly crossing the Atlantic. The idea behind them, proponents argued, was to give students a heads up about distressing content. Those who had experienced sexual assault, abuse or violence could then protect themselves from ‘triggering’ flashbacks by leaving class or employing coping strategies. In this way, trigger warnings came to be seen as compassionate. And if some compassion is good, the argument went, then more is clearly better. Warnings about every negative element of human existence soon came to be sprinkled liberally across reading lists and course guides. Indeed, even the word ‘trigger’ was removed from what became ‘content warnings’ for fear it might harm students who had witnessed gun violence.

Meanwhile, a growing number of psychologists questioned the use of such warnings. Some argued they simply did not work and that victims of assault were far more likely to experience flashbacks as a result of a random colour or smell than reading an academic text. Others went further and argued they ‘might exacerbate negative reactions or promote avoidance behaviours’.

These debates about the efficacy of trigger warnings take at face value that their purpose is to protect traumatised students. They miss the point that their use has long since morphed into something else altogether. Those issuing warnings today are likely to see all students as vulnerable and in need of protection – not so much from descriptions of assault, but mainly from politically dubious content. The warning Nottingham University has attached to The Canterbury Tales perfectly illustrates this trend.

If lecturers felt compelled to give a heads up to students who had experienced trauma, violent scenes abound in Chaucer’s work. There’s the grim pursuit of death in ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ that leads to one murder by stabbing and two by poisoning. ‘The Monk’s Tale’ goes one better. It features cannibalism, poisoning, hanging, beheading, suicide and children starving to death. The Wife of Bath – who was hit round the head by a former husband until she lost her hearing in one ear – tells of a young ‘mayde’ who was raped by a ‘lusty bacheler’ from King Arthur’s court. Meanwhile, the young wife in ‘The Clerk’s Tale’ is forced to obey her husband, even when he convinces her he has had their children executed. Then there’s the Prioress who relays a story of blood libel. A young boy, she tells her fellow pilgrims, was wandering in a Jewish ghetto, innocently singing songs in praise of the Virgin Mary, when he had his throat cut, his entrails removed and his body thrown into a sewage pit. He reappears before his grieving mother in ghost-like form.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/department-of-education-grants-found-to-support-classes-taught-by-radical-anti-israel-professors/

The Department of Education has granted millions of dollars in funding to university programs that tout anti-Israel professors, a new report from Open the Books revealed on Tuesday.

More than $22 million has been allocated to support at least a dozen foreign studies programs at top universities that feature anti-Israel staff members. The DOE awards universities Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants “to assist graduate students in foreign language and either international studies or area studies,” the department says on its website, which Open the Books found have been used to support the work of multiple anti-Israel faculty members.

Columbia University’s Middle East program received $2.8 million in FLAS grants between the years 2020–24, Open the Books reported, which it secured by way of grant applications that spotlighted the work of Joseph Massad, among others. A professor in the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) Department, Massad, called Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel “a stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance” and has spoken before at Columbia on “Zionism and Jewish Supremacy.” On a 2018 FLAS grant application, Columbia listed Massad as a faculty member who is “strong on contemporary politics, with tremendous geographic range” and said that lauded his work teaching “courses that focus on the modern history, gender, political economy, international relations, politics and culture of the region.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-new-hope-for-k-12-education

In early September, as New York’s children returned to the classroom, the city witnessed a landmark in educational history. Forty pioneering students—fifth-, sixth-, and ninth-graders—became the inaugural cohort at Emet Classical Academy, the first Jewish school founded on the principles of classical education. 

The need for classical alternatives to traditional public education has intensified in recent years, as political indoctrination—often including anti-American rhetoric, gender ideology, and anti-Semitic propaganda—is increasingly inflicted on public school students. The classical education movement’s response to these developments is to remove political bias from the classroom, focusing instead on equipping students with foundational knowledge and fostering logic, critical thinking, and an appreciation for the core texts of Western civilization.

Emet Academy’s commitment to “take your child as far as he or she can go” is a useful encapsulation of its approach. Along with teaching classic texts, the school also offers a rigorous STEM program. Its Judaic studies program, which encompasses the Tanakh and Talmudic reasoning, sets it apart from other classical institutions. Classes are taught seminar-style to facilitate serious discussions about the material, and to allow students to hone their public-speaking and debate skills. Electives are offered by experts in their respective fields—music, by an orchestrator from the Manhattan School of Music; theater, by a professional Shakespearean actor; a philosophy-of-math course—for the most advanced ninth-grade students—by a renowned mathematician.

Dr. Abraham Unger, Emet’s founding head of school, highlighted the importance of keeping political bias out of the classroom. “To impose ideology on a text is really to halt the progress of humanity,” he said. An emphasis on ideology has led many curricula, he said, to lose a sense of “how to move the human prospect forward.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/free-speech-impediment/

It has now been 60 years since the birth of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. It all started in mid-September 1964, when the school’s dean of students banned tables and political activity along the Bancroft strip, a 26-foot stretch of sidewalk near Telegraph Avenue. Students protested, cops were called in and angry students surrounded the police car. Thousands subsequently joined the crusade, and activist Mario Savio emerged as the leader of the burgeoning Free Speech Movement. The events at Berkeley garnered national attention.

Once again, colleges are ground zero for the free speech issue.But now things have turned 180 degrees, as many studentsactively try to quash speech they don’t agree with.

According to a new survey from the Knight Foundation, 70% of college students say that speech can be just as damaging as physical violence. The survey polled more than 1,600 college students and found that “2024 marks a crisis for free speech on college campuses…”

The poll revealed that more than a quarter agreed that it was more important for schools to “protect students by prohibiting speech they may find offensive or biased” rather than prioritizing allowing students to hear a wide range of viewpoints, including possibly offensive ones.

Another poll, the 2024 American College Student Freedom, Progress and Flourishing Survey, found that 71% of college students maintain that a professor who expresses “offensive”ideas should be reported to the university. Other eye-opening results include:

• About a third of students want professors to drop uncomfortable readings.
• One-quarter want them to avoid uncomfortable discussion topics.
• A third of students said a professor should be reported for contending there is no evidence of anti-black bias in police shootings.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/09/free-speech-impediment/

It has now been 60 years since the birth of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. It all started in mid-September 1964, when the school’s dean of students banned tables and political activity along the Bancroft strip, a 26-foot stretch of sidewalk near Telegraph Avenue. Students protested, cops were called in and angry students surrounded the police car. Thousands subsequently joined the crusade, and activist Mario Savio emerged as the leader of the burgeoning Free Speech Movement. The events at Berkeley garnered national attention.

Once again, colleges are ground zero for the free speech issue. But now things have turned 180 degrees, as many students actively try to quash speech they don’t agree with.

According to a new survey from the Knight Foundation, 70% of college students say that speech can be just as damaging as physical violence. The survey polled more than 1,600 college students and found that “2024 marks a crisis for free speech on college campuses…”

The poll revealed that more than a quarter agreed that it was more important for schools to “protect students by prohibiting speech they may find offensive or biased” rather than prioritizing allowing students to hear a wide range of viewpoints, including possibly offensive ones.

Another poll, the 2024 American College Student Freedom, Progress and Flourishing Survey, found that 71% of college students maintain that a professor who expresses “offensive” ideas should be reported to the university. Other eye-opening results include:

About a third of students want professors to drop uncomfortable readings.
One-quarter want them to avoid uncomfortable discussion topics.
A third of students said a professor should be reported for contending there is no evidence of anti-black bias in police shootings.
A quarter contends that a professor should be reported for saying COVID vaccinations shouldn’t be required.
More than one in five students declare that a professor should be reported for asserting that biological sex is a scientific fact.
Just under one in five students said a professor should be reported for saying that affirmative action is doing more harm than good.
14% would report a professor who accused affirmative action opponents of perpetuating white privilege.
56% of students would report a classmate for saying something they thought was offensive.