RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/02/libraries-at-georgetown-university-remove-novels-that-offend-some-students/

In a situation like this, why aren’t the people who complain ever told to shut up and go away?

The College Fix reports:

Georgetown libraries remove dozens of novels that offend some students

When the staff at an “independent journal of politics and world affairs” complain to Georgetown University officials, they get results.

Administrators removed “all but a few books” from the McCarthy and Reynolds libraries after The Georgetown Review asked why they had so many books marked by “racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, fetishization, and pedophilia,” the publication reported in early February. The story was picked up last week by The Hoya.

Review staff came across the books, which appear to be all 20th century novels, while attending a “general body meeting” of the campus political satire group The Hilltop Show in McCarthy Library last month.

A Hilltop staffer soon “found more problematic books” in Reynolds Library, “portraying Christianity and the Priesthood as evil.” (The article notes that Hilltop’s “Research Team” contributed to the report.)

Only two books are identified by name in the article body: Cherokee, which contains “blatantly racist language degrading Native Americans,” and Death of an Informer. The article is bylined by Editors-in-Chief Jacob Adams and Justin Drewer.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/14/wokeness-free-speech-and-the-role-of-education/

This essay is adapted from a talk earlier in February delivered at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom and the American Culture and Ideas Initiative at the University of Arizona.

Conservatives have rightly lamented the assault on free speech that is such a conspicuous and disfiguring reality of life in America today. But that loss only achieves its true significance in the context of a more fundamental erosion: the erosion of a shared political consensus that gives life to “We, the People.”

Back in New York, we have recently started an informal reading group at The New Criterion and Encounter Books. If that sounds dull, let me add that I have combined the reading with a little seminar on wine appreciation. At the moment, our palettes are padding around Bordeaux, learning to discriminate reliably among Paulliac, Saint-Estèphe, and Saint-Julien. Soon we’ll move east to the Right Bank and then further afield. 

At the same time, we are in the midst of reading Plato’s Republic, a book about nearly everything, including a major theme of my remarks today: the role of education. 

I thank my host Dan Asia for supplying the title of my talk, and I will get around to touching on all of its elements. In the meantime, I want to point out a certain ambiguity or incompleteness about the phrase “the role of education.” One immediately wants to know, “the role of education” in what? In free speech? In the perpetuation of wokeness? Perhaps this is the place to issue a trigger warning to the effect this talk is definitely not “woke.” Anyone anxious about being offended may leave with impunity. 

In what follows, I am basically going to follow some hints in the Republic, which inquires into the role of education in several senses: into what it means for individuals, to start with, and also what it means for society at large. Socrates signals the importance of education early on when he tells Glaucon, Plato’s elder brother and one of the chief characters in the dialogue, that “it is no trifling matter we are discussing, but the right conduct of life.” 

I think that’s right. Education, rightly understood, is important business. And it is worth noting that, traditionally, a liberal arts education involved both character formation and learning. It was, as the word “liberal” suggests, an education for freedom, for liberty. It might incidentally teach you how to plot a trajectory, dissect a frog, analyze a poem, or construct a pie chart. But at the end of the day, the aim of a liberal arts education was thoughtful reflection about the question “How should I live my life?” The goal was to produce men and women who, as Allan Bloom put it in The Closing of the American Mind, had reflected thoughtfully on the question “‘What is man?’ in relation to his highest aspirations as opposed to his low and common needs.” 

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/02/14/skills-development-not-education-is-key-to-workforce-transformation/

As a new decade dawns, the U.S. workforce will face tremendous challenges, but also unprecedented opportunities, especially in manufacturing.

We know that the face of the workforce is changing. As the Wall Street Journal reported in December, American manufacturers are on pace to employ more college graduates than workers with a high school education or those without high school degrees in the next three years. While it is essential for manufacturers to hire developers, coders, analysts, and employees with specialized backgrounds, employees across our manufacturing operations are proving that it doesn’t take an advanced education to have a fulfilling, well-paying career. At Koch, we have close to 2,000 openings in manufacturing roles throughout our enterprise. These openings won’t all be filled by employees with four-year degrees.

Much of the U.S. workforce is facing a future in which their current roles will almost certainly give way to automation, artificial intelligence and other innovations. A recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute highlights the importance of upskilling current employees and supporting programs that prepare the emerging workforce. Without continuing education initiatives and skills training across demographic groups, education levels, and geography, the report found that automation and other technological changes could leave millions of workers behind. That is why manufacturers must encourage alternatives to traditional educational structures while empowering employees with the tools to improve and transform.

By 2028, there could be as many as 2 million unfilled manufacturing jobs across the United States. Filling that gap will require not just a shift in how businesses think about these roles but also how employees can grow with them.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/bears-for-palestine-celebrates-terrorists-at-uc-berkeley/

Algemeiner, a website for Jewish and Israel news, reports that a group at the University of California, Berkeley, called Bears for Palestine, “us[ed] its dedicated cubicle space to display photos” of Palestinian terrorists—namely Fatima Bernawi, Rasmea Odeh, and Leila Khaled, “the latter seen wielding an AK-47 assault rifle.”

Bernawi was reportedly “the first Palestinian woman to organize an attack in Israel, placing a bomb [which didn’t explode] in a Jerusalem cinema in 1967. Rasmea Odeh was involved in a 1969 terror bombing in a Jerusalem supermarket that killed two Israeli students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe. Sentenced in Israel to life in prison, she was freed in a prisoner exchange; in 2017 she was deported from the U.S. to Jordan for lying on immigration forms.

As for Leila Khaled—who, like Rasmea Odeh, is affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated by the U.S. as a terror organization and responsible for multiple suicide bombings—she was involved in the hijacking of a TWA plane in 1969 and an (Israeli) El Al plane in 1970 and is considered a Palestinian icon.

Back at UC Berkeley, on February 3, the student senate met to vote on a bill to condemn Bears for Palestine for the pro-terror display. “More than 200 people showed up…with many Jewish and Zionist students coming out to back the resolution, while Bears for Palestine members and supporters gathered to oppose it.”

Two hours later, “Jewish students collectively left the meeting” after deciding “that enough was enough and that [they] were not going to sit idly by as [their] members were threatened and harassed.”

https://www.foxnews.com/us/harvard-yale-under-investigation-foreign-donors

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced an investigation into Harvard and Yale on Wednesday and accused both universities of failing to report foreign gifts and contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The federal agency claimed Yale failed to report at least $375 million in foreign transactions and hasn’t reported any gifts or contracts for the last four years. The DOE did not say how much Harvard might have failed to report.

Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires American Title IV-eligible colleges and universities to report any foreign gifts or contracts that exceed $250,000 in value. Institutions must also disclose any foreign ownership or control, twice each year — something many schools have failed to do, according to federal officials.

A spokesperson from Yale’s office of public affairs and communications provided a statement to Fox News, saying: “Yesterday, Yale received a Department of Education request for records of certain gifts and contracts from foreign sources under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965. We are reviewing the request and preparing to respond to it.”

Education officials also highlighted concerns about Harvard’s lack of “institutional controls” over foreign funds and cited the case of Dr. Charlies Lieber.

“Dr. Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department, was indicted for lying about his involvement with the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Plan and admitting that Harvard lacks adequate institutional controls for effective oversight and tracking of very large donations,” the DOE said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/what-happened-when-jewish-activist-confronted-daniel-greenfield/

On Sunday, Rutgers University hosted the 14th Annual Interfaith Prophet Muhammad Conference.

The speakers were Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who had just falsely accused Jews of a blood libel, Craig Considine, a Catholic apologist for Islam who supports BDS, and Imam Sayed Moustafa Al-Qazwini, an Iranian-trained Shiite cleric who had accused Israel of being behind ISIS.

This panel of Jew hatred was a project of Muslims 4 Peace promoting Islamic migration. But the founder of Americans Against Anti-Semitism instead showed up to ask them some tough questions about hate.

“What about your anti-Semitism?” Dov Hikind, a former elected Democrat official who now takes on anti-Semitism in his former party, challenged Rep. Tlaib as she declaimed about racism in America.

Hikind was immediately confronted by a man in a keffiyah. Rutgers police officers surrounded the founder of Americans Against Anti-Semitism and escorted him out of the room for asking an elected official about anti-Semitism at a state university funded by the taxpayers of New Jersey.

The “Interfaith” Mohammed conference had consisted of two Muslim panelists and one token Christian who spends much of his time promoting Islam and bashing Israel.

There had not been a single panelist of another religion.

The agenda of the conference was promoting migration “from Syria, Afghan, Somalia, Sudan, Myanmar, and Latin America”. All but the last region on the list produces Muslim migrants.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/twisted-world-craig-considine-bruce-bawer/

Craig Considine, a lecturer in sociology at Rice University in Houston, is full of love – or so he would have us believe. Love, that is, for Islam, its prophet, and its holy book. It’s a love that Considine – a self-declared Christian – can’t stop affirming. On January 9, for example, he tweeted: “I ️ the Qur’an because it emphasizes humanity.” On January 10, he tweeted: “Why is Prophet Muhammad ️’d by Christians like me? Because he confirms the veracity of the Bible & encourages positive dialogue w/ Jews/Christians.” On January 11, he tweeted: “’The difference between us & you is no bigger than this line,’ said the Christian King of Abyssinia to Muslim refugees from Mecca, who had just explained the Qur’an’s position on Jesus & Mary.” And on January 12, he tweeted: “I ️ the Qur’an because it celebrates diversity.”  

Whereas Considine’s love of Islam would appear to be absolute and unqualified, however, his attitude toward Judaism and Israel is something else again. As David Gerstman noted in a January 9 article for Middle East Forum, Considine “recently appeared on a Twitter video wearing a kufiyah and touting the organization PaliRoots, which claims to promote Palestinian culture and identity. He could barely contain his enthusiasm about Palestine’s ‘beautiful culture.’” What’s PaliRoots? At its blog, Gerstman encountered a systematic “denial of Jewish history and Israel’s existence.” In other words, it’s another one of those toxic groups that insist, either ignorantly or dishonestly, that the Palestinians, as we know them today, have been around for centuries. According to PaliRoots, the Palestinians even turn up in “numerous hieroglyphs in Egyptian documents.” The name of Palestine derives from the Hebrew; PaliRoots describes it as Greek in origin. Moreover, observed Gerstman, PaliRoots ignores the fact that the Roman Empire, “in an attempt to erase any Jewish connection to the land,” changed Judea’s name to Syria Palaestina. In short, to quote Gerstman, PaliRoots is a purveyor of “ahistorical claims” that amount to “anti-Israel, anti-Jewish propaganda,” and “Considine’s proclamation of its trustworthiness further exposes him as a hack.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/11/why-its-delusional-to-think

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine we live in a reverse universe in which the population is overwhelmingly center-left on the major cultural and socioeconomic issues, and the institutional power in media and higher education is in the hands of the right wing.

In that universe, university applications are overwhelmingly meritocratic, admissions metrics include only academic qualification and aptitude and nothing else, the flow of knowledge is outright cut-throat, and if you fail, you perish. The system is Vulcan and absolutely hierarchic, and only the best of the best excel.

There’s no campus bureaucracy, no university “mental health counselors” for any fragile flower whose cat died, no campus sexual assault “courts” where the accused is already guilty, no university student unions led by outsider thugs, no federal loans for anyone willing to spend a few hundred thousand on a master’s degree about the connection between Maori tribal weaving patterns and post-colonial feminist movements. Most importantly, in this alternate reality, there is no forced push for the sameness known as equality.

Albeit this is an extreme scenario, it is not difficult to imagine what the left’s reaction would be. This system would not be allowed to continue.

Of course, it’s the exact reverse of our current reality. In two broadly center-right countries, the United Kingdom and the United States, cultural institutions are not just dominated by the left, they are increasingly becoming off-limits to conservatives. Consider the news from just last week: The Western Art History course at Yale was canceled, the 1619 Project was incorporated into public school curricula at Buffalo, military presence was banned at the Cambridge University freshers’ fair because it could be “triggering” for students who are “mentally unwell,” and a centuries-old student club was banned at Oxford for failing an identity politics quota.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/west-point-tackles-toxic-masculinity-mark-tapson/

If you are a good, committed cultural Marxist and your mission is to help dismantle the cultural, economic, and power structures in the capitalist West from within, how do you undertake such a grand task? How do you subvert an entire civilization? You undermine its foundations, and the most basic building block of all is the nuclear family. To deconstruct the family successfully, you must subvert masculinity, because masculinity is the warrior spirit of that nuclear family. To emasculate a civilization, you indoctrinate its youth to believe that the natural traits typically associated with masculinity – such as aggression, competitiveness, and emotional self-control – are poisonous to society and even to boys and men themselves. You convince men – especially society’s warriors – to reject their very nature altogether.

This January, cadets at West Point, the United States Military Academy, were required to attend educational events for “Honorable Living Day,” the academy’s third such day hosted during the short tenure of Superintendent Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams. The first was held last February and focused on eliminating sexual assault and harassment at the academy, which has been co-ed since 1976. The second, held last semester, called upon cadets, staff and faculty to improve the culture in order to combat sexual assault further.

At this most recent Honorable Living Day, the goal was to “expand the discussion beyond sexual assault and talk about how all aspects of the community can come together and promote an atmosphere of honorable living to include diversity, inclusion and acceptance of people from differing backgrounds, races and genders.” Lt. Gen. Williams described the curriculum as being “connected” to improving combat readiness.

Eradicating any sexual assaults or harassment at West Point is a worthy goal. They shouldn’t be tolerated in any work or study environment. Encouraging cadets to live with personal integrity and to treat others according to the content of their character and not the color of their skin are also vital aims. But if reports from several male West Point cadets are true, there appears to be more going on in this past Honorable Living Day than meets the eye. Breitbart News reported that it received comments from some cadets, on condition of anonymity, complaining that the program went beyond merely discouraging sexual harassment. As one cadet put it: “I’m being taught how not to be a man.”