RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/freedom-center-plans-title-vi-suit-against-sara-dogan/

In a letter sent to the heads of Pitzer College and Pomona College in Southern California, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, acting with the Dhillon Law Group, put the Claremont Consortium of Colleges on notice that their promotion and funding of anti-Semitic speakers and events is a violation of federal law and will no longer be tolerated.

Over the past several years, Pitzer, Pomona, and the other Claremont Colleges have repeatedly funded anti-Semitic rhetoric and displays on campus—largely organized by the Hamas-funded campus hate group Students for Justice in Palestine—which contribute to a hostile environment for Jewish students.

The letter cites Executive Order 13899 which was signed by President Trump on December 11, 2019. The Order directs executive agencies to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against all prohibited forms of discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism just as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination prohibited by Title VI. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.

This is not the first occasion on which the Freedom Center has challenged the Claremont Colleges over their funding and promotion of Jew hatred. Last fall, the Freedom Center named Pitzer as one of the “Top Ten Colleges that Promote Jew Hatred and Incite Terrorism.” Over a thousand printed newspapers containing the report on the prevalence of anti-Semitism at Pitzer were distributed by the Freedom Center on Pitzer’s campus.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/07/vassar-college-workshop-all-white-people-are-racist/

Students that attended a recent workshop at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, were reportedly told that “all white people are racist,” Breitbart reports.

According to a report by The College Fix, The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond’s “Undoing Racism” workshop, hosted on various college campuses and other community locations across the nation, works to end systemic racism and institutional oppression, teaching students that racism is woven into the fabric of American society.

One way it does that is by telling attendees “all white people are racist.”

An op-ed in Vassar College’s student newspaper states that during an Undoing Racism workshop there during the fall 2019 semester, instructors made that statement and highlighted specific ways in which they believe American society is racist.

“We looked into each other’s souls as we discussed hardships and shared truths. For some spotting racism is easy, while for others it comes to light that racism is not always this blatant use of the n-word or making someone sit in the back of the bus. It’s oppression. It’s a lack of opportunities. Racism is thinking you are being progressive by allowing a Black child into your predominantly white school, but not wanting your white child to attend a predominantly Black school.”

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/06/oberlin-reaches-settlement-with-ex-professor-who-claimed-israel-behind-isis-charlie-hebdo-shooting/

A professor fired from Oberlin College after sharing multiple social media posts targeting Jews and Israelis has recently settled a discrimination lawsuit against her former employer.

Joilynn “Joy” Karega-Mason, previously an assistant professor at the private Ohio liberal arts school, faced widespread criticism after The Tower news blog reported in February 2016 that she had published various Facebook posts espousing conspiracy theories, among them that Israel was behind the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, the 2014 downing of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine and the Islamic State terrorist group.

She also endorsed an image claiming the Jewish Rothschild family owned “your news, the media, your oil and your government,” as well as a video by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in which he claimed that “there were many Israeli and Zionist Jews in key roles in the 9/11 attack.”

After initially defending her right to free speech, Oberlin launched an investigation into Karega-Mason’s conduct and announced in August 2016 that it had put her on paid leave. She was ultimately dismissed that November following a vote by Oberlin’s Board of Trustees, which accused Karega-Mason of “failing to meet the academic standards that Oberlin requires of its faculty and failing to demonstrate intellectual honesty.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mike-moons-missouri-campus-intellectual-diversity-act/

The current atmosphere of crisis and conflict on America’s college campuses was kicked off by the troubles at the University of Missouri–Columbia (“Mizzou”) during the 2015–2016 academic year. Many will remember the infamous video of Professor Melissa Click calling for “some muscle” to prevent journalists from covering the protests, a harbinger of the campus free-speech crisis. In the wake of Mizzou’s 2015 debacle, university enrollment cratered, with a modest recovery beginning only recently.

It is in the interest of the citizens of Missouri to find a long-term solution to this problem — a way to encourage all sides on our divided college campuses to freely to speak their minds. We need to regularize civil debate over the issues that divide us. If students were accustomed to hosting and hearing civil debates over issues like immigration, abortion, religious liberty, health insurance, and criminal-justice reform, the effect would be to normalize disagreement and lower the emotional temperature on campus.

By introducing House Bill No. 2177, the Missouri Campus Intellectual Diversity Act, Representative Mike Moon aims to do exactly that. Moon’s bill is modeled on a proposal I made here at NRO last year. (See that proposal for a detailed explanation of the concept.) This proposal has been endorsed by the National Association of Scholars, and by Mark Bauerlein at Minding the Campus. Essentially, Moon’s bill instructs the state university system to set up a series of debates, public forums, and individual lectures that will explore our most hotly debated public-policy issues from competing perspectives. If experts willing and able to present and defend both sides of a given controversy are in short supply on campus, outside speakers could be invited in. Videos of public-policy debates arranged by the university would be made available to the public. Moon’s bill also instructs universities to keep detailed event calendars. This will provide a snapshot, so to speak, of the state of intellectual diversity on campus, at least with regard to public-policy events.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/04/like-david-mccullough-americans-ignorance-of-history-should-keep-us-up-at-night/

In academia, including teacher education, an illiberal secular fundamentalism severs connections between schools and religion, morality, and knowledge.

David McCullough, the well-known historian, couldn’t sleep. Of course, people in their 80s often experience some form of insomnia, his doctor, Thomas H. Lee, told him. But the pea under McCullough’s mattress was metaphorical, not physical.

The author of Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies of presidents John Adams and Harry S. Truman, among other highly praised works, tossed and turned. Why? Because public figures don’t know American history, don’t understand that despite uncertainties and challenges, “Things worked out — because individuals behaved in certain ways with integrity and resilience. They figured out how to work with other people, and they tried to do the right things.”

So wrote Lee, with his patient’s permission, in a Wall Street Journal commentary nearly two years ago. By the time McCullough spoke at the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., last Labor Day weekend, his anxiety about historical ignorance had expanded from our leaders to the whole country.

McCullough’s main topic was his latest book, “The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought American Ideals West.” But he confessed that he worried American history isn’t taught much anymore, that subject matter in general does not receive proper attention.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/03/universities-are-complicit-in-1619-projects-disgusting-swindle/

David Randall is Director of Research at the National Association of Scholars.

Of course Hannah-Jones doesn’t welcome pushback. But we expect better of our universities. They shouldn’t give their intellectual and moral authority to her gimcrack wares.

The backers of the New York Times’ 1619 Project don’t believe their hate-reading of American history can stand up to examination in the light of day. That’s the only conclusion to be drawn from their full flight from critics across the political spectrum.

Proponents of the 1619 Project—believers that the real founding of the country came with the landing of African slaves in Jamestown in 1619—are determined to foist their ideas on children who don’t have enough information to argue back. They’ll force teachers to teach its falsehoods as the only acceptable history. They’ll arrange “dialogues” throughout the nation, where their advocates say six sorts of nonsense and their carefully selected “interlocutors” reply, You’re so very right! But they’ll never allow for an open debate against an informed opponent.

They know the arguments behind the 1619 Project would fall to pieces if they did. So they carefully arrange matters so that no one ever gets a chance to say that the emperor has no clothes.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/dh-wednesday-lead-hate-america-project-david-horowitz/

Editorial Note: It’s time to recognize that the current ideologies of the progressive Left and the Democrat Party – Cultural Marxism and Identity Politics – pose existential threats to America’s survival.

America is unique among nations in being founded on a set of ideas and values rather than having a shared “identity” based on “blood and soil.” The founding of America during the revolutionary era 1776 – 1787 was based on principles that provide the sinews of our national identity. They are what create a unity out of the diverse peoples that have settled and occupied this country since its founding. They have been the inspirational force that enabled America to abolish slavery, become a global symbol of freedom, and provide the world’s chief bulwark against global tyrannies.

It is this inspirational memory that the political left has set out to erase and destroy. The most disturbing manifestation of this sinister aggression is the so-called “1619 Project,” the brainchild of a staff writer at The New York Times, named Nikole Hannah-Jones. It is supported by The Pulitzer Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution and the nation’s cultural elite. Six months after its launch, the “1619 Project” Is already a curriculum in 3,500 public high schools in all 50 states.[1] Given the extreme leftwing nature of the teacher unions and the public education establishment, while disturbing this is hardly surprising.[2]

The “1619 Project” is described by Times editorial board member Mara Gay in the following words: “In the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.”[3] In a formal statement, the Times editorial board elaborated: “The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”[4]

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/01/31/complaints-on-antisemitism-executive-order-highlight-climate-on-campus/

The new Executive Order extending protections to Jewish students under the 1964 Civil Rights Act has generated a number of complaints to the Department of Education. At Columbia University, a complaint alleges “pervasive and ongoing” discrimination against Jewish students, and “a targeted harassment and discrimination campaign” by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other BDS groups.

At UCLA, a complaint alleges that a speaker described Israel as a racist entity, denied its right to exist, and stated that its supporters were white supremacists. A complaint filed on behalf of Hillel of Georgia alleges that Georgia Tech permitted discrimination against an individual who was denied entry to a Young Democratic Socialists of America event because of her identity.

Central to the growing number of complaints are allegations that denials of Israel’s right to exist are de facto antisemitic, by reference to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is referred to in the recent Executive Order. Another issue is harassment and disruption of public events held by Jewish and other students.

The complaints come as still more evidence has appeared regarding the politicization of classrooms at all levels by BDS supporters. A new report by the AMCHA Initiative analyzed syllabi from 50 university courses on the Arab-Israeli conflict. On average, instructors who support BDS assigned an average of 78% of readings by fellow BDS supporters, in contrast to only 17% from non-BDS supporting instructors. The qualitative and quantitative contrasts demonstrate decisively that college courses are being deliberately politicized.

The problem of BDS supporters in the classroom is not restricted to higher education. Support for BDS and antisemitism in the Newton, Massachusetts, public schools has been long documented. A new incident at the private Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Riverdale, New York, saw a BDS-supporting teacher host a speaker who alleged that Israelis, who were “the victims of the Holocaust and violence have become perpetrators of violence against Palestinians.”