RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272745/king-kang-rampage-lloyd-billingsley

Editors’ note: At the end of the 1960s at UCLA, the Black Panthers and the US organization battled for control of the new Black Studies program. In time, Chicano Studies, Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies also gained official recognition. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the University of California system rejected academically-qualified students and accepted others based on race and ethnicity. In 1996, voters responded with the California Civil Rights Initiative, which banned racial and ethnic preferences in state education, employment and contracting.

Twenty years later, UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity Diversity and Inclusion is a specialist in “implicit bias” theory but shows a distinct preference for politically correct groups of the Left. Meanwhile, professors of a certain ethnicity and conservative political profile are ostracized for championing free speech. Even their staff and student supporters come under fire.

Below is Part III of Frontpage Mag’s 4-part series by Lloyd Billingsley on this state of affairs at UCLA.

[Read Part I: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272686/diversity-lysenkoism-rules-ucla-lloyd-billingsley)

Read Part II: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272720/king-kang-makes-ucla-safe-jew-hatred-lloyd-billingsley

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden won ten NCAA national championships, including a record seven in a row. As a student at UCLA, Keith Fink was something of an academic John Wooden, winning three national debating championships. After earning a law degree, Fink returned to the campus in 2008 as a professor, in the same department as his college debate coach Thomas Miller. Fink became popular with students, with good reason.

Jewish students Negeen Arasteh and Shahab Naimi, for example, sought out Fink’s classes because he is “one of the best teachers at UCLA.” Students of all backgrounds and disciplines packed classes such as “Sex, Politics and Race: Free Speech on Campus.” In all his classes, Fink championed what he calls “fundamental American values,” such as free speech and due process. Politically correct campus bosses didn’t like it.

As professor Fink told Frontpage last year, “They are all afraid of a vocal, rational intelligent conservative who can provide a check on the progressive narrative they seek to indoctrinate the students with and empowers the students with knowledge of their rights on how to fight against the UC when their rights are being violated.” Jerry Kang, UCLA Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and his commissars responded by slapping restrictions on Fink’s class sizes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-curious-time-for-insidehighered-to-lose-interest-in-campus-speech/

Colleges have a free speech “problem.” From high-profile instances at Missouri, Yale, and Middlebury, to more recent events at UC Berkeley and Sarah Lawrence College, we’ve seen college leaders allow the campus left to harass speakers, silence debate, and drive conservative views and values from the academy.

This state of affairs is one reason why InsideHigherEd’s annual survey of college and university chief academic officers has been especially useful. Since 2015, this survey has been the only annual snapshot that captures what senior college administrators think about trigger warnings, free speech, and academic freedom — and thus the only reliable way to gauge changes in their actions or attitudes. In light of the contretemps of the past year, many were eager to see what campus leaders had to say.

Unfortunately, in the latest survey, released last week, those questions had been neatly scrubbed from the survey. Yep, one of the nation’s primary news outlets covering higher education decided that now would be a propitious time to stop asking about academic freedom and free speech on campus.

What might appear to be simply a curious case of bad timing is emblematic of a larger problem with the higher ed-industrial complex — a tendency to sweep under the rug those developments which raise uncomfortable questions about the orthodoxies and agendas pervading campus culture. This dynamic was on full display last fall in the lawsuit that Students for Fair Admissions has mounted against Harvard’s admissions policies, when all the quarreling factions of academe responded by finding a way to link arms in the cause of race-based admissions.

The survey did find time to ask whether conservative and liberal students feel welcome in classrooms on their campus. Four percent of provosts expressed reservations about whether liberal students feel welcome; 12 percent expressed concerns about whether conservative students do. Given that surveys of students have indicated that half of them report having censored themselves in class for fear of what will be said in response, this kind of question provides a useful, sometimes laughable, window into the self-serving bubble that campus mandarins occupy.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/29/duke-universit

Middlebury College is widely renowned for their top-quality, immersive foreign language learning programs. Central to the Middlebury curriculum is the infamous language pledge, a promise which all students must take to use for communication only the language one is studying for the duration of the program. Whether during the summer in idyllic Middlebury, Vermont, or overseas at one of the school’s satellite locations, hundreds of students every year commit themselves to Middlebury’s infamous language pledge, immersing themselves in the culture of the target language and internalizing all the subtle cues and linguistic patterns that occur over water cooler talk, gossip, run-of-the-mill transactions, etc.

Fulfilling one’s obligations under the language pledge is difficult. Most people process their emotions and thoughts by speaking about them. Living in a strange, new place with all of the emotional turmoil that brings can be overwhelming, especially when one lacks the vocabulary to articulate one’s experience. In rare moments of longing, the average Middlebury student might call home and speak in his native tongue for awhile. But those instances of quiet desperation are understood to be private.

The language pledge is as much a matter of respect for the other people in the room as it is a personal commitment to self-improvement. Speaking the language of the host country notifies the people of that country of one’s regard for their culture, time, and welcome. Thus, a certain intimacy may be achieved with friends of completely different backgrounds through speaking the host language. As for classmates, staying true to the language pledge in public and private settings communicates to them that their learning process is of as much value as one’s own. The shared experience of stumbling toward fluency also lends to the development of comradery among fellow students.

Ultimately, Middlebury Language School graduates are generally regarded as the best in the field. The positive outcomes of immersing oneself in the target culture cannot be overstated. From the national security perspective, Middlebury Language Schools are fantastic tools of cultural diplomacy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/guns-metoo-israel-human-rights-and-trump-11548806463

Editor’s Note: This is the first edition of Future View, a WSJ Opinion series allowing college students to sound off on politics, culture and global affairs. In this installment, contributors share opinions that are unpopular among their peers. Next we ask, “What’s one issue on which President Trump and the Democrats can compromise?” Click here to submit responses of fewer than 250 words by noon ET Feb. 5. The best responses will be published on Feb. 6.

Women Need the Right to Bear Arms

If you don’t support Second Amendment rights, you can’t claim to be a supporter of the #MeToo movement. In the fall of 2016 I was a senior at my dream university in Philadelphia. What started as an ordinary day ended up being the worst of my life: I was violently raped. At the time I was a law-abiding gun owner, but I couldn’t bring my gun with me to my gun-free university. That senseless rule left me defenseless. I was just months away from being the first in my family to graduate from college, but I was forced to drop out due to the emotional trauma stemming from my assault.

Unfortunately, there are times when women in particular need to have a reliable means of self-defense. There are times when seconds count and no one is there to save us. If you won’t respect our right to bear arms and let us have a reliable means of self-defense on college campuses, you have no right to tell us you stand with victims of sexual assault.

–Savannah Lindquist, Tidewater Community College and Old Dominion University, majoring in psychology.

Israel Is Powerful. That Doesn’t Make it Wrong

Why do my peers oppose Israel? Not because college students are anti-Semitic, but because most hold one truth to be self-evident: Powerlessness implies moral legitimacy. The Israelis are powerful; the Palestinians are not. As such, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is merely a struggle between victim and oppressor, and nobody wants to support the oppressor.

Accordingly, campus pro-Israel groups often try to portray Israel as a victim, too—a victim of international bias and unprovoked aggression from its Arab neighbors. This strategy, however, has failed. It will continue to fail because even though Israel may be under threat, it isn’t powerless. Israel’s army is strong and its technology is advanced. But power doesn’t automatically imply moral turpitude; and conversely, powerlessness does not guarantee goodness. In other words, might does not make Israel right, but it certainly does not make Israel wrong, either. Indeed, Israel strives for justice and peace. But students can’t see that when they allow the popular morality of power to obscure the truth.

–Benjamin Simon, Stanford University, intends to major in philosophy and religious studies and computer science.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272686/diversity-lysenkoism-rules-ucla-lloyd-billingsley

Editors’ note: At the end of the 1960s at UCLA, the Black Panthers and the US organization battled for control of the new Black Studies program. In time, Chicano Studies, Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies also gained official recognition. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the University of California system rejected academically-qualified students and accepted others based on race and ethnicity. In 1996, voters responded with the California Civil Rights Initiative, which banned racial and ethnic preferences in state education, employment and contracting.

Twenty years later, UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity Diversity and Inclusion is a specialist in “implicit bias” theory but shows a distinct preference for politically correct groups of the Left. Meanwhile, professors of a certain ethnicity and conservative political profile are ostracized for championing free speech. Even their staff and student supporters come under fire.

Below is Part I of Frontpage Mag’s 4-part series by Lloyd Billingsley on this state of affairs at UCLA.

January 17, 2019, marked 50 years since the Black Panthers and the US organization shot it out in room 1201 of Campbell Hall at the University of California at Los Angeles. Panthers John Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter perished in the gun battle over control of fledgling black studies programs on the UCLA campus. Also at stake was control of the larger Black Power movement of the sixties.

US stood for “us,” black people, as opposed to “them,” the oppressive white people, but the rival Panthers called the group “United Slaves.” They were black nationalists founded by Hakim Jamal, formerly known as Allen Donaldson and a cousin of Malcolm X. Another US founder was Maulana Karenga, formerly known as Ron Karenga and Ronald McKinley Everett. Karenga is the creator of Kwanzaa and is now professor of Africana studies at Cal State Long Beach. The Black Panthers were more of a Marxist cast and made common cause with white radicals.

One of them was New Left stalwart David Horowitz, a red diaper baby born to Communist parents, as he outlined in Radical Son. Horowitz raised money for a Black Panther school in Oakland, but in late 1974 the Panthers murdered Betty Van Patter, the bookkeeper Horowitz recommended. The brutal crime showed the true nature of the Panthers, who had murdered many others, including member Alex Rackley, only 19, after making a recording of his “trial.” For David Horowitz, Van Patter’s murder signaled the need to depart from the left.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/duke-professor-resigns-after-urging-students-to-only-speak-english-on-campus/
I happen to disagree with Professor Nealy….students should not speak too loudly in any language, but why should she have to resign any position over a well meant letter??????rsk
An assistant professor at Duke University has resigned amid backlash after sending an email Friday that urged students to speak “English 100% of the time” while on campus and in professional settings.

Megan Lee Nealy resigned from her position as director of graduate studies for biostatistics after university administrators learned of the email she sent to first- and second-year students, in which she warned that their academic careers might suffer if they used their native languages around professors.

“To international students, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep these unintended consequences in mind when you choose to speak in Chinese in the building,” Neely wrote, according to screenshots of the message obtained by the New York Post. “I have no idea how hard it has been and still is for you to come to the US and have to learn in a non-native language. As such, I have the upmost [sic] respect for what you are doing.”

“That being said, I encourage you to commit to using English 100% of the time when you are in Hock or any other professional building. Copying the second-year students as a reminder given they are currently applying for jobs,” she added.

Neely, who will remain on as an assistant professor despite resigning from her administrative post, subsequently explained that she felt compelled to address the language issue after two professors complained to her that a group of Chinese students were speaking their native tongue “VERY LOUDLY” in a student lounge.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272697/bad-ideas-are-born-bad-universities-bruce-thornton

In 1726 Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels gave us a brilliant satire of the folly of research divorced from common sense, practicality, and reality. When Gulliver visits the Grand Academy of Lagado, he finds “Projectors” busy with research projects like extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, building houses from the roof down, and converting excrement back to food.

It’s hard not to think about Swift’s Projectors when you consider today’s loony ideas driving our social mores and even laws. And for that we can thank our universities, where most of these preposterous notions have their genesis. Multiple “gender” identities, “toxic masculinity,” “microaggressions,” and occult “racism” are just a few examples of speculative nonsense that have escaped the university asylum and now roil our politics and infect our laws.

Like most social and political dysfunctions, this degradation of the university is a product of the Sixties. Professors always have had political and ideological preferences, but in the Sixties, universities institutionalized left-wing identity politics in various “studies” departments and programs. Yet faced with aggressive public complaints that women and minorities had been ignored in academic research and teaching, administrators did not address the alleged shortcomings in their curricula from within the protocols of university disciplines like English or history. For example, the topics of black or female history, literature, or social history should be studied with the same professional methodologies and protocols that govern those disciplines. Training in those professional standards could then become the foundation of research and teaching, subject to the professional oversight and judgment of similarly trained peers.

Rather than adjusting and correcting curricula within the framework of existing disciplines, however, universities simply created separate but equal academic sandboxes to quiet noisy activists and buy (they thought) some peace and quiet. Nor did they consider the consequences of sacrificing professional standards in order to display their political correctness.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/24/who

Last year, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the industry periodical for academia, published a commentary under the title “The Whitesplaining of History Is Over.” The first sentence went like this:

When the academy was the exclusive playground of white men, it produced the theories of race, gender, and Western cultural superiority that underwrote imperialism abroad and inequality at home.

The rest of the commentary cited women and minority historians who are steadily correcting that white male supremacist record compiled by white male scholars in the past.

The author, a historian at Stanford, wanted to present the revision work taking place as a story of triumph. But as you can see from the denigrating first sentence, there is no joy in her expression. She can’t get past her own bitter resentment. As I read the piece, I didn’t quibble with the thesis. Instead, I wondered, “How many 19-year-olds want to spend 14 weeks in a class with her?”

The year before, the classics web site Eidolon published a commentary by a professor at Denison University with the headline, “We Condone It by Our Silence: Confronting Classics’ Complicity in White Supremacy.” In one paragraph, citing the “Greek Miracle” that produced the extraordinary burst of genius in the arts, philosophy, and literature, the author terms it a myth and adds:

It is a myth that gets trotted out frequently in the pages of elite magazines by those among us who wish to promote the study of the classical world as valuable to the present and by those who may be (un)consciously trying to continue to hide the field’s racism and misogyny behind a sanitized story of (white, male, Euro-American) greatness.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/notre-dame-will-cover-christopher-columbus-murals-after-complaints/

Father John Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, announced on Sunday that he has decided to cover a series of murals of Christopher Columbus displayed in Main Building, the central administrative building on campus.

“In recent years I have heard from students, alumni, faculty, staff, representatives of the Native American community, and others on this complex topic,” Fr. Jenkins said in an email to the Notre Dame community, a copy of which was obtained by National Review. “I have decided, after consultation with the University’s Board of Fellows, on a course that will preserve the murals, but will not display them regularly in their current location.”

As he usually does when faced with a situation in which he hopes to appease everyone, Fr. Jenkins has settled on a course of action that will please exactly no one.

The twelve murals were painted by Luigi Gregori in the 1880s specifically for display in Notre Dame’s Main Building, depicting the life and explorations of Columbus. The images had deep resonance at the time for American Catholics, most of whom were immigrants, who faced intense anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic prejudice. Columbus represented for them the essential contributions of immigrants and of Catholics to U.S. history, while Notre Dame represented the possibility of eventually gaining the nation’s respect.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/university-harassment-policy-bans-offensive-jokes-posters-cartoons/

To make students subject to punishment over something that is so unclear is, quite frankly, unfair.

The “discrimination and harassment policy” of Southeastern Louisiana University lists “offensive jokes,” “posters,” “cartoons,” and “drawings” as “prohibited conduct” that can be considered “harassment.”

“This conduct need not have intent to harm; if severe enough, it does not have to
consist of repeated incidents; and it need not be directed against a specific individual/group of
Individuals,” the school’s policy states.

As The College Fix notes, the university has received a “Red Light” rating from the pro-free-speech group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — a rating reserved for schools that have “at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” FIRE’s senior program officer Laura Beltz told The Fix that, although she did not know of any students who had recently been disciplined under the policy, that doesn’t mean that the existence of such a restrictive policy was harmless.

“It’s important to remember that, even when not enforced, policies that restrict constitutionally protected expression have an impermissible chilling effect on speech,” Beltz told The Fix. “To use two policies at Southeastern Louisiana as an example, students may be discouraged from expressing themselves if they read a policy that requires registration of expressive activities a full seven days in advance, or one that calls things like ‘offensive jokes’ punishable harassment.”