RUTHFULLY YOURS

Rabbi Shlomo Elkan hadn’t heard of Oberlin College before heading there in 2010 to establish a Chabad House, which functions as a campus center for Jewish students. “Rural Ohio wasn’t on my radar,” the 34-year-old rabbi, who grew up in Atlanta and received his rabbinical training in New Jersey, tells me. But a third of students at Oberlin are Jewish, and the Corn Belt seemed a quiet place to raise a family. Little did he know.

The rabbi and his wife, Devora, quickly drew regular attendance to services at their small home, but Oberlin was boiling with political debate. It was a loop playing out on campuses across the country, under the banners of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The presumption around many quads was that to be Jewish meant you were part of the privileged, oppressor class.

“At first the questioning and conflict seemed natural. That’s what college is about, with kids seeking new identities, communities, even religious narratives,” says Rabbi Elkan, one of 200 Chabad rabbis posted at U.S. colleges. “But in the last several years we noticed hard lines forming around students to show their progressive stripes. That put many in the uncomfortable position of having to denounce Israel and their own Jewishness or stay silent when others did so.”

Early last year Oberlin rhetoric professor Joy Karega was exposed for promoting conspiracy theories and sharing anti-Semitic images on Facebook . Ms. Karega wrote that Islamic State is “a CIA and Mossad operation.” She also posted memes about Jews’ controlling the world’s banks, media and the U.S. government. These themes could have been ripped from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The Oberlin administration initially defended Ms. Karega, citing academic freedom. But it relented and fired her in November. Some accused the school of caving to Jewish alumni by ousting the popular African-American teacher. Amid the noise, a Jewish professor’s home was vandalized with references to ovens; numerous students transferred; and Oberlin landed 11th on a Jewish newspaper’s Worst Colleges for Jewish Students list.

Donors pulled back, including one who had pledged $350,000 to relocate Oberlin Chabad to a 6,000-square-foot campus residence. The unfinished property—the site of a former YMCA—sits in mid-repair, covered with construction wrap. “That one was tough,” Rabbi Elkan says, noting his current home has one bathroom to accommodate his six children, plus the dozens of students who pile in each Sabbath. CONTINUE AT SITE

Fall semester has begun, and the University of California at Berkeley is back at the epicenter of the free-speech wars. Last weekend saw 13 arrests as Antifa activists bloodied their outnumbered foes in the city streets, and conservative journalist Ben Shapiro, former White House aide Steve Bannon and alt-right parvenu Milo Yiannopoulos are scheduled or have been invited to speak on campus this month. Stage set, Chekhov’s gun on the table.

The university’s new chancellor, Carol T. Christ, has vowed to restore free speech on campus, saying in August that it was “critical for the Berkeley community to protect this right.” Resilience is “the surest form of safe space,” she told students, and “we would be providing you less of an education” if “we tried protect you from ideas that you may find wrong, even noxious.”

Yet Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin has already asked the university to cancel controversial speakers. He said last week the city must be “very careful that while protecting people’s free-speech rights, we are not putting our citizens in a potentially dangerous situation and costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing the windows of businesses.”

Mr. Arreguin also suggested that conservative speakers were “just a target” for radical activists “to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street.” Yet the risk comes not from the peaceful speakers but from masked and armed censors.

Meanwhile, Ms. Christ is schooling the mayor on the First Amendment. The chancellor believes allowing the speeches to continue as scheduled is the university’s legal obligation and spokesman Dan Mogulof told us she is prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on security to protect speakers and attendees.

Ms. Christ is off to a good start, but the pressure to capitulate will increase as the semester goes on. In the student newspaper recently, Berkeley resident Sarah Cordette accused the chancellor of “giving institutional support to white supremacists” and exposing students to “mental and emotional damage.” You can imagine what the faculty is saying.

Past administrators were so intimidated by student protesters that the university installed a $9,000 emergency exit in the chancellor’s office, which soon became known as an “escape hatch.” And when Mr. Yiannopoulos tried to speak on campus last February, Antifa activists threw Molotov cocktails, used commercial-grade fireworks as grenades, shattered windows and set fires, causing about $100,000 in damage.

Mr. Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Mr. Gillman is chancellor of the University of California, Irvine. They are authors of “Free Speech on Campus,” recently published by Yale University Press.

During the past year appearances by controversial speakers on college campuses have led to a string of tense, sometimes violent, incidents. As students return to school, administrators will again face the challenge of protecting freedom of speech while ensuring safety for their students, staff and faculty. We offer this checklist to help them prepare for the difficult issues that are sure to arise.

1. Disseminate a clear statement of free-speech values and create opportunities to teach the campus community about free speech. Senior administrators at colleges and universities need to communicate with their communities the vital importance of freedom of expression and academic freedom for higher education. At a minimum, they must state that all ideas and views can be expressed, no matter how controversial or offensive, and must explain why a university can’t fulfill its core purpose without this freedom.

Campus officials can no longer assume this is obvious and therefore unnecessary. Our experience is that too many students, faculty and administrators lack familiarity with basic principles of free expression and academic freedom. Because protection of offensive speech comes naturally to few, campuses should supplement strong free-speech statements with online resources and educational programming that allow all members of the community to develop a better understanding of the issues. For example, schools can include a discussion of free-speech issues at their freshman orientation programs.

But freedom of expression is never absolute. Some speech—such as true threats and harassment and interfering with the speech of others—is not protected. Campuses can enact regulations that ensure ample opportunities for communication while preventing interference with the teaching and research of faculty and students.

2. Publish a clear statement supporting the presence of controversial speakers before particular incidents occur. Speakers should never be excluded because of their views, but campus officials also need to explain that it is completely appropriate, and indeed desirable, for students and faculty to express disagreement with speakers they find objectionable. There can be nondisruptive protests at events, statements of objection through the media, and counter-events that highlight different messages. As the old saying goes, the answer to speech we don’t like is more speech.

3. Devise and publicize transparent and neutral procedures for approving events. Campuses typically require advance permission for use of their facilities. There is no free-speech right for groups to demand unconditional access to limited campus venues at a time of their choosing. But the procedures and the criteria for receiving such approval must be clear, stated in advance and applicable to all. Otherwise such fair limitations could be abused.

4. Ensure everyone’s safety. Campuses need to prepare security assessments that ensure adequate protection for controversial speakers and their audiences. A campus might insist on venues that make it easier to prevent protesters from blocking access to the event, and it might require tickets or university identification to minimize the chances of disruption. Speakers in uncontrolled venues on campus public spaces have no right to speak without interruption or rebuttal from a gathering audience, but they do have a right to be protected from violence or threats of violence.

From California to Minnesota to the District of Columbia, the transgender agenda has infiltrated the classrooms of even the most tender youth. Last week Alexandra DeSanctis reported for National Review Online about the “transition ceremony” hosted by a kindergarten teacher at California’s Rocklin Academy Gateway to celebrate a gender-dysphoric boy donning the attire and appellation of a little girl. As DeSanctis noted, the shocked and angry parents of the Rocklin pupils had not received advance notice of the “lesson” and learned of the events only when their confused children returned home.

When the outraged parents complained to school administrators, the principal fell back on Rocklin’s non-discrimination policy and the supposed age-appropriateness of the discussions. The parents’ ire at the principal and, for that matter, even the school board was wrongly directed. The fault lies instead with the California legislature. Here’s why.

California, like 21 other states and the District of Columbia, requires schools to notify parents of their sex-education curriculum. The Golden State also joins 35 other states and D.C. in requiring schools to allow parents to opt their children out of sex education. (Three other states require parents to opt in — that is, to express consent to their children’s participation in sex-education programs.) But the California legislature specifically excluded “gender identity” from the state’s notice and opt-out requirements, by providing in Section 51932(b) of the Education Code:

“This chapter does not apply to instructions, materials, presentations, or programming that discuss gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation, relationships, or family and do not discuss human reproductive organs and their functions.”

So, contrary to the parents’ assumption that the local administrators of Rocklin Academy failed them and their children, the blame lies with the California legislature, which purposely exempted gender identity from both the notice and opt-out mandates of its sex-education provisions.

Paradoxically, as Matt Sharp, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal-advocacy non-profit organization working with allies in California to protect parental rights, highlighted in an e-mail interview: “What is so troubling is that, under California law, schools must provide notification and an opt-out before they discuss certain biological truths of human reproduction between males and females, but not when they teach the rejection of those biological truths.”

California is unique in that its legislature expressly excluded classroom instruction related to gender identity from the state’s sex education notice and opt-out requirements. However, while other states have not (yet) taken this direct approach, parents might be surprised to learn that the of law of their state likely provides them with no better protection.

For instance, the Colorado Comprehensive Health Education Act provides that local school boards and districts must provide written notification to parents of any “comprehensive health education program” and allow parents to opt their students out of the curriculum. But the statute defines “comprehensive health education program” to mean “a planned, sequential health program of learning experiences in preschool, kindergarten, and grades one through twelve.”

This is almost beyond belief. Dozens of public school teachers are members of the ultra-violent Antifa faction “By Any Means Necessary” (BAMN) — with many teachers playing a prominent leadership role in what DHS says in an organization engaged in “domestic terrorist violence.” Several of the BAMN teachers helped organize the violent Berkeley protest that assaulted peaceful protesters.

Even after being arrested for inciting violence, the teachers weren’t fired.

The Daily Caller:

One of BAMN’s most prominent organizers is Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley middle school teacher and pro-violence militant. Felarca currently faces charges of inciting a riot for her role in the Sacramento violence

After BAMN and other antifa groups staged violent protests in Berkeley to keep right-wing author Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking, Felarca defended her group’s acts of violence. BAMN was able to cancel another event, this time an April speech by pro-Trump author Ann Coulter, by promising a repeat performance of the Milo riots.

The FBI and DHS say Antifa groups like BAMN are engaging in “domestic terrorist violence,” according to the Politico report.

Just last weekend, Felarca helped organize BAMN’s mass demonstrations that “shut down” a free speech rally in Berkeley last weekend. As with BAMN’s other organized actions, left-wing actors at Saturday demonstrations violently attacked peaceful protesters. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi condemned the Antifa violence in Berkeley, while Felarca called BAMN’s actions a “resounding success.”

Several BAMN members and leaders have run for spots on local teachers’ union boards — successfully.

BAMN organizer and high school teacher Nicole Conaway organized a “sickout” at her school in 2015, leading other teachers in calling in sick to protest the policies of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. The sickout forced six Detroit-area schools to cancel classes, affecting nearly 4,000 students.

[…]

Oakland Technical High School teacher and BAMN member Tania Kappner worked with Felarca this past January to organize students and teachers in a walkout in protesting Trump. Kappner was identified in the media as a BAMN member as early as 2011.

For those who doubted that political correctness posed a threat to free speech on campus, Above the Law contributor Joe Patrice just gave you reason to believe. Patrice called for the firing of two tenured professors who coauthored an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for a return to “bourgeois values.”

Patrice characterized the article as racist and sexist, “This dynamic duo of dumb spend the op-ed concocting a theory as terrifying as it is bereft of factual support when they posit that all of America’s woes really do stem from failing to live up to the ideals of an era when (white) men were men and everyone else kept their goddamned mouths shut.”

Amy Wax and Larry Alexander began their op-ed with a clear statement of purpose, “Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.”

Wax and Alexander argue that the breakdown of what they call “bourgeois values,” contributed to all of these problems. They defined these “bourgeois values” as, “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

Wax and Alexander credit these social norms for boosting prosperity, reducing crime, and increasing social cohesion. It is difficult to see how Wax and Alexander’s innocuous paean to conventional wisdom and middle-class norms could be considered racist. The substance of the article is indistinguishable from what one might hear in a black church on a Sunday morning.

Strangely, Wax and Alexander’s critics seem to associate “non-whites,” with laziness, promiscuity, and irresponsibility. A view that the Charlottesville deplorables would not disagree with.

Racism is not the reason Joe Patrice provides for firing Wax and Alexander. Rather, Patrice writes, “Neither Wax nor Alexander should be fired for holding unpopular opinions. They should be fired for being bad scholars.”

“An op-ed isn’t an academic journal, of course, but belching out so many lies and half-truths while draped in the imprimatur of the credibility that the law school’s name brings is an institutional embarrassment. It undermines that credibility with students and peers. Op-eds for local newspapers may not be held to the strict standards of a scholarly journal, but that doesn’t absolve professors of the need to conduct themselves as scholars for the good of the institution that employs them.”

It would have been more honest for Patrice to say he wants them fired because he disagrees with what they have to say. To paraphrase Voltaire, I disagree with what you say and will ensure that you get fired for your offensive opinion.

Becoming a tenured professor requires around a decade of hard work, from the time you graduate college to the time you receive tenure. In Patrice’s view a single poorly sourced (according to him) newspaper op-ed should be enough to take that away. Regardless of your lengthy and impressive publication record, your stellar teaching evaluations, a substandard op-ed or ill-considered letter to the editor makes you unfit for academic employment.

The University of California in Berkeley was again the scene of violence recently, as protesters claimed license to silence those with whom they disagree. Their fight against “fascism” took the form of not just stopping a speech, but assaulting those who came to hear it.

For those of us at universities and colleges, these counter-demonstrators, and in particular the masked antifa protesters, are a troubling and growing presence on our campuses. They have been assaulting people and blocking speeches for years with relatively little condemnation. They flourish in an environment where any criticism is denounced as being reflective of racist or fascist sentiments.

However, as the latest violence in Berkeley vividly demonstrates, there is no distinction between these protesters and the fascists they claim to be resisting. They are all fascists in their use of fear and violence to silence others. What is particularly chilling is how some academics have given this anti-speech mob legitimacy through pseudo-philosophical rationalizations.

At Berkeley and other universities, protesters have held up signs saying “F–k Free Speech” and have threatened to beat up anyone taking their pictures, including journalists. They seem blissfully ignorant of the contradiction in using fascistic tactics as anti-fascist protesters. After all, a leading definition of fascism is “a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.”

CNN recently interviewed antifa protesters who insist that violence is simply the language that their opponents understand. Leftist organizer Scott Crow endorsed illegal actions and said that antifa activists cover their faces to “avoid the ramifications of law enforcement.” Such violent logic is supported by some professors.

Last week, Clemson University Professor Bart Knijnenburg went on Facebook to call Trump supporters and Republicans “racist scum.” He added, “I admire anyone who stands up against white supremacy, violent or nonviolent. This needs to stop, by any means necessary. #PunchNazis.” He is not alone. Trinity College Professor Johnny Williams, who teaches classes on race, posted attacks on bigots and called on people to “let them f—–g die.”

These voices go beyond the troubling number of academics supporting speech codes and the curtailment of free speech. These are scholars who have embraced the antithesis of the life and values of academia. They justify violence to silence those who are deemed unworthy to be heard. Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray, the author of a book entitled “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” is one of the chief enablers of these protesters. Bray defines antifa as “politics or an activity of social revolutionary self defense. It’s a pan-left radical politics uniting communists, socialists, anarchists and various different radical leftists together for the shared purpose of combating the far right.”

A fiery white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., has reignited calls to sanitize college campuses of anything reminiscent of the Confederacy. Many of the memorials to the Civil War-era are being targeted with vandalism or hidden away by administrators.https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/36203/

While some say the memorials should remain up as a monument to how far America has come as a nation, others say they represent a celebration of white supremacy and must come down, echoing chants such as “No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”

The controversy is especially heated on college campuses, where protests and vandalism of the monuments have plagued campuses for several years.

In recent times, the issue surfaced in 2014 when Washington and Lee University, named after the Confederate general, removed Confederate flags on display near his statue. The controversy came up again in 2015 at the University of Texas, Austin when campus leaders removed a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis after repeated student complaints.

Later in 2016, Vanderbilt University paid more than $1 million dollars to rename a building that included the word “Confederate” in the building’s stone inscription. In November of last year, administration at the University of Louisville relocated a confederate statue on their campus to avoid offending students.

Earlier this year, Yale University reversed their stance on protecting history by renaming Calhoun College, named after the pro-slavery advocate, to Grace Mary Hopper College.

Now, galvanized by the attention brought to the memorials through the rise of white nationalists, more monuments have been vandalized or removed or come under heated scrutiny. Such recent incidents include:

Aug. 13, 2017: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Silent Sam statue covered with a black hood; a week later a massive rally unfolded against it (and it’s still ongoing)

Aug. 14, 2017: North Carolina Central University: Student takes down a nearby confederate monument by tying a rope around its neck, attaching it to a car and driving away

Aug. 19, 2017: Bowdin College: Moved a confederate monument from public view to an archived section of their library.

Aug. 19, 2017: Duke University: Removed a statue of Robert E. Lee after it was vandalized

Aug. 20, 2017: University of Texas, Austin: Removed three statues of confederate figures and relocating them to the Briscoe Center of American History

Aug. 21, 2017: University of Mississippi: Administration decides to “contextualize” their statue of confederate figure and Civil War-era Supreme Court Justice Lucius Q.C. Lamar by adding a plaque fully describing his legacy

Aug. 24, 2017: Virginia Commonwealth University: VCU President Michael Rao has directed administrators to conduct an audit of all symbols “of an exclusionary nature,” including Confederate ones

Aug. 28, 2017: The University of Maryland marching band decided it will no longer play the state song before the college’s football games because of the song’s ties to the Confederacy

Not all reactions have been supportive. Some say taking the monuments down whitewashes history. Others call the movement a politically motivated stunt that has snowballed out of control.