RUTHFULLY YOURS

When the University of Michigan decided to renovate the century-old Michigan Union building, they thought it would be nice to get some input from students on the direction the renovations should take. In theory, not a bad idea.

Unfortunately, the university forgot this is the outrage generation, and should have expected that a student would express concern that minorities are oppressed by FINISHED WOOD:

Anna Wibbelman, former president of Building a Better Michigan, an organization that voices student concerns about university development, stated at a student government meeting in late March that “ minority students felt marginalized by quiet, imposing masculine paneling” found throughout the 100-year-old building, the meeting’s minutes state.

…

Current president of Building a Better Michigan, Jazz Teste, stated that Wibbelman’s comment wasn’t necessarily about the wood paneling.

“I believe it was an off-hand comment about how many students felt marginalized by the quiet nature of the building when they entered,” she told The College Fix via email.

It’s one thing to say you find certain architecture or design “oppressive,” as in stuffy or uncomfortable. It’s a whole different thing to call the walls racist.

This woman literally thought that students of a certain skin color would be freaked out by an old building. “Triggered” by architecture. And not even architecture that looks like a Klan hood or a penis. Just wood paneling.

The radical leftism that has taken over college campuses is making promising young men and women into irrational loons yelling at the walls. People who would even entertain the thought that old architecture is an unfair burden on minorities are not being prepared for adulthood. CONTINUE AT SITE

Earlier this month, a professor at California State University, Fresno, berated the school’s Students for Life group, going so far as to scrub out chalk messages that were part of the club’s university-approved pro-life display. Fresno State students also tried to efface the display, and the professor insisted that free speech was only permitted in the “free speech” zone, which had in fact been eliminated by the school’s administration two years earlier.

Such incidents occur so frequently on college campuses these days that it’s easy for them to become white noise. When groups host conservative events on campus, they are most often greeted by protests, some of which have grown violent in recent months — like the debacles greeting Charles Murray and Ann Coulter at Middlebury College and UC–Berkeley respectively. And frequently, the colleges and universities involved acquiesce to student requests to shut down certain events with which they disagree. While groups such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the Alliance Defending Freedom have long track records of legally (and successfully) protecting students’ rights on campus, there has been little in the way of nationally coordinated free-speech movements bubbling up from students who have had enough of being shut down.

That changed just a few weeks ago, when 22 college students met at the University of Chicago, traveling from across the country, including from schools such as New York University, the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and Chicago’s own DePaul University and University of Chicago. At the event, students offered presentations about the state of free speech on their campuses.

One student, Michael Hout, traveled to the weekend-long conference from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is a junior. After being involved in Democratic politics in his home state of Georgia, Hout sat on the national council of College Democrats and served as the group’s chartering director, in charge of founding new chapters on campuses.

But after volunteering extensively in these capacities, he began to realize how strong his party’s tendency to smother free speech truly was, and he eventually decided to leave the Democrats and become a registered independent, believing that he could do more to reform the party from the outside than from within. Today, he describes himself as a classical liberal.

Last week, the University of Arizona set off a firestorm when it was learned the school proposed to hire “social justice advocates” for $10 per hour — and one of their job responsibilities is straight from Orwell.

They are supposed to “report any bias incidents or claims” they happen to hear about.

That’s right. A taxpayer-funded university is hiring professional listeners to monitor the students for politically incorrect activity. It’s a social justice Gestapo, as I noted in my post on PJ Media.

The good news is that we can now credit the school for realizing it has a PR problem on its hands. But alas, it was unable to identify what it is. Because they are not backing down from the idea itself — just the job title. And the positions have already been filled:

School officials now tell the Phoenix New Times that they are changing the job title from “social justice advocate” to something else because the term “social justice” is too loaded.

“It’s best to use a title that isn’t politically charged,” said university spokesperson Pam Scott. “It just set off alarms.”

The Phoenix New Times notes that despite announcing plans to change the name, the position and its responsibilities will likely remain the same.

…

The students previously known as social justice activists will still be responsible for reporting fellow students for “bias”, and these students will be contacted by university administrators to discuss their behavior.

Four students have already been hired for the position, according to the Phoenix New Times. The hiring process is closed.

Frankly, I don’t care if they call them The Care Bear Zydeco Band And Gospel Choir. The issue isn’t calling them “social justice advocates,” but that they will be a social justice secret police, constantly watching their peers for signs of WrongThink.

Because they’re paid to do it, they’re far more likely to feel obligated to report incidents that they otherwise might have ignored. CONTINUE AT SITE

One of the most prestigious private schools in the UK has made “boys” and “girls” uniforms interchangeable because gender is up for grabs these days. Breitbart reports:

One of Britain’s top private schools is bringing in ‘gender-neutral’ uniforms that would allow boys to wear skirts, as teachers report growing numbers of children ‘questioning their gender identity’.

The move by Highgate School in north London comes as activist pupils at schools across the country are demanding ‘gender-neutral’ bathroom facilities, a ban on terms they deem ‘sexist’, and for teachers to use gender-neutral pronouns such as “they”. [snip]

[Headmaster] Pettitt said some former pupils at the school, whose alumni include the cricketer Phil Tufnell and the poet T.S. Eliot, have opposed the changes.

“They write in and say if you left children to their own devices they would grow up differently and you are promoting the wrong ideas.”

But the headmaster added that if boys choose to wear skirts, then “if [as a result] they feel happier and more secure in who they are, it must be a good thing.”

Activist pupils are “demanding.” What’s new?

As to the observation that a growing number of students are questioning their gender identity, that wouldn’t be the case if we’d stop bombarding them with crazy messages that create confusion where there would otherwise be none. But we are bombarding them. And it’s criminal.

The Sunday Times reported figures show a surge in the number of children wanting to change gender, with more than 2,000 minors referred to north London’s Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust last year, compared to just 100 when it opened eight years ago.

But critics warn the rush by schools to implement gender-neutral policies being demanded by activists risked encouraging “copycat” behaviour amongst children, fuelled by social media and the internet.

June Chu is the dean of a Yale University residential college called Pierson. Her official Yale biography says that throughout a career in higher education Ms. Chu “has sought to help students not only succeed academically but to support their holistic academic experience and multifaceted identities.” However, there seem to be some identities that Ms. Chu does not support. On Saturday the Yale Daily News reported:

Over the last year, Pierson College Dean June Chu published controversial reviews of local businesses on her personal Yelp account, on one occasion referring to clientele of a restaurant as “white trash” and “low class folks,” and on another praising a movie theater for its lack of “sketchy crowds” despite being located in New Haven.

On paper, Ms. Chu might appear to be among the most culturally sensitive people on the planet. She holds a Ph.D. in social psychology and previously directed the Pan Asian American Community House at the University of Pennsylvania. And according to Yale she’s not just deeply concerned about particular groups of students. Her bio reports that she’s also an “animal loving pescatarian.”

Fish have little standing to complain about their treatment at the hands of Dean Chu, but plenty of people do. The Yale Daily News was able to save screen shots of a number of Ms. Chu’s reviews of businesses near the school’s Connecticut campus, including her thoughts on a Japanese restaurant:

To put it quite simply: if you are white trash, this is the perfect night out for you! This establishment is definitely not authentic by any stretch of any imagination and perfect for those low class folks who believe this is a real night out.

The social psychologist wrote in her review of another purveyor of Japanese fare: “I guess if you were a white person who has no clue what mochi is, this would be fine for you.”

The Yale dean wrote of one local cinema, “I loved the small theater feel without sketchy crowds (despite it being in new haven) and the seats were roomy and comfortable.”

Another theater was staffed by “barely educated morons,” wrote Ms. Chu, who had a crude reference in another post and separately whined about the desk attendant at a local gym. She added that “seriously I don’t care if you would ‘lose your job’ (I am sure McDonalds would hire you).”

Dean Chu appears to be a classic progressive elitist, contemptuous of the deplorables—especially the white ones—who lack her academic credentials and income. This column tends to think that people should try to be forgiving when it comes to insensitive comments. Still, the double standard on the Yale campus is striking.

This is the same campus where within the last two years administrators stepped down from their posts in a residential college after they sparked student protests simply by urging people to be tolerant of Halloween costumes. Here we have a dean dismissing a large number of individual human beings as “white trash.”

The official response appears to be an emailed apology to students from Dean Chu and another email from the head of Pierson College, Stephen Davis, pronouncing:

I know her apology to you is genuine. CONTINUE AT SITE

Over the past two weeks, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has named 10 prestigious college and university campuses to its list of the “Top 10 College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.” These campuses provide financial and institutional support to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech exposing the truth about Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States.

The Freedom Center placed posters exposing the links between the terrorist group Hamas and SJP on each of these ten campuses, both to inform students about the allies to terror in their midst and to challenge these campus administrations to do what they so far have refused to do—to uphold the First Amendment and promote free expression even when doing so means facing down radical students and faculty who demand otherwise.

Already our campaign has yielded positive results. Mainstream Jewish publication JWeekly.com reported on the Freedom Center’s poster campaign, quoting David Horowitz and noting that San Francisco State University President Les Wong has come under fire recently for failing to adequately protect Jewish students on campus.

Wong himself has also responded to the campaign in a letter to entire SFSU community (which was reprinted at Jweekly.com) noting that “This week I encountered both the re-emergence of posters on campus attacking and condemning the work of Palestinian activists and their supporters.” Wong went on to state, “I believe it is the fundamental role of a university to engage differing viewpoints and to evaluate their merits and shortcomings. It is this belief that compels me to unequivocally reject the concept of ‘anti-normalization’ outright.” SJP as an organization rejects all “normalization” of relations with pro-Israel groups. By making this declaration, Wong is taking an important stand against at least one aspect of SJP’s genocidal agenda.

The full report on the ten campus administrations “Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment” follows below.

Introduction:

Of all the disturbing trends to have emerged on college campuses in recent years, perhaps the most ominous is the support universities offer to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech critical of Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States. Administrators at San Francisco State University, UCLA, the University of Chicago, Tufts University, Brooklyn College and other schools have actively supported organizations supporting terrorists and their activities while suppressing their critics.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has emerged as the leading pro-terrorist, anti-Jewish organization in America, and the driving force behind the recent surge of anti-Semitism on American campuses. SJP is the chief promoter of the Hamas-inspired and funded “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign in America, an effort to weaken and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. SJP also stages annual “Israeli Apartheid” hate weeks on campuses across the nation which feature pro-Hamas speakers and “apartheid walls” in public spaces on campus displaying pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic propaganda. SJP also creates mock checkpoints and die-ins that obstruct student movements on campus, disrupts pro-Israel campus events, threatens Jewish and pro-Israel speakers, and has physically assaulted Jewish students.

As described in the Freedom Center’s recent pamphlet, Students for Justice in Palestine: A Campus Front for Hamas Terrorists, SJP’s pro-terror campaign is guided and funded through a Hamas front called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. AMP was created by Hatem Bazian, a pro-Hamas professor at UC Berkeley who is also the co-founder of SJP.

In recent testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism finance analyst for the United States Department of the Treasury from 2004-2007, described AMP as “arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States” and explained that “AMP spent $100,000 on campus activities in 2014 alone.”

The following report chronicles ten of the worst collegiate offenders in this category of campuses that support anti-Israel terrorists even when their rhetoric and propaganda cross the line into hate speech while rejecting speech critical of the perpetrators and promoters of terrorism.

(Campuses are listed in alphabetical order)

1. Brandeis University
2. Brooklyn College (CUNY)
3. Saint Louis University
4. San Francisco State University
5. Tufts University
6. University of California, Berkeley
7. University of California, Los Angeles
8. University of Chicago
9. University of Minnesota
10. Vassar College

Read :NGO IN HIS OWN WORDS

Fired for Reporting the Truth Simply tweeting video of a Muslim student characterizing his religion on an interfaith panel cost me my job. By Andy Ngo http://www.nationalreview.com/node/447563/print

At an interfaith student panel at Portland State University in April, a Muslim student responded to a question by confirming that it is ok in many Muslim countries to kill non-Muslims. A reporter for the student-run newspaper on campus tweeted out the video of this comment, an act for which he was fired. The newspaper stated that the main reason for the firing was because the video was run at a conservative news outlet—even though it was done without the reporter’s knowledge.

The reporter, Andy Ngo, is a graduate student in political science at Portland State University. Until this incident, he was also a reporter and multimedia editor for the Portland Vanguard, the student-run newspaper on campus. On April 26, the campus hosted a free student panel discussion, “Unpacking Misconceptions,” which it billed as “a panel & discussion on different Religions, Spiritualities, and Worldviews.”

Ngo writes that he began recording video with his cell phone when the Muslim student on the panel was asked about a verse in the Koran that allows Muslims to kill non-Muslims. The Muslim student answered:

I can confidently tell you, when the Koran says an innocent life, it means an innocent life, regardless of the faith, the race, like, whatever you can think about as a characteristic. And some, this, that you’re referring to, killing non-Muslims, that [to be a non-believer] is only considered a crime when the country’s law, the country is based on Koranic law — that means there is no other law than the Koran. In that case, you’re given the liberty to leave the country, you can go in a different country, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. So you can go in a different country, but in a Muslim country, in a country based on the Koranic laws, disbelieving, or being an infidel, is not allowed so you will be given the choice [to leave].

Ngo was not there on an assignment for the Vanguard, merely as a student with an interest in the event. He proceeded to tweet the video of the Muslim student’s answer from his personal Twitter account.

Ngo says that his tweet was shared with the editor-in-chief of the Vanguard shortly after the event concluded with no negative feedback. It was only four days later, when Breitbart ran a story based on his public tweets, that Ngo was called in for a meeting with the editor-in-chief and the managing editor of the Vanguard. Ngo did not contribute to the Breitbart story, and in fact, it ran without his prior knowledge. CONTINUE AT SITE

There is no denying the left-leaning political bias on American college campuses. As data from UCLA’s Higher Education Institute show, the professoriate has moved considerably leftward since the late 1980s, especially in the arts and humanities. In New England, where my own university is located, liberal professors outnumber their conservative colleagues by a ratio of 28:1.

How does this bias affect the education we offer? I’d like to think that we left-leaning professors are able to teach the works of conservative thinkers with the same seriousness and attention that we devote to works on our own side of the political spectrum—but do we?

It is hard to be optimistic about this challenge in the wake of recent episodes of campus intolerance for views on the right. Would-be social-justice warriors at Middlebury College transformed the mild-mannered political scientist Charles Murray into a free-speech hero, and campus appearances by the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald and the right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter have been handled badly, turning both women into media martyrs.

Most colleges, of course, host controversial speakers without incident and without much media coverage. In March, for instance, Franklin & Marshall College gave a platform to the Danish editor who published cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. There were protests and arguments but no attempt to silence the speaker.

Academics worried about attacks on free speech have felt the need to respond, and they have articulated sound principles. Princeton professors Robert P. George and Cornel West recently attracted lots of supporters for a statement underscoring that “all of us should seek respectfully to engage with people who challenge our views” and that “we should oppose efforts to silence those with whom we disagree—especially on college and university campuses.”

The issue, however, isn’t whether the occasional conservative, libertarian or religious speaker gets a chance to speak. That is tolerance, an appeal to civility and fairness, but it doesn’t take us far enough. To create deeper intellectual and political diversity, we need an affirmative-action program for the full range of conservative ideas and traditions, because on too many of our campuses they seldom get the sustained, scholarly attention that they deserve.

Such an effort can take many different forms. In 2013, Wesleyan decided to join Vassar College in working with the Posse Foundation to bring cohorts of military veterans to campus on full scholarships. These students with military backgrounds are older than our other undergraduates and have very different life experiences; more of them also hold conservative political views.

One notable episode illustrates how this program has contributed to broadening discussion on campus. A student named Bryan Stascavage, who had served almost six years as a U.S. Army military intelligence analyst in Iraq and Haiti, came to Wesleyan to study social sciences. In the fall of 2015, he published an op-ed in the student newspaper questioning the Black Lives Matter movement, which enjoys widespread support here. He asked whether the protests were “actually achieving anything positive” because of the damage done by the extremists in their ranks.

The essay caused an uproar, including demands by activists to cut funding to the school newspaper. Most students, faculty and administrators recognized that free speech needed to be defended, especially for unpopular views. They rose to the challenge of responding substantively (if sometimes heatedly) to Bryan’s argument.

‘I don’t want to be in an environment where everybody thinks the same as me, because you just don’t learn that way.’

—Wesleyan student Bryan Stascavage

As for Bryan himself, he felt that he had “field-tested” his ideas. As he told the PBS NewsHour in an interview about his experience at Wesleyan, “I don’t want to be in an environment where everybody thinks the same as me, because you just don’t learn that way.”

At Wesleyan, we now plan to deepen our engagement with the military. We have been working with the U.S. Army to bring senior military officers to campus, and starting next year, the first of them will arrive to teach classes on the relationship between military institutions and civil society. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings/analysis#.WRbfQsYpCUk

The Free Speech University Rankings (FSUR) is the UK’s first university rankings for free speech. We survey British universities, examining the policies and actions of universities and students’ unions, and rank them using our traffic-light system. Read our analysis below and get clued up on the bans and bureaucracy stifling free debate.

Data accurate up until January 2017.