RUTHFULLY YOURS

Nowhere was the hysteria, panic, and fearmongering attending Donald Trump’s win in the 2016 presidential election felt more strongly than on college campuses — and Middle East studies academics were no exception. Rather than acknowledging that justified concern over increasing terrorism in the U.S. was a strong factor, they dismissed Trump voters as angry, fearful, ignorant, “Islamophobic” white supremacists.

This despite Trump’s receiving more minority votes than did Mitt Romney in 2012, and the support of the same white working-class population that twice voted for biracial President Barack Obama.

It was not millions of American voters, but the professors themselves who exhibited bigotry, fear, and anger.

Admitting that the “segment of society” who voted for Trump “frightens me,” Muqtedar Khan, director of the University of Delaware’s Islamic Studies Program, ascribed his win to “myopia” and “cultural insecurity.” Accordingly, he announced that he was “frightened for the future of minorities in this country.” No word on whether Khan is frightened of his own shadow.

Similarly, Rhodes College Islamic studies professor Yasir Qadhi suddenly feared “for the safety of my wife in a hijab, of my children in the streets, of minorities everywhere struggling to understand what happened.” He maintained that white Americans’ racist, irrational fear of “melanin content” led them to support Trump.

Reza Aslan, University of California, Riverside creative writing professor, tweeted hysterically, “Someone please tell me how I tell my kids that the president whose picture will soon be on their classroom wall hates them, wants them gone.”

University of Denver Center for Middle East Studies director Nader Hashemi bemoaned “the new white extremism in middle America,” while accusing Trump of being “so radical and so extreme” that ISIS is “celebrating” his victory.

Meanwhile, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole claimed that white Trump voters were motivated by “rage,” “anti-immigrant sentiment,” and the loss of “cultural supremacy.” He declared 2016 to be “the equivalent of a red scare, only now it is a Muslim scare,” and warned of the coming “nativism” and, ludicrously, “the third big wave of the Klu [sic] Klux Klan.” Curiously, Cole had no such concerns when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton eulogized Robert Byrd, the late Democratic congressman and former “Exalted Cyclops” of the KKK, as her “mentor.”

Omid Safi, director of Duke University’s Islamic Studies Center, insulted a significant percentage of the electorate by angrily demanding of white evangelical Christians, “When you had to choose between your white privilege and your Jesus, how did you live with yourself putting Jesus on the bottom?” Here’s a rhetorical question: would Safi would have directed such ire at his fellow Muslims, let alone substituted Muhammed for Jesus, were the tables turned?

Crybullies cry almost as easily as they bully. Take the case of Nada Merghani, a Muslim “refugee” who was investigated by the Secret Service for alleged threats against Trump.

In August, just before Donald Trump was set to take the stage to speak at my university, UNC-Wilmington, a student posted on Facebook, “Y’all are not prepared for what I’m about to do.” The context of the quote made it seem like a threat so the Secret Service paid the student a visit. Readers shouldn’t let the use of the term “Y’all” fool them. This threat wasn’t issued by a redneck wanting to see the Donald dead. In fact, our UNCW rednecks love Donald Trump. The most frightening type of student imaginable made the post: A self-described “queer Muslim social justice warrior” (hereafter: SJW).

That’s Mike Adams writing about Nada. You’ll hear more about him in a moment.

“Expect to see me at the Trump rally on Tuesday. Y’all are not prepared for what I’m about to do,” read Merghani’s Facebook post, referring to the candidate’s Aug. 9 rally where he would make his controversial “Second Amendment people” remark.

“All I can say is pray I make it out of this alive.”

You can see why the Secret Service noticed. So Nada began demanding armed guards.

Because Merghani’s request for a security escort from the university was turned down, she hasn’t felt safe to attend classes, she told The Fix in a phone call Monday.

“Being who I am in the community, threats are just a given. Definitely did not expect conceal carry permits,” she said, referring to the threatening message made to the protesters.

On Aug. 19 Merghani and her ACLU advocate met with Vice Chancellor Patricia Leonard, Chief Diversity Officer Kent Guion, and Chief of Staff Bradley Ballou to speak about Merghani’s safety concerns as a black woman.

It didn’t go well.

While Jewish students are terrorized on campus, Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut took on another mission.

“The Hillel family will watch out for our Muslim brothers and sisters on campus,” the failed Democratic pol declared. And he added, “As we hope they will watch out for us.”

There is as much hope of campus hate groups like the Muslim Students’ Association, which has a long history of terrorizing Jews on campus, doing that as there was for Fingerhut in his 2004 Ohio Senate bid which he lost with one of the worst showings by a Democratic Senate candidate in the state. But after taking Ohio Democrats down with him, Fingerhut moved on to tanking Hillel.

In his address to the Hillel International General Assembly, Fingerhut seemed to think the big campus crisis was for Muslims, not Jews. “We will stand by our brothers of the Muslim faith,” he bloviated.

But Fingerhut was only trying to outdo the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt who had won approval from no less a Jewish civil rights figure than J.K. Rowling for declaring at what was supposed to be an event to tackle anti-Semitism, “The day they create a registry for Muslims is the day that I register as a Muslim.”

Fighting actual anti-Semitism isn’t cool. Just ask anyone trying to bring attention to Keith Ellison’s long history of anti-Semitism and association with anti-Semitic groups as he crawls on to head the DNC. Defending Muslims against an imaginary threat however is as hip and trendy as a Williamsburg bar.

There up on stage was Eboo Patel, as one of Hillel’s partners, who had bragged of encouraging Hillel to talk to the MSA. Patel had appeared at Islamic Society of North America events, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding Hamas, and celebrated the election of Ingrid Mattson to head the Islamist group by declaring, “I’m proud to have her elected as my president.” Mattson had denounced Israeli “brutality” and defended Sami Al-Arian, the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

It only got worse from there.

Hillel had silenced pro-Israel columnist Caroline Glick, yet it provided a platform for anti-Israel activist Jill Jacobs and widely promoted her anti-Israel pressure group, T’ruah, featuring it on its social media feed. Jacobs has campaigned against efforts to fight BDS and attacked Jewish charities helping Jews in ’67 Israel.

Jill Jacobs had even signed a letter calling for “constructive engagement” with a Hamas government even after Hamas had broadcast the threat, “My message to the loathed Jews: There is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere. We are a nation that drinks blood. We know that there is no better blood than the blood of Jews.”

Anyone with a clear mind who has taught or studied at a university or whose children are currently enrolled in its troubled precincts knows that the academy has fallen on evil days. Preoccupied with “diversity,” “inclusiveness,” affirmative action, and equality of outcome regardless of input, universities have coddled students into a state of planular emotionalism — “you are loved” and “all your emotions are real,” goes the mantra at Virginia Tech — and rendered them incapable of grappling with anything that resembles an unfamiliar idea or an unanticipated event. Considering in addition the number of useless and cost-ineffective courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences (e.g., Gender Studies, Peace Studies, Fat Studies, Black Studies, Aboriginal Studies, Queer Studies, etc.), as well as the dilution of even the more respectable subjects in order to make them accessible to the unqualified, the future of the university looks increasingly bleak — a “strange Twilight Zone,” as Daniel Greenfield writes, where “none of the sane rules apply.”

In an exceptionally civil discourse on the need for civility in academia, Ashley Thorne, executive director of the National Association of Scholars, argues that the two animating principles of higher education are: (1) building student character in the interests of self-examination and growth, and (2) freedom to pursue truth in whatever direction it may lead. The university, however, has betrayed both its founding ideals. Thorne writes in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory, which has teachers and administrators reeling with disbelief and students collapsing in paroxysms of despair, fear, anxiety, deep uncertainty, emotional trauma and cataclysmic grief, and in desperate need of “relaxing stations,” cry-ins, calming music, teddy bears, and coloring books. Students racked by electoral stress routinely wish to be exempted from taking their finals. A note saying “Suck it up,” posted by an intrepid student at Wisconsin’s Edgewood College, was deemed a hate crime by college authorities. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that an academy administered by a clade of invertebrates and thick with Pajama Boys and Julias does not elicit confidence in its future. Put one Hamas five-year-old in their midst and they’re goners.

The upshot is that practically the entire university culture is sick unto death: the vast majority of professors in lockstep leftism like an army of Star Trek Borgs marching toward an ever-receding progressivist Millennium, next to none with any real-world experience; hiring protocols based on gender credentials (i.e., women) rather than merit; systematic hostility to fair debate and the free exchange of ideas, however asunder the prevailing cultural consensus; Access Service personnel who regard the university as a field hospital or are simply unable to cope with the new and burgeoning category of disability claimants; and the students themselves, some “mismatched” (code for not possessing the academic wherewithal to succeed), others simply incapable of intellectual endeavor or serious application across the curricular spectrum, and, in short, a supine clientele intent on avoiding work, who consider the university as a daycare center when they are not turning it into a Jungle Gym.

It’s slow going, but the campaign to highlight censorship on campus may be getting somewhere. That’s the message of a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire), which tracks the speech bullies in academia.

Fire’s 10th annual report surveyed speech policies at 345 four-year public colleges and 104 private schools. The good news is that the share of colleges with “red-light” speech codes that substantially bar constitutionally protected speech has declined to 39.6%, a nearly 10% drop in the last year and the lowest share since 2008. Over the last nine years the number of institutions that don’t seriously threaten speech has tripled to 27. Several colleges including the University of Wisconsin have adopted policies that affirm (at least in theory) their commitment to free speech.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte deserves some credit for this free-speech breakthrough. Last August he sent letters to the presidents of public schools with red-light codes inquiring about their unconstitutional policies. While public universities are bound by the First Amendment, private colleges can legally restrict speech, ironically thanks to their First Amendment right to freedom of association. Nearly twice as many private universities (58.7%) maintain restrictive speech codes as public colleges (33.9%).

As Fire notes, “although acceptance of federal funding does confer some obligations upon private colleges (such as compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws), compliance with the First Amendment is not one of them.” Private schools can therefore discriminate against faculty and students based on their political expression, but not gender or race.

The Obama Administration has used Title IX, which bans sexual discrimination, to threaten schools over their handling of sexual misconduct and assault claims. And its expansive definition of sexual harassment, which encompasses all “unwelcome” conduct of a sexual nature, infringes on speech. Colleges have adopted the Education Department’s “guidance” in responding to sexual harassment claims to avoid sanctions. In June 2015 a tenured Louisiana State University professor was fired for alleged sexual harassment because she used off-color humor. Fire is litigating the case.

Even as some colleges drop speech codes to avoid legal challenges, many have established “bias” reporting systems that solicit complaints about offensive speech. As Fire explains, these systems encourage “students to report on one another—and on faculty members—whenever they subjectively perceive that someone’s speech or expression is biased.”