RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/preserving-academic-freedom-at-the-university-of-chicago/

Perhaps when literary critic C.S. Lewis despaired of “omnipotent moral busybodies . . . who torment us for our own good,” he was anticipating the tendentious rants of members of the University of Chicago’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a toxic campus group of anti-Israel activists who have helped lead a campaign of libel and delegitimization against the Jewish state, and, at times, have inspired ugly anti-Semitism disguised as being merely criticism of Israeli government policies.

SJP has a long history since its founding in 1993 of bringing vitriolic anti-Israel speakers to their respective 200 or so campuses, and for sponsoring Israeli Apartheid Weeks, building mock “apartheid walls,” and sending fake eviction notices to students in their dorms to help them empathize with Palestinians.

Now, SJP’s U Chicago chapter has mounted a targeted campaign to deplatform a course, “Security, Counter-Terrorism and Resilience: The Israeli Case,” being taught by visiting professor and Israel Institute Fellow Meir Elran, former deputy director of Israeli Military Intelligence and retired Israeli brigadier general who also directs the domestic research programs of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.

SJP’s attempt to boycott and dissuade their peers from enrolling in this class is not the first effort this year to interfere with teaching at the university. In January, for instance, SJP posted on its Instagram page the shocking admonition, “DON’T TAKE SH*TTY ZIONIST CLASSES.” Students were asked to “Support the Palestinian movement for liberation by boycotting classes on Israel or those taught by Israeli fellows.”

According to the SJP post, any students who enrolled in the two classes, “Gender Relations in Israel” taught by Meital Pinto and “Narrating Israel and Palestine through Literature and Film” taught by Stephanie Kraver, would be “participating in a propaganda campaign that creates complicity in the continuation of Israel’s occupation of Palestine” and that, in its view, “Israeli-centered classes are designed to obscure Palestinian perspectives.”

The arrival of General Elran, a veteran of the Israeli military, was particularly offensive to the SJP scolds, inspiring them to issue a statement in which they based their critique of the course on their own ahistorical, factually-flawed narrative about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, opposing any pro-Israel views to be expressed and claiming, as they always do, that Israel is an illegitimate entity that exists on stolen Palestinian lands which it illegally and brutally occupies with its tactical and strategic military force.

“On Elran’s telling of Israeli history,” the statement contended, “Israel appears not as an expansionist apartheid state predicated on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land, but as an embattled liberal democracy surrounded by ‘large hostile Muslim populations’ and mired in a ‘Muslim-Jewish conflict’ not of its own making.” In other words, SJP believed, the reality that the Jews of Israel have faced a genocidal onslaught from psychopathic terrorists determined to extirpate the Jewish state and murder its Jews is merely a fiction, a false narrative promoted by Israel. The truth, according to SJP, is that Israel was created on Palestinian land and now oppresses the indigenous population with a system of racist apartheid and military occupation, all factually and historically incorrect, as any sentient observer knows.

Anticipating that defenders of the course would point to the University’s own commitment to academic freedom and the right of faculty and students to enjoy free and open debate—even concerning controversial topics—SJP said that Elran’s course should not be insulated by those precepts. Why? Because, as their statement put it, again reversing fact and narrative to suit their own advantage, “No principle of ‘academic freedom’ or ‘intellectual diversity’ justifies hosting classes taught by complicit Israeli military personnel – particularly not classes that misrepresent Palestinian history, treat Palestinian deaths as fodder for ‘strategic’ military theorizing, and inundate students with the Orientalist worldview of Israeli colonists.”

SJP’s opposition to General Elran has not been limited to published statements denouncing the professor and the course content. On February 2nd, SJP members mounted an in-person protest at Cobb Hall, the building where Elran’s course is being taught, something the activists have been doing since the class began and a tactic meant to physically and morally intimidate enrolled students as they enter and leave the building. The February 2nd protest was particularly grotesque since it had as its secondary purpose, according to an SJP Instagram post, “to commemorate the 10 martyrs of the Jenin Refugee Camp.”

Consider how shocking and morally deranged it is for students on an American campus to celebrate terrorists whose supposed martyrdom is achieved by murdering Jewish civilians in Israel—and to do so outside of a classroom full of Israeli and Jewish students and a professor who reasonably understand that their support for Israel would make them justifiable targets for the psychopathic madmen who feel compelled to murder civilians as “resistance” to and occupation of a factitious Palestine.

Consider how a university community would respond to a similar protest that glorified the murder of 10 black people in Buffalo by a white supremacist in May of 2022 or the 2016 murder of 49 gay people at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando by a deranged homophobe. The response and criticism of such a demonstration for such psychopaths would be thunderous, immediate, and severe, but at the University of Chicago, the event passed without comment.

The so-called martyrs that SJP commemorated in their protest died in the Jenin refugee camp, a location that is notorious for being a terrorist stronghold and, as i24News has noted, is “a central base for terror groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades . . , Hamas,” Lion’s Den, Fatah, and others. Nowhere acknowledged by SJP, of course, is the fact that Jenin is proudly referred to by Palestinians “as the ‘Martyrs’ Capital,’ [and] at least 23 of the 60 suicide bombers that attacked Israel came from Jenin, according to Israel —more than any other Palestinian city.”

And typical of SJP’s virulent anti-Israel narrative, Israel and the IDF are depicted as a brutal, nearly sadistic force that regularly and randomly murders innocent Palestinian civilians. But the inverse of that is actually true, and the IDF is methodical and fastidiously careful in its incursions to suppress terror against its citizens, as it was in the latest Jenin operation.

“2023 has seen increased terror attacks & IDF counter-terror operations,” noted Honest Reporting, a media watchdog organization, “with an equal number of Israeli & Palestinian civilian casualties.” But the media and activists like SJP “report all Palestinian deaths equally,” Honest Reporting noted, “choosing not to mention that 49 of the 60 Palestinian deaths were confirmed terrorists actively engaged in attacking Israelis. And 8 were under the age of 18.” Given that Palestinian terrorists wear no uniforms and regularly embed themselves in civilian populations, it is the unfortunate reality that, even given Israel’s extreme care in minimizing casualties, some civilian deaths occur—regrettable, of course, but the fault of the terrorist groups who initiated conflict against Israelis with rockets, bombings, knife attacks, car ramming, and shootings.

Aside from the evident moral indifference SJP demonstrated in honoring those who murder Jews, other important academic considerations are being compromised by the group’s disruption of the Elran class.

When a visiting faculty member is asked to teach a course, as is the case here, he or she is thoroughly vetted in advance by departmental faculty and others with an academic interest in or knowledge of the proposed course and professor. To teach at an elite institution such as the University of Chicago, a visiting professor must possess both professional experience and academic credentials to satisfy the hiring committee and to insure that the course will be taught to the standards of the host university. Clearly, General Elran is qualified, both academically and professionally.

So the troublesome issue here is that a small group of activist students, SJP, with a poisonous enmity toward Israel, Zionism, and Judaism have assumed the right to overrule the decision of the University’s faculty and call for a boycott and cancellation of a course. The course in question is not, importantly, a mandatory course, so any student can avoid the course by simply not enrolling. If the morally sensitive SJP members were compelled to take Elran’s course, they might have a stronger argument for having someone else teach the course or not making it mandatory, but that is not the case here.

SJP and other anti-Israel activists on campuses would prefer, of course, that nothing that might be construed as pro-Israel ever be uttered or taught or written about on campus. The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once quipped that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” something SJP has yet to realize or comprehend. They are certainly permitted to have their own version of history and their own narrative about the Israeli-Palestinian debate, but people as knowledgeable, and even more knowledgeable, than they also have their own narratives, facts, and set of truths.

And SJP’s latest repellent tactic of physically disrupting the operations of the University, of course, are more than simply annoying; they are violative of the University’s own rules of student life and conduct. “The right of freedom of expression at the University,” the code reads, “includes peaceful protests and orderly demonstrations. At the same time, the University has long recognized that the right to protest and demonstrate does not include the right to engage in conduct that disrupts the University’s operations or endangers the safety of others,” precisely what SJP’s protest outside the classroom and building entailed. The code also has a warning to offenders that “Any member of the University who engages in disruptive conduct will be subject to disciplinary action,” although it seems SJP has yet to be punished for their aggressive activism.

Coincidentally, it was the University of Chicago that published a seminal set of guidelines for university free speech, the 2014 “Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression,” often referred to as the Chicago Principles.

“Although members of the University community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus, and to criticize and contest speakers who are invited to express their views on campus,” the report read, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe. To this end, the University has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.”

SJP must recognize that, while they have the right to express their views publicly and forcefully, they cannot expect or attempt to suppress those same rights of expression enjoyed by others.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-onslaught/

DEI has gone national. The belief that quality takes a backseat to racial bean counting wormed its way into the White House in February, when President Biden signed an executive order that promises to create a national “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” bureaucracy. As Christopher Rufo reports, the DEI diktat, “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” proposes three key strategies:

Creating internal cadres and power centers through the deployment of “Agency Equity Teams.”
Funding third-party political activism through grants to “community[-based] organizations.”
Weaponizing civil rights law by requiring federal agencies to use artificial intelligence “in a manner that advances equity.”

The order prescribes that equity be “embedded… into the fabric of Federal policymaking and service delivery.” Also, this will not be a one-time project, and instead must be a multi-generational commitment, and remain the responsibility of agencies across the Federal Government.

To that end, the government will establish an “Agency Equity Team… to coordinate the implementation of equity initiatives.” Every aspect of government down to the design, development, and acquisition of artificial intelligence must advance equity.

The executive order, dripping with cultural Marxism, posits that “by advancing equity, the Federal Government can support and empower all Americans, including the many communities in America that have been underserved, discriminated against, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/upenn-laws-race-inquisitors-seek-to-silence-amy-wax/

When he wryly observed that “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act,” Orwell may well have had academia in mind, where challenging prevailing ideology can have a calamitous effect on one’s reputation and career—something especially true of faculty.

One ubiquitous ideology in academia now is an obsession with race, manifested in the relentless pursuit of recruiting and retaining minority students as part of a diversity, equity, and inclusion, (DEI) campaign. The campaign for diversity is based on an assumed, but unproven, assumption that diverse student populations are automatically superior to non-diverse ones, and that diversity not only benefits minority students but all students and the university as a whole. This belief is accepted by woke virtue-signaling administrators and diversocrats as a given, but it is certainly still a topic that can be questioned, critiqued, and challenged, and a faculty member has the right to not accept it as settled doctrine.

DEI bureaucracies have also had another unintended, negative side-effect, namely, that minority students are counseled to see themselves as victims of systemic racism—both in their own universities and in the country as a whole. Students have quickly realized that once they are designated as victims and given a bucket of accommodations and benefits not enjoyed by their white and Asian peers, they have become emboldened to demand further concessions—one significant one being the “right” not to be challenged or offended by the views of others that question the prevailing dogma on liberal campuses.

Actual racism—from faculty, students, and administrators—is so rare and benign that in order to identify cases where racism reveals itself, university diversocrats and the student victims they serve must assiduously ferret out examples of racist thought and behavior—including accusations of systemic racism, invisible racism, triggers, microaggressions, white privilege, and, recently, instances when faculty or students have defended law enforcement or criticized the motives and tactics of Black Lives Matter. Any challenges to the prevailing orthodoxy of these victim students and their administrative enablers are stamped down, attacked, and deemed racist and indicative of white supremacy. And when it is faculty members who dare to question affirmative action, diversity, systemic racism, and white supremacy, the wrath of the woke mob is immediate and unrelenting.

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/when-anti-racism-comes-for-the-anti

Earlier this month, Vincent Lloyd, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, published an article in Compact that ought to make “anti-racists” everywhere think long and hard about what they’re doing. While leading a summer seminar last year at the Telluride Association entitled “Race and the Limits of Law in America,” Vincent found himself accused of the very forms of anti-racism his course was designed to interrogate. Under the influence of a Telluride-appointed anti-racism workshop leader Vincent refers to as “Keisha,” his students turned against him. No longer able to teach effectively in an environment turned hostile, Vincent ended the seminar early.

The irony is that Vincent is a committed anti-racist. He is the director of Villanova’s Africana Studies program, he leads anti-racist workshops, and he publishes on the topic of anti-racism. And, not for nothing, he’s black. One would think that those bona fides would insulate him from charges of perpetuating white supremacy. Indeed, even after being treated so shabbily by Keisha, Vincent remains a staunch anti-racist. As John notes in the following excerpt from our conversation with Vincent, all of this was, in some ways, predictable. The anti-racist mindset divides the world into victims and oppressors. When no true oppressor can be found, one will be conjured from the materials at hand in order to reestablish the phantom social order that anti-racism requires to justify its existence.

In our conversation, Vincent says that, while he was a victim of anti-racism run amok, he views Keisha as a victim, too. Perhaps she is. But if so, then the oppressor is the very worldview that seeks to lock people those two very narrow, inhuman roles. A true commitment to social justice would demand that we relinquish any paradigm that operates by reducing intelligent, kind, dedicated people like Vincent to mere nodes in a structure of domination. If anti-racism truly defended the full humanity of black people, then its own premises would require it to wink out of existence. Vincent’s story ought to be proof of that. Unfortunately, consistency seems too much to ask in this case.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-the-diversity-industry-is-so-homogenous_5071781.html?utm_source=epochHG&utm_campaign=rcp

It’s one of the great ironies of our time that the word “diversity” is repeated everywhere, while the opposite, a stultifying homogeneity, is the reality that’s enforced “on the ground.”

Our educational institutions offer the classic example.

Is there any self-respecting college or university that doesn’t tout its commitment to “diversity” these days?

You can’t peruse a college’s promotional literature, let alone set foot on its campus, without being inundated by assurances that diversity is its most cherished value, the cynosure to which every other pursuit is subordinated.

But when you look at what they actually teach and preach, it turns out that rigid conformity is the order of the day.

We used to titter that there were people whose title was some variation on “dean of diversity.”

“You’re kidding, right?” was the response.

No one is laughing now.

On an increasingly wide range of subjects, only one opinion is granted the patent of diversity. Those deans are there not to invigilate academic excellence but to enforce social and moral conformity.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/summer-school-can-remedy-pandemic-brain-drain-covid-closures-students-charter-public-philanthropy-bloomberg-af4b2278?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The crisis in American public education caused by the pandemic has settled into a dangerous new phase: resignation. The disastrous effects of remote instruction are still with us. Students continue to lag behind where they should be—sometimes by multiple grade levels—and little is being done to help them. The good news is that we know how to overcome learning loss.

Last year, when it became clear that a nationwide expansion of summer school would not be happening, I led a group of philanthropists in creating Summer Boost in New York City. The program focused on math and English and was open to struggling K-8 students in the city’s public charter schools, most of which did not have the resources to run robust summer school programs.

We didn’t know if the program would succeed. But letting struggling students languish was out of the question. The U.S. can’t move on from the pandemic until we address student learning loss.

The response from students and schools was resoundingly positive. More than 16,000 students from 224 schools participated. At the end of the summer, we tested students to assess their progress, and the results were encouraging.

The percentage of students who met grade-level standards in math nearly doubled—and in English, it more than doubled. The share of students scoring below the most basic levels of proficiency fell by nearly half. By the end of the summer session, many students had caught up and were back on track for success. But in much of the country, students didn’t spend any of their summer vacations in classrooms.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2023/02/14/shock-23-baltimore-schools-produced-zero-students-proficient-in-math-n1670521

Project Baltimore, an investigative reporting initiative, analyzed the recent release of Baltimore City Public Schools 2022 test scores and made a shocking discovery: 23 of the city’s schools failed to produce a single student who was proficient in math. An additional 20 Baltimore schools had just one or two students who could do math at their grade level. These appalling failures account for over a quarter of the city’s 155 schools (elementary through high school) where students take the MCAP (Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program) tests.

FOX45 reports:

The Maryland State Department of Education recently released the 2022 state test results known as MCAP, Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Baltimore City’s math scores were the lowest in the state. Just 7 percent of third through eighth graders tested proficient in math, which means 93 percent could not do math at grade level.

This, even though the Baltimore school district hovers around third place for per-capita educational spending. “Baltimore is often ranked in the top three per capita spending districts,” writes top attorney and academic Jonathan Turley. “The total budget for Baltimore public schools is roughly $1.2 billion. That is for a city with a total population of roughly 600,000 (The greater Baltimore metropolitan area is 2.8 million). In 2015, the school population was 84,000 kids.”

In a separate article, Turley had more to say on the subject:

What astonishes me is the lack of criticism of the school and political leadership of these major cities who have failed the African American community for decades. It is hard to imagine how the school system could possibly do worse while receiving some of the highest levels of federal and state expenditures per student.

This is not due to a lack of funding or support. It is a catastrophic failure that is not being addressed in the media despite occurring annually in cities like New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and other media hubs.