RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s been a rough year for free speech on campus, but there are glimmers of hope in Southern California. The colleges of the Claremont University Consortium have been laying down the law in response to those who act out to advance their idea of social justice.

Consider the case of Jonathan Higgins. In June, Pomona College announced that Mr. Higgins had been hired as the new director of the Queer Resource Center of the Claremont Colleges, which Pomona administers. Elliot Dordick, a student and writer at Pitzer College, looked at the new administrator’s Twitter feed and reported his findings at TheCollegeFix.com and in the Claremont Independent, a conservative student newspaper where I currently serve as deputy editor. Mr. Higgins, who is black, had responded to a tweet asking, “Who are you automatically wary of/keep at a distance because of your past experiences?” His answer: “White gays and well meaning white women.” In another tweet he asserted: “I finally have nothing to say other than police are meant to service and protect white supremacy.”

A day after the Fix and the Independent ran the article, Pomona announced that Mr. Higgins wouldn’t be taking the position after all. In an email to the Pomona student body, Associate Dean Jan Collins-Eaglin wrote that “we have reopened the national search for the Director of the Queer Resource Center.”

Then, two weeks ago, Claremont McKenna College announced punishments for 10 students who had violated college policy in April during a raucous protest against Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald, author of “The War on Cops.” The protesters, who spent the evening chanting “No cops, no KKK, no fascist USA!,” blockaded entrances to the building where Ms. Mac Donald was speaking, so that she ended up addressing an almost empty hall.

“The blockade breached institutional values of freedom of expression and assembly,” the college declared in a statement. “Furthermore, this action violated policies of both the College and The Claremont Colleges that prohibit material disruption of college programs and created unsafe conditions in disregard of state law.” The punishments included suspensions, in contrast with Vermont’s Middlebury College, where students who disrupted a lecture by social scientist Charles Murray —and attacked and injured a professor as she was leaving the venue—received nothing more severe than “probation.”

So instead of defending Dr. Higgins for his high “intersectional” victim status—Pomona had originally touted him as “a motivational speaker dedicated to empowering all LGBTQ students with an emphasis on students of color”—they treated him as a professional whose behavior made him unfit for the job. And Claremont McKenna kept its promise to protect free speech on campus. In his original statement following the protest, the college’s president, Hiram Chodosh, wrote, “The breach of our freedoms to listen to views that challenge us and to engage in dialogue about matters of controversy is a serious, ongoing concern we must address effectively.” Bravo to him for keeping his word.

Even at the University of California, Berkeley, where spring riots shut down speeches by conservative controversialists Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter, administrators now say they’ll allow the College Republicans to bring author Ben Shapiro for an appearance in the fall, a request the dean of students initially denied.

That actions such as these are considered unusual, even courageous, is a sign of just how bad things are on campus today. But colleges and universities across the country should be following the examples being set in California. CONTINUE AT SITE

In a stunning display of reverse discrimination Columbia University’s Teachers College organized a conference exploring the “problem of whiteness” and how to combat whiteness.

300 participants mostly K-12 teachers and principals were “reeducated” in ways to frame being white as the primary social problem to be addressed in elementary schools. Workshops and presentations titled “Whiteness in Schools,” “Three Ways to Face White Privilege in the Classroom,” “Teaching for Social Justice” are representative of the blatant prejudice and reverse discrimination intrinsic in the conference designed to “Reimagine Education.”

Black history exposes how black children were made to feel ashamed of being black. How does making white children feel ashamed of being white remedy the situation? It can’t.

Similarly, at a diversity conference for employees at Jesuit colleges Dr. Kris Sealey, associate professor of philosophy at Fairfield University, spoke about race in the university classroom. She has taught race based courses such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Critical Race Theory.”

“So more and more, the courses that I teach on race have become courses in which I expect my students to engage in the hegemonic power of whiteness.” Really?

Let’s discuss hegemonic theory. Early 19th century Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci was made famous by his theory of cultural hegemony which posits that the state and ruling class (the bourgeoisie in Italy) use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. Hegemony is just another word for dominance. The ruling class uses ideology rather than military force to achieve compliance to its cultural norms. The idea is that the lessons of accepted normative behavior are repeated and reinforced at home, at school, and at worship. The cultural norms become codified into laws which further enforce the cultural norms and thus cultural hegemony rather than force is used to maintain power.

Dr. Sealey and the presenters at Teachers College are criticizing cultural hegemony as the evil method used for maintaining white power while they are hypocritically attempting to reformat American cultural institutions with reverse discrimination to establish cultural hegemony and establish black power. Reverse discrimination is still discrimination and cannot remedy the problem of discrimination it can only exacerbate it.

Reverse racism taken to its extreme will necessarily end in a race war – the white population will not submit without a fight. The social chaos of a race war will not end well for America. The police force will be nationalized and the federal government will declare martial law and all individual freedoms will be suspended.

There is an alternative.

America’s judicial system was created with the dream of blind justice. This meant that the judicial system would focus exclusively on the WHAT of behavior and ignore the WHO. To realize the dream of fairness requires a commitment to the ideal of the meritocracy not a campaign to institutionalize reverse racism. Racism and reverse racism are the opposite of fairness because they focus on the WHO of behavior not on the WHAT of behavior.

Consider the blind auditions for orchestras. They are the fairest system and yield the most talented artists for positions in the orchestra. Musicians sitting behind a screen play for judges – there is only the music – it does not matter if the musician is white, black, hispanic, Asian, old, young, Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. Only the music matters. The competence and achievement of the musician is measured – not the color of his/her skin.

The meritocracy is the structure of fairness that supports the American dream of upward mobility. The meritocracy focuses exclusively on the WHAT of behavior and ignores the WHO.

City College was among the finest in the nation. It was called the “Harvard” of Convent Avenue and listed as one of the regional leaders in quality education. The list of alums includes seven Nobel laureates, prominent jurors, scientists, artists and intellectuals….tuition was free and admission based on meritocracy.In 1970, response to the spring 1969 building takeovers and riot threats by Puerto-Rican and black City College students, they instituted a policy of open admissions, guaranteeing every New York City high-school graduate acceptance to a CUNY campus and remedial courses anyone requiring them. …..the rest is history….rsk

When the president of the City College of New York resigned unexpectedly in October during a financial scandal, the school quickly named an interim leader and said it planned to pick a replacement by the end of the academic year.

But with the new school year less than a month away, no candidate has been chosen to replace Lisa S. Coico, who remains under federal investigation for using money from a college foundation to pay personal expenses.

Last month, in an unusual letter to the City College community, James B. Milliken, chancellor of the City University of New York, the college’s parent entity, cautioned that the search could take longer than anticipated.

“The search committee and our consultant continue their good work on this critically important responsibility, and I have assured them they should take the time required to see this process to a successful conclusion,” Mr. Milliken wrote.

Whether a successor is named in weeks — or months, as some officials are now speculating — the continued vacancy in the president’s office comes at a pivotal moment for City College, the flagship of CUNY, the country’s largest public urban university.

The CUNY system is playing a central role in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s newplan to help make public colleges in New York tuition-free for middle-class students, and has been attracting more national attention as an affordableengine of upward mobility. With 16,000 students, most of whom are undergraduates, City College has been called “the poor man’s Harvard” for educating thousands of poor, minority and immigrant students.

But its more recent history has been troubled. In May 2016, The New York Times reported that the 21st Century Foundation, a nonprofit group affiliated with the college, had paid for some of Ms. Coico’s personal expenses when she took office in 2010. The foundation was then reimbursed for more than $150,000 by the Research Foundation of CUNY, which manages research funds for the entire system. As questions swirled over the handling of Ms. Coico’s expenses, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York began issuing subpoenas seeking records.

Ms. Coico resigned one day after The Times informed the college that a memo from 2011 concerning her reimbursements appeared to be fabricated, possibly to mislead prosecutors.