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Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Two Columns from Jonathan Turley


August 5, 2024 | https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/05/a-people-first-approach-dalhousie-medical-school-removes-portraits-of-white-deans-in-the-name-of-inclusivity/

“A ‘People First’ Approach”: Dalhousie Medical School Removes Portraits of White Deans in the Name of Inclusivity

We have previously discussed schools such as Harvard, Yale, and even courts removing portraits of white people in the name of inclusivity despite complaints that the left is engaging in its own form of racism. The media as praised these efforts and, in one case, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow spurred Rockefeller University to change what she derided as the “Dude Wall.” Now Canada’s Dalhousie University Medical School has joined these ranks in ordering the removal of  former “old” and “white” deans in a campaign to “put people first” … with some obvious exceptions.

Dean of Medicine David Anderson announced the portrait cleansing in a message as part of the school’s “Valuing People” initiative. He declared that showing former white deans was inimical to “creating positive, safe, and inclusive environments for people to thrive.”

He claimed that the appearance of white people in the portraits make students feel unwelcomed and “dominated by senior male white leaders.” In other words, their race was viewed as interfering with maintaining a healthy and friendly environment.

This exclusion was all done in the name of inclusion, part of the Orwellian logic of today’s culture in higher education.

What is lost is the history of the institution and the recognition of those who built the medical school regardless of their race. Whatever they may have done for the school has been now superseded by their race and gender. As greater gender and racial diversity is achieved, those portraits show an institutional progression that is reflective of a changing society and profession.

Agenda over Athletes: How the Paris Games Became a Competition for Woke Gold

August 5, 2024 | https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/05/agenda-over-athletes-how-the-paris-games-became-a-competition-for-woke-gold/

Below is my column in The Hill on the controversies surrounding the Paris Olympics. Criticisms of the Opening Ceremony continue with the Vatican weighing in this week to condemn the scenes discussed below.

Here is the column:

“I wanted no part of politics.” Those words of Jesse Owens after the 1936 Olympics echoed in my mind as I watched the string of controversies emerge from the Paris games.

From the scenes in the Opening Ceremony to even the food service in the Olympic village, the 2024 Olympics sometimes seemed like a clash not of individual athletes but of political agendas.

The Opening Ceremony of director Thomas Jolly is still raising protests from religious and other groups over two controversial segments. In one scene, three young people are shown flirting in a library while reading books like “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” (Dangerous Liaisons) and “Le Diable au Corps” (Devil in the Flesh). They then run to an apartment for what was clearly a threesome sex-romp, culminating in the participants pushing the cameraman out of the bedroom.

Many people (including me) could not care less about who or how many people you have sex with. Many also would prefer not to have to explain to kids watching what the scene meant if they failed to pick up the meaning from the hot stairway kissing scene.

Then there was the feast scene, featuring DJ and producer Barbara Butch, described as “an LGBTQ+ icon who calls herself a ‘love activist.’” For many, the tableau evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” — an image that was brought home for many by the Christ-like halo worn by Butch in the center.

For the record, I loved many parts of the Opening Ceremony with its stunning imagery and wonderful music. I also welcomed the inclusion of scenes with gay or trans people to show the diversity of French culture.

But for games that are supposed to serve as a shared experience for a world composed of many religions, cultures and practices, these two scenes were gratuitously divisive. Why was a threesome sex romp so vital to the vision of these Olympics?

For many, the hoisting of the Olympic flag upside down seemed to capture the approach of the French organizers. The games are supposed to capture our shared love of sports and ability to come together as a world for these games.

But that was only the beginning of the controversies, as the games appeared to make political and social divisions into an Olympic sport. It seemed like every aspect of the games, no matter how small, had to “make a point.”

For example, the environmentalists prevailed in pushing a green agenda that succeeded in not only producing possibly more carbon emissions but certainly pushing many nations over the edge.

Athletes have complained that their performances were undermined by the conditions at the village. That included “green beds” made of cardboard — beds that are ideal for recycling and a nightmare to actually sleep on. Athletes complained that they competed with little sleep on the beds designed by some woke Marquis de Sade. 

Air conditioning was a “non” at the Paris Olympics, leaving athletes sweltering on their cardboard beds. It was so miserable that various countries flew in air units to make the rooms inhabitable.

Then there was the food shortage. Many blamed the push for plant-based food to lower the games’ carbon footprint. The result was that many teams, given their athletes’ need for high-protein and high-calorie meals, turned up their noses at the “reasonable,” “sustainable” choices and flew in not just their own food but also their own chefs.

None of this, of course, was about the athletes, who were left literally scavenging for meat. Their food and living conditions were meant to send a message, much like the opening ceremony, that was separate from them or their competitions. It seems like only interest groups were cheering, as athletes literally sweated it out before even going to compete.

Ironically, the many planes and trucks used to ship air conditioning units, food, and staff to Paris likely wiped out any climate benefits.

The games then became the focus of an even more intense debate over the decision to allow transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports.

Imane Khelif of Algeria defeated Angela Carini of Italy in just 46 seconds in the ring. Carini tapped out, stating that in her entire career she had never been hit that hard.

It was later revealed that Khelif and another boxer, Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan, had failed to meet gender eligibility tests at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi just last year. (It should be noted that Khelif is not a transgender athlete but someone listed with differences of sexual development, known as DSDs.) Khelif and Yu-ting competed in the last Olympics without medaling. (Yu-ting won a fight on Friday in the women’s 57kg category against Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova to reach the quarterfinals.)

In fairness, the Olympics, like all federations, is struggling with this issue and it is not the responsibility of the French organizers. Yet the theme of the games also outraged some civil libertarians. For example, there was another controversy at the start of the games when France announced that its Muslim athletes would not be allowed to wear their hijabs, or hair coverings, a decision that some of us condemned as a gratuitous denial of their faith. France is infamous for barring religious garb in public as part of its secularist tradition.

At the same time, French authorities have announced that charges are being considered against critics of the participants and organizers of the “Last Supper” scene.

There is little debate that direct, intentional threats should be prosecuted as they are in the U.S. But France is now one of the most anti-free speech nations in the West, with its sweeping criminalization of speech that can be interpreted as “inciting” or “intimidating” others.

These measures reflect the most glaring disconnect in the Opening Ceremony where the French motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity (“liberté, égalité, fraternité”) was celebrated.

In today’s France, “liberté” is no longer valued. Individual rights of religion and speech are routinely sacrificed in the name of “equity” and “fraternity.”

Many in this country believe that we should follow the same path. As I discuss in my new book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” this movement has reached our shores, with many calling for individual rights like free speech to be limited by goals of equity. There is even a movement to amend the First Amendment as “aggressively individualistic.”

In spite of our best efforts, the athletes of the Paris games continue to inspire us. Ratings are soaring. I have been glued to the television and have already fallen into the habit of gasping in shock when a gymnast steps slightly out of bounds after doing a routine that would have left me crippled for life for just attempting. They make us believe that anything is possible, even superhuman feats.

There are times when athletes cannot escape the politics of our age. When Owens won four gold medals with Hitler watching, there was no missing the transcendent meaning of his achievement.

That message, however, was far more powerful because it was delivered by an athlete as part of his competition. The problem with the Paris games is that they are trying to make it more about us than it is about them.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Education, International Politics, Society

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“The Movement is Winning.”: Polling Shows Drop in Support for Free Speech


By: Jonathan Turley | August 2, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/02/the-movement-is-winning-polling-shows-drop-in-support-for-free-speech/

In my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about a global anti-free speech movement that is now sweeping over the United States. While not the first, it is in my view the most dangerous movement in our history due to an unprecedented alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media forces. That fear was amplified this week with polling showing that years of attacking free speech as harmful has begun to change the views of citizens.

As discussed in the book, our own anti-free speech movement began in higher education where it continues to rage. It then metastasized throughout our politics and media. It is, therefore, not surprising to see the new Knight Foundation-Ipsos study revealing a further a decline in students’ views concerning the state of free speech on college campuses.

The study shows that 70 percent of students “believe that speech can be as damaging as physical violence.” It also shows the impact of speech codes and regulations with two out of three students reporting that they “self-censor” during classroom discussions.

Not surprisingly, Republican students are the most likely to self-censor given the purging of conservative faculty and the viewpoint intolerance shown on most campuses. Some 49 percent of Republican students report self-censoring on three or more topics. Independents are the second most likely at 40 percent. Some 38 percent of Democrats admit to self-censuring.

Sixty percent of college students strongly or somewhat agree that “[t]he climate at my school or on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe, because others might find it offensive.”

The most alarming finding may be that only 54 percent of students believe that colleges should “allow students to be exposed to all types of speech even if they may find it offensive or biased.” That figure stood at 78 percent in 2016.

The poll follows similar results in a new poll by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) of the population as a whole. It found that 53% of Americans believe that the First Amendment goes too far in protecting rights. So there is now a majority who believe that the First Amendment, including their own rights, should be curtailed.

The most supportive of limiting free speech are Democrats at a shocking 61%. However, a majority (52%) of Republicans also agreed.

Roughly 40% now trust the government to censor speech, agreeing that they trust the government “somewhat,” “very much,” or “completely” to make fair decisions about what speech should be disallowed.

It is no small feat to convince a free people to give up their freedoms.  They have to be afraid or angry. These polls suggest that they appear both very afraid and very angry.

It is the result of years of indoctrinating students and citizens that free speech is harmful and dangerous. We have created a generation of speech phobics who are willing to turn their backs on centuries of struggle against censorship and speech codes.

Anti-free speech books have been heralded in the media. University of Michigan Law Professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has written how dangerous free speech is for the nation. Her book, “Attack from Within,” describes how free speech is what she calls the “Achilles Heel” of America, portraying this right not as the value that defines this nation but the threat that lurks within it.

McQuade and many on the left are working to convince people that “disinformation” is a threat to them and that free speech is the vehicle that makes them vulnerable.

This view has been pushed by President Joe Biden who claims that companies refusing to censor citizens are “killing people.” The Biden administration has sought to use disinformation to justify an unprecedented system of censorship.

Recently, the New York Times ran a column by former Biden official and Columbia University law professor Tim Wu describing how the First Amendment was “out of control” in protecting too much speech.

Wu insists that the First Amendment is now “beginning to threaten many of the essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” He claims that the First Amendment “now mostly protects corporate interests.”

There is even a movement afoot to rewrite the First Amendment through an amendment. George Washington University Law School Professor Mary Anne Franks believes that the First Amendment is “aggressively individualistic” and needs to be rewritten to “redo” the work of the Framers.

Her new amendment suggestion replaces the clear statement in favor of a convoluted, ambiguous statement of free speech that will be “subject to responsibility for abuses.” It then adds that “all conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.”

Franks has also dismissed objections to the censorship on social media and insisted that “the Internet model of free speech is little more than cacophony, where the loudest, most provocative, or most unlikeable voice dominates . . . If we want to protect free speech, we should not only resist the attempt to remake college campuses in the image of the Internet but consider the benefits of remaking the Internet in the image of the university.”

Franks is certainly correct that those “unlikeable voices” are less likely to be heard in academia today. As discussed in my book, faculties have largely cleansed with the ranks of conservative, Republican, libertarian, and dissenting professors through hiring bias and attrition. In self-identifying surveys, some faculties show no or just a handful of conservative or Republican members.

The discussion on most campuses now runs from the left to far left without that pesky “cacophony” of opposing viewpoints.

One of the most dangerous and successful groups in this anti-free speech movement has been Antifa. I testified in the Senate on Antifa and the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States. I specifically disagreed with the statement of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler that Antifa (and its involvement in violent protests) is a “myth.”

In the meantime, Antifa continues to attack those with opposing views and anti-free speech allies continue to “deplatform” speakers on campuses and public forums. “Your speech is violence” is now a common mantra heard around the country. Faculty continue to lead students in attacking pro-life and other demonstrators. Antifa is now so popular in some quarters that it recently saw two members elected to the French and European parliaments.

Antifa is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. It is laid out in Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” in which he emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”

Bray quotes one Antifa member as summing up their approach to free speech as a “nonargument . . . you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.”

However, the most chilling statement may have come from arrested Antifa member Jason Charter after an attack on historic statues in Washington, D.C. After his arrest, Charter declared “The Movement is winning.” As these polls show, he is right.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).

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Education, Law

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Bakersfield College Agrees to $2.4 Million Settlement in Free Speech Case


By: Jonathan Turley | August 1, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/01/bakersfield-college-agrees-to-2-4-million-settlement-in-free-speech-case/

Last year, we discussed the free speech case of Matthew Garrett, formerly a tenured history professor at Bakersfield College who was investigated and disciplined after he questioned the use of grant money to fund social justice initiatives. Bakersfield College has one of the worst records on free speech in higher education and has been repeatedly sued by faculty. It will now pay another $2.4 million in a settlement to subsidize the anti-free speech actions of its administration. The question is why California taxpayers continue to allow faculty and administrators to burn through millions in these efforts to punish divergent or dissenting viewpoints. Matthew Garrett will reportedly receive $2,245,480 over the next 20 years as well as an immediate one-time payment of $154,520 as “compensation for back wages and medical benefits since [his] dismissal.” Unfortunately, the college got its way in insisting that he resign from the Kern Community College District. So, it achieved greater uniformity and orthodoxy in viewpoints at the cost of millions in damages.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression supported his case and detailed in 2023 how his criticism of DEI programs made him a target of faculty and administrators:

Animosity toward Garrett by some faculty and administrators increased over the past couple years as Garrett and several other faculty members associated with the Renegade Institute for Liberty — a Bakersfield College think tank Garrett founded — joined the faculty diversity committee. Other committee members say that the Renegade faculty have made it difficult for the group to get anything done by stalling campus diversity initiatives. But it was Garrett’s comments regarding a proposed racial climate task force during a diversity committee meeting last fall that led Bakersfield to recommend Garrett’s termination.

At the October 2022 meeting of the Bakersfield Equal Opportunity and Diversity Advisory Committee, Garrett criticized a proposal by professor Paula Parks to create a racial climate task force he felt might usurp the jurisdiction of the diversity committee. He also contested the student survey data cited as justification for the proposed task force and questioned the survey’s objectivity and the lack of evidence connecting the data presented and the proposed solutions. Several other faculty members in the meeting also challenged the veracity of the survey data. But ultimately, the committee voted to approve the creation of the task force.

On Nov. 15, Parks published an op-ed in Kern Sol News accusing Garrett and other Renegade Institute-affiliated faculty of a “disturbing pattern of actions” that “created negativity and division in the name of free speech.”

We previously also discussed the case of History Professor Daymon Johnson who was put under investigation after he commented on the extremist comments of another professor. Professor Andrew Bond denounced the United States as a “sh*t nation” and then invited conservatives to quote him. In August 2019, Bond posted a statement on Facebook that:

“Maybe Trump’s comment about sh*thole countries was a statement of projection because honestly, the US is a f**king piece of sh*t nation. Go ahead and quote me, conservatives. This country has yet to live up to the ideals of its founding documents.”

[Text changes added to profanity from the original]

Johnson proceeded to do exactly what Bond suggested and quoted him on the Facebook page for the Renegade Institute for Liberty. He asked others “Do you agree with this radical SJW from BC’s English Department? Thoughts?” He then posted on his own Facebook account the following statement according to his complaint:

“Johnson then used his personal Facebook account to comment on what he had reposted: ‘Maybe he should move to China, and post this about the PRC in general or the Chinese Communist Party and see how much mileage it gets him. I wonder, do they still send the family the bill for the spent round?’”

Johnson said that the college would not allow him to read the complaint but subjected him to months of investigation.

After the investigation was finally concluded with no action by the Kern Community College District (which oversees the college), it stated that it would “investigate any further complaints of harassment and bullying and, if applicable, [taking] appropriate remedial action including but not limited to any discipline determined to be appropriate.”

That threat took on a more menacing meaning given the controversy involving John Corkins, vice president of the Board of Trustees of the Kern Community College District Board. Corkins declared in an open meeting that critics of Critical Race Theory should be “culled” from the faculty and “taken to the slaughterhouse.”

As shown by Corkins, it remains popular in California to pledge to wipe out conservatives and dissenters from faculty. There are comparably few left. Conservatives and libertarians have been gradually purged from many institutions.

A survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”

Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.

Some sites like Above the Law have supported the exclusion of conservative faculty.  Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university. So, the views of roughly half of the judiciary and half of the country are treated as legitimately excluded as intellectually invalid.

We have also seen administrators and faculty treat public or private funds as a subsidy for radical policies. For example, Oberlin College abused a small family grocery store for years and racked up millions in costs and damages that it expected alumni to cover. There was no blowback for its president or administrators.

These cases continue unabated despite a long litany of losses for universities and colleges over free speech limits and faculty discipline. The reason is that it is still personally and professionally beneficial for these professors and administrators to attack those with dissenting viewpoints. While faith in higher education is at an all-time low and these schools are gushing money in litigation, there are few remaining dissenting voices on faculties and even fewer willing to resist retaliation by speaking up.

Settlements are now just a cost of doing business for the anti-free speech movement in higher education. The costs are born by taxpayers or donors who are expected to foot the bill for intellectual intolerance.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).

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Education, Law, Political

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House Bill Would Codify Sex as Male and Female, Not Gender Identity or Expression


By: Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell | July 30, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/30/congresswoman-introduces-bill-defining-sex-male-female/

A pen chooses male or female
Rep. Mary Miller’s proposed legislation would codify the definition of biological sex. (Jamie Grill/Getty Images)

A Republican congresswoman from Illinois has introduced a bill to clearly define sex based on biology, rather than ideology.

“As a mother and grandmother, I am deeply concerned by the Biden administration’s illegal rewrite of Title IX, endangering our daughters and granddaughters in sports and locker rooms,” Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., told The Daily Signal. “My bill simply recognizes the most distinct differences of our humanity—our maleness and femaleness.”

“The Defining Male and Female Act will enshrine these definitions in federal law, preventing future departments and administrations from redefining this fundamental characteristic,” she explained.

The Defining Male and Female Act of 2024—co-sponsored by Republican Reps. Debbie Lesko of Arizona, Lisa McClain of Michigan, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Claudia Tenney of New York, Barry Moore of Alabama, Greg Steube of Florida, Doug LaMalfa of California, Keith Self of Texas, Michael Guest of Mississippi, and Alex Mooney of West Virginia—is intended to combat the Biden administration’s attempted Title IX rule change.

President Joe Biden’s April revisions to Title IX—the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs—include adding “gender identity” to the list of sex-based protections. That would allow males in female sports and private spaces. Biden’s proposed changes were supposed to take effect on Aug. 1, but they have been blocked by a number of federal court injunctions across the country. The Miller bill establishes that there are only two sexes—male and female.

“To prevent further efforts to undermine the long-standing meaning and understanding of sex—male, female, and related terms—it is necessary for Congress to reaffirm and codify the meaning of these terms,” the bill says.

Rare sexual development disorders are not exceptions to the binary nature of sex, the bill establishes. The legal equality of men and women does not mean that they are the same in every respect, so it’s not unequal treatment under the law to have separate male and female facilities, the bill’s text says.

A female is “an individual who naturally has, had, will have, or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization,” and a male is an “individual who naturally has, had, will have, or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization,” according the bill.

Miller’s legislation establishes “gender” as a synonym for sex, not a synonym for “gender identity,” “experienced gender,” “gender expression,” or “gender roles.”

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Education, LGBTQ+ AND TRANSGENDER

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RELIGIOUS LIBERTY VICTORY: Va. Court Deals Blow to School District’s ‘Unconstitutional’ Pronoun and Bathroom Policies


By: Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell | July 26, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/26/virginia-court-upholds-challenge-unconstitutional-school-pronoun-bathroom-policies/

A little boy washes his hands.
(Westend61 via Getty Images)

A Virginia court ruled Wednesday that students can challenge unconstitutional “transgender” pronoun and bathroom policies.

“We are pleased with the court’s decision recognizing that students can, in fact, challenge unconstitutional policies implemented by school boards in Virginia,” America First Legal attorney Andrew Block told The Daily Signal.

Fairfax County Public Schools in Northern Virginia requires all students to refer to “students who identify as gender-expansive or transgender by their chosen name and pronoun, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent pupil record.”

Conservative public interest law firm America First Legal sued the district on behalf of a Roman Catholic student who believes the policy opposes her religious beliefs. The student believes God made only two genders—male and female—and that to reject one’s biological sex is to reject the image of God within that person. 

The school district argued that the student, who was followed into the girls’ bathroom by a boy and is compelled to use preferred pronouns under the school district’s policy, did not have standing to sue. In Wednesday’s hearing, the court overruled that motion, recognizing that students can challenge unconstitutional policies. The court held that the student did not allege “discriminatory purpose or intent.”

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a Fairfax County mom of three who has followed this issue closely, celebrated the decision.

“I’m joining other parents across Fairfax County today as we collectively inhale the fresh scent of common sense with the court’s verdict,” she told The Daily Signal. “We knew all along that it was tyrannical and completely wrong to try to compel our children’s speech with forced pronoun usage in their public schools. It is such a relief that justice has prevailed this time to preserve our children’s constitutional rights.”

Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Brett Kassabian gave the plaintiff 21 days to file responsive pleadings.

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Education, Family, Law, Political

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“All Men are Created Equal”: University of Oregon Loses Key Motion in Free Speech Case


By: Jonathan Turley | July 25, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/25/all-men-are-created-equal-university-of-oregon-loses-key-motion-in-free-speech-case/

We previously discussed the free speech lawsuit of Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting “All men are created equal.” The court just granted a preliminary injunction holding that there was a substantial likelihood that he would prevail on the merits against the University of Oregon.

Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley was excluded from a Diversity Twitter page by the Communication Manager of the Division of Equity and Inclusion at the University of Oregon. (The manager is identified as “tova stabin” who the court notes “spells her name with all lowercase letters.”). Stabin has now left the school.

In Gilley v. Stabin, Judge Hernández previously offered this background:

On or about June 14, 2022, Defendant stabin, in her capacity as Communication Manager, posted a “racism interruptor” to the Division’s Twitter page, @UOEquity. The Tweet read “You can interrupt racism,” and the prompt read, “It sounded like you just said_________. Is that really what you meant?”

Plaintiff Bruce Gilley, a professor at Portland State University, responded to the Tweet the same day it was posted with the entry “all men are created equal.” Plaintiff is critical of diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) principles, and intended his tweet to promote a colorblindness viewpoint. Plaintiff tagged @uoregon and @UOEquity in his re-tweet. Also on June 14, 2022, Defendant stabin blocked Plaintiff from the @UOEquity account. Once he was blocked, Plaintiff could no longer view, reply to, or retweet any of @UOEquity’s posts….

Plaintiff later filed a public records request with the University of Oregon to inquire about the policy VPEI uses to block Twitter users. … The University initially responded that there was no written policy and that “the staff member that administers the VPEI Twitter account and social media has the autonomy to manage the accounts and uses professional judgment when deciding to block users.” …Plaintiff also asked whether other Twitter users had been blocked from @UOEquity, and the University responded that two other users were blocked. … Plaintiff asserts that “[b]oth of the other users have expressed politically conservative viewpoints, including criticizing posts of the @UOEquity account.” Am. Compl. ¶ 70.

On June 27, 2022, Defendant stabin responded to an email from University of Oregon employee Kelly Pembleton, who was helping respond to Plaintiff’s public records request. Defendant stabin sent the following in response to Pembleton’s request for a list of the users she had blocked on @UOEquity:

“Doesn’t take real long. I’ve only ever blocked three people. Here is the list. I’m assuming the issue is this guy Bruce Gilley. He was not just being obnoxious, but bringing obnoxious people to the site some. We don’t have much following and it’s the social I pay least attention to. Here’s a screenshot of everyone I’ve ever blocked. I hardly do it (and barely know how to).”

Minutes later, Defendant stabin sent another email to Pembleton about the records request. The email reads, in pertinent part:

“Oh, I see. It is Bruce who brought it. Not surprising. He was commenting on one of the “interrupt racism” posts, as I recall talking something about the oppression of white men, if I recall. Really, they are just there to trip you up and make trouble. Ugh. I’m around at home for a quick zoom about it.’

The court previously denied the university’s motion to dismiss. The University of Oregon then continued to spend public dollars to try to defend its right to censor academics and students in this arbitrary way. Now it has lost the key fight over the preliminary injunction.

In his decision, Judge Hernández zeroed in on the guidelines allowing for the censorship of offensive or hateful speech:

“Plaintiff has shown that the two provisions of the social media guidelines he challenges create a risk of censoring speech that is protected by the First Amendment. As Plaintiff points out, speech that is “hateful,” “racist,” or “otherwise offensive” is protected by the Constitution. Pl. Br. 3 (citing Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 454 (2011); Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 25 (1971); Am. Freedom Def. Initiative v. King County, 904 F.3d 1126, 1131 (9th Cir. 2018)). The Court held that the @UOEquity account was a limited public forum, meaning that any restrictions on speech must be reasonable and viewpoint-neutral. Op. & Ord. 25.5 Plaintiff is correct that the provisions allowing the Communications Manager to block “hateful,” “racist,” and “otherwise offensive” speech create a risk of viewpoint discrimination because “[w]hat is offensive or hateful is often in the eye of the beholder.” Pl. Br. 4. If Plaintiff was blocked for posting “all men are created equal” because the post was viewed as hateful, racist, or otherwise offensive, such blocking would violate the Constitution. Deleting or hiding the post for that reason would also violate the Constitution.”

That is why this decision could have a lasting impact for higher education. The Oregon language is not dissimilar from many schools limiting campus speech under vague guidelines.

Notably, we have discussed how these schools have been losing in federal courts in their effort to maintain censorship systems. Yet, administrators continue undeterred in pursuing these policies with the support of their faculty.

Oregon has long been known for radical viewpoints in academia. I previously criticized the school policy to monitor student speech on social media and off campus as part of its speech regulations.

The school previously gave special recognition to University of California (Santa Barbara) Professor Mireille Miller-Young who criminally assaulted pro-life advocates on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara.  At Oregon, she was honored as a featured speaker at the University of Oregon’s Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.  Part of its “black feminist speaker series,” Miller-Young’s work was highlighted by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English to show “the radical potential of black feminism in the work that we do on campus and in our everyday lives.”

It is unlikely that the legislature will object to this expensive fight to preserve the right to censor speech. The state itself has moved aggressively against free speech rights of doctors and others in areas like abortion. However, the people of Oregon should consider the use of their tax dollars to seek to limit the “indispensable right” of free speech and to give figures like stabin such discretion over what speech to allow on campus.

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“Let’s Hope Today’s Events Inspire Others”: Rutgers Professor Under Fire for Posting on Trump Assassination Attempt

We have been following the controversies surrounding professors commenting on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Some of those responses have ranged from celebrations to spreading bizarre conspiracy theories. The latest controversy concerns Rutgers University Writing Program Assistant Teaching Professor Tracy Budd, who posted a Facebook message saying” Let’s hope today’s events inspire others.” These postings raise difficult questions for universities in balancing free speech rights against statements viewed as endorsing violence.

Professor Budd is engaged in what I called “rage rhetoric” in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” Indeed, she perfectly embodies the following from the beginning of the book:

“We are living in an age of rage. It permeates every aspect of our society and politics. Rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others. Rage is often found at the farthest extreme of reason. For those who agree with the underlying message, it is righteous and passionate. For those who disagree, it is dangerous and destabilizing.”

Like many on the left, Budd mocked the assassination attempt and seemed to regret that it was not successful. She added, ”They shot his wig. Sad.”

For most of us, the comments are shocking, but shock is a relative concept in an age of rage. Budd, like many, does not appear to view Trump as a human being as much as a symbol or object. He is treated as devoid of human components from feelings to family. It is easier to call for the killing of a caricature than a person.

Budd is obviously part of the radical chic in higher education discussed in my book.  She has worked at the Rutgers University Writing Program for 22 years.

Conservative sites like Campus Reform have noted that her Facebook account features a poster at a protest that reads: “Capitalism will kill us all. Gender is fake. Eat garbage. Be free.” The posting is an example of the difficult questions that arise on social media. This was a comment made outside of the campus as a private person, not as an academic.

Yet, there have been calls for Budd to be fired.

My inclination is always to err on the side of free speech in such circumstances. The university can condemn it, but punishing political speech can place a university on a slippery slope. Moreover, Rutgers is a public university subject to the First Amendment. I do not believe that disciplinary action would be upheld under these circumstances. Rutgers could argue that this is a call for political violence. However, Professor Budd can insist that this is mere hyperbole and bad humor.

My concern is not with allowing Budd’s hateful speech, but the lack of consistency in how universities respond to such controversies.

Many conservative or libertarian professors find themselves suspended or under investigation for controversial tweets or jokes. Conversely, it is comparably rare to see such action against those on the left who use inflammatory language including professors advocating “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer,  strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements.

The most analogous case is that of University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, who defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. Yet, those extreme statements from the left are rarely subject to cancel campaigns or university actions.

Faculty and students often have little tolerance for even jokes from conservatives as they do alleged jokes by liberals like Budd.

For example, conservative North Carolina professor Dr. Mike Adams faced calls for termination for years with investigations and cancel campaigns. He repeatedly had to go to court to defend his right to continue to teach. He was then again targeted after an inflammatory tweet. He was done. Under pressure from the university, he agreed to resign with a settlement. Four years ago this month, Adams went home just days before his final day as a professor. He then committed suicide.

What are often portrayed as harmless jokes from the left are treated as threats from the right. That is the long reality of rage rhetoric; it is either righteous or dangerous depending on your perspective.

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“They Lie and People Die”: Carnegie Mellon Professor Claims Trump Assassination Attempt was “Staged”


By: Jonathan Turley | July 18, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/18/they-lie-and-people-die-carnegie-mellon-professor-claims-trump-assassination-attempt-was-staged/

Carnegie Mellon University Professor Uju Anya has joined the ranks of academics spreading the conspiracy theory that the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was “staged.” As for the killing and wounding of bystanders, Anya explained that “that’s exactly what they do.” We previously discussed other academics who have spread this conspiracy theory. However, few are willing to go as far as Professor Anya in explaining how the other victims were used to make the staging more plausible. Anya declared:

“It was staged. Like a stupid Tubi movie set in the Bronx with palm trees in the background. They lie, and people die. That’s exactly what they do

…That’s the record. Whatever ‘attack’ on him they set up to stoke his followers’ fears and sentiments threat and persecution has now cost lives.

…And people died behind this farce. Actual people’s lives gone for them to stage this stupid show. People dying doesn’t make the attack any less staged. Someone who thought the attack was real could’ve killed others trying to prevent harm. Also, someone could’ve shot the shooter to hide the plot.”

The faculty bio states that Anya is an Associate Professor of Second Language Acquisition. She describes herself as

“a scholar of language learning and Black experiences in multilingualism. My primary fields of

inquiry are critical applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics and critical discourse studies examining race, gender, sexual and social class identities in new language learning through the multilingual journeys of African American students.”

Likewise, in a now since-deleted Threads posting, Professor of Psychology at San Diego Mesa College Inna Kanevsky also fueled the baseless conspiracy theory. She posted

“‘He took a bullet for his country!’ No, he didn’t. He took it, like everything else he

took and keeps taking, for himself. For his own personal aggrandizement.”

Professor Anya has long been a controversial figure including her wish that Queen Elizabeth would die a long “excruciating” death. She later doubled down on the hateful statements.

She also tweeted out crude remarks about the 2022 elections: “contrary to all these major media outlets, the red wave coming is my period on Friday.”

So, these and other faculty believe that Trump enlisted a kid who was thrown out of his high school shooting club as a bad shot to wing him at 130 yards from a sloped position. The conspiracists also decided to kill or wound some supporters to make the staging look real. In our age of rage, this all makes sense to these professors.

I agree with Professor Anya that such political statements are protected speech. However, her unhinged and hateful commentary exposes the radicalism of many faculty in higher education today.

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“Staged Theatrics to Win Idiots’ Vote”: Virginia Professor Declares Trump Shooting Was Faked


By: Jonathan Turley | July 16, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/16/staged-theatrics-to-win-idiots-vote-virginia-professor-declares-trump-shooting-was-faked/

University of Virginia Assistant Professor Sethunya Mokoko took a break from teaching students to get the word out this week that the entire assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump was a staged event for suckers. Mokoko explained that it was just a ploy to get the votes of “idiots.” He, however, is available to offer sage-like clarity that the Secret Service, local police, and the Trump campaign conspired to fake the assassination, kill a bystander, and seriously wound others to get the sucker vote. He is not alone in this theory while others on the left are simply bemoaning that Thomas Matthew Crooks missed.

In his tweet, Mokoko said that security ”ignored [Crooks] because trump & secrete service staged theatrics to win idiots’ vote.”

So let me get the conspiracy down. The Secret Service allowed a kid who flunked out of the high school shooting club as a bad shot to fire multiple rounds at the former president from a sloped roof at 130 yards in the hope that he would only wing him?

Mokoko previously taught at Clemson University, Gold West College, Long Beach City College and University of California, Long Beach, according to his Linkedin page.

His faculty bio states that Mokoko teaches “Race, Rhetoric, and Social Justice” and “Writing about Culture and Society.” His focus is “teaching students to appreciate and value social justice rhetorics across media; to become rhetorically listening writers, readers, and viewers; and to understand how global rhetorics shape and define agency and identification.”

He is not alone. Within minutes of the assassination attempt, the staging theory was going viral and has been picked up by many on the left. For example, actress Amanda Seales took to social media to claim that Trump used fake stage blood and sound effects to stage his assassination attempt.

“That sh** was more staged than a Tyler Perry production of Madea Runs for President. I lived in Harlem long enough to know that gunshots do not sound like making popcorn on the stove.”

She does not explain how local fireman Corey Comperatore died from the fake bullets.

Others fueled the stage conspiracy theory.

Tennessee state Rep. Antonio Parkinson posted a statement that “I certainly hope this is not a staged act. But.”

Colorado state Rep. Steve Woodrow, D-Denver, declared “The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.”

Aberdeen, Wash., Mayor Douglas Orr declared “The shooter is dead so we will never know if this was staged. I hope I’m wrong, but because of his record of deceit, that’s the first thing that came to mind.”

Still others accepted that the shooting was real but complain that Crooks should not have missed. Bellarmine University English instructor John James posted on Instagram: “If you’re gonna shoot, man, don’t miss.”

Jack Black’s Tenacious D partner Kyle Gass made a wish while performing with Black that the next assassination would not miss. Various people joined in on regretting that the assassination was not successful.

This is the very face of the age of rage and shows how it is both addictive and contagious.

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Gallup: Higher Education Plunges in Public Confidence


By: Jonathan Turley | July 9, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/09/gallup-higher-education-plunges-in-public-confidence/

A new poll shows a further erosion of public confidence in higher education as faculty and administrators reduce colleges and universities to mere academic echo chambers. The poll from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found only 36% of adults have a great deal or a lot of confidence in higher education, a drop from 57% in 2015.

In my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I have a long chapter on the erosion of free speech and viewpoint diversity in higher education.

We previously discussed how surveys at universities show a virtual purging of conservative and Republican faculty members.  For example, last year, the Harvard Crimson noted that the university had virtually eliminated Republicans from most departments but that the lack of diversity was not a problem.  Now, a new survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”

Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.

Compare that to a recent Gallup poll stating, “roughly equal proportions of U.S. adults identified as conservative (36%) and moderate (35%) in Gallup polling throughout 2022, while about a quarter identified as liberal (26%).”

Universities have effectively purged faculty with values that reflect roughly half of this country. Students and taxpayers (for public universities) are treated as virtual captive audiences to a culture that runs from the left to the far left. In some cases, classes have moved from education to indoctrination, including universities which now employ “resident activists” or offer degrees in activism.

I have watched the steady erosion of intellectual diversity for 30 years and a rising intolerance for opposing viewpoints. Many students and their families are not keen on spending huge amounts on tuition to attend schools with little tolerance or exposure to conservative or libertarian or even dissenting views on major public issues.

While schools profess a desire for diversity, they continue to replicate their own views and values while excluding opposing views. Some openly support such exclusion. Sites like Above the Law have spent years ridiculing objections over the exclusion of conservative faculty.  Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university. So, the views of roughly half of the judiciary and half of the country are treated as legitimately excluded as intellectually invalid.

Much like the media, which has sacrificed readership and viewership to advocacy journalism, academics continue this trend despite alienating much of the country and radically narrowing the range of thought on campuses.

Roughly one-third of respondents said that they have very little or no faith in such institutions at all.

There was a time when higher education enjoyed some of the highest levels of respect. Today’s faculty and administrators have destroyed that trust and their institutions by yielding to the impulse to exclude opposing viewpoints.

Some 68% said that higher education is going in the wrong direction. There are obviously a myriad of different factors at play from rising tuition costs to falling populations of college-aged students. However, polls are also registering opposition to the activism and extremism among faculty and administrators in our universities and colleges.

Not surprisingly, Republicans and independents are the most estranged from higher education. While trust of Democrats has also declined, a majority still have trust in higher education. That is hardly a shock when Democratic faculty now outnumber Republicans 10-1 and many departments reporting not a single conservative professor.

Now only 36% of respondents believe that a college education is worth the expense. If these were corporations, universities would be in a full panic and boards would be demanding a new organizational plan. However, these not-for-profits are more insulated from such market pressures and academics feel little pressure for reform.

Faculty members have shown that they will not voluntarily restore diversity of viewpoints. The only chance for any change will come from pressure by donors and, in the case of public universities, legislators. The alternative is to allow the academic echo chamber to continue to drown out opposing views and alienate prospective students.

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“Our Finest Hour”: Democratic Insiders Support “Blitz Primary” After Blocking Primary Competition


By: Jonathan Turley | July 8, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/08/this-our-finest-hour-democratic-insiders-support-blitz-primary-after-blocking-primary-competition/

A proposal is circulating in Washington to dump President Joe Biden and hold a “blitz primary” to choose a replacement. The proposal is the work of Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor who worked in the Obama and Clinton administrations, and Ted Dintersmith, a venture capitalist and education philanthropist. The proposal is gaining support with party insiders and repeats the hyperbolic claim that this is essential to avoid a “democracy-ending defeat.” It is disappointing to see a law professor repeating this unfounded alarmist claim. Yet, the most glaring contradiction is found in the stated desire to give delegates a choice after the party worked to prevent any choice for voters in state primaries.

The authors promise an “uplifting” path in which candidates would pledge not to attack each other. They would then have a few weeks as named celebrities like Oprah and Taylor Swift would moderate discussions. Delegates would then use ranked voting before the August 19th convention.

The authors proclaim that “we can limp to shameful, avoidable democracy-ending defeat. Or Democrats can make this Our Finest Hour. While we hope for help from Lord Almighty, the Lord helps those who help themselves.”

One wrinkle is that Biden himself spent Sunday pledging again that he is not stepping aside. He also continued his penchant for bizarre statements like stating that “even when I was running for Senate, each time I ran – quite frankly, not a joke – Philadelphia, in particularly, got me across the line. No, I’m not joking. No, I mean it, seriously. Organizationally and in terms of fundraising, the whole deal.”

Either Biden was confessing to using Pennsylvania votes to win elections in Delaware or he was hopelessly confused. Seriously.

The “finest hour” for the party is coming a bit late given the concerted effort of the Democratic establishment to strip away opposing candidates from ballots and crush anyone offering an alternative to Biden. At the same time, both the press and pundits attacked those who raised the President’s infirmity, including calling unedited videos “cheap fakes.”

For the last year, Democratic secretaries of state were trying to remove Trump from 2024 ballots and Democratic leaders in Florida, North Carolina and other states were refusing to allow other candidates to run against Biden in their primaries. For those voters, the primary might have seemed like a “democracy ending” election.

At the same time, the Democratic establishment opposed any debate where Biden’s infirmities might have been observed when there was still time for voters to make another choice. They did so even though every poll showed the majority of Democratic voters thought Biden was too old and wanted an alternative choice. (Notably, I also favored a debate in the GOP primary. While Trump did not participate in any debate, he was widely available for media questions and pressers).

Now, after quashing opposing candidates when the public would have had a chance to make a state-by-state choice, insiders are calling for an “uplifting” blitz election by the party establishment and activists.

I am still curious how this will work. Donors gave money to the Biden-Harris ticket. That money would now have to be used for different candidates. Absent a formal acceptance to the alternative slate, it could raise tough questions under federal election laws. Likewise, the DNC is coming up on a number of states with drop-dead dates for ballot changes. Finally, there is the rather awkward problem of a President who is still very much alive and running.

As Biden objects over and over again that he will not step aside, Brooks and Dintersmith are already planning his political eulogy where Biden would be celebrated as a “modern-day George Washington.”

Once again, the Democratic Party seems to be channeling Monty Python in planning for a departure of a president who does not want to go.

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The Ten Commandments Should Be Taught In Classrooms, Not Just Hung On The Wall


BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JUNE 21, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/06/21/the-ten-commandments-should-be-taught-in-classrooms-not-just-hung-on-the-wall/

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Louisiana made news this week for passing a law that mandates the Ten Commandments be displayed on the walls of every public-school classroom, including elementary schools, middle and high schools, and all public college classrooms.

The law defies a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a similar law in Kentucky, so this is certain to be challenged in court — a prospect supporters of the legislation are counting on. “I can’t wait to be sued,” said Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who has been rather open about one of the purposes of the law: to challenge Supreme Court precedent on the First Amendment, specifically regarding the establishment clause, which for the past half-century has been used to excise nearly all formal recognition of religion from America’s public schools.

As a vehicle for challenging bad precedent, the law seems sufficient. But another purpose for it, at least according to Landry and other Republicans, is to instruct and mold students. “If you want to respect the rule of law,” the governor said, “you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.”

This is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. The idea that posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms will do anything to inculcate in students a respect for the rule of law, to say nothing of basic morality, is pure fantasy. You might say it’s necessary but not anywhere close to sufficient.

If you want to teach students to respect the rule of law and understand that just laws are based on objective moral standards, then you’re going to have to do more than post the Ten Commandments. You’re going to have to get to the root cause of why these things are not taught in public schools anymore — in fact the opposite is taught, that objective morality is oppressive and that the rule of law is systematically racist.

That means you’re going to have to do something about the teachers and administrators. It’s no secret that public school teachers all over the country tend to be far more left-wing than the average American and that no matter how small or conservative your community might be, its teachers and librarians and public-school administrators are among the most radical people in it. They are supported by powerful teacher’s unions and come out of an education and credentialing pipeline that exists to put left-wing ideologues in classrooms and school bureaucracies.

If you really want students to learn about the importance of the Ten Commandments — to say nothing of Christianity, Western philosophy, or the American founding — then you’d better be ready to take on the teachers’ unions and dismantle the teacher’s colleges and credentialing programs.

All of those things are of course well within the mandate of state legislatures. If the GOP-controlled Louisiana legislature has enough votes to mandate the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom in the state, surely, they have enough votes to shut down the teacher’s colleges and repeal the laws requiring that every public-school teacher be credentialed from such colleges.

It’s all well and good to pass laws with a view of changing Supreme Court precedent on establishment clause jurisprudence, but that doesn’t really strike at the root of the problem. Even if the Ten Commandments are allowed to remain on the walls of Louisiana classrooms, students aren’t going to learn anything about them unless they’re taught by teachers who themselves understand the importance of the Ten Commandments.

Therein lies the problem. The institutions that were once supposed to safeguard our education system have been taken over and transformed by leftist radicals who hate the very things we need them to teach our students — like respect for the rule of law or what the Ten Commandments are and where they came from.

What can be done about this? Plenty. Conservatives who actually care about such things are in the minority in America. They don’t wield a lot of institutional power. But Republicans, who count at least some conservatives among their ranks, currently control state legislatures and governors’ mansions (trifecta control) in 23 states. If the GOP in those states really wanted to fight back against the left’s control over public schools, it could push for the abolition of teachers’ colleges, or of credentialing requirements, or change them so that public school teachers need not be indoctrinated in Marxist ideology to teach in a Republican-controlled state.

And of course, much more than just that could be done — if the right wanted to fight back. The key thing is getting over this idea that we must preserve at all costs an outdated and fundamentally flawed notion of neutrality in our public institutions, that public schools, for example, must be silent about religion and morality even as they indoctrinate students in what amounts to a new religion of leftist political activism, bombarding them with lessons derived from critical race theory and LGBT ideology.

The left obviously doesn’t care about neutrality. Every institution and public space they are able to control is immediately used to push a very non-neutral message and agenda. Conservatives are the only ones who even pretend to care about neutrality anymore. It’s time to change that. Neutrality has always been a luxury good that only a religiously and culturally homogenous society could afford. Once the left weaponized it as part of a campaign to take over institutions, it became folly to adhere to it.

And yet most Republican officeholders still do. They should stop and get serious about getting the Ten Commandments back in public school — in the curriculum, not just posted on the wall.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Federal Court Rules Professors Can Be Punished for Disruptive or Uncollegial Speech


By: Jonathan Turley | June 21, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/21/federal-court-rules-professors-can-be-punished-for-disruptive-or-uncollegial-speech/

In my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, and a recent academic work, I discuss a new rationale being used by administrators to punish free speech: threatening academic collegiality or campus tranquility. I was discussing the Fourth Circuit case of Porter v. Board of Trustees of North Carolina State University, which was unfortunately not reviewed by the Supreme Court. Now, as feared, it is being replicated by the Sixth Circuit in Gruber v. Tenn. Tech. Bd. of Trustees.  The result is a new and serious threat to free speech in higher education to curtail speech where it would be “likely to cause disruption” or undermine the “fostering [of] a collegial educational environment.”

The Porter case involved the targeting of a conservative faculty member who opposed diversity views. Given the purging of conservative professors from faculties and the intolerance on our campuses, the use of collegiality to justify disciplinary action is likely to fall more heavily on the dwindling number of conservatives.

However, Gruber involved professors who spoke out against a conservative colleague. As previously addressed by Keith Whittington, the case involved Professor Andrew Donadio, who serves as the faculty advisor for the local chapter of Turning Point USA at Tennessee Tech University.

Donadio was attacked by Professor Julia Gruber and Instructor Andrew Smith who hold strikingly anti-free speech views that are evident in the flyers that they put up around campus denouncing the “hate and hypocrisy” of “Professor Donadio and Turning Point USA.” In addition to saying that his views are “not welcome at Tennessee Tech,” they declared that there should be “no unity with racists” and that “hate speech is not free speech.”

Gruber and Smith are only the latest examples of academics who reject free speech rights for others, but still demand that their own views be protected. Fortunately for them, the free speech community supports free speech regardless of its inherent merits or the hypocrisy of speakers.

Provost Lori Bruce disciplined Gruber and Smith under Policy 600, requiring faculty members “to conduct themselves fairly, honestly, in good faith, and in accordance with the highest ethical and professional standards.”

As with Porter, the use of a lack of collegiality has long been used against those with unpopular views. I previously wrote:

“The lack of collegiality and professionalism has long been shibboleth for those have sought to block minorities and women from appointments. Many objected to the claims of ‘lack of collegiality’ and bad ‘temperament’ raised against figures like Justice Sotomayor when she was nominated for the Court. Indeed, the American Association of University Professors has stressed that collegiality is often a coded or biased basis for discrimination. It cautioned against this use since, “[i]n the heat of making important academic decisions regarding hiring, promotion, and tenure, it would be easy to confuse collegiality with the expectation that a faculty member display ‘enthusiasm,’ or evince ‘a constructive attitude’ that ‘will foster harmony.’” Indeed, collegiality is commonly defined as being “cooperative,” a virtue that is hard to display when you are a dissenting voice on a matter of intense and passionate debate with your colleagues.”

Nevertheless, Sixth Circuit Judges Richard Griffin, Helene White, and Eric Murphy upheld the lower court decision supporting the university:

When deciding whether the plaintiff engaged in protected activity, we first determine whether the action constitutes speech on a matter of public concern, and if it does, we apply the “Pickering balancing test” to determine whether the plaintiff’s interest in commenting outweighs the defendant’s interest as an employer in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees. The balancing test considers the manner, time, and place of the expressive action, and the pertinent considerations include whether the action (1) impairs discipline by superiors or harmony among coworkers, (2) negatively affects close working relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary, (3) impedes performance of the speaker’s duties or interferes with the employer’s regular operations, and (4) undermines the employer’s mission….

TTU does not dispute that the district court properly concluded that the plaintiffs’ speech was a matter of public concern. Even so, as the district also properly concluded, the plaintiffs’ distribution of the flyers was not protected speech because their speech interest was outweighed by TTU’s interest in preventing a disruption to its pedagogical and collegial environment….

At the outset, the “manner” of the plaintiffs’ speech decreased its expressive value and increased TTU’s operational interests. Plaintiffs did not speak in the classroom or through scholarship, where professors’ “rights to academic freedom and freedom of expression are paramount.”

Nor is this a simple case of one professor raising a race-related issue with another or expressing disagreement with a group’s ideology, perhaps one-on-one or in a more private setting. Instead, the plaintiffs posted flyers in an academic building at a time they knew students would be on campus for class and posted an additional flyer the next day. Those flyers were highly likely to cause disruption, and they did so in several ways.

Specifically, the flyers identified Donadio as a “racist college professor” and branded members of Turning Point USA as “racist students.” They stated in bold text that the professor and group’s “hate & hypocrisy are not welcome at Tennessee Tech.” The dissemination of “disrespectful, demeaning, insulting, and rude” messages targeting a colleague and students—regardless of whether some accusations may have had basis in fact—to the entire university community undoubtably threatened to disrupt TTU’s learning environment and academic mission.

For one, flyers that publicly attack a colleague as racist and threaten that the colleague is on the anonymous author’s “list” certainly “impairs … harmony among co-workers.” {Plaintiffs protest that they did not interact with Donadio professionally, so there was no harmony to impair. But even if the professors did not work closely together, they were nonetheless colleagues on TTU’s faculty, and it was not unreasonable for Bruce to conclude that on-campus and public accusations of racism—even between colleagues who did not work together—could cause disruption of the university’s operations.}

Perhaps more critically, by attacking students, the flyers threatened the core of TTU’s educational “mission” and undermined the plaintiffs’ ability to perform their teaching “duties.” The flyers insinuated that, like Donadio, all students who were members of Turning Point USA were racist. The accusations harmed these students’ educations.

For example, one Turning Point USA member, having been deemed a racist, missed class because of the fallout. In addition, the accusations affected the plaintiffs’ effectiveness in the classroom. Students in the club, or those considering joining the club, who were taking courses with Gruber and Smith might reasonably fear the potential treatment they would receive in class due to differing political views. This case is thus factually distinguishable from cases like Pickering, where a teacher was disciplined for writing a letter to a local newspaper criticizing the school district that was “in no way directed towards any person with whom [the teacher] would normally be in contact in the course of his daily work as a teacher.” And most basically, TTU has ‘an interest in fostering a collegial educational environment.’ Permitting professors to circulate flyers with personal attacks on colleagues and students undoubtably undermines that interest.

To be sure, the flyers were quickly collected and affected only a handful of students and professors. But evidence of widespread disruption is not necessary: it was reasonable for Bruce to believe that, had the flyers remained posted, they could have caused far greater disruption.

Lastly, the “place” of the plaintiffs’ speech undermines their interests even further. Even if they did not undertake this speech pursuant to their official duties, they also did not engage in it away from campus as private citizens. Rather than make their claims on their personal Facebook pages or in a local newspaper, they chose to use TTU’s own property as the billboard for their speech. But public employers have greater interest in regulating speech “at the office” (or here on campus) than they do away from the public employers’ property. Indeed, the conclusion that the First Amendment protected the plaintiffs’ speech would mean that TTU remained powerless to remove the flyers off of its property. So this case raises no concern that TTU sought to “leverage” its employment relationship with the plaintiffs to regulate their speech “outside” the context of its university functions.

All told, the Pickering balancing test weighs against the plaintiffs’ speech being protected. The flyers, which attacked a professor and student organization and stated that they were not welcome on campus, created a reasonable threat of disrupting TTU’s academic mission and is the type of speech that a learning institution has a strong interest in preventing. Under the Pickering balancing test, TTU’s interest in preventing a potential disruption to its pedagogical and collegial environment outweighed the plaintiffs’ interest in distributing the flyers. Thus, the plaintiffs’ speech was not protected, foreclosing their First Amendment retaliation claim.

The allowance for censorship and sanctions for speech “likely to cause disruption” would gut free speech protections on campus. The court suggests that the ability of the university to crack down on the speech was magnified by the fact that others might be particularly interested in their views or exposed to them. It is enough that it threatened the tranquility of campus and the collegiality of the faculty.

This week we discussed an analogous position at Harvard where Lawrence Bobo, the Dean of Social Science, rejected views of free speech as a “blank check” and said that criticizing university leaders like himself or school policies are now viewed as “outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct.”

The refusal of the Court to take the Porter decision was crushing for many of us in the free speech community and academia. Hopefully, Gruber will receive a more favorable review in light of the expanding threat to free speech to “foster a collegial educational environment.”

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School District Uses Form to Assess Whether Parents Know Child Transitioning


By: Elizabeth Troutman | June 20, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/06/20/colorado-district-uses-form-assess-parental-awareness-childs-gender-identity/

A mom consoles her young daughter.
In a Denver suburb, the St. Vrain school district uses a “Gender Identity Guidance” form asking whether parents know their child thinks he or she is transgender. (Photo illustration: Ilkercelik/Getty Images)

A Colorado school district uses a form asking staff whether a student’s parents know their child identifies as transgender and support that decision.

St. Vrain Public Schools, in a Denver suburb, developed a so-called Gender Identity Guidance form for “counselors, interventionists, and administrators to support students dealing with issues related to gender identification.”

The document, found on the school district’s website and reviewed by The Daily Signal, includes questions about students’ preferred name, birth name, sex at birth, and gender identity. A section asks whether parents are aware of their child’s gender identity and if they support that, as well as who can advocate on behalf of the child if his or her parents won’t. 

Gender-Identity-GuideDownload

“Do I understand the parent/guardian support and am I able to identify other supports for the student?” the form asks.

Follow-up questions on the school district’s form include:

— “Do student’s parents/guardians know of the gender identity?”

— “Do parents/guardians support the gender identity?”

—”Who can advocate or support the student if not the parents/guardians?”

—”What are the communication methods/issues/challenges between school and home?”

—“Who are the adult contacts at school for support, concerns, etc.?” 

Gender policies such as this one at St. Vrain Public Schools, which allows children to hide their gender identity from parents, undermine parental authority and rights, Lori Gimelshteyn, executive director of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, told The Daily Signal. 

“As parents, our priority is our children’s well-being and safety,” Gimelshteyn said. “No institution should intervene between us and our children, especially during critical times like mental health crises.”

St. Vrain Public Schools did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about whether the district conceals students’ gender transitions from parents. 

Another section of the Gender Identity Guidance form inquiries about others’ awareness of a student’s gender identity.  The school employee who fills out the form must indicate the status of the child, who currently knows about the child’s transition, whether the transition is public or private, and who else needs to know. 

The form lays out how schools in the St. Vrain district should handle communication related to the child’s gender, including how to discuss the transition in an “age appropriate” manner with classmates. 

The form also tracks a child’s preferred personal pronouns and how to refer to that student in school records.

A bill in the Colorado House of Representatives would require educators statewide to call students by their preferred name upon request. The Gender Identity Guidance form reviews a student’s use of facilities to determine whether the child is using restrooms and locker rooms in line with his or her gender identity. 

The St. Vrain district also connects students with “outside resources,” such as Rocky Mountain Equality, the Human Rights Campaign, and other LGBTQ activist groups. Rocky Mountain Equality offers programs for LGBTQ youth ages 11 to 18. Only those under 12 need parental permission to participate. The group provides children with “gender-affirming clothes” such as chest binders. (“Binders are reserved for those ages 11 to 18,” the website says.)

The school district’s form considers “the social dynamics with other students/families/staff” and addresses potential challenges with extracurricular activities, such as sports and clubs. The Colorado High School Activities Association reviews students’ requests to play sports in accord with their “gender identity” if it “differs from their sex assigned at birth.”

A bill requiring student athletes to play sports in line with their biological sex failed to pass the Colorado House last year. 

Related Posts:

  1. Fired Christian Teacher Wins $360K in Lawsuit vs. California School District for Anti-Religious Bias
  2. Federal Appeals Court Rules Maryland Parents Cannot Opt Children Out of LGBTQ Lessons
  3. 2 School Textbook Giants Replace ‘Sex’ With ‘Gender.’ Parents, Teachers Aren’t Buying.

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No “Blank Check”: Dean Warns that Criticizing the School or its Leadership is Not Protected at Harvard


By: Jonathan Turley | June 20, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/20/no-blank-check-dean-warns-that-criticizing-the-school-or-its-leadership-is-not-protected-at-harvard/

In my book out this week, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I write about the anti-free speech movement that has swept over higher education and how administrators and faculty hold a view of free speech as harmful. Now Harvard is again at the heart of a free speech fight after Lawrence Bobo, the Dean of Social Science, rejected views of free speech as a “blank check” and said that criticizing university leaders like himself or school policies are now viewed as “outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct.”

Bobo warns that public criticism of the school could “cross a line into sanctionable violations.”

In his opinion editorial in the Harvard Crimson, Bobo declares:

“A faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government — to intervene in Harvard’s affairs. Along with freedom of expression and the protection of tenure comes a responsibility to exercise good professional judgment and to refrain from conscious action that would seriously harm the University and its independence.”

The column adopts every jingoistic rationale used by anti-free speech critics today, including the invocation of the Holmes “crowded theater” analogy:

“But many faculty at Harvard enjoy an external stature that also opens to them much broader platforms for potential advocacy. Figures such as Raj Chetty ’00, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jill Lepore, or Steven A. Pinker have well-earned notoriety that reaches far beyond the academy.

Would it simply be an ordinary act of free speech for those faculty to repeatedly denounce the University, its students, fellow faculty, or leadership? The truth is that free speech has limits — it’s why you can’t escape sanction for shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.”

First and foremost, the ability of faculty to speak out on public disputes should not depend on whether you are more popular or visible. However, it is the theater analogy that is most galling.

I have an entire chapter in The Indispensable Right that addresses the fallacies surrounding this line out of the Holmes opinion. It is arguably the most damaging single line ever written by a Supreme Court justice in the area of free speech.

I have previously written about the irony of liberals adopting the analogy, which was used to crack down on socialists and dissenters on the left.

One of the most telling moments came in a congressional hearing when I warned of the dangers of repeating the abuses of prior periods like the Red Scare, when censorship and blacklisting were the norm. In response, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-New York, invoked Oliver Wendell Holmes’ view that free speech does not give a person the right to yell fire in a crowded theater. In other words, citizens had to be silenced because their views are dangerous to others.

When I attempted to point out that the line came from a case justifying the imprisonment of socialists for their political viewpoints, Goldman cut me off and “reclaimed his time.”

Other Democrats have used the line as a mantra, despite its origins in one of our most abusive anti-free speech periods during which the government targeted political dissidents on the left.

Dean Bobo is now the latest academic to embrace the theater rationale to justify the silencing of dissent. At Harvard, he is suggesting that the entire university is now a crowded theater and criticizing the university leadership is a cry of “Fire.” It is that easy.

By punishing criticism of the school’s leadership and policies, Bobo believes that they can look “forward to calmer times” on campus. It is precisely the type of artificial silence that academics have been enforcing against conservatives, libertarians, and dissenters for years. It is the approach that reduced our schools to an academic echo chamber.

The reference to Professor Steven Pinker is particularly ironic. As we have previously discussed, Pinker was targeted for exercising free speech. In past controversies, most Harvard faculty members have been conspicuously silent as colleagues were targeted by cancel campaigns. It was the same at other universities.

As faculties effectively purged their ranks of conservative or Republican members, the silence was deafening. Others either supported such campaigns or justified them. Notably, over 75 percent of the Harvard faculty identify as “liberal” or “very liberal.”

Then the Gaza protests began and some of these same faculty found themselves the targets of mobs. Suddenly, free speech became an urgent matter to address. Fortunately for these liberal professors, the free speech community is used to opportunistic allies. Where “fair weather friends” are often ridiculed, free speech relies on “foul-weather friends,” those who suddenly see the need to protect a diversity of opinions when they feel threatened.

Bobo’s arguments are consistent with years of rationales for silencing or investigating dissenting faculty for years. It violates the very foundation for academia in free speech and academic freedom. The university is free to punish students or faculty for unlawful conduct. However, when it comes to their viewpoints, there should be a bright line of protection.

Of course, this criticism is likely to trigger another common fallacy used to rationalize speech controls: as a private university Harvard is not subject to the First Amendment and thus this is not a true free speech issue.

As discussed previously, free speech values go beyond the First Amendment whether it is a controversy on social media or campuses. For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech objections to social media or academic censorship by stressing that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies or institutions. The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government or corporations.

The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies. This threat is even greater when politicians openly use corporations and universities to achieve indirectly what they cannot achieve directly.

Dean Bobo’s desire for “calmer times” would come at too high a price for free speech as well as Harvard.

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Louisiana Expands Education Choice to All


By: Jason Bedrick | June 19, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/06/19/louisiana-expands-education-choice-all/

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry—seen here March 18 outside the Supreme Court speaking with reporters after justices heard oral arguments in a First Amendment case—on Wednesday signed an expansive Educational Savings Accounts bill into law. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

Education freedom is on the march.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry on Wednesday signed legislation making the Pelican State the 16th state in the nation to enact K-12 Education Savings Accounts and the 11th to offer education choice to every K-12 student, following Alabama earlier this year.

The legislation creates the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise—LA GATOR—Scholarships, which families can use to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their kids. As with other ESA policies, parents can use the LA GATOR Scholarships to pay for private school tuition, textbooks, curricular materials, special-needs therapy, and more.

“The LA Gator Program puts parents in the driver’s seat and gives every child the opportunity for a great education. When parents are committed to the value of their child’s education, government should never get in the way,” said Landry, a Republican. “School choice is now a reality in the state of Louisiana!”

Most students will be eligible for scholarships worth about $5,200 annually, which is just over a third of the average per-pupil spending at Louisiana district schools. Students with special needs and children from low-income families can receive higher scholarship amounts.

The scholarships will initially be limited to students who are switching from a district or charter school, are entering kindergarten, or who are from families earning no more than 250% of the federal poverty level. In the second year, families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty line will be eligible, and in the third year, the scholarships will be open to all K-12 students in Louisiana.

More than a quarter of K-12 students nationwide are currently or soon will be eligible for a publicly funded education choice policy. Including privately funded tax-credit scholarship policies, more than 36% of students nationwide are eligible for a private education choice policy.

The new scholarship policy is an example of how the school choice movement has moved in a more free-market and family-centric direction. Instead of relying on bureaucrats to provide top-down accountability, the new policy trusts parents to provide bottom-up accountability.

The LA GATOR Scholarships will replace the state’s overregulated school voucher program, which produced the nation’s first negative results in a random-assignment study on the effects of a school choice policy on participating students’ academic performance.

“Equalitarian” regulations intended to guarantee access and quality—such as open admissions requirements, price controls, and mandating the state test—backfired by chasing away high-performing private schools.

Fortunately, Louisiana lawmakers have learned from their state’s own mistakes, as well as the success of states such as Arizona and Florida, which have shown that a free-market approach to education does a better job of providing a high degree of access and quality. The new scholarship policy eschews the harmful regulations of its predecessor.

Louisiana’s embrace of universal school choice also shows the success of efforts by conservatives to channel parents’ frustrations over “woke” ideology in traditional public schools into public support for policies that empower parents to choose schools that align with their values.

“Our people seek government that reflects their values,” said Landry during his Jan. 8 inauguration. “They demand that our children be afforded an education that reflects those wholesome principles, and not an indoctrination behind their mother’s back.”

The same week that the Louisiana Legislature gave the green light to the LA GATOR Scholarships, it also approved legislation curbing the ability of “woke” teachers to indoctrinate students in radical gender ideology behind parents’ backs.

Similar to Given Name Act policies in other states, Louisiana’s HB 121 would prohibit public school employees, including teachers, from referring to children by pronouns that are inconsistent with their sex, or any name other than the student’s legal name or common derivatives thereof.

Too often, school officials have begun the process of “socially transitioning” confused children all while keeping their parents in the dark. Going forward, Louisiana schools will no longer be able to subvert and supersede parents by making decisions concerning their children’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being without their knowledge and consent.

Another bill, HB 122, restricts discussion in government-run schools about sexual orientation and gender identity “in a manner that deviates from state content standards or curricula developed or approved by public school governing authorities.”

The bill properly recognizes that public school teachers are not free agents, but rather public employees hired by the public to perform a particular job. Parents and the public at large expect teachers to carry out the job they were hired to do without exploiting their position to indoctrinate a captive audience of children in a radical ideology.

Louisiana’s school choice win is also evidence that advocates’ short-term hyperpartisan strategy will pay bipartisan dividends in the long term. If Republicans gain an electoral advantage over Democrats by embracing school choice, eventually the Democrats will have to embrace school choice, too. We’re already seeing the signs in places like Louisiana.

When the Louisiana House of Representatives on April 8 passed the bill to create the LA GATOR Scholarships, the vote was 71-32, including six Democrats. That might not sound like a lot, but that’s one-fifth of the Democratic caucus. Moreover, whereas bipartisan efforts to advance school choice legislation typically involve bills to create small, targeted, and overregulated policies like the one the LA GATOR Scholarships are replacing, these Democrats voted for a Republican-led effort to enact education choice for all.

There’s still a long way to go. After all, most of the Louisiana House Democrats and all the state Senate Democrats voted against school choice. But as education choice policies become the norm and not just the exception, it will be increasingly difficult for members of any political party to stand in their way.

Related Posts:

  1. Missouri, Nebraska Advance Education Freedom
  2. Parents’ Involvement Called Key to Keeping Leftism Out of Schools
  3. Heritage Foundation Chief Urges Abolishing Federal Education Department

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Snitches Give Stitches: Oregon Moves to Make Reporting Microaggressions Mandatory for Doctors


By: Jonathan Turley | June 19, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/19/snitches-give-stitches-oregon-moves-to-make-reporting-microaggressions-mandatory-for-doctors/

There is a controversy in Oregon over a proposed change in the ethics rule from the Oregon Medical Board. At issue is the use of “microaggressions” to discipline doctors and to make reporting such transgressions mandatory for all doctors. It seems before you can give stitches, you have to join snitches under one of the most ambiguous categories of prescribed speech.

I have been a critic of microaggression rules on college campuses and discuss this trend in my book out this week, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. In past debates over this category of offensive speech, I have objected that it is hopelessly vague and highly controversial.

microaggression

mi·​cro·​ag·​gres·​sion ˌmī-krō-ə-ˈgre-shən 

NOUN

: a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group (such as a racial minority)

A digital photo project run by a Fordham University student about “racial microaggressions” features minority students holding up signs with comments like “You’re really pretty … for a dark-skin girl.”—Jinnie Spiegler

There is a real and worthy conversation taking place in this country now, particularly among young people, around the idea of microaggressions—slight, often unintended discriminatory comments or behaviors.—Charles M. Blow

also : behavior or speech that is characterized by such comments or actions

… argues that the power of microaggression lies in its invisibility to the perpetrator, who typically finds it difficult to believe that he or she possesses biased attitudes.—Emily Skop

That ambiguity creates a threat to free speech through a chilling effect on speakers who are unsure of what will be considered microaggressive. Terms ranging from “melting pot” to phrases like “pulling oneself up by your own bootstraps” have been declared racist.  Some of those have been identified by Columbia professor Derald Wing Sue, cited by Oregon’s state government as a “microaggressions expert.”

Professor Sue considers statements like “Everyone can succeed if they just work hard enough!” as an example of a microaggression. Sue’s work on “microassaults,” “microinsults,” and “microinvalidations” are being effectively adopted by the Board.

Notably, when I have objected to this category, advocates have insisted that they are merely voluntary and instructive, not mandatory. I have long argued that they are used in a mandatory fashion by triggering investigations of professors and would inevitably be made mandatory.

That appears to be happening in Oregon. A couple of conservative sites have covered the controversy.

Under the new ethics rule from the Oregon Medical Board, “unprofessional conduct” (over which a doctor can lose his or her license) will include microaggressions:

“In the practice of medicine, podiatry, or acupuncture, discrimination through unfair treatment characterized by implicit and explicit bias, including microaggressions, or indirect or subtle behaviors that reflect negative attitudes or beliefs about a non-majority group.”

The new section “J” ranks microaggressions with fraud, sexual assault, and ordering unnecessary or harmful surgeries.

Oregon Medical Board states that

“The proposed rule amendments update the definition of “unprofessional conduct” to include discrimination in the practice of medicine, podiatry, and acupuncture, which would make discrimination a ground for discipline. The proposed rule may favorably impact racial equity by making discrimination a ground for discipline for OMB licensees. It is not known how the other proposed rule amendments will impact racial equity in the state.”

The incorporation of microaggressions under the new ethic rules is precisely what some of us have been warning about for years. As is often the case, activists begin by insisting that language monitoring is purely instructional and optional before codifying those rules in mandatory terms.

We have seen the same trajectory in other areas like land acknowledgments where the line between the optimal and the mandatory is hard to discern. As discussed in my book:

“What began as voluntary statements have become either expressly or implicitly mandatory…George Brown College in Toronto requires faculty and students alike to agree to a land acknowledgment statement to even gain access to virtual classrooms. While such statements are portrayed as optional, they are often enforced as compulsory. The University of Washington encouraged faculty to add a prewritten ‘Indigenous land acknowledgment’ statement to their syllabi. The recommended statement states that ‘The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.’

Computer science professor Stuart Reges decided to write his own statement. He declared…’I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.’ … He was told that, while the university statement is optional, his statement was unacceptable because it questioned the indigenous land claim of the Coast Salish people. Reges’s dissenting statement was removed, and the university emailed his students offering an apology for their professor’s ‘offensive’ opinion and advising them on ‘three ways students could file complaints against’ him.”

Federal courts have ruled in favor of academics in disputes over microaggression rules, but the movement is expanding beyond campuses, as shown in Oregon.

I have no objection to the sharing of views of others on how certain phrases are received. I have dropped certain terms or phrases even though I did not see why a term or phrase is insulting. When others have a reasoned basis for objecting to language, I err on the side of caution to avoid making others uncomfortable. Yet, this category of speech was created to encompass a broad, ill-defined range of speech that falls below outright discriminatory or harassing language. That makes for a dangerously vague standard for a mandatory reporting rule.

The free speech concern is how such microaggressive terms can be used to curtail or punish speech, including supporting complaints for formal investigations.  Disciplinary actions often seem based on how language is received rather than intended. Schools need to be clear as to whether microaggressive language can be the basis for bias complaints and actions.

Consider again the language from the Oregon Medical Board. It would encompass any “indirect or subtle behaviors that reflect negative attitudes or beliefs about a non-majority group.” The standard is heavily laden with subjectivity. (Notably, it does not include making such comments about any majority group, presumably whites or males).

The board then amplifies the standard by making it mandatory for other doctors to report colleagues. Under the proposed ruled,

“a licensee must report within 10 business days to the Board any information that appears to show that a licensee is or may be medically incompetent or is or may be guilty of unprofessional or dishonorable conduct or is or may be a licensee with a physical incapacity.”

So, doctors will have to police any “indirect or subtle behaviors” that “reflect negative attitudes or beliefs” . . . or face discipline themselves.

The Hippocratic oath is based on the pledge that doctors will “first do no harm.” Unfortunately, that pledge does not appear to apply to free speech in Oregon. Rather than merely publish opinions on phrases or practices that can be seen as microaggressive, the Oregon Medical Board is about to impose an ambiguous speech regulation that is likely viewed by some doctors as turning them into social-warrior snitches.

The Oregon Medical Board should remove the microaggressive provision. Sometimes the best treatment is the least intrusive.

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American Bar Association Requiring All Law Schools to Push DEI, Displacing Constitutional Law


BY: MONROE HARLESS | JUNE 18, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/06/18/american-bar-association-requiring-all-law-schools-to-push-dei-displacing-constitutional-law/

IU Robert H. McKinney Law School classroom

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When Indiana University implemented DEI standards in its law school curriculum, Professor John Lawrence Hill warned the state legislature about attempts by “extreme idealogues to indoctrinate students” that “fly in the face” of America’s legal foundations.

Addressed to Indiana State Sens. Jeff Raatz and John Crane, Hill’s letter challenges the university’s new mandatory “responsible lawyering” course for first-year law students, introduced to comply with the American Bar Association’s (ABA) “cross-cultural competency” requirements. Hill argues that this move politicizes legal education.

“This class is guaranteed to further polarize and politicize the law school environment and represents yet another attempt by the academic Left to provide a platform for extreme idealogues to indoctrinate students who are essentially academic hostages,” Hill wrote in his letter. “DEI is now ‘in’ at the McKinney school….”

In an interview with The Federalist, Hill, a professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law (IU McKinney) says that issues with the ABA’s DEI requirements are long-standing.

A New ABA Requirement

In February 2022, the ABA introduced a new standard for legal education. Standard 303(c) reads, “A law school shall provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism: (1) at the start of the program of legal education, and (2) at least once again before graduation.”

This marks the first time the ABA has mandated non-legal coursework in law school curriculum.

Hill learned of the new ABA requirement when he was serving on the law school’s academic affairs committee, which was tasked with implementing curricular reform. At the time, Hill chalked it up to an “unnecessary” addition to students’ legal education.

Once Hill departed from the committee, however, the university faculty capitalized on the new ABA instructions. Although standard 303(c) can be satisfied through orientation sessions, lectures, or “other educational experiences,” the faculty at IU McKinney opted to create a mandatory DEI course.

“[As] things developed, and I saw the way it was going … it wasn’t just unnecessary. It’s been baleful,” Hill says. “I mean, it’s really been … used as a predicate to make other changes.”

DEI at the Expense of Constitutional Law

In order to introduce new DEI coursework, the committee gave three proposals to the faculty. Two of them involved moving constitutional law to the second year, a major departure from traditional law school curriculum. Hill says this provoked a “huge faculty fight.”

“Every single one of us took constitutional law in the first year. Every single law student has taken Con Law in the first year for a century,” Hill recalls telling the faculty. “Why is it that all of a sudden our students can’t do this?”

In a memo, Hill urged the faculty to reject the abandonment of constitutional education for first-year students. Hill says he suggested a number of alternatives, including reducing the hours of one of his own classes, civil procedure. 

“People freaked out at the memo,” Hill remembers. “There was a lot of anger.”

As a professor of constitutional law himself, Hill viewed the proposals to move constitutional law as particularly egregious.

“I believe that the real reason for throwing Constitutional Law out of the first year is plainly ideological,” Hill wrote in his letter to state senators. “Our Constitution enshrines and projects the values of liberty, individuality, and equality under the law.  These values, which have served our nation for over 235 years, fly in the face of the DEI paradigm.”

In April, the faculty agreed to keep constitutional law in the first-year curriculum while still incorporating the “responsible lawyering” course. The new curriculum will take effect this fall.

“The law school has not considered or approved a 1-hour Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) course,” a spokeswoman for IU McKinney said in a statement to The Federalist. “A new 1L course, Responsible Lawyering, will include professional identity formation, consistent with ABA Standard 303, among other professionalism topics.”

However, “responsible lawyering” was added in direct response to the ABA’s DEI agenda. According to the ABA, this type of coursework will “reinforce the skill of cultural competency and their obligation as future lawyers to work to eliminate racism in the legal profession.” Hill describes this curriculum as a sign of more leftist change down the road.

“In law, sometimes a case is called a signal. It may be more modest in terms of what it actually rules, but it signals a change … a new way of doing things. The ABA requirement was cover, and it was a signal that … law schools can make changes, including pretty dramatic changes,” Hill says. “Many people in our faculty said this is a cover. The ABA has given us cover. That term was used specifically by other faculty members.”

According to Hill, these changes run deeper than some may think. 

“What ties all this together is that there is an ideological agenda. Some people understand that consciously. They embrace it. They pursue it. A lot of other people just sort of go along, understanding the current. You know, people can sense when political currents are changing or where they’re moving, and so they sort of move with it, without really sharing the goal as such. But I think that this was something that came down from on high [that is] ideological, deeply ideological.”

In an interview with The Federalist, Raatz confirmed he is investigating the matter personally. 

“We can all be sensitive to one another, but to mandate diversity, equity, inclusion … what does that really mean?” Raatz, a recipient of Hill’s letter, told The Federalist. “To just be frank about it, I’m not a proponent of DEI, honestly, and I’m going to determine just what their parameters are, and we’ll go from there.”

Fighting a DEI Agenda

Hill sent his letter to Raatz and Crane on Saturday afternoon. The senators are members of the Indiana Senate Education and Career Development Committee, and Hill hopes making them aware of the situation could lead to action. 

“I have taught at McKinney for 21 years. I love this school and I love our students,” Hill wrote. “I hope that there might be something that you and your colleagues in the Indiana House and Senate might be able to do to respond to these developments.”

In the meantime, his concern is primarily for the quality of education at IU McKinney. 

“When I started teaching, I was middle of the road. I wasn’t, you know, a wild-eyed progressive, but I wasn’t a libertarian or a conservative, either. I tried to kind of find the middle way, but I started to see the extent to which our textbooks, the way people teach classes, who gets tenure, who’s elevated — I mean, there’s so much of politics in it.”

Today, Hill says he still has hope for the law school — and for Americans.

“The most important thing is that you get everything accurate,” Hill told The Federalist. “I think once people know, it makes it harder for the powers that be to continue to advance these causes. I mean, everyone is aware of what’s going on. People are smart. Americans are smart. Once they’re aware of what’s going on, how it’s going on, it removes the cover for people who are trying to essentially push these values, these courses.”

Monroe Harless is a summer intern at The Federalist. She is a recent graduate of the University of Georgia with degrees in journalism and political science.

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Poll: Only 28 Percent of the Public Has “High Confidence” in Higher Education


By: Jonathan Turley | June 18, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/18/poll-only-28-percent-of-the-public-has-high-confidence-in-higher-education/

A new poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago (commissioned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) shows that only 28% of Americans have a lot of trust in higher education. Academia has continued to alienate much of the country as an orthodox echo chamber. As with media outlets, the result has been falling interest and trust in these institutions. The poll asked, “How much confidence, if any, do you have in U.S. colleges and universities?”

Only 28% said they had a “great deal of confidence in colleges and universities.” Not surprisingly, given the ideological balance at most schools, the highest levels of trust came from Democrats and liberals. However, even this group only showed a 40% high confidence rate. Among Republicans, it drops to 12% and among independents it drops to 28%.

For most businesses, such negative reactions would be viewed as catastrophic. For academia, it will not matter a whit.

It is still personally beneficial for professors and administrators to push ideological agendas and maintain the lack of intellectual diversity on campuses. These professors are not challenged in their writings or their statements. They dominate publications, awards, and associations. In the meantime, these schools still receive sufficient support from alumni and, in the case of public universities, public funding.

This could not come at a worse time as many decide that college is simply not worth the money. At the same time, falling birthrates are impacting dropping applications. Others have little interest in going to institutions where they must hide their political viewpoints or values.

We have seen the same phenomenon in the media where media outlets are collapsing in viewership or readership, but reporters are resisting every effort to return to a more neutral and objective basis for coverage. Recently, the Washington Post’s new publisher and CEO William Lewis dropped a truth bomb on his writers by telling them “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

The response from the media has been a campaign against Lewis and another editor tasked with saving the newspaper from itself. The New York Times, National Public Radio, and other outlets have piled on Lewis with a series of attack pieces. This is being actively and openly supported by reporters at the Post and could well work in pressuring owner Jeff Bezos. The result will be to stay the course of plunging trust and readership at a paper that is hemorrhaging money and readers.

We need great universities and great newspapers as a nation. We need Princeton and the Post. That is why this trend is so alarming. These are hardened silos that seem impenetrable to efforts to restore trust in their product.

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MSNBC Legal Analyst and Law Professor Barbara McQuade Doubles Down on Laptop “Conspiracy Theory”


By: Jonathan Turley | June 14, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/14/msnbc-legal-analyst-and-law-professor-barbara-mcquade-double-downs-on-laptop-conspiracy-theory/

We have previously discussed the view of Michigan Law Professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade on free speech. We have strikingly different views on free speech. McQuade just published “Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America” and calls free speech our “Achilles heel.” My book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, is out in the coming days with a more robust view of free speech.

Notably, McQuade’s call to limit free speech is justified as needed to combat disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation. Yet, McQuade just went public with a full-throated defense of what the U.S. government now calls a “conspiracy theory.” She maintains that the Hunter Biden laptop should still be discounted or dismissed as Russian disinformation.

In her comments, Professor McQuade joins the Post’s Philip Bump as one of the last dogs in this fight. Most media figures have long accepted the view of the U.S. government that the Hunter Biden laptop is “real” and authenticated.

I have previously disagreed with Professor McQuade on issues such as her belief that former president Donald Trump could be charged with manslaughter over the January 6th riot. Yet, those disagreements represent materially different understandings of the operative legal standards. Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe went even further in arguing that Trump could be charged with attempted murder. Academics can disagree on such matters and free speech allows us to hash out our differences.

However, I was still surprised by the effort to resurrect the Russian disinformation claim. Professor McQuade noted that the agent at the Biden trial could not say with certainty that nothing was changed to the laptop before it was obtained by agents from the computer shop. However, FBI agent Erika Jensen said that there was no evidence tampering.

That space, however, was big enough to drive a conspiracy theory through on X:

As noted by @emptywheel, however, questions remain about the chain of custody of the laptop, and [FBI] Agent [Erika] Jensen testified that she was unable to say whether the laptop was tampered with before the FBI obtained it.

And, as @AshaRangappa has noted, even if the content was authentic, it still may have been a Russian influence operation, just like the DNC hack-and-leak operation, designed to sow discord. If so, mission accomplished! […] Therefore, it remains unknown whether Russia was involved with the scheme, and it is still correct to say that the laptop has “all of the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.”

Under this theory, any negative stories found in documents or electronic sources can have “the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation” in any given election. That same skepticism, of course, did not apply to the Steele dossier, which was secretly funded by the Clinton campaign and found by U.S. intelligence as containing possible Russian disinformation.

It is a variation on proving a negative. McQuade and others appear to be arguing that you must prove that there was no Russian involvement before giving weight to the damaging contents of the laptop.

Of course, there still has been no showing of any fake file or email. To the contrary, the most damaging emails on influence peddling and other potential criminal conduct have been verified. Yet, McQuade is repeating the claim that “even if the content was authentic, it still may have been a Russian influence operation.” There is also the more obvious explanation that Hunter abandoned his laptop at a computer shop and it was given to the FBI.

What is striking is how advocates are now abandoning the claims of false emails and files in favor of an argument that it may be true but still disinformation. This is consistent with the positions of many academics and the Biden Administration. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) maintains this position.

CISA head Jen Easterly declared that her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure would be extended to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” That includes not just “disinformation” and “misinformation,” but combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

The chain of custody argument continues to be used in Congress despite the federal court and federal agencies recognizing the authenticity of the laptop. The Delaware jury also did not appear persuaded by the claims of Hunter Biden’s defense counsel. It is, in my view, transparently evasive. The issue remains the files on the laptop detailing a massive influence peddling operation and a myriad of criminal acts committed by the President’s son. None of those files have been challenged by evidence of tampering or planting.

Ironically, the continued effort to keep this theory alive seems precisely the type of disinformation that Professor McQuade has cited in justifying limits on free speech.

There are obviously many media and academic figures who are heavily invested in what the government now calls a “conspiracy theory.”  I previously discussed how the Bidens have succeeded in a Houdini-like trick in making this elephant of a scandal disappear from the public stage. They did so by enlisting the media in the illusion. Houdini knew the trick would work because the audience wanted the elephant to disappear.

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Graduating McGill Student Seen Spitting at President as Crowd Cheers


By: Jonathan Turley | June 10, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/10/graduating-mcgill-student-seen-spitting-at-president-as-crowd-cheers/

Various posters on social media have featured a video of a graduating McGill University student appearing to spit on the Dean and another faculty member. She then produced a sign demanding divestment from Israel. As she appeared to spit on the President Deep Saini and the other faculty member, the audience can be heard cheering. The school later reportedly edited out the ugly incident and would not confirm that it will be taking any action against the student.

In the video, the student can be seen making the spitting gestures while wearing a keffiyeh and holding a sign that reads “Divest from death.”

The university did not deny that the incident was edited out and simply stated that “multimedia staff often cut to different angles during the livestream to focus on different aspects of the ceremony, which allows students and their families to celebrate an important milestone.”

The incident is only the latest such protest at graduations. In another protest recently (by an animal activist), interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber was hit by green glitter. Brittany A. Drake, the activist, pleaded not guilty to three counts of felony criminal charges.

McGill has not committed to seeking any discipline, let alone such charges, for the student.

The incident captures the breakdown of civility and respect at our institutions of higher education. This conduct has been reinforced by professors and administrators for years in pushing activism over academics. McGill students have declared that “free speech does not exist outside of its social context” and sought to strip professors of academic titles due to their holding opposing views. There has also been a lack of discipline for students who have engaged in the disruption of events and even classes.

McGill is notorious for objecting to such misconduct without taking any immediate action to sanction the students, including the recent disruption of a human rights professor.

McGill is one of the world’s finest universities, but it has shown little principle or courage in facing disruptive and disgraceful conduct in the past. Simply deleting the scene of the student spitting at the President will do little to address this trend. As academics, we need to reassert control over our campuses and stand firmly against conduct to disrupt events or classes.

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Missouri High Schoolers Asked If They Understand Difference Between Gender, Sex Assigned at Birth 


By: Elizabeth Troutman / @ElizTroutman / May 28, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/28/missouri-high-schoolers-asked-if-they-understand-difference-between-gender-sex-assigned-at-birth/

A Missouri high school asks students in a health class whether they understand that “gender” is different than “sex assigned at birth.” (Photo illustration: Fat Camera/Getty Images)

A Missouri high school instructed students in a health class to complete a survey asking if they understood “the difference between sex assigned at birth and gender.”

Webster Groves High School hosted a workshop in late April called “Understanding Gender and Relationships” presented by a speaker with a program run by the St. Louis-based domestic abuse treatment center Safe Connections. Before and after the guest speaker’s lecture, the health teacher instructed students to take the survey. 

Webster Groves High School is part of Webster Groves School District, which enrolls 4,407 students across 10 schools. The survey asked students in the high school health class to respond with “yes,” “not sure,” or “no” to four statements, including “I can explain the difference between sex assigned at birth and gender.”

Two other statements on the survey are “I can create relationships in which others can express themselves and I can be myself” and “I understand how some gender stereotypes contribute to violence and abuse.”

The guest speaker for the health class represented Project HART, which its website describes as a “relationship violence prevention program offered at St. Louis-area schools, community centers and other places teens gather.” (HART is an acronym for Healthy Alternatives for Relationships Among Teens.)

In a fourth statement, the survey asks students whether they “can show people respect regardless of gender and how it is expressed.”

The high school gave the survey to students after Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, ordered the Webster Groves School District to “cease and desist” teaching students about human sexuality, including gender ideology, without parental consent ahead of time, The Daily Signal reported in February.  

Missouri state law requires every public school district and public charter school to notify each student’s parent or guardian before providing any human sexuality materials or instruction to students. When asked if the survey taken by students in the health class violated this mandate, Webster Groves School District’s communications director, Derek Duncan, told The Daily Signal that the school system notifies families before lessons about human growth and development.

“Families are given the choice to opt out of such lessons,” Duncan said. 

Duncan did not respond directly to The Daily Signal’s question asking whether parents of the involved students got the opportunity to opt their children out of the health class lesson on gender ideology. 

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office told The Daily Signal it would look into the matter. 

The session on “Understanding Gender and Relationships” allows students to “explore harmful gender stereotypes and to understand the differences between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and attraction/sexual orientation,” Cynthia Danley, chief executive officer for Safe Connections, told The Daily Signal in an email. 

“Key learning objectives include helping youth recognize that everyone deserves respect regardless of their gender and expression, understanding the negative impact of failing to respect gender-expansive individuals, and equipping youth with the tools to build relationships where peers can safely express themselves and be authentic,” Danley said. 

Webster Groves School District, in the suburbs of St. Louis, approved a memorandum of understanding with Safe Connections at an April 11 school board meeting. On Feb. 20, Webster Groves issued a $220 check to the organization, according to the website BoardDocs.

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Professor Accuses UCLA of “Torturing” Pro-Palestinian Protesters


By: Jonathan Turley | May 28, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/28/professor-denounces-ucla-of-torturing-pro-palestinian-protesters/

UCLA Professor Hannah Appel has accused the school of human rights violations amounting to “torture” in the treatment of pro-Palestinian protesters. The reason is the denial of water and food from being brought into a building being unlawfully occupied by protesters, even though the students were free to leave at any time.

Appel teaches in the anthropology department in the areas of “transnational capitalism and finance,” “the economic imagination,” and “anti-capitalist and abolitionist social movements.”

She is also a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA. The Daily Bruin reports that a brief sit-in protest was held at the campus’s Dodd Hall. The students were soon cleared from the building. In the interim, Appel made her accusation of torture tactics. In a video posted on X, Appel is seen declaring “even if this is unlawful which, of course, I don’t think it is […] you cannot deny people to send in water in an effort to get them to do something against their will.” While the students were free to leave at any time, Appel objected that “you cannot use a mechanism of torture” to force people to leave. In another video Appel objects that she and other faculty were not allowed to bring food and water to the encampment demonstrators. Notably, Appel repeats a threat from faculty at various schools that they may withhold their grades in protest to pressure schools to drop any charges or allegations against protesters: “When the university sees that folks are withholding grades, they get scared. They’re scared because we’re flexing our collective power, and optimally, that fear drives them to the bargaining table, and then we win.”

Such threats have already worked as universities have caved to demands at schools like Northwestern or dropped charges against students. Yet, these professors are using the grades of students to coerce universities. It is grossly unfair to students who were not involved in the protests or may oppose these protests. They have right to their grades and these professors have a contractual obligation to supply them. They should not be a tool for faculty protests.

Professors were free to join these students in occupying university buildings so long as they were willing to bear the consequences for their actions. To withhold grades to achieve political ends should be treated as a serious violation of faculty rules of conduct.

As for the torture allegation, Appel is dead wrong. There was no denial of food or water. The students had access to both, outside of the building. Unlawful occupation of a building does not create an obligation on the part of the university to support the occupiers. To call this a human rights violation is to belittle the deprivations of true victims of torture and other abuses.

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Turley to Debate Kalt on Presidential Self-Pardons


By: Jonathan Turley | May 22, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/22/turley-to-debate-presidential-self-pardons/

Today I will have the pleasure of participating in a debate titled Civil Disagreements: Presidential Self Pardons. I will be debating Professor Brian Kalt, who believes that the presidents do not have the authority to pardon themselves. I will be taking the opposing position. The debate will be held entirely online. The debate is sponsored by Reform for Illinois, the American Bar Association, the Chicago Chapter of the American Constitution Society, and the Chicago Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society

I have long maintained that presidents do have the authority to grant self-pardons. That does not mean that I approve of the practice as a policy matter, but the question, in my view, rests with a president in using the authority granted under Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, which defines the pardon power as allowing a president to “grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”

I value the effort of these two legal groups to foster civil and substantive dialogue on these questions and look forward to the debate with Professor Kalt.

The debate will begin at 1pm (ET) and participants can register here.

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Dickinson College Cancels Commencement Address by Michael Smerconish


By: Jonathan Turley | May 22, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/22/dickinson-college-cancels-commencement-address-by-michael-smerconish/

In another victory for the mobocracy, Dickinson College canceled the commencement address of CNN host Michael Smerconish after liberal and pro-Palestinian students objected. The school decided to forego any speaker rather than risk the ire of radical students and groups. The greatest loss was not to Smerconish but to the college and the students. These graduates could have heard from one of the brightest legal minds in media and a person who has been a powerful and unflagging champion of free speech.

The decision was an unparalleled act of cowardice by President John Jones, who cited “overwhelming opposition” to Smerconish in a recent statement. Somehow Jones viewed yielding to the mob to be a virtuous act and announced that “with the support of our Board of Trustees, I have decided to rescind the honorary degree and invitation to speak at Commencement.”

That certainly offered clarity to the question and the solution: Jones and the board should resign.

The very touchstone of higher education is a diversity of viewpoints. We have seen a growing orthodoxy on our campuses with little tolerance for dissenting views, particularly when it comes to conservative or libertarian voices. That is most evident in the selection of commencement speakers. It is now routine to invite far left commencement speakers, including at my own university. Speakers like MSNBC host Jen Psaki this year at GW are treated as ideal choices while the selection of more moderate or conservative speakers would trigger protests and cancel campaigns.

Commencements are now an extension of echo chambers on our campuses where faculties have largely purged conservatives from their ranks.

We previously discussed how surveys at universities show a virtual purging of conservative and Republican faculty members.  For example, last year, the Harvard Crimson noted that the university had virtually eliminated Republicans from most departments but that the lack of diversity was not a problem.  Now, a new survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identify as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”

Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.

Compare that to a recent Gallup poll stating, “roughly equal proportions of U.S. adults identified as conservative (36%) and moderate (35%) in Gallup polling throughout 2022, while about a quarter identified as liberal (26%).”

Targeting Smerconish is particularly maddening. I have known Michael for many years, and I hold him in the highest respect. He remains one of the most intelligent and principled figures in the media. He is also one of the most consistent and committed figures in the media in his defense of the rule of law and constitutional values.

Critics have focused on excerpts from the journalist’s 2004 book “Flying Blind: How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11.” They charge that the book supports “racial profiling.” The truth is that Smerconish is one of the most outspoken civil libertarians in the country and has routinely defended groups stereotyped or targeted simply for their race or national origin.

In a statement on his website, Smerconish explained how his writings have been “grossly distorted.” He added how he wished Jones would have done “the honorable thing” and called to “explain his inability to control the unjustified campus sentiment.”

He is certainly correct, but such integrity is increasingly rare in higher education where administrators and educators have remained silent as their colleagues are targeted, investigated, and sometimes fired for their views. Most Dickinson College professors have remained silent or voiced support for the cancelation in the wake of this decision.

Jones and the Dickinson board took the path of least resistance when confronted by the academic mob. In doing so, they have abandoned the core values that define higher education. This act of surrender is particularly glaring at a college founded in 1783 by the great Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and champion of individual rights.

It is named for John Dickinson, another founding father who refused to sign the Declaration on Independence in seeking a peaceful resolution with Great Britain. Dickinson was a person of tremendous courage and principle despite his false depiction in the musical 1776.

Dickinson stood up to tremendous pressures in maintaining his position and wrote “My conduct this day, I expect will give the finishing blow to my once too great and, my integrity considered, now too diminished popularity.” Yet, he would enlist with the patriots and fight in the war for independence. He was only one of two Framers to do so. Even his political adversary John Adams praised him for his stalwart commitment to principle and refusal to yield to pressure.

Dickinson is a worthy model for those who believe in free speech and the need to protect a diversity of viewpoints. Indeed, he was an early target of a cancel campaign by those who refused to understand the reason for his opposition to the declaration. Now, the college named for Dickinson has become the very thing that he fought to resist in his life.

Michael Smerconish will remain a voice for tolerance and free speech. He is the very embodiment of the ideals that led to the establishment of Dickinson College.

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Court Rules Schools Can Force LGBT Ideology on Kids Against Parents’ Religious Objections


BY: CHAD FELIX GREENE | MAY 21, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/21/court-rules-schools-can-force-lgbt-ideology-on-kids-against-parents-religious-objections/

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In a growing environment of left-wing activism in schools, especially related to LGBT ideology, parents who have not been able to influence curriculum have had the option of opting their kids out of classes. Not any longer, at least according to a federal appeals court in a Maryland case of three families suing for the right to religious freedom for their elementary school-aged children in public schools.

In August of 2023, three families — one Muslim, one Christian, and one Jewish — brought a case against the Montgomery County Board of Education for a recent policy change removing the opt-out option for curriculum. Previously, parents received advanced notice of materials that would be read to their children and could opt out. The school board announced that parents would no longer receive advanced notice of materials, and they could no longer opt out of readings or lessons.

A year prior, according to the case, “In the spring of 2022, the School Board had determined that the books in its English language arts curriculum were not sufficiently representative because they did not include LGBTQ characters.” Maryland law requires schools to give parents the opportunity “to view instructional materials to be used in the teaching of family life and human sexuality objectives.” The school board also has an opt-out policy for religious exemptions in place.

However, there is a clause that states that “if such requests become too frequent or too burdensome, the school may refuse to accommodate the requests. Schools are not required to alter fundamentally the educational program or create a separate educational program or a separate course to accommodate a student’s religious practice or belief.” Deciding that LGBT inclusion in the curriculum was fundamental to the educational program and the requests were too burdensome, the school board simply declared parents could not opt out of LGBT content any longer.

Judge’s Ruling

Last week, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman dismissed the parents’ concerns and noted that every court that has reviewed similar mandatory public-school curricula has found that “mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents.”

She insisted, “The parents still may instruct their children on their religious beliefs regarding sexuality, marriage, and gender, and each family may place contrary views in its religious context.”

“No government action prevents the parents from freely discussing the topics raised in the storybooks with their children or teaching their children as they wish,” Boardman wrote in Thursday’s order.

The decision was upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Their reasoning was that the parents could not demonstrate how the LGBT-themed books would be used in the classroom and therefore could not determine if they would infringe on their beliefs.

Contrary to the First Amendment

Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argued, “That runs contrary to the First Amendment, Maryland law, the School Board’s own policies, and basic human decency.”

“Parents should have the right to receive notice and opt their children out of classroom material that violates their faith,” he added.

In contrast to the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning, reviewing the Montgomery County Public Schools website makes it clear why these books are in the classroom. The website has a dedicated LGBT section stating, “We have welcoming, affirming schools, classrooms, teams, and clubs. We value all of our children, youth, teachers, staff, and parents.” The section provides an extensive list of LGBT content, resources, and “How to” guides for students, staff, and parents.

Students are provided a Coming Out as YOU! guide that instructs them on how to come out, including a “safety plan,” which tells the students to make sure they have a safe place outside their home to stay; someone, seemingly besides their parents, that they can trust; and to “Consider letting a friend know that you’re planning on coming out and if you don’t text them by a certain time you might need help because your safety might be in danger.” The guide tells students they should decide what they identify as daily, which can change day by day.

The school’s Culturally Responsive Supplemental Elementary ELA Collection is the biggest concern point for parents, as it details the content students will be provided. Students grades kindergarten to second grade are provided more than eight separate LGBT titles, half of which are trans-focused. One book, titled Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope, states in its description, “Penelope knows that he’s a boy. (And a ninja.) The problem is getting everyone else to realize it.”

Three books focus on a character named Max, a transgender-identifying elementary school-aged student who dedicates time to educating friends, teachers, and parents about what being transgender means. Several books are focused on same-sex relationships: one about a prince and a knight who fall in love, one about a child’s gay uncle getting married, and a book for 4- to 8-year-olds titled Love, Violet, about an elementary-aged girl who falls in love with another girl.

Not being subtle, another title for this age group is IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All, a book on intersectional feminism that teaches kids how to be activists, and a book titled Let’s Eat Bugs! for fifth graders provides recipes on eating insects. The school also offers an LGBT club for elementary school students.

The Obvious Purpose

The school system’s agenda is pretty obvious.

Is it any wonder that religious parents would be concerned about their children — again, kindergarten to fifth grade — being exposed to extreme LGBT ideology? Critics pretend kids are just being told stories that include LGBT characters and that only bigots would oppose kids learning about different types of people. The first judge dismissed the parents saying they “failed to show that the lack of an opt-out policy would result in the ‘indoctrination of their children’ or ‘coerce their children to violate or change their religious beliefs.’”

However, these are books designed to teach kids about being LGBT themselves, not simply about LGBT experiences, history, or health education. This is an environment where kids are heavily encouraged to explore sexuality and gender ideology, with expansive resources, instruction guides, and clubs. Of course, religious parents would consider this to be an invasive level of activism and indoctrination.

It should be obvious to anyone that forcing parents to accept this instruction for their children violates their religious freedom, and the obnoxious dismissal from a judge that parents can simply undo whatever their kids learn in school further mocks these sacred rights. Left-wing, LGBT activists simply want full control over children’s education and have constructed a system that not only excludes parents but intentionally isolates their children from them in school.

LGBT activists believe they know best for all students, and that all students need to learn about LGBT ideology in an open, proactive, and affirming way, and if parents oppose this instruction, they don’t need to know about it, or worse, have no power to stop it. Unfortunately, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just strengthened this abuse of power by school systems, degrading parental rights and religious freedom even further.

Chad Felix Greene is a senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of “Surviving Gender: My Journey Through Gender Dysphoria,” and is a social writer focusing on truth in media, conservative ideas and goals, and true equality under the law. You can follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg.

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Education, Family, Law, LGBTQ+ AND TRANSGENDER, Political

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“An Old White Cultural Institution”: Professor Denounces Romance as a Creation of White Supremacy


By: Jonathan Turley | May 19, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/19/an-old-white-cultural-institution-professor-denounces-romance-as-a-creation-of-white-supremacy/

In higher education, there is a virtual cottage industry of academics declaring everything from math to meritocracy to be forms of white supremacy and racism. Now, it appears romance will be added to the list. University of California Santa Barbara Black Studies Professor Sabrina Strings has written how romance promotes white supremacy and “global pigmentocracy.” In The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance, Strings recounts having “endured” her own bad relationships and maintains that “Romance is an old white cultural institution that began in the Middle Ages.” In an interview with The Current,  Strings explains that “I am only one of the millions of Gen X-to-Gen Z women who have endured a seemingly endless array of miserable relationships with men.” In viewing romance through her own lens, Strings comes up with distinctly different views of literature and famous relationships. For example, many people have read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, a story of forbidden love that introduced disharmony and disaster to King Arthur’s Round Table.  It is a story of love and eventual betrayal. It is both irresistible and irrational. Many accounts show Lancelot rescuing Guinevere and, torn by their mutual loyalty to King Arthur, the couple finally succumbs to the inexorable pull of love to each other. It is a tragedy of love and loyalty that leaves everyone in ruin. Arthur would die of wounds in the later battles, Guinevere would die in a convent, and Lancelot would, according to some accounts, die as a hermit. It is a powerful tale of how love can overwhelm all other considerations and shatter every other bond.

That is not exactly how Professor Strings sees it. She says that the tale is really about how a man of lower status is trying to secure greater power and prestige by seducing a higher class European Christian woman: “Love is very much about generosity, but romance is very much about what you can get from somebody, especially if you’re a man who is social climbing.”

Professor Strings zeros in on the beauty and whiteness of Guinevere. She notes that the queen was viewed as irresistibly attractive and pale in complexion:

“We can easily recognize these features today as those representing the apex of whiteness, even though race did not exist at the time of Troyes’s writing. Nevertheless, to the extent that some of these representations occurred before the seventeenth century dawn of race science, they have what historians have called a ‘proto-racist’ bent. Indeed, scholars have shown that the preference for light skin, hair, and eyes existed prior to the advent of racism, and that these characteristics were co-opted by it and enlisted for the purpose of installing a global pigmentocracy.”

The “whiteness” could also simply reflect the racial makeup of the historical characters as opposed to any “global pigmentocracy.” Yet, according to Professor Strings, romance is about “women who are not peak white or are ‘insufficiently white’ are subject deservedly to deceit, manipulation, assault and rape.”

Professor Strings previously wrote a 2019 book about how “fatphobia” is rooted in racism.

In today’s academic environment, there often seems a rush to racialize common practices, customs, or terminology. Publications clamor for such articles and discovering another hidden racist element in society can bring academic accolades. However, others have already staked out many areas such as mathematics, astrophysics, statistics, meritocracy, climate change, dieting, tipping, skiing, chess, and organized pantries. Most recently, the American Psychological Association declared that merit-based hiring may be racist. Even robots are now declared to be part of the supremacist menace because they are often made of white plastic. Indeed, it now appears that both romance and marriage are vehicles for white supremacy. We previously discussed the writings of George Mason Professor Bethany Letiecq on how marriage advances “White, heteropatriarchal supremacy in America.” Nevertheless, the Strings book has met with acclaim and praise from many. Ms. Magazine praised the book as espousing the foundations of romance in “the white supremacist cishetallo patriarchy. Personal, historical, rigorous and readable, this is a fresh and essential feminist analysis on sexism, whiteness and toxic masculinity.” Other reviews note that Strings “challeng[es]readers to accept the end of love as they know it and to embrace more queer and feminist ideas of love, equity and partnership.”

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Culture, Education

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13 Federal Judges Boycott Columbia University


By: John G. Malcolm / @malcolm_john | May 17, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/17/13-federal-judges-boycott-columbia-university/

Here’s why 13 federal judges, all appointed by Donald Trump, pledge not to hire Columbia University graduates over the school’s response to anti-Israel demonstrations on campus. Pictured: Police arrest a pro-Palestinian protester April 22 at the gates of Columbia University in New York City. (Photo: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY John G. Malcolm @malcolm_john

John G. Malcolm is The Heritage Foundation’s vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government and also directs Heritage’s Meese and Simon centers.

Is it proper for federal judges to boycott hiring students who attend a particular university? Thirteen federal judges, all of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump, have announced that they are going to do just that. In a May 6 letter to Minouche Shafik, president of protest-rocked Columbia University, the 13 judges referred to “recent events” there and informed her that, “absent extraordinary change,” they would “not hire anyone who joins the Columbia University community whether as undergraduates or law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024.” 

The recent events, of course, are the campuswide anti-Israel demonstrations that resulted in the occupation of a school building (Hamilton Hall), multiple arrests, and a smaller-than-usual commencement ceremony punctuated by ongoing protests.

Such antisemitic protests, of course, have been taking place on dozens of campuses, but things seem to have been particularly bad at Columbia. 

In addition to occupying a Columbia University building and assaulting maintenance workers, protesters accosted and assaulted Jewish students, shouting “F— Israel” and “Israel is a b—-” and telling them that they would be Hamas’ “next targets” and should “Go back to Poland!” (This last was a thinly veiled reference to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzek, Sobibor, and Chelmno, the horrific extermination camps for Jews that existed in German-occupied Poland during World War II.) 

Many protesters at Columbia were joined by sympathetic faculty members (hundreds, according to The Guardian), who linked arms and formed a protective wall around the anti-Israel encampments. Among these supportive faculty members was Joseph Massad, who said Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, which left over 1,200 dead and 250 hostages taken, was “awesome” and a “stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.”

The situation became so dicey that one rabbi associated with Columbia said Jewish students should go home and remain there because the school could not guarantee their safety.

Columbia Law School was not exempt from this activity. The editors of the Columbia Law Review—presumably among the best and the brightest students—said that they, like most of their classmates, were “irrevocably shaken” by what was happening on campus and demanded that the school cancel final exams and simply pass all students.

What judge could have faith in the integrity and academic rigor of any institution teaching future lawyers that this is an appropriate response to disturbing events?

As someone with a long family history at Columbia (my grandfather taught at the medical school and I went to Columbia, as did my father and my daughter), these hits close to home.

In their letter to Shafik, the 13 federal judges wrote that they had “lost confidence in Columbia as an institution of higher education” and that the school had “become an incubator of bigotry.” To restore academic freedom and reclaim a “once-distinguished reputation,” the judges stated, Columbia should do three things at a minimum:

1) See to it that students and faculty members who violated the school’s rules and disrupted campus life, including by threatening Jewish students, suffer serious consequences.

2) Ensure that in the future the university protects free speech and enforces rules of conduct in a neutral and nondiscriminatory fashion.

3) Make “[s]ignificant and dramatic change[s] in the composition of its faculty and administration” to promote viewpoint diversity.

Two of the judges who signed the letter are appellate judges, namely James Ho of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Elizabeth Branch of the 11th Circuit. Also signing: eight District Court judges from Texas (Alan Albright, David Counts, James Hendrix, Matthew Kacsmaryk, Brantley Starr, Jeremy Kernodle, and Drew Tipton), a District Court judge from Georgia (Tilman Self), a District Court judge from North Dakota (Daniel Traynor), a judge on the Court of Federal Claims (Matthew Solomson), and a judge on the Court of International Trade (Stephen Vaden).

The federal judges noted that the anti-Israel demonstrations on the Columbia campus had made it clear “that ideological homogeneity throughout the entire institution … had destroyed its ability to train future leaders of a pluralistic and intellectually diverse country,” and that it was equally “clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct.” 

The judges cited abortion as an example, stating that they had “no doubt” that the response of Columbia administrators would have been “profoundly different” had religious conservatives on campus who “view abortion as a tragic genocide” engaged in an uprising. 

I also have no doubt that this is true, and could cite many other examples: Protest racial preferences in admissions policies or the establishment of black-only housing on campus? Rally against biological males being allowed to compete in women’s sports? Galvanize a petition drive against being forced to refer to students by their preferred personal pronouns? Raise a ruckus over the legality and morality of same-sex marriages? Gather a crowd and give a speech claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen?

Not a chance! Any student group that did any of those things would be subjected to discipline for engaging in “hate speech.” But wear a mask and carry placards proclaiming, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” (with its implicit message that Israel must and will be eliminated)? Well, then, “It depends on the context.” 

There are those, including Columbia Law grad Dan Abrams (whom I recently debated on this subject on his NewsNation show) and MSNBC columnist Jessica Levinson, who say this is a dramatic overreaction tantamount to guilt by association that punishes innocent students who didn’t participate in anti-Israel protests.

Levinson goes so far as to say that the 13 judges are engaging in extortion and blackmail of Columbia. Other commentators, such as Berkeley Law School professor Orin Kerr, say they believe that “judges as judges do not have an important role to play in our society beyond the work they do in the courtroom or in chambers … , and they shouldn’t be trying to help American society solve problems like anti-Semitism, in any kind of official capacity.” 

Still others, less thoughtful or kind, have stated that the judges who vow not to hire Columbia graduates are engaging in a performative protest designed to appeal to “their chosen audience of wackjobs.”

One wonders whether these critics would respond the same way if a university or college, and especially a law school, were to foster a hostile environment, replete with threats to students by mask-wearing fellow students and faculty members, for female, black, or LGBTQ students?

Are there students who will suffer the consequences of this hiring boycott even though they had nothing to do with, and may well have disapproved of, the campus protests? Certainly. But the same could be said of any boycott.

When a group chooses to boycott a product or restaurant chain because of some corporate policy or practice, those who produce that product or work in that restaurant inevitably will suffer the consequences and may well lose their jobs, even though they had nothing to do with formulating the policy or implementing the practice that the protesting group finds objectionable. Boycotts are a blunt but often effective tool designed to bring about systemic change from the top. And change is certainly needed here.

Many of our elite universities, including Columbia, pay far less attention than they should to teaching students how to think and far more attention than they should to teaching students what to think. Overwhelmingly liberal faculty members and administrators divide the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed,” indoctrinate students in left-wing ideology, and “cancel” any contrary views in the process.

It shouldn’t be surprising that some campus activists (supplemented by well-funded outside agitators), used to getting their way with the administration and utilizing a “heckler’s veto” to drown out views they don’t like, occasionally resort to mass protests, threats, and violence when they don’t immediately get their way.  

Those who have observed and decry these developments have the right, if not the duty, to use what leverage they have to promote change. Alumni, for example, can cease donating to their alma mater, which I did several years ago and some far-bigger donors are threatening to do now.

And judges have considerable leverage too in the form of desirable and highly prized clerkships in their chambers that can serve as launching pads for a promising legal career. Judges have a special role to play in promoting civil discourse in society, respect for the rule of law, and making sure that students (and future lawyers) are taught the skills they need to engage with an inquiring and open mind in a critical analysis of various texts and arguments, legal and otherwise.

Such things should be the bread and butter of every university, but, sadly, that is not the case today.

Columbia University professes to provide a top-notch education in an environment that is welcoming to all people and all views. Its law school no doubt touts the fact that its students, including conservative students, have a leg up in terms of obtaining prestigious federal clerkships. Although the latter is certainly true, the former is subject to serious doubt—and these 13 judges are letting everyone know it in a public way.

If enough bright, conservative-leaning students who might wish to clerk for one of these judges decides to go to another university or law school that is more welcoming of their views, Columbia may suffer reputational harm. And that might prompt some much-needed change.

This isn’t the first time some of these judges have announced a boycott. Ho and Branch, the two appeals court judges who signed the letter, previously announced that they were going to boycott hiring law clerks out of Yale Law School and Stanford Law School. Both schools have long histories of liberal activism. 

In March 2022, over 100 students disrupted an event at Yale Law School hosted by the Federalist Society featuring a panel including Kristen Waggoner, then general counsel and now also president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, a public interest law firm that litigates religious liberty cases—and quite successfully too. 

The students stood, waved signs, blocked the only exit, threatened to beat up event organizers, shouted profanities, and grabbed and jostled two Federalist Society members who attempted to leave. When Yale Law professor Kate Stith told these budding lawyers attending an elite law school that they should “grow up,” 417 students signed a letter condemning her.

In March 2023, 5th Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was subjected to similar treatment by over 100 law students at Stanford Law School. Only this time Tieren Steinbach, the school’s associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, who was supposed to be the adult in the room, egged on the students by saying that Duncan’s work had “caused harm” and questioning his judgment for having accepted an invitation to speak on campus, given some of his more controversial (at least to the riotous students) views on the law. 

Duncan responded: “You are all law students. You are supposed to have reasoned debate and hear the other side, not yell at those who disagree.”

An impressionable and thoroughly misguided future advocate responded, telling the federal judge: “You don’t believe we have a right to exist, so we don’t believe you have a right to our respect or to speak here.”  

When the dean of Stanford Law School apologized to Duncan for the students’ opprobrious behavior, she was greeted by hundreds of masked students dressed all in black and lining the halls, and found that her classroom had been vandalized.

Was the boycott by these two distinguished federal appellate judges effective? (Or, to quote the subsequently ousted Steinbach: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”)

It may be too early to tell, but the initial signs are quite promising.

Earlier this year, the American Bar Association announced that it would require all accredited law schools “to adopt a policy that would allow faculty, students and staff ‘to communicate ideas that may be controversial or unpopular, including through robust debate, demonstrations or protests,’ and would forbid activities that disrupt or impinge on free speech.” The ABA’s new policy also applies to speakers invited by student groups.

At Stanford, Steinbach was placed on leave and ultimately resigned. Administrative staff was reminded that their job is to ensure that campus rules are followed and events are not to be disrupted. They were told they would receive additional training and that school policies would be revised and “clear protocols” provided.

The students who participated in hectoring Duncan were not disciplined, as they should have been. However, they were required to attend mandatory educational programming.

Stanford administrators also announced that, in the future, all students would attend a mandatory, half-day session “on the topic of freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession.”

At Yale Law School, the dean issued a strong statement that the students’ behavior at the Federalist Society event was “unacceptable” and “violated the norms” of the law school. She wrote that Yale Law School “is an institution of higher learning, not a town square, and no one should interfere with others’ efforts to carry on activities on campus.” She punctuated the point by adding that “this is not ho­­w lawyers interact.”

Yale Law School also revised its disciplinary code and developed an online resource providing guidance on free speech and respectful engagement. Ho and Branch were invited to speak. Waggoner also was invited back to speak, this time without disruptions.

More recently, Yale Law School hired two prominent conservative scholars, including a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito who worked for him when Alito wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

So, it seems that the organized bar, Yale, and Stanford were paying attention after all and are implementing some positive changes. 

Let’s hope Columbia does too.

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Education

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The New York Times Denounces Cancel Culture . . . After Fueling Cancel Culture for Years


By: Jonatan Turley | May 12, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/12/the-new-york-times-denounces-cancel-culture-after-fueling-cancel-culture-for-years/

For those of us who have criticized the cancel culture in higher education for years, the attacks and shunning have been unrelenting. The media has played a role in that culture and none more prominently than the New York Times. Recently, however, the mob came for liberal professors and media who have remained silent for years as conservatives and others were targeted on campus. Suddenly, there is a new interest in free speech and academic freedom, including by the Times editors who blamed cancel culture for the recent demonstrations and disruptions on campus.

Until good liberals were targeted on campus, cancel culture was treated as free speech. It did not matter that preventing others from speaking or being heard is the very antithesis of free speech.

The New York Times reached true infamy in the controversy over publishing Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R., Ark.) op-ed where he argued for the possible use of national guard to quell violent riots around the White House. It was one of the lowest points in the history of modern American journalism. Cotton was calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House.  While Congress would “call in the troops” six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists called the column historically inaccurate and politically inciteful.

Reporters insisted that Cotton was even endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper cannot feature people who advocate political violence. One year later, the New York Times published a column by an academic who had previously declared that there is nothing wrong with murdering conservatives and Republicans.

Later, former editors came forward to denounce the cancel culture at the Times and the censorship of opposing views. At the same time, the Times has embraced “advocacy journalism.” Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism. Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.”

Now, however, liberal professors and writers are being targeted. After years of turning a blind eye to conservative and libertarian figures being purged from faculties or canceled in events, the Times is alarmed that …students and other demonstrators disrupting college campuses this spring are being taught the wrong lesson — for as admirable as it can be to stand up for your beliefs, there are no guarantees that doing so will be without consequence.

What is most striking is how the editors chastise administrators for lacking the courage that they have not shown for years in standing up to their cultural warriors:

For several years, many university leaders have failed to act as their students and faculty have shown ever greater readiness to block an expanding range of views that they deem wrong or beyond the pale. Some scholars report that this has had a chilling effect on their work, making them less willing to participate in the academy or in the wider world of public discourse. The price of pushing boundaries, particularly with more conservative ideas, has become higher and higher…

It has not gone unnoticed — on campuses but also by members of Congress and by the public writ large — that many of those who are now demanding the right to protest have previously sought to curtail the speech of those whom they declared hateful.

It is certainly good to see the “Old Gray Lady” have second thoughts about cancel culture. However, she might want to look inwardly before casting more cultural stones.

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Armstrong Williams Op-ed: The Most Dangerous People in America: College Professors


By: Armstrong Williams / @Arightside / May 09, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/09/the-most-dangerous-people-in-america-college-professors/

Columbia University professors demonstrate outside the university campus demanding the release of students in New York City on May 1, 2024. Hundreds of people were arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses as police on May 1 extended a crackdown that included clearing out demonstrators occupying a building at Columbia University. (Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY Armstrong Williams@Arightside

Armstrong Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and host of “The Armstrong Williams Show,” a nationally syndicated TV program.

American college campuses are permeated with corrupted professors who themselves corrupt students. Without a doubt, college professors are the most dangerous people in America.

They’re not dangerous because they challenge the status quo or encourage their students to think critically. On the contrary, they are dangerous because they encourage impressionable young college students to adhere to the doctrines of the professors they choose without giving them the chance to meaningfully challenge those doctrines.

During the recent pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas protests on elite college campuses, thousands of students put up tents on private property, commandeered university-owned buildings, defaced private property, and chanted disturbing, antisemitic rhetoric. But while we constantly talk about the actions of the students, we fail to recognize that these students aren’t alone but instead are educated and cheered on by their college professors.

At Columbia University, many of the university’s professors joined the protests, donning orange reflective vests and standing alongside students in protest of Israel and—apparently—in support of the students’ right to free speech. Of course, these professors, like their students, are not constitutional scholars, yet they teach their students that what they’re doing is protected.

The First Amendment does not protect the right to vandalize or trespass on private property, which is what these students were doing, or even make terroristic threats or aid a terrorist organization, which arguably many of these students did. The very idea that there were professors aiding the students in their illegal takeover of the university should sound alarm bells.

Even in the face of the professors’ statements and actions, which were to the effect of “we support our students’ right to protest,” no rights were being violated. But you can be absolutely sure the impressionable college students seeing their actions and reading their statements feel more emboldened than ever and as though they were the ones wronged, not the scores of Jewish students who were barred from campus nor the many impoverished students unable to access the now-closed dining halls.

There can be no doubt left now that students who witnessed their professors, people of great authority and respect to them, supporting a protest that resulted in the unprovoked stabbing of a Jewish woman in the eye with a Palestinian flag, chants of “death to America” and “globalize the intifada” (a violent uprising in which more than a thousand Israelis were murdered in the early 2000s), students claiming “we are Hamas,” and a significant number of students donning Hamas militant headbands will think any violence or violent rhetoric on their part is somehow justified.

Look no further than the case of Russell Rickford, an associate history professor at Cornell University, who took a leave of absence after openly stating that the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks were “exhilarating” and “energizing.” He was seen back on campus, protesting in solidarity with the students and speaking in support of the students and Palestine.

Why should a student feel afraid of being suspended—or even expelled—when a professor of the institution who met a similar fate is back on campus voicing his support of Palestine?

One thing any college student—particularly one who challenges authority—will learn is that when that authority (the professor, the administration, or even the student body) is overwhelmingly liberal, questioning dogma is a recipe for failure and being labeled an outcast.

For a college student, a bad grade can make or break their college career, which, to college students, is the most immediately important thing in their life. Giving a college professor the ability to judge a student more harshly because they disagree or even simply question the professors’ beliefs is the perfect recipe for indoctrination.

Let’s be clear, college professors should not be feared; they should be respected when they earn that respect, same as anyone else. The only power they wield is the title they were given by their institution—a title that can be quickly stripped away from them. To college students, these professors are the most academically accomplished people they know, so they follow them mindlessly; that’s why they are dangerous.

Well-educated people are often the least intelligent. They are so confident in their ability to think critically that they have successfully convinced themselves that they can do no wrong. It is only when students have an honest professor who understands their fallibility that they can truly learn.

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The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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They Spent $29,284 per Pupil, but Only 28% of Eighth Graders Rated Proficient in Math


By: Terence Jeffrey / @TerryJeffrey / May 09, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/09/they-spent-29284-per-pupil-but-only-28-of-eighth-graders-rated-proficient-in-math/

Despite high per-pupil spending, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, and other states see low test scores in math and reading, as does D.C. Catholic schools, however, outperform. (Photo illustration: Comstock Images/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY

Terence Jeffrey@TerryJeffrey

Terence P. Jeffrey is investigative editor for the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The public schools in the state of New York doled out $29,284 per pupil in “current expenditures” in fiscal year 2022, according to a report published this week by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

“Current expenditures comprise expenditures for the day-to-day operation of schools and school districts for public elementary and secondary education, including expenditures for staff salaries and benefits, supplies, and purchased services,” the National Center for Education Statistics says.

“General administration expenditures and school administration expenditures are also included in current expenditures,” it says.

The $29,284 that New York spent per pupil on these items was more than any other state. So, what did taxpayers get in return for this investment?

Not much.

In the mathematics test of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 28% of eighth graders in New York state public schools scored proficient or better. Only 32% scored proficient or better in reading.

In our capital city of Washington, D.C., which the NCES lists with the states, the public schools had $28,128 in “current expenditures” per pupil. That was more than any state except New York. So, how did the students do in D.C. public schools? Only 16% of eight graders in the D.C. school system scored proficient or better in math. Only 22% scored proficient or better in reading.

New Jersey had the next-highest level of per-pupil spending in its public schools in fiscal year 2022. In that state, it was $25,550. The students there scored a little better in reading and math than those in New York or the District of Columbia. But they did not do great. Only 33% of New Jersey eighth graders were proficient or better in math, while 42% were proficient or better in reading.

Vermont, the state represented by Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, finished slightly behind New Jersey in per-pupil spending in its public schools. It spent $25,073. Vermont also finished behind New Jersey in its NAEP test scores. Only 27% of eighth graders in Vermont public schools scored proficient or better in math, and only 34% scored proficient or better in reading.

Connecticut, another New England state, came in fifth—behind New York, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and Vermont—in per-pupil sending. It spent $23,868 per student. Only 30% of its eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and only 35% scored proficient in reading.

Connecticut was followed by three other New England states when the 50 states are ranked by per-pupil spending. Massachusetts spent $22,778; Rhode Island spent $20,498; and New Hampshire spent $20,424.

Yet only 35% of eighth graders in Massachusetts public schools scored proficient or better in math; only 40% scored proficient or better in reading. In Rhode Island, only 24% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math; only 31% scored proficient or better in reading. In New Hampshire, only 29% scored proficient or better in math; only 33% scored proficient or better in reading.

Did the results significantly improve if a state spent less money per pupil in its public schools? No.

Utah spent $9,496 per pupil in its public schools in fiscal year 2022. That was less than any other state. Only 35% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and only 36% scored proficient or better in reading.

Similarly, Idaho finished next to last in per-pupil spending in its public schools, putting up $9,662. Only 32% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and 32% scored proficient or better in reading.

As this column has noted before, students at Catholic schools score better on these NAEP tests than students at public schools. In 2022, eighth graders in Catholic schools had an average score of 288 on the math test, while eighth graders in public schools had an average score of 273. Similarly, eighth graders in Catholic schools had an average score of 279 on the reading test, while public-school eighth graders had an average score of 259. The average tuition at Catholic elementary schools in 2023, according to U.S. News and World Report, was $4,840. The average tuition at Catholic high schools was $11,240.

In the upcoming school year, DeMatha Catholic High School—in Hyattsville, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.—will have a tuition of $22,700, according to its website. That is $5,428 less than the $28,128 that D.C. public schools spent per pupil in 2022.

Parents in the District of Columbia and every other community in this country should not be forced to send their children to government-run schools. All parents should be given a voucher equal to the per-pupil expenditures in the local public schools and they should be free to redeem that voucher at any school—public or private, religious or secular—that they choose.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM 

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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This is Antifa: Journalist and Others Attacked at UW Event


By: Jonathan Turley | May 8, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/08/this-is-antifa-journalist-and-others-attacked-at-uw-event/

The University of Washington became the latest scene of Antifa violence this week with an attack on a conservative reporter and several other people. Antifa often attacks reporters who are critical of their actions and the videotape shows at least one person bleeding after the attack on reporter, Jonathan Choe, and his team. The attack came before an event Tuesday at the University of Washington featuring Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, which released the video.

The University of Washington issued a statement that campus police “are busy keeping the Turning Point USA event and other areas of campus as safe as possible. We take any assault seriously, and UWPD will be investigating these incidents, gathering statements and video footage that may be available.”

Despite the denial of its existence by figures like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), I have long written and spoken about the threat of Antifa to free speech on our campuses and in our communities. This includes testimony before Congress on Antifa’s central role in the anti-free speech movement nationally.

As I have written, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association.  Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray has repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa’s work or violence. In one hearing, Wray stated “And we have quite a number” — and “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction.”

We have continued to follow the attacks and arrests of Antifa followers across the country.

Some Democrats have played a dangerous game in supporting or excusing the work of Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to clearly denounce Antifa and falsely suggested that the far right was the primary cause of recent violence. Likewise, Joe Biden has dismissed objections to Antifa as just “an idea.”

It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”

Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists…  From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.” It is an illusion designed to promote what Antifa is resisting “white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ultra-nationalism, authoritarianism, and genocide.” Thus, all of these opposing figures are deemed fascistic and thus unworthy of being heard.

Bray quotes one Antifa member as summing up their approach to free speech as a “nonargument . . . you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.”

We previously discussed the case involving another Antifa member who was convicted after taking an ax to the door of Sen. John Hoeven’s office in Fargo. He was given no jail time, and the FBI even returned his ax. He later mocked the government by posting on social media “Look what the FBI were kind enough to give back to me!”

For those who have sought to deny the existence of Antifa, this is Antifa.

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Columbia Caves: Commencement is Canceled Due to Pro-Palestinian Protests


By: Jonathan Turley | May 7, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/07/columbia-caves-commencement-is-canceled-due-to-pro-palestinian-protests/

Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success is showing up.” Yesterday, Columbia University established its academic corollary: 80 percent of defeat is not showing up. In a disgraceful decision that deprived students of one of the most memorable moments of their lives, the university yielded to protesters who have occupied parts of the campus and buildings. Instead, graduates will be allowed to go to small-scale graduations. It is a profile of cowardice that will stain the record of Columbia for years to come.

Notably, the graduation is ordinarily held on the space where students set up an encampment, but that space was finally cleared by police last week. It did not matter. Columbia stated that “holding a large commencement ceremony on our campus presented security concerns that unfortunately proved insurmountable…Like our students, we are deeply disappointed with this outcome.”

“Insurmountable?” It is your campus. These are your students. Hold the damn commencement.

Columbia said the security advisers identified “too many variables” for holding the commencement and that adding security would only trigger the protesters. So, the solution, once again, is to do precisely what the protesters wanted.

Schools like University of Southern California said late last month that it was canceling its main commencement ceremony, citing similar security concerns. Protesters disrupted the commencement at University of Michigan this weekend. However, Michigan did not yield. They handled the disruption and held their ground. They held their commencement.

The decision by Columbia is consistent with how administrators have approached disruptive protests for years. While some of us have called upon schools to suspend or to expel students preventing others from speaking on campus, universities have yielded over and over again. Indeed, citing security concerns became an easy way for schools to cancel conservative speakers while professing neutrality on the content of their views. Faculty have not only encouraged but participated in such cancel campaigns.

Even classes have been stopped by protesters at places like Northwestern without any repercussions for the students. Northwestern (my alma mater) is the ultimate example of administrators picking the path of least resistance in the face of radicalized students. Recently, seven out of 11 members of the “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate” resigned in protest.

Under the controversial agreement, the school will admit five Palestinian students each year, support two Palestinian faculty members annually, create special housing for Muslim students, and add students to Committees to review purchases from Israeli businesses.

Columbia has been consistently ranked at the very bottom of schools for free speech due to its intolerance for opposing viewpoints and failure to protect a diversity of opinions on campus. Even the dean of its leading journalism school has warned against the “weaponization of free speech.” One of Columbia’s centers publicly complained when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was allowed to speak on campus.

When Columbia finally drew the line at protesters damaging and taking over buildings, the response from many students and faculty was outrage.

After Hamilton Hall was cleared by police, the editors of Columbia Law Review asked for the cancelation of exams because they were emotionally compromised. The editors wrote that the clearing of the unauthorized encampment constituted traumatic “violence” that left them “irrevocably shaken” and “unable to focus.” They were joined by editors of five other law journals, including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review & A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual.

They portrayed the trauma as the appearance of counter protesters and police on campus, accusing a “white supremacist, neo-fascist hate group” of “storming” campus. The Columbia students told the university that “many are unwell at this time and cannot study or concentrate while their peers are being hauled to jail.”

Columbia then faced threats of protests at the commencement, so it solved the problem by doing what the protesters were demanding. Of course, it did not solve the problem. Columbia is the problem. It is an example of how administrators have yielded control over their campuses to the loudest and most aggressive elements in their community.

Higher education is not supposed to be an academic version of the Hunger Games where the last person standing wins in a contest of attrition.

It is perhaps only appropriate that Columbia’s final lesson for graduates should be a continuation of years of yielding to the demands of those who dictate what can be said or done on campus.

Many of these students were denied commencement ceremonies four years ago. They worked to get into Columbia and many of their families had to make huge sacrifices to allow them to study at the university. As protests ramped up, they found themselves barred from campus and told again to take remote classes.  A Jewish professor’s access card was deactivated because his presence on campus was viewed as too inflammatory for the protesters.

When they are finally ready to celebrate that moment, they have been told, again, that commencement is cancelled. However, this is not due to a pandemic but protesters. They will have to go to smaller graduations that are less objectionable to the radical elements of the student body.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.” It has the same effect on higher education. There was a clear path open to Columbia. Hold the commencement and hold any disrupters accountable. In choosing to yield, President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik has abandoned not just these graduates but the integrity of Columbia.

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“Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!”: GW Protesters Call for the Heads of President and Others to be Cut Off


By: Jonathan Turley | May 6, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/06/guillotine-guillotine-guillotine-gw-protesters-call-for-the-heads-of-president-and-others-to-be-cut-off/

For years, I have written about the analogy of what is happening on our campuses to the French Revolution, including faculty enablers becoming the targets of radical groups. Many faculty were silent as conservatives and libertarians were purged from faculties. Some even supported cancel campaigns against professors and speakers with opposing views. Now the analogy has become even more poignant on my campus of George Washington University after protesters held mock tribunals and called for the heads of the President, Provost, and Board of Trustees to be cut off by guillotine. A video has emerged over the weekend from the enactment outside of my office with students gleefully cheering for the beheading of faculty, administrators, and board members. They specifically “convicted” President Ellen Granberg, Provost Christopher Bracey, the Board of Trustees, @GWPolice, and others according to the poster of the video.

I discussed earlier how the D.C. police refused to clear the street outside of the law school and next to the quad. In D.C., it often matters what you are protesting in determining whether action will be taken.

As for the guillotine video, the Post Millennial reported on the scene:

In the mock tribunal, the woman asks, “How do the people find you?”

The crowd shouts, “Guilty!” then “Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!”

“Bracey, Bracey, we see you! You assault students too. Off to the motherf*cking gallows with you,” the woman chants, along with the gleeful activists.

Moving on to the Board of Trustees, she states “On the charges of having a vested interest in the genocide of Palestinian people as they profit off Zionist weapons and purchases that you refuse to divest the apartheid as they line their pockets. The people find you.”

“Guilty!” The crowd screams with a mix of mob rage and joy.

“To the Guillotine!” the girl yells. “Board of Trustees, we charge you with genocide. I hope all that money is gonna save you when you’re rotting in jail.”

The crowd calls out President Grandberg, as well. “On the charges of using our tuition dollars to fund genocide, and selling out students to Zionist interest, the people find you?”

“Guilty!” The crowd yells.

“As you already know where I am sending her,” she adds, referring to the guillotine. “Her and her f*ck *ss bob.”

Fortunately, we got rid of shop in many schools years ago so the actual construction of a gallows may prove challenging. Amazon can deliver a guillotine but it is only five inches tall so it might be a bit of a Spinal Tap moment for the new Jacobins.

Few of us expect tumbrils to roll in Foggy Bottom. These students clearly thought that this was funny and no one believes that they are turning into little Robespierres. However, the rhetoric of these protests have displayed violent and unhinged elements – fueled by radical activists from Antifa and other organizations.

The protesters have already succeeded in forcing concessions from universities like Brown, Northwestern, and Rutgers. The growing protests have also clearly spooked the White House, particularly with the chant “Genocide Joe” catching on across the country. At GW, that image was projected over the large flag hung by the school.

The protesters are likely to take solace in the fact that the Biden Administration just reportedly put a hold on an ammunition transfer to Israel. It is not clear if this will be a mere symbolic hold that will be lifted or something more significant. Israel is preparing the long-announced offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza where the remaining Hamas fighters are located.

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NEWS UPDATE: New ruling reveals fate of middle school girls banned for protesting trans competitor


Jamie Joseph By Jamie Joseph Fox News | Published May 3, 2024 3:36pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-ruling-reveals-fate-middle-school-girls-banned-protesting-trans-competitor

Five West Virginia middle school girls banned from participating in track and field meets after they protested against a trans athlete last week are allowed to compete again, a judge ruled Thursday night. Judge Thomas A. Bedell issued a preliminary injunction that prevents the Harrison Board of Education and its schools from penalizing student-athletes for their speech. (https://wordpress.com/post/whatdidyousay.org/90958)

The school board denied allegations of retaliation against the students, and instead asserted the students were allowed to protest without hindrance and with full awareness and permission from coaches and the principal.

Read the rest of the story at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-ruling-reveals-fate-middle-school-girls-banned-protesting-trans-competitor

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“Irrevocably Shaken”: Columbia Law Review Editors Ask for Cancellation of Exams Due to Protests


By: Jonathan Turley | May 3, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/03/irrevocably-shaken-columbia-law-review-editors-ask-for-cancellation-of-exams-due-to-protests/

In recent years, there has been much discussion of the claims of “trauma” by students caused by court rulings and other events. These developments are often cited as a basis for the cancellation of exam or classes. Conservative speakers, case decisions, and protests have all been cited in the past for such demands as well as the creation of therapy tents and trauma counseling. Now, editors of the Columbia Law Review (and editors of other journals) have called for the outright cancellation of exams due to the trauma of watching recent protests on campus.  This is indeed a learning moment. Law students need to be able to face such moments without shutting down due to the stress. Our profession is filled with stress and trauma. It is the environment in which we operate. In those moments, we do not have the option of being a no-show. We make our appearance and speak for others.

Such claims have been commonplace. Black Harvard and Georgetown law students demanded exam cancellation after the death of Michael Brown in 2014. Administrators and faculty foster these claims by calling free speech “harmful” and “triggering” for students.

Students have also complained of the trauma of taking classes by faculty who do not recognize “white privilege” or classes that touch on certain crimes. After Trump was elected in 2016, universities set up “safe areas” and trauma tents for students.

The editors of the Columbia Law Review are virtually guaranteed their picks of top jobs after graduation. Yet, they told the law school that the clearing of the unauthorized encampment constituted traumatic “violence” that left them “irrevocably shaken” and “unable to focus.” They were joined by editors of five other law journals, including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review & A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual.

They portrayed the trauma as the appearance of counter protesters and police on campus, accusing a “white supremacist, neo-fascist hate group” of “storming” campus.

The Columbia students told the university that “many are unwell at this time and cannot study or concentrate while their peers are being hauled to jail.”

The law school has postponed exams due to the protests but has not cancelled the exams.

The students offered an alternative but not preferred option of allowing them to take exams pass/fail. However, they emphasized that “instituting an optional Pass/Fail policy is not really optional when employers will see that some students have grades and others do not… [T]his leaves room for the introduction of extreme bias into the hiring process.”

It is true that law firms are likely to look for students who can handle high-stress situations. This letter suggests the opposite of students at the very top of the Columbia law class.

More importantly, the question is how such law students are emotionally prepared for the pressures of practice when such protests shut them down and leave them “unable to focus.” However, they have been educated in systems that have fostered the sense of victimization or trauma from opposing views.

While often called the “trophy generation,” it sometimes seems like this is becoming the trauma generation. I do not blame these students. Teachers and administrators have reinforced this view. That was evident in the controversial cancelling of a federal judge at Stanford Law School last year.

The Stanford Federalist Society invited Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to speak on campus. It is a great opportunity to hear the views of one of the highest ranked judicial officers in the country.  However, liberal students decided that allowing a conservative judge to speak on campus is intolerable and set about to “deplatform” him by shouting him down. It was reminiscent of an equally disgraceful event at Yale Law School when another conservative speaker was similarly canceled — the law students then objected to the fact that campus police were present.

In this event, Duncan was planning to speak on the topic: “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter.” A video shows that the students prevented Duncan from speaking and the judge asked for an administrator to be called in to allow the event to proceed.

Dean Tirien Steinback then took the stage and, instead of simply demanding that the students allow for the event to proceed, Steinback launched into a babbling attack on the judge for seeking to be heard despite such objections.

Steinbach explained “I had to write something down because I am so uncomfortable up here. And I don’t say that for sympathy, I just say that I am deeply, deeply uncomfortable.”

Steinbach declared “It’s uncomfortable to say that for many people here, you’re work has caused harm.” After a perfunctory nod to free speech, Steinbach proceeded to eviscerate it to the delight of the law students. She continued “again I still ask, is the juice worth the squeeze?” “Is it worth the pain that this causes, the division that this causes? Do you have something so incredibly important to say about Twitter and guns and Covid that that is worth this impact on the division of these people.”

These students have spent years with such faculty telling them that they are fragile, vulnerable victims. However, our clients are often victims with traumatic injuries that must be addressed. Securing an equally vulnerable and triggered lawyer is not going to help them much.

Outside of the Columbia Law Review offices is a thing called life. It is neither predictable nor comfortable. We enter the lives of our clients when they are often failing apart. We have to bring our skills and support at those moments without the assistance of a trauma tent or emotional coach.  We also cannot ask judges for postponements to allow us to process the stress of the moment.

This is not meant to be another “buck up buttercup” dismissal. I understand that the campus faced disruption and that many feel deeply about the underlying issues. That passion is needed. Young lawyers should be motivated to right wrongs in this world. I also understand that many of these law students likely had friends who were arrested or involved in the protests. However, our clients look to us for strength not fragility in such moments.

The response from Columbia Law School should be simple: see you at the exams.

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Education

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Did You Ever Think You Would See This Day?


May2, 2024

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Education, Islamic News

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Biden Botched Financial Aid Rollout. And it’s Parents and Students Who Are Paying the Price.


By: Kevin Roberts / @KevinRobertsTX / Lindsey Burke / @lindseymburke / May 02, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/02/biden-botched-financial-aid-rollout-and-its-parents-and-students-who-are-paying-the-price/

Completed FAFSA applications were down nearly 30% as of April 19. (Photo Illustration: Richard Stephen/Getty Images)

In a normal year, May 1 is known as National College Decision Day, the deadline for students to commit to enrolling at a college, guided in part by their financial aid awards. But the Biden administration’s disastrous rollout of a new financial aid application has left tens of thousands of families in the dark about their students’ future and prompted several universities to push back their enrollment deadlines.

As of April 19, completed FAFSA applications were down nearly 30%. At best, it means many students and parents don’t know how much it will cost to attend college in the fall. Even worse, it may lead frustrated young people to skip college altogether.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is a notoriously cumbersome form that all prospective college students must fill out if they want federal loans or grants. Previously more than 100 questions long, FAFSA’s current crisis can be traced to 2020, when the FAFSA Simplification Act dropped the number of questions on the form to about 40.

Ironically, because of the Biden administration’s incompetence, the simplification has led to massive complications and confusion for families this year as they apply for college. Focused on other priorities, the Biden administration failed to update the FAFSA website before October, when most students start applying.

In fact, the “improved” FAFSA website didn’t go live until the end of December, and even then, only in 30-minute increments. This was presumably so that the department could meet the statutory deadline for release, as Inside Higher Ed reported. When the website finally became available in a more final form in January, the Department of Education still wasn’t processing applications or relaying students’ financial information to colleges. It said it’d be able to do that by mid-March.

President Biden’s FAFSA Chief Steps Down

With the May 1 deadline now here, the Biden administration is still running behind, prompting the bureaucrat in charge of the new form to resign last week. But it’s students and their families who are paying the real price of this debacle.

Couple that reality with what families are now seeing at America’s universities—protests featuring ugly displays of antisemitism—and it appears that higher education is experiencing the same “Zoom moment” that K-12 schools experienced during COVID-19. Parents now see up close what schools are teaching and the values they relay. All of this is the perfect recipe for a significant decline in college enrollment this year.

That might not be such a bad thing. Far too many students feel that pursuing higher education is their only option for success, and if this FAFSA debacle ushers in a much-needed course correction, that would be a welcome silver lining.

But for those students still pursuing traditional higher education, this academic limbo is maddening.

Colleges Push Back Enrollment Deadlines

Colleges are trying to adjust, and many have extended their decision deadlines, some as far out as July. Department of Education officials had to explain the disastrous rollout in congressional hearings, more of which should come soon.

All of this is yet another reminder of the pitfalls of the federal government’s involvement in higher education. Today, the federal government originates and services most student loans. But the Department of Education wasn’t designed as a bank, nor Uncle Sam as a lender. And it’s clear the agency isn’t up to the task.

The FAFSA debacle conjures up memories of the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare portal a decade ago.

As dual trainwrecks of the FAFSA rollout and antisemitic university protests play out simultaneously, there’s no better time for Congress to cut off the open spigot of federal funds to universities and protect future American students.

Originally published by USA Today

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Come for the Education, Stay for the Amputation: Iran Offers Free Scholarships to U.S. Students


By: Jonathan Turley | May 2, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/02/come-for-the-education-stay-for-the-amputation-iran-offers-free-scholarships-to-u-s-students/

Now this could truly be educational. Students protesting on our campuses have been offered free scholarships at Shiraz University in Fars. So, while Northwestern has reached a settlement with protesters to give scholarships to Palestinian students and positions to Palestinian faculty, U.S. protesters can now go to Iran for their education.

Mohammad Moazzeni, head of Shiraz University told media that “students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide the conditions].”

This could be the single most transformative educational experience of their lives. Of course, Iran is better known for floggings than free speech. Iran is particularly prone to such contradictions like executing homosexuals while denying that there are any homosexuals in Iran or objecting to the treatment of protesters in the West while jailing, beating and killing protesters.

Warning: vegan meals are not available at Iranian protests. Instead, it has ordered the arrest and killing of writers and artists while holding such fun events as a cartoon competition on the Holocaust.

While expungements are not a common feature of the criminal justice system, it does have unique elements like judicially ordered blindings. Likewise, where else can you go where a criminal defendant was ordered to be executed by being tied into a burlap bag and thrown down a cliff with sharp rocks?

Some universities clearly have space after students were arrested for protesting the death sentence given a rapper. That includes Shiraz University where the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) arrested students for protests.

The good thing is that U.S. students are already covering up their faces. Iranian women have faced arrest for being photographed without hijabs.

Students like Khymani James, the Columbia organizer declaring that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” have the right viewpoint but may find that the Iranian officials are less supportive in other respects.

Just a year studying abroad in Iran is worth a lifetime of education.

So Iranian universities are making the ultimate pitch to come for the free education and stay for the free amputations.

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School board ‘punished’ middle school girls who protested biological male competing against them at track meet: Complaint


By: DAVE URBANSKI | APRIL 30, 2024

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/school-board-punished-middle-school-girls-who-protested-biological-male-competing-against-them-at-track-meet-complaint-2668105934.html/

A West Virginia school board “punished” a group of middle school girls who protested a biological male competing against them at a track meet earlier this month, according to a legal complaint.

Cellphone video showed girls from Lincoln Middle School staging a protest in the shot-put ring at the Harrison County Middle School Championships on April 18; one by one, they stepped into the ring and then quickly stepped out without making attempts.

While the video in the post from female athlete advocate Riley Gaines appears to show six separate protests by Lincoln girls in the shot put ring, AthleticNet indicated that five Lincoln girls posted “ND” (no distance) in the finals. Gaines also wrote that five girls refused to participate.

Blaze News reported that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just days prior to the meet ruled in a 2-1 decision that a West Virginia law requiring every student athlete to participate in accordance with their biological sex violates the Title IX rights of Becky Pepper-Jackson — the student against whom the girls protested.

Pepper-Jackson — a biological male — has been living as a female and taking puberty blockers for years. AthleticNet said Pepper-Jackson of Bridgeport won the shot put final at the meet with a toss of 32 feet, 9 inches, easily besting the second-place finisher by more than three feet.

What happened next?

Parents of four of the five protesting girls filed the legal complaint against the Harrison County Board of Education. The complaint states the girls attended an April 24 press conference addressing their protest. Attendees included Gaines and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Auditor J.B. McCuskey, along with several Republicans from the state Senate and House of Delegates, the complaint states.

The complaint also states that the next day — Thursday — the father of one of the girls “spoke with Lincoln Middle School principal Lori Scott,” who told him that the girls who protested “would not be permitted to compete in a scheduled track and field meet on April 27, 2024.”

The complaint also states that a father of another girl spoke with coach Dawn Riestenberg, who “informed him that his daughter would not be allowed to participate in the scheduled track and field meet on April 27.” The complaint adds that Riestenberg told the dad that the girls were barred from the meet because it was her job “to score points for the track team,” which the complaint says correlates to “the minor student athletes’ protest and subsequent appearance at a press conference to the decision to ban them from competition.”

The complaint states that the protesting girls “are being punished” by the school board “for exercising their rights to freedom of speech and expression under the Constitution of West Virginia.”

The complaint was filed Friday — the day before the April 27 meet from which the girls allegedly were barred — and seeks no monetary damages, only “injunctive relief.” State Attorney General Morrisey filed an amicus brief Friday in support of the parents’ complaint.

“The only thing this decision does is teach these children to keep their mouths shut and not disagree with what they saw as unfairness,” Morrisey said in a news release, according to WBOY-TV. “That is outrageous and it tramples these students’ rights to freedom of speech and expression.”

Apparently, the complaint and even support from the state attorney general were not enough.

AthleticNet records show that none of the Lincoln Middle School girls listed in the complaint took part in the shot put competition at the Mid Mountain 10 Championships on April 27.

In addition, while it’s been reported that the protesting girls were barred from competition for a longer period of time, all the girls in the complaint are listed on the shot put stat sheet from a Monday invitational meet.

The school board on Tuesday didn’t immediately reply to Blaze News’ request for comment on the complaint.

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Left-Wing Dark Money Groups Are Bankrolling Anti-Israel Demonstrations


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MAY 01, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/01/left-wing-dark-money-groups-are-bankrolling-anti-israel-demonstrations/

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Left-wing dark money networks are funding the outbreak of anti-Israel protests spreading at college campuses across the country.

Last week, Fox News reported the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), “a national organization affiliated with around 200 independent chapters” including Columbia University, raked in “a six-figure donation from a nonprofit bankrolled by the George Soros network.”

According to Influence Watch, the group orchestrates student activism on university campuses, accuses Israel of committing genocide, and compares Palestinians to black Americans under the Jim Crow era.

“In addition to Columbia, NSJP has been protesting and setting up encampments at other universities across the country, including UCLA and USC in California and at the University of Texas in Austin, where over 50 people were arrested this week,” Fox News reported.

The University of Texas said in a statement Tuesday that 45 of the 79 people arrested on the school’s Austin campus Monday “had no affiliation with UT Austin.”

“These numbers validate our concern that much of the disruption on campus over the past week has been orchestrated by people from outside the University, including groups with ties to escalating protests at other universities around the country,” the university said.

The New York Post reported Tuesday that police have arrested more than 1,000 demonstrators across more than 25 U.S. campuses. At Columbia University in Manhattan, which became the epicenter of anti-Israeli encampments when school leadership testified about antisemitism to Congress, police arrested nearly 300 protestors Tuesday night.

According to Fox News, “Another group active at Columbia, Jewish Voice for Peace, has brought in at least $650,000 from Soros-linked groups since 2016. JVP has also taken in hundreds of thousands from the billionaire-fueled Rockefeller Fund, which is boosted by millions of dollars from a dark money funding network.”

“Another Soros-backed group, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, has paid what it calls ‘fellows’ to organize and attend anti-Israel protests across the country,” Fox also said, citing New York Post reporting.

On Wednesday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the People’s Forum, another non-profit in New York that “received more than $12 million from Goldman Sachs’ charitable arm[,] encouraged anti-Israel activists to re-create the violent protests of ‘the summer of 2020.’”

The sustained demonstrations breaking out across American campuses have led some schools to cancel in-person classes and have jeopardized graduation ceremonies. Columbia University has shifted to a hybrid model for the remainder of the semester and announced final exams will be held remotely.

At the University of Southern California (USC), officials announced the school’s primary graduation ceremony will be canceled. The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) also canceled classes Wednesday after fighting erupted on campus.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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The Path of Least Resistance: Northwestern Reaches Controversial Settlement With Pro-Palestinian Protesters


By: JonathanTurley.org | May 1, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/01/the-path-of-least-resistance-northwestern-reaches-controversial-settlement-with-pro-palestinian-protesters/

Northwestern University has agreed to a controversial settlement with pro-Palestinian protesters encamped on its campus this week, including

  • a commitment for scholarships for Palestinians,
  • Palestinian faculty appointments,
  • and special housing for Muslim students.
  • The protesters will also be allowed to continue their protests while agreeing to stay in a particular area of campus. 
  • It will also put the students and supporting faculty on bodies to review any university investments and purchases, a major demand from supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Previously, protesters had reportedly prevented some students and faculty from entering buildings and engaged in property damage.

The Daily Northwestern reported the details of the deal and noted

“The University has committed to provide a conduit for students to engage with the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees. It will also re-establish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility this fall, which will include students, faculty and staff.

…

In addition, the University committed to some support for Palestinian students and faculty in the agreement. NU will ‘support visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk,’ and will provide the cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern.

…

The University also committed to providing an ‘immediate temporary space for MENA/Muslim students’ — a longtime demand from students on campus — and will provide and renovate a house for MENA/Muslims students as soon as possible. The final house is expected to come in 2026.”

It also includes a commitment of the university to intervene with employers to guarantee that students suffer no consequences for participating in protests in their jobs and internships.

Northwestern (my alma mater) has always chosen the path of least resistance when it comes to protesters, including at times surrendering core academic functions. I have been particularly critical of the loss of freedom of speech and academic integrity on campus.

Students previously succeeded in cancelling a speech by former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Student Zachery Novicoff embodied the rising intolerance to free speech on campus. He is quoted as saying “There’s a limitation to free speech. That ends at overtly racist old white dudes.”

I criticized former Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro for his lack of support for free speech on campus. Schapiro denounced what he called “absolute” free speech positions and endorsed speech sanctions, including treating speech as a form of assault.

During his tenure, the university often seemed a mere pedestrian to mob action taken against dissenting voices. For example, we previously discussed a Sociology 201 class by Professor Beth Redbird that examined “inequality in American society with an emphasis on race, class and gender.”  To that end, Redbird invited both an undocumented person and a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  It is the type of balance that is now considered verboten on campuses.

Members of MEChA de Northwestern, Black Lives Matter NU, the Immigrant Justice Project, the Asian Pacific American Coalition, NU Queer Trans Intersex People of Color and Rainbow Alliance organized to stop other students from hearing from the ICE representative.  However, they could not have succeeded without the help of Northwestern administrators (including  Dean of Students Todd Adams).  The protesters were screaming “F**k ICE” outside of the hall.  Adams and the other administrators then said that the protesters screaming profanities would be allowed into the class if they promised not to disrupt the class.  Really?  They were screaming profanities and seeking to stop the class but would just sit nicely as the speaker answered questions?

Of course, that did not happen. As soon as the protesters were allowed into the classroom, they prevented the ICE representative from speaking.  The ICE official eventually left, and Redbird canceled the class to discuss the issue with the protesters that just prevented her students from hearing an opposing view.

The comments of the Northwestern students were predictable after being told by people like Schapiro that some offensive speech should be treated as a form of assault.  SESP sophomore April Navarro rejected that faculty should be allowed to invite such speakers to their classrooms for a “good, nice conversation with ICE.” She insisted such speakers needed to be silenced because they “terrorize communities” and profit from detainee labor. Here is the face of the new generation of censors being shaped by speech-intolerant academics like Schapiro:

“We’re not interested in having those types of conversations that would be like, ‘Oh, let’s listen to their side of it’ because that’s making them passive rule-followers rather than active proponents of violence. We’re not engaging in those kinds of things; it legitimizes ICE’s violence, it makes Northwestern complicit in this. There’s an unequal power balance that happens when you deal with state apparatuses.”

Last year, the Northwestern student body banned press from meetings to protect students from the harm of media coverage. The students also have previously frozen funds of conservative groups.

The Northwestern journalism faculty is little better.  Steven Thrasher, the Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting at Northwestern, who trashed a reporter who waited for the facts before reporting on a police shooting.

Of course, it is not just conservative speakers that the students want to ban. In 2021, they called for the removal of the President of the Board of Trustees. Despite being a major donor and supporter of the school, J. Landis Martin was denounced as a Republican who donated money to former President Donald Trump.

The university issued a statement that “This path forward requires the immediate removal of tents on Deering Meadow, cessation of non-approved use of amplified sound and a commitment that all conduct on Deering and across campus will comply with all University rules and policies. Compliant demonstration can continue at Deering Meadow through June 1.”

The university has long lacked the fortitude to stand up to students engaging in disruptive protests. The danger of such passivity is evident on our campuses. As Henry David Thoreau warned, “all rivers and most corrupt men follow the path of least resistance.”

Here is the Northwestern agreement.

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Pro-Palestine Protesters Defy Columbia Deadline to Disband or Be Suspended


Monday, 29 April 2024 03:10 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/israel-palestinian-campus-student-protests-war/2024/04/29/id/1162810/

Colleges around the U.S. implored pro-Palestinian student protesters to clear out tent encampments with rising levels of urgency Monday, including an ultimatum from Columbia University for students to sign a form and leave the encampment by the afternoon or face suspension.

Columbia activists defied the 2 p.m. deadline with chants, clapping and drumming from the encampment of more than 300 people. No officials appeared to enter the encampment, with at least 120 tents staying up as the deadline passed.

The notice sent Monday by the Ivy League university in Manhattan to protesters in the encampment said that if they left by the deadline and signed a form committing to abide by university policies through June 2025 or an earlier graduation, they could finish the semester in good standing. If not, the letter said, they will be suspended, pending further investigation.

Early protests at Columbia, where demonstrators set up tents in the center of the campus, sparked pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country. Students and others have been sparring over the Israel-Hamas war and its mounting death toll. Many students are demanding their universities cut financial ties with Israel. The number of arrests at campuses nationwide is approaching 1,000.

College classes are wrapping up for the semester, and campuses are preparing for graduation ceremonies, giving schools an extra incentive to clear encampments. The University of Southern California canceled its main graduation ceremony this spring. Others are asking the protests to resolve peacefully so they can hold their ceremonies.

Fewer new tent encampments have sprouted around the country as the school year winds down. But students have dug in their heels at tent encampments at some high-profile universities, with standoffs continuing between protesters and administrators at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale and others.

Protesters at Yale set up a new camp with dozens of tents Sunday afternoon, nearly a week after police arrested nearly 50 and cleared a similar one nearby. Later Sunday, they were notified by a Yale official that they could face discipline, including suspension, and possible arrest if they continued the encampment on a grassy area known as Cross Campus, protesters and school officials said. No deadline to leave was set.

Yale said in a statement Monday that while it supports peaceful protests and freedom of speech, it does not tolerate policy violations such as the encampment. School officials said that the protest is near residential colleges where many students are studying for final exams, and that permission must be granted for groups to hold events and put-up structures on campus.

Protests were also still active at a number of other campuses. Near George Washington University, protesters at an encampment breached and dismantled the barriers Monday morning used to secure University Yard, the university said in a statement. The yard had been closed since last week.

About 275 people were arrested Saturday at various campuses including Indiana University at Bloomington, Arizona State University and Washington University in St. Louis.

In its letter to student protesters, Columbia officials noted that exams are beginning, and graduation is upcoming.

“We urge you to remove the encampment so that we do not deprive your fellow students, their families and friends of this momentous occasion,” the letter said.

Mahmoud Khalil, the lead negotiator on behalf of protesters, said university representatives began passing out the notices at the encampment shortly after 10 a.m. Monday. A spokesperson for Columbia confirmed the letter had gone out to students but declined to comment further.

Under the terms spelled out in the letter, students who leave the encampment would be put on disciplinary probation through June 2025. Students who are already receiving discipline, or who face harassment or discrimination charges for actions in the encampment, are not eligible for the offer.

Red and orange tents stayed up on the lawn as protesters considered the latest amnesty offer from the administration. A hundred feet away, a student cafe was open, and people enjoyed coffee in the warm spring sun.

On one side of the shuttered campus, students and staff lined up for security checks across the street from a cluster of TV trucks. At the other side, a police officer stood next to an unmarked black sedan with blue and red lights quietly flashing.

The demonstrations have led Columbia to hold remote classes and set a series of deadlines for protesters to leave the encampment, which they have missed. The school said in an email to students that bringing back police “at this time” would be counterproductive.

The students and administrators have negotiated to end the disruptions, but the sides have not come to an agreement, university President Minouche Shafik said in a statement Monday. The university said it will offer an alternative venue for the protests after exams and graduation.

Columbia’s handling of the protests has prompted federal complaints.

A class-action lawsuit on behalf of Jewish students alleges a breach of contract by Columbia, claiming the university failed to maintain a safe learning environment, despite policies and promises. It also challenges the move away from in-person classes and seeks quick court action requiring Columbia to provide security for the students.

Meanwhile, a legal group representing pro-Palestinian students is urging the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office to investigate Columbia’s compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for how they have been treated.

The plight of students who have been arrested has become a central part of protests, with the students and a growing number of faculty demanding amnesty for protesters. At issue is whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students through their adult lives.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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College Activists Postpone Anti-Israel Encampment Because Students Are Too White


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | APRIL 26, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/26/college-activists-postpone-anti-israel-encampment-because-students-are-too-white/

anti-Israel college protest at Columbia university

Students at the University of Washington postponed an anti-Israel demonstration planned for Thursday because too many of the students who signed up are white.

According to MyNorthwest, a Washington-based radio station, the University of Washington’s Progressive Student Union (UWPSU) opted to delay an encampment in solidarity with Palestinian terrorists “to make sure this encampment is a better reflection of the UW community, and having even greater unity with Muslim, Palestinian and Arab students.”

“We want to be part of a much larger coalition of groups and make no mistake, WE WILL HAVE A UW ENCAMPMENT! We want to make sure everyone’s voice is included and this action is as safe, secure, and strong as possible,” read a statement from the far-left student union published by MyNorthwest.

The protest at the University of Washington would have placed the school on the map of more than 40 college campuses where pro-Palestine demonstrations have brought havoc to institutions from coast to coast. These anti-Israel encampments have been reported from Harvard and Yale to Stanford and the University of Southern California (USC), driving a nationwide rise in anti-Jewish hate. According to the Associated Press, students taking over college campuses are broadly demanding schools halt business with Israel or any other groups supporting the Israeli effort to eliminate Iranian-backed terrorists in the Middle East.

Demonstrations spread from Columbia University, where students began to protest last week as school leaders testified about antisemitism on Capitol Hill. The Ivy League school canceled in-person classes Monday and notified students that classes would be hybrid for the rest of the semester due to ongoing demonstrations. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson visited the university this week to shift attention away from his embarrassing failure to secure any new border fortification amid negotiations that ended with sending more money to Ukraine.

At USC, officials announced the university will cancel the school’s primary graduation ceremony after dozens were arrested in protests Thursday. Other universities may follow suit while some, such as the University of Michigan, are tightening restrictions on prohibited items, including flags and banners.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent a letter to college and university presidents earlier this month to “urge you to take clear, decisive action now to ensure that graduation ceremonies, events, and functions run smoothly, and that all students and their families feel safe, welcomed and celebrated.”

“As leaders in the Jewish community, we ask that you take your role seriously in making sure that Jewish students — and all students — are not robbed of a positive, memorable lifecycle event,” said the ADL.

Meanwhile, schools where demonstrations are taking place are facing financial consequences for their failure to crack down on the encampment protests. Billionaire Columbia University alum Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, said he would stop contributing to his alma mater, and Leon Cooperman, another alum, also pledged to continue a halt in donations shortly after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. According to The New York Post, other billionaire donors are considering a similar pause on university contributions. With high-dollar contributors pulling back from schools, having too few white students involved in pro-terrorist protests should be the least of their worries.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Tennessee teachers may soon carry guns, thanks to lawmakers who ignored desperate, theatrical stunts from activists


By: CORTNEY WEIL | APRIL 24, 2024

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/tennessee-teachers-may-soon-carry-guns-thanks-to-lawmakers-who-ignored-desperate-theatrical-stunts-from-activists-2667871969.html/

Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill permitting teachers and staff to carry a concealed weapon under certain conditions, despite angry theatrics from activists.

On Tuesday, hundreds of anti-gun radicals ramped up their efforts to stop the gun-rights legislation. They stormed the capitol building in Nashville, carrying signs and chanting unoriginal slogans such as “Blood on your hands!” and “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! The GOP has got to go!”

Noted Democrat agitator state Rep. Justin Pearson, who has already been expelled from the Tennessee House once for his disruptive activism, spoke in the midst of the group, railing in the cadence of a Southern preacher, “This is what democracy looks like!”

The activists, most of whom appeared to be women, then performed a protest known as a “die in,” whereby participants collectively collapse to the floor, pretending to be dead. They apparently believe the demonstration reflects the carnage of mass school shootings, though members of the public and law enforcement in the building that day instead likely enjoyed the brief moment of quiet.

The cries of the activists then reached a shrill pitch when the measure, SB1325, passed easily through the House, 68-28. Four Republicans joined all 24 Democrats in voting against the bill. Three more Republicans abstained.

“Vote them out!” one woman shrieked as a security officer escorted her and another individual out of the gallery. “Vote them out!”

The bill will now go to the desk of Republican Gov. Bill Lee. If he signs it or does nothing, it will become law. His only means of stopping the measure from taking effect would be to veto it, but he has never vetoed any piece of legislation since taking office in 2019. Thus, the bill will almost assuredly soon become the law of the state. But, cosponsor Republican state Sen. Paul Bailey clarified that it will not force any “faculty or staff member” to carry a weapon. It “simply gives” them “the option,” he said.

The bill also places several conditions on teachers and staff interested in arming themselves on campus. The following is a summary of those conditions, per CNN:

• Get an enhanced carry permit

• Get written authorization from the superintendent, principal, and the chief of the appropriate law enforcement agency

• Complete 40 hours of basic training in school policing and 40 hours of Peace Officer’s Standards and Training commission-approved training that is specific to school policing each year at the educator’s expense

• Complete a background check

• Undergo a psychological exam conducted by a Tennessee-licensed health care provider

As CNN noted, the bill passed just over a year after the horrific shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, which left six Christians — three adults and three children — dead. However, CNN neglected to report that the individual responsible for the murders identified as transgender, describing the shooter only as “a 28-year-old former student.”

CNN also incorrectly asserted that “gun violence is the leading killer of children in the United States,” which has already claimed the lives of 436 children this year. The leading killer of children in America, by far, is abortion. According to NPR, more than 1 million children died from abortion in the U.S. in 2023 alone.

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Education Chief ‘Concerned’ About Columbia Protests


By Theodore Bunker    |   Tuesday, 23 April 2024 03:19 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/miguel-cardona-columbia-university-israel/2024/04/23/id/1162122/

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on Tuesday released a statement condemning “antisemitic hate on college campuses” and expressing his concerns about the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University.

Three students were suspended from the school and multiple others were arrested last week for staging a pro-Palestinian protest in the center of the school’s campus. The demonstrators are calling for an immediate cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas and for the United States to stop sending military aid to Israel.

“Antisemitic hate on college campuses is unacceptable. I am deeply concerned by what is happening at Columbia University,” Cardona wrote in a statement on social media. “In November 2023, our Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation of Columbia involving Title VI.”

Cardona added: “While we can’t comment on pending investigations, every student deserves to feel a sense of safety and belonging at school. Hate has no place in our schools. All education leaders must stand definitively against hate, antisemitism, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim sentiment.”

Columbia previously announced that the main campus will implement hybrid learning for almost all classes, excluding programs based on the arts or that require in-person practice.

“Safety is our highest priority as we strive to support our students’ learning and all the required academic operations,” the school’s Provost Angela V. Olinto and Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway said in a statement Monday.

Theodore Bunker ✉

Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.

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“Deactivated”: Columbia Reportedly Blocks Jewish Professor from Access to Campus


JonathanTurley.org | April 23, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/23/deactivated-columbia-reportedly-blocks-jewish-professor-from-access-to-campus/

Professor Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, was reportedly denied access to the main campus on Friday as his school ID was “deactivated” during the recent protests over the Israeli-Gaza conflict. What was equally concerning is that the university did so for his own protection out of concern that, as an outspoken Jewish faculty member, he could not walk around the campus safely. It was reminiscent of the recent controversy of a man in London threatened with arrest because being “quite openly Jewish” would trigger pro-Palestinian protesters.

Davidai said that the university told him they banned him from campus because they could not ensure his safety. This followed a Columbia rabbi telling Jewish students to leave campus for their own safety.

The most basic obligation of a university is to ensure the safety of its faculty and students from physical assaults. If there is a problem on campus, it is found in those students or faculty who would threaten a Jewish professor if he were to walk on campus.

This is not part of the debate over what language is considered a threat or hateful rhetoric. This is barring a professor because his status alone makes his presence inflammatory or dangerous. I cannot imagine how the solution was barring the potential victim of religious-based bigotry and violence.

We have not heard from Columbia University on the “deactivation.” Unless Professor Davidai is lying, someone cut off his access in the university. The university owes him and the Columbia community an immediate explanation. Indeed, University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik should have issued a statement yesterday.

There are calls for Shafik to resign. That position is not helped by the silence on the barring of a faculty member. If the accounts are untrue, Shafik needs to say so. If they are true, she needs to explain the basis for this extraordinary action. I cannot imagine the basis for such a deactivation since Shafik has not been accused of any threatening conduct himself.

As major donors like Robert Kraft pull their financial support from Columbia, the school will need to respond more quickly and transparently to such controversies. That can start by reactivating the card of Professor Davidai and supplying whatever security is needed to allow him and others to walk around campus without fear of assault.

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YOU’VE GOT TO HEAR THIS BRAVE LITTLE GIRL


April 20, 2024

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“Normal to be Distressed”: UCLA Psychiatry Professors Rationalize Self-Immolation to Protest Israel


JonathTurley.org | April 19, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/19/normal-to-be-distressed-ucla-psychiatry-professors-praise-man-who-burned-himself-alive-to-protest-israeli-policy/

Drs. Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa caused a controversy recently at UCLA medical school after publicly rationalizing the self-immolation in front of Israel’s embassy of airman Aaron Bushnell in February to protest Israeli policies. Dr. Izar is listed as part of the UCLA staff. It was, according to one of the doctors, a “revolutionary suicide.”  We recently discussed a mandatory lecture at the UCLA medical school of one of the university’s “activists-in-residence” replete with anti-Semitic postings and racist rhetoric.

The professors made their comments as part of a panel on “Depathologizing Resistance” as reported  previously by The Washington Free Beacon. Dr. Izar stated that Bushnell “carried a lot of distress…but does that mean that the actions he engaged in are any less valid?” She suggested that it is “normal to be distressed when you’re seeing this level of carnage [in Gaza].”

Dr. Moustafa is quoted as saying “Psychiatry pathologizes non-pathological … reactions to a pathological environment or pathological society. It’s considered illness to choose to die in protest of the violence of war but perfectly sane to choose to die in service of the violence of war.”

HUH?????

Neither doctor ever evaluated or examined Bushnell. At the end of the discussion, Dr. Izar acknowledged that psychiatrists should not comment on people they have not evaluated.

There have been a few self-immolations in history as a form of protest, particularly the famous case of Thich Quang Duc who burned himself alive to protest the Vietnam War in 1963.

However, as a lay person, I would venture to say that it is not “normal” or “valid” to set yourself on fire in a protest. If self-immolation is the new normal, this could make the “publish or perish” culture of the faculty a bit more precarious at UCLA.

Between racist lectures from “activists-in-residence” and self-immolation rationalizations, it is not clear when UCLA medical students hunker down on such tangential matters like the central nervous system.

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Survey: A Majority of Stanford Students Support Cancelling Conservative Speakers a Year After Duncan Controversy


JonathanTurley.org | April 19, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/19/survey-a-majority-stanford-students-support-cancelling-conservative-speakers-a-year-after-duncan-controversy/

A year ago, Stanford University was embroiled in controversy after federal appellate Judge Kyle Duncan was shouted down by law students. Now a survey by FIRE has found that a majority of students believe that Duncan should have been cancelled.  Seventy-five percent believe that it is appropriate to shout down speakers.  A year ago, I wrote a critical column on the ridiculous response of Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Law School Dean Jenny Martinez who declined to punish any students. Instead all students were required to watch a widely mocked video on free speech.

The Stanford Federalist Society invited Judge Duncan of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to speak on campus. However, liberal students, including members from the National Lawyers Guild, decided that allowing a conservative judge to speak on campus is intolerable and set about to “deplatform” him by shouting him down. In this event, Duncan was planning to speak on the topic: “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter.”

A video showed that the students prevented Duncan from speaking from the very beginning. Many called him a racist while others hurled insults like one yelling “We hope your daughters get raped.” Duncan was unable to continue and asked for an administrator to assist him. Dean Steinbach then took the stage and criticized the judge for seeking to be heard despite such objections. Steinbach, who was put on leave, later doubled down in defending her widely criticized actions.

Given the tepid response of the university, it is hardly surprising that students believe that stopping others from speaking is a form of free speech.

Academics later supported the students in shutting down the judge.

  • Another 36% stated that using physical violence to shut down a campus speaker is “always,” “sometimes,” or “rarely” acceptable.
  • 75% said the same about shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking.
  • Not surprising, only six percent of conservative students now feel comfortable disagreeing with professors.

The survey is consistent with other surveys and polling in higher education.

These students have been taught for years that “speech is violence” and harmful. They have also been told by figures such as Pines that silencing others is an act of free speech. Academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech. In one instance, former CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek insisted that disrupting a speech on free speech is itself free speech.

Even schools that purportedly forbid such interruptions rarely punish students who engage in them. For example, students disrupted a Northwestern class due to a guest speaker from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (after the class had heard from an undocumented

immigrant). The university let the protesters into the room after they promised not to disrupt the class. They proceeded to stop the class and then gave interviews to the media proudly disclosing their names and celebrating the cancellation. Northwestern did nothing beyond express “disappointment.”

At Stanford, law students received a mixed message in the law school denouncing the silencing of opposing views but refusing to hold any students or groups accountable. These schools are enablers of the anti-free speech movement and the rising of a generation of speech phobics. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, academics and administrators continue to foster an environment of orthodoxy and viewpoint intolerance in higher education. This survey vividly demonstrates how schools like Stanford mouth commitments to free speech while sending a completely different message in the actual actions that it takes in the face of anti-free speech campaigns.

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