The grim antithesis to liberal education

[American_Jihad]

I tell all conservatives friends act like a liberal get the grade graduate then go tell your professors how you fucked them...
Progressive “Thought-Blockers”: Diversity
The grim antithesis to liberal education.
December 15, 2015
Bruce Thornton

Encumbered with a fossilized illiberal ideology, progressives must rely on what Robert Conquest called “thought-blockers”––empty words and phrases that comfort and rouse the party faithful, and camouflage the lack of coherent argument, consistent principles, and empirical evidence. More important, these empty words and phrases that lie at the heart of progressivism are the tools for increasing the progressives’ political power and influence, at the expense of everybody else’s freedom.

Here’s a quick catalogue of a handful of such verbal evasions: “Imperialism,” “colonialism,” “racism,” “black lives matter,” “sexism,” “war on women,” “income inequality,” “one percent,” “fair share,” “Islamophobia,” “nothing to do with Islam,” “climate change consensus,” “microagressions,” and “diversity.” Most lack any specific content or connection to historical evidence, and are devoid of consistent principle. They are ideological spells either chanted by the dim-witted or manipulated by the clever who lust for power and influence.

Take “diversity,” an important pseudo-concept that has lain at the heart of race-based college admissions and preferences since the 1978 Bakke vs. University of California Supreme Court case. In that decision, Justice Lewis Powell asserted that an undefined “diversity” could allow taking account of race in college admissions, for it was a “compelling state interest” that justified an exception to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban on discrimination by race. In 2003, in Grutter vs. Bollinger the Supreme Court reaffirmed the “compelling state interest” of diversity since it provided, as Justice Sandra Day O’Conner argued, “the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”

The Supreme Court this term is revisiting the Fischer vs. University of Texas case of 2013, which instructed the university to practice “strict scrutiny” of its use of race in admissions. But that case also left in place the dubious rationale of diversity. So once again there will be a chance for the Court finally to discard this fraudulent idea. For in the nearly 40 years since Bakke, no one has been able to demonstrate specifically and empirically the alleged “education benefits” of a diverse student body, or even to precisely define “diversity.” As the ideological uniformity of most college campuses shows, today there is little genuine diversity in higher education. This year’s outbreak of protest movements demanding adherence to a rigid racial orthodoxy at Yale, the University of Missouri, and other universities shows how that lack of intellectual and political diversity produces students intolerant of alternative points of view and free speech.

Nor is it surprising that a “commitment to diversity” ends up institutionalizing an oppressive uniformity. The “diversity” most colleges are concerned with is the superficial variety of race or ethnicity, an old Jim Crow-assumption that one member of a minority is pretty much the same as another. Thus even the extensive diversity within a racial or ethnic category––regional or socio-economic or confessional differences, for example––is ignored. Worse yet, not all diverse groups get the same preferential treatment. Asians, in fact, are punished for their superior work ethic by having the bar of admission raised significantly. Less privileged white applicants get little credit for their difficult circumstances. On the contrary, during the Fisher oral arguments the lawyer for the university argued that an affluent black applicant increased “diversity,” with the implication that a white working class applicant would not.

...

The result has been the ridiculous spectacles we have been witnessing on college campuses, where craven administrators have appeased and apologized to callow undergraduates who violate every canon of civilized discourse and free speech. More important, they represent the grim antithesis to liberal education. Rather than the “free play of the mind on all subjects,” as Matthew Arnold famously put it––the search for truth and coherent argument uninhibited by restraints, whether formal censorship or informal subject notions of offense––today’s campuses are rigidly orthodox, intolerant of dissent, and willing to use or threaten force to impose their ideology on others. They evoke philosopher Karl Popper’s attempt to argue with a Nazi Party member, who responded, “What, you want to argue? I don’t argue, I shoot.”

And thus does the abuse of language sow the seeds of intolerance and tyranny.


Progressive “Thought-Blockers”: Diversity

 

[Programmer]

I think both sides indulge in this. See reductionism. I suspect the hand of political consultants.

 

[September]

Encumbered with a fossilized... ...ideology... ..._____ rely on “thought-blockers”––empty words and phrases that comfort and rouse the party faithful, and camouflage the lack of coherent argument, consistent principles, and empirical evidence. More important, these empty words and phrases... ...are the tools for increasing... ...political power and influence, at the expense of everybody else’s freedom.

​

Among the most reductive of all these words are the terms "good" and "evil"...

​

 

[Mr. H.]

In my day, we just smoked weed and listened to music.

Then came a knock on my dormitory door... there he stood. Michael Sharp. A 6'4" black guy from East St. Louis.

 

[American_Jihad]

Why Academic Freedom Trumps Social Justice
The fight for the soul of the American university.
December 18, 2015
Dr. David Deming

Last year, undergraduate Sandra Korn initiated a furor when she authored an article for the Harvard Crimson newspaper arguing that academic freedom should be discarded in favor of social justice. Citing the example of Richard Herrnstein's research on racial differences in intelligence, Korn posed the question: "if our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of 'academic freedom'"?

Why, indeed. One reason might be that the entire concept of social justice is hopelessly ambiguous. As early as the fifth century BC, Greek philosophers demonstrated that any attempt to define abstract moral quantities such as justice, truth, or courage was doomed from the outset. Plato's most famous work, The Republic, is devoted to an exploration of the nature of justice. The conclusion is that everyone defines justice to be what he perceives to be in his own self-interest. The standard of "justice" is no standard at all, because it has no objective existence. To declare that one is for "justice" is nothing more than an assertion than one is for oneself.

Ms. Korn is hardly the first person to make an argument against toleration. Her views were anticipated in the fifth century by that most influential of the Christian Fathers, Augustine of Hippo. In a letter to a colleague, Augustine confessed that he had once made the mistake of embracing toleration. But experience had taught him the folly of tolerating heretics and eschewing coercion. "The thing to be considered when anyone is coerced," Augustine explained, "is not the mere fact of the coercion, but the nature of that to which he is coerced, whether it be good or bad." If someone had truth on their side, persecution was entirely justified. Like Ms. Korn, Augustine was one of those exceptional individuals blessed with an infallible talent for discerning right from wrong.

Let us concede the logic of the argument. If a viewpoint is entirely wrong and bad it ought to be suppressed. Why should we have academic freedom if it allows not only the good to flourish, but also the pernicious and wicked? Why not, as Korn advocated, simply adopt a policy of promoting what is good, just, and righteous? The answer is that twenty-five hundred years of experience in Western Civilization have taught us that it's impossible to differentiate between right and wrong in an absolute and objective manner.

...

It is concerning that a plea for intolerance comes from the most august of our institutions of higher education. How did this happen? American universities have become politicized. In recent decades we have witnessed the rise of "studies" departments in our colleges that are not so much devoted to inquiry as to the promulgation of ideologies. We now have the spectacle of a professor at the University of Iowa suspended, in part, because she suggested to her students that low retention rates for African-American students could be attributed to poor grades. The students, en masse, declared this idea to be "academically irresponsible, morally abhorrent, and patently untrue." Instead of rebutting the argument, they demanded that their professor be removed from the class.

It is distressing that more institutions have not chosen to emulate the University of Chicago, an institution that has long been preeminent in its dedication to free speech and inquiry. In 1967, the Kalven Report noted that it was inherent in the very mission and design of a university to create discontent. More recently, Chicago reaffirmed its commitment to academic freedom by noting that it was improper for their administration to "shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive." These statements of principle ought to be self-evident in any academic or intellectual community. Unfortunately, the University of Chicago is an exception in a sea of indifference. Faculty are largely apathetic, and administrators find appeasement to be more expedient than explanation and defense. This is a crisis of identity. If American universities do not understand their proper function and role they will undergo an ugly transformation into second-rate political associations.

Why Academic Freedom Trumps Social Justice

 

[Two Thumbs]

Texas U said they would take the top 10% from any Texas HS

you were automatically in.

shortly after doing this, Texas fell, sharply, on academic scales, enough that 60 Minutes did a special on it.

turns out that a minority girl in a school of mostly minorities was eligible with a B while a white girl in a mostly white school was not with a greater then 4.0.

the minority girl was at least kind enough to note that is was partially not cool.

imagine being told that all your hard work is meaningless

then imagine being told that "we know you couldn't make it in, so we are going to let you in"

 

[American_Jihad]

2015: The Year of Self-Criticism for Leftist Speech Codes?
The New Left's monstrous movement turns on its own -- but it may be too late to reverse course.
December 23, 2015
Mary Grabar

In 2015, leftists in the media and academia began criticizing the leftist mobs seeking to shut them down. Kirsten Powers, the left-of-center commentator at Fox News, came out with a book titled, The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech.

Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis, after being slapped with a Title IX lawsuit for her essay “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” made it to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “2015 Influence List.” The 1972 law was intended to protect against sexual discrimination and misconduct. Kipnis’s crime was to criticize new consensual-relations codes governing professor-student dating. For opining that the codes infantilized students and increased the power of administrators, she was accused of creating a hostile environment and was greeted by mattress-carrying protestors (following Columbia art student, Emma Sulkowicz who claimed an ex-boyfriend raped her).

After the kangaroo court proceedings, Kipnis wrote “My Title IX Inquisition” for the Chronicle, expressing surprise that students would protest someone like herself, a feminist who hadn’t sexually assaulted anyone. Kipnis had assumed that “academic freedom would prevail.”

“The whole thing seemed symbolically incoherent,” she mused, claiming that most of her academic colleagues, including “feminists, progressives, minorities, and those who identify as gay or queer,” live “in fear of some classroom incident spiraling into professional disaster.”

This rang true. A piece in Vox titled “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Students Terrify Me” by an anonymous professor had gone viral.

Kipnis noted, “It’s astounding how aggressive students’ assertions of vulnerability have gotten in the past few years. Emotional discomfort is regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be remediated.”

Todd Gitlin, proud veteran leader of the 1960s “youth movement,” also criticized the youth, after some students at Columbia had proposed that syllabi contain “trigger warnings.” He told them “You Are Here to Be Disturbed.” By “here” he meant the college classroom, a place where many veterans of the 1960s campus takeovers found themselves comfortably ensconced with tenure. Gitlin himself is at Columbia. In character with those of his generation, he referred back to the “changes for good” they had instituted, including recognizing that speech acts can lead to a hostile environment and accordingly changing word usage, for example, replacing “girl” with “woman,” and “Negro” with “African-American.” But, Gitlin warned, that does not justify “censorious policy.”

Kirsten Powers, who was born at the height of the “youth movement,” in 1969, believes the grizzled veterans, and writes, “While watching the illiberal left in action, it’s easy to forget that it was the political left that championed free speech in America. During the Vietnam War era, the targeting of left-wing anti-war activists at the University of California-Berkeley for their dissent launched what came to be known as ‘The Free Speech Movement.’”

Powers takes the self-defined “free speech movement” at Berkeley as true to its name, perpetuating myths promulgated in school lessons and in the media—by veterans of the movement, Todd Gitlin, being one of the most influential. What we are seeing today as we close out 2015 with the forced or attempted ouster of insufficiently politically correct faculty and administrators, is a continuation of the policies of the 1960s New Left.

“Silencing” is in the DNA of the New Left and its progeny, today’s student protestors.

Mario Savio, the Berkeley student credited with beginning the free speech movement, admitted that the issue of “free speech” was a “pretext” to “arouse the students against the existing role of the university.” That existing role is the search for truth through reasoned debate and evidence, and the appreciation for higher and beautiful things.

The acquiescence to Savio’s demands to use university space for political mobilizing led to waves of student protests. But “debates” were conducted through bullhorns. Negotiations were conducted by commandeering buildings and taking hostages. Scientific labs and scholarly papers were destroyed. People were hurt, sometimes killed.

The goal was to subvert the academy, and its methods, and make it into an adjunct for activism. Todd Gitlin easily segued from leader of the largest student activist group, SDS, to teaching a self-glorifying history of the SDS. History professor Howard Zinn did the same. Today, City University history professor Angus Johnston describes himself as both a “historian and advocate of American student organizing.”

In his recent article in the Chronicle, “Student Protests, Then and Now,” Johnston attributes the resurgence of student protest to racial discrimination, sexual assault and harassment, and rising tuition and debt. He and the student protestors, however, give little empirical evidence of discrimination or harassment. He states, “The origins of today’s student complaints are deep and in many cases intractable, and the more accustomed activists become to protesting, the more readily they will mobilize in response to new provocation.” Indeed.

...

2015: The Year of Self-Criticism for Leftist Speech Codes?

 

[American_Jihad]

Left Tries to Shut Down Shapiro
So much for free speech.
2.25.2016
News
Brian Lilley

Video
...

Free speech is not so alive and well on campus. An attempt by conservative pundit, columnist and author Ben Shapiro to give a speech at California State University at Los Angeles resulted in loud, near violent protests, a pulled fire alarm, and Shapiro being escorted from campus after giving his speech.

The speech, titled When Diversity Becomes a Problem, was arranged by the Young America Foundation. It was canceled by the university in the name of diversity before being allowed to go ahead on Thursday afternoon. The decision didn't sit well with the organized campus left, who tried to storm the event to prevent Shapiro from speaking.
...

Video

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Shortly after Shapiro began his speech a fire alarm was pulled.

The local ABC affiliate reports that Shapiro was able to speak for about an hour and take questions before being escorted off the campus.

...

Video

Left Tries to Shut Down Shapiro

 

[American_Jihad]

Harvard Students Demand Right Not to Sit Next to Anyone Who Opposes Abortion
March 30, 2016
Daniel Greenfield

Welcome to Harvard. Try not to have any politically incorrect opinions.

In a class I attended earlier this semester, a large portion of the first meeting was devoted to compiling a list of rules for class discussion. A student contended that as a woman, she would be unable to sit across from a student who declared that he was strongly against abortion, and the other students in the seminar vigorously defended this declaration. The professor remained silent.

How long until she refuses to sit in the same class with someone who opposes abortion? And then other students join her "protest" and scream that the university isn't hearing their pain. And then go on a hunger strike?

This kind of crybullying worked very well at Mizzou and Yale. So it's only going to escalate... and escalate.

...

Harvard Students Demand Right Not to Sit Next to Anyone Who Opposes Abortion

 

[Two Thumbs]

Harvard Students Demand Right Not to Sit Next to Anyone Who Opposes Abortion
March 30, 2016
Daniel Greenfield

Welcome to Harvard. Try not to have any politically incorrect opinions.

In a class I attended earlier this semester, a large portion of the first meeting was devoted to compiling a list of rules for class discussion. A student contended that as a woman, she would be unable to sit across from a student who declared that he was strongly against abortion, and the other students in the seminar vigorously defended this declaration. The professor remained silent.

How long until she refuses to sit in the same class with someone who opposes abortion? And then other students join her "protest" and scream that the university isn't hearing their pain. And then go on a hunger strike?

This kind of crybullying worked very well at Mizzou and Yale. So it's only going to escalate... and escalate.

...

Harvard Students Demand Right Not to Sit Next to Anyone Who Opposes Abortion

this is proof that leftist are mentally handicapped.

not an insult or an exaggeration

if you literally can't sit near someone with a different opinion than your own, you are dysfunctional.

 

[Moonglow]

Well I don't know about the left, but there is just whey too many spoiled brats running around, demanding the world bend to their will like Mommy and Daddy does......See what you get with being the wealthiest nation?

 

[Two Thumbs]

Well I don't know about the left, but there is just whey too many spoiled brats running around, demanding the world bend to their will like Mommy and Daddy does......See what you get with being the wealthiest nation?

leftist made punishing your kids a crime, so now we have to deal with the results of their ignorance.

 

[Moonglow]

Well I don't know about the left, but there is just whey too many spoiled brats running around, demanding the world bend to their will like Mommy and Daddy does......See what you get with being the wealthiest nation?

leftist made punishing your kids a crime, so now we have to deal with the results of their ignorance.

Actually it was abuse by several teachers..but you have it your whey, you seem to need to find something to blame the left for...Which you guys try to generalize and associate an oxymoron de jur euphemism of the word leftist.. I mean, you guys have stretched it so far to include all area codes...

 

[Two Thumbs]

Well I don't know about the left, but there is just whey too many spoiled brats running around, demanding the world bend to their will like Mommy and Daddy does......See what you get with being the wealthiest nation?

leftist made punishing your kids a crime, so now we have to deal with the results of their ignorance.

Actually it was abuse by several teachers..but you have it your whey, you seem to need to find something to blame the left for...Which you guys try to generalize and associate an oxymoron de jur euphemism of the word leftist.. I mean, you guys have stretched it so far to include all area codes...

abused or taught manners?

the left can't tell the difference

 

[American_Jihad]

Well I don't know about the left, but there is just whey too many spoiled brats running around, demanding the world bend to their will like Mommy and Daddy does......See what you get with being the wealthiest nation?

leftist made punishing your kids a crime, so now we have to deal with the results of their ignorance.

Actually it was abuse by several teachers..but you have it your whey, you seem to need to find something to blame the left for...Which you guys try to generalize and associate an oxymoron de jur euphemism of the word leftist.. I mean, you guys have stretched it so far to include all area codes...

STFU moron we all see your intelligence in yo avatar, by the way we listened to all your leftist ilk whining for the last 15 years about Bush...

 

[American_Jihad]

Groupthink in Academia: Moving Further to the Left
No welcome mat for academic dissidents.
April 1, 2016
Jack Kerwick

...

Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik notes that the leftward trends among faculty have persisted for a long time. George Mason University economics professor, Daniel B. Klein, along with Charlotta Stern, note that in 1972, the ratio of Democrat to Republican in humanities and liberal arts departments was about four-to-one. Today, it is more than eight-to-one. Why?

According to Klein and Stern, academia has the characteristic “antecedent conditions” and “symptoms” of the phenomenon known as “groupthink.”

Academics tend to constitute an “insular” and (ideologically) “homogenous” group that, as such, is self-perpetuating, for academics, presiding as they do over decisions pertaining to who will and won’t be permitted to join their insiders’ club, are disposed to admit those who think like themselves.

Moreover, academics labor under the “illusion of invulnerability” and they share a “belief in the inherent morality of the group” to which they belong. However, “heightened uniformity makes the group overconfident.” Consequently, “members take their ideas to greater extremes” but, “facing less testing and challenge,” their “habits of thought become more foolhardy and close-minded.”

This closed-mindedness is solidified via “collective rationalizations.” The authors explain: “Academic professions develop elaborate scholastic dogmas to justify the omission of challenging or intractable ideas.” Thus, words like “‘normative,’ ‘ideological,’ or ‘advocacy’” are used to sweepingly dismiss viewpoints that depart from the mentality of the herd.

Klein and Stern cite Irving Janis, a scholar of groupthink, who remarks that the “reliance on consensual validation” tends to “replace individual critical thinking and reality-testing.”

Another sign that academics have succumbed to groupthink is their propensity to indulge in “stereotypes of Out-Groups.” Again, Klein and Stern allude to Janis: “One of the symptoms of groupthink is the members’ persistence in conveying to each other the cliché and oversimplified images of political enemies embodied in long-standing ideological stereotypes.” Left-leaning academics, as anyone who has spent any amount of time around them can attest, are guilty as sin in this regard: critics are summarily disregarded as “conservatives” or “right-wingers” who, in turn, are associated with the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, and so forth.

Conservative and classical liberal thinkers—like, say, Russell Kirk, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Michael Oakeshott, and Edmund Burke—are rarely, if ever, considered.

“Self-censorship” and “direct pressure on dissenters” are two other “symptoms” of groupthink—and the academic world exemplifies them in spades.

Self-censorship leads to “preference falsification” as academics that disagree with the consensus, rather than express their views, choose instead to go along to get along. Those who dare to step out of line are coerced, in so many ways, to conform. “As the group’s beliefs become more defective [questionable], the group becomes more sensitive to tension, more intolerant of would-be challengers and miscreants.” Klein and Stern add: “This development leads to tighter vetting and expulsion, more uniformity, more intellectual deterioration, and more intolerance.”

It is not toward women and minorities that philosophy and other fields in the humanities are unwelcoming but, rather, those who refuse to endorse leftist groupthink.

Groupthink in Academia: Moving Further to the Left

 

[American_Jihad]

Virginia Tech's Campaign Against Charles Murray
A textbook case study of systemic corruption in Higher Ed.
April 7, 2016
Jack Kerwick

Among the variety of other topics that it explores, my book, The American Offensive: Dispatches from the Front, discusses at length the intellectual and moral corruption that pervades much of the humanities and liberal arts in the contemporary academy.

The examples of the corruption are legion. Recently, at San Francisco State University, a white student, Cory Goldstein, was accosted, harangued, and assaulted by a black woman—a university employee—for…wearing dreadlocks.

Evidently, Goldstein “micro-aggressed” against this woman specifically and blacks generally, for he is guilty of “cultural appropriation,” of appropriating a hair style that is distinctive of “black culture.”

“Micro-aggressions,” “cultural appropriation”—these are just some of the terms of the esoteric insider-speak to which college students are daily exposed courtesy of their professors.

To repeat, college students are taught to view their experiences in terms of the template of grievance imposed upon them by their instructors.

In a sane world, a world within which people hadn’t forgotten that the university is an institution whose raison d’etre has been the promotion of Western civilization, the ideological abuses to which the academic world has been subjected would constitute nothing less than an epic scandal.

In a sane world, taxpayers wouldn’t part with one red cent to subsidize this perversion of the university’s historic mission.

But we’re not living in a sane world.

Recently, Charles Murray—long-time scholar and co-author of The Bell Curve, a study of IQ and its practical implications that was published over 20 years ago—was invited to speak at Virginia Tech University. When, however, certain students got wind of this information, they demanded that the university disinvite him.

Black and white leftist student activists issued a statement in which they charge Murray with being a “social Darwinist” and an agent of “hate” and “prejudice:”

“At the time when rising racism, misogyny and anti-intellectualism have moved to the forefront of our national consciousness,” the statement reads, “there is no better place than a college campus from which to focus our efforts against the voices of prejudice and hate[.]”

Murray’s “social Darwinist take on intelligence, ability and morality—and his assertion of the inherent inferiority of non-whites and women—do nothing but promote a white supremacist agenda, cast in the guise of ‘scientific discourse.’”

Containing as it does all of the vapid, but emotionally-charged and politically effective, buzzwords—“racism,” “misogyny,” “prejudice,” “hate,” “social Darwinist,” “white supremacist”—this statement, besides being poorly written, is a classic textbook example of precisely the sort of “anti-intellectualism” of which it convicts Murray.

Yet it is no less insubstantial and ideologically-driven than the statement issued by the faculty of the Africana Studies Program. The latter accused Murray of being “engaged in a mission to use discredited pseudoscience to perpetuate the subordination of people of African descent, Latino/as, Native American Indians, the poor, women and the disabled.”

Murray’s thoughts served to promote a narrative that promised to “visit violence upon marginalized populations—recalling the history of forced sterilization, unjust institutionalization and incarceration, and denial of basic human rights.”


...

Virginia Tech's Campaign Against Charles Murray

 

[American_Jihad]

Be nice to see a hummer go threw there about 70mph...
Campus Lunacy
Inside the world of the Fascist Left's intimidation tactics.
April 11, 2016
Walter Williams

[Learn about the Freedom Center's Campaign: Stop The Jew Hatred on Campus.]

...

College administrators are short on guts and backbone. But there is a glimmer of hope every now and then. Young Americans for Liberty at Rutgers University invited Breitbart News' technology editor, Milo Yiannopoulos, who is a homosexual, to give a lecture. Yiannopoulos describes his lecture tour as "The Most Dangerous Faggot Tour." His lecture was titled "How the Progressive Left Is Destroying American Education." There were about 400 students who attended his lecture, plus there were protesters who smeared themselves with fake blood. Despite student opposition, Rutgers University President Robert Barchi called on his university to stand up for free speech, saying, "That freedom is fundamental to our university, our society, and our nation." That was also Yiannopoulos' message, namely: "The purpose of university is to interrogate new ideas, discover ourselves, meet new people and explore the world. What it ought to be is a free space without trigger warnings. In my view, anyone who asks for a trigger warning should be expelled. What they've demonstrated is that they are incapable of being exposed to new ideas."

Then there is Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, who bravely told his students, "This is not a day care. It's a university."

Stanford University's board of trustees is to be congratulated for not caving in to the diversity crowd in its selection of highly distinguished scientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne as university president. Students furiously denounced the choice because Tessier-Lavigne is a white man. The student-run Stanford Political Journal wrote: "We believe the Search Committee intended to select the best possible candidate, and, of course, white men should not have automatically been precluded from the search. However ... it would have been fitting for Stanford to select a president that deviates from the traditional white, straight, male mode."

The University of Missouri System's board of curators is also to be congratulated for firing professor Melissa Click, who was videotaped intimidating a student reporter during demonstrations that led to the cowardly resignations of the system's president, Timothy M. Wolfe, and chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin. Her firing was not a result of administrator and faculty decency. Private donations had plummeted, and Missouri lawmakers were proposing an $8 million cut in the system's budget. That proves what I have always held: Nothing opens the closed minds of administrators better than the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut.

Campus Lunacy

 

[American_Jihad]

Campus Lunacy, Part II
The student "renaming" craze.
April 13, 2016
Walter Williams

[Learn about the Freedom Center's Campaign: Stop The Jew Hatred on Campus.]

...

Most universities have a women's studies program. Part of their agenda is to make sure men learn that "no" means "no" and condemn any form of sexual assault. Should campus feminists make clear that former President Bill Clinton, a womanizer and exploiter of women, is unwelcome on any campus? Should they also protest any appearance by his enabler, Hillary Clinton, who helped demonize her husband's female accusers by cracking down on "bimbo eruptions"?

Recently, Brown University changed its Columbus Day celebration to Indigenous People's Day. By the way, many cities are following suit. There may be a problem. According to publications such as Lawrence H. Keeley's "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage" and Steven A. LeBlanc and Katherine E. Register's "Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage," we may have to rethink just how noble and peaceful American Indians were prior to Christopher Columbus. American Indians waged brutal tribal wars long before Europeans showed up. The evidence is especially strong in the American Southwest, where archaeologists have found numerous skeletons with projectile points embedded in them and other marks of violence. Comanche Indians were responsible for some of the most brutal slaughters in the history of Western America.

Our military has a number of deadly aircraft named with what the nation's leftist might consider racial slights, such as the Comanche, Apache, Iroquois, Kiowa, Lakota and the more peaceful Mescalero. Should they be renamed? Our military might also be seen as disrespecting the rights and dignity of animals. Should military death-dealing aircraft named after peace-loving animals — such as the Eagle, Falcon, Raptor, Cobra and Dolphin — be renamed? Renaming deadly aircraft might receive a sympathetic ear from our politically correct secretary of defense, Ashton Carter.

Victor Davis Hanson says that changing history through renaming is nothing new. Back in the Roman days, the practice was called damnatio memoriae, a Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory." It was practiced when the Romans wanted to erase the memory of people they deemed dishonorable; it was as if they had never existed.

Campus Lunacy, Part II

 

[American_Jihad]

To Sabotage the Future, Lie about the Past
Northwestern University Scholar Dario Fernandez-Morera tilts at the windmill of the Andalusian Myth – and the myth topples.
April 26, 2016
Danusha V. Goska

I am in awe of The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain. Author Dario Fernandez-Morera, a Northwestern University Professor and Harvard PhD, argues that elite scholars are peddling a myth – that Islamic Spain, c. 711 AD -1492 AD, was a paradise. Fernandez-Morera's job is to expose historical realities. The main text is 240 pages. There are 95 pages of notes, a bibliography and an index. It was published in February, 2016 by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

This book is an intellectual boxing match. The author shreds not just one opponent, but a series of intellectual bigots, prostitutes and manipulators of the common man. Fernandez-Morera's biceps gleam as his lightning footwork and peerless preparedness dazzle. Our hero risks much, from hate mail to non-person status.

The reader is plunged into vast landscapes, international intrigue, arcane customs, and timeless heroism. One envisions veiled women and bejeweled slave girls, the smoking ruins of churches, enslaved, whipped Christians forced to carry their cathedral bells to be melted down to embellish mosques, heartbreaking suffering and eventual victory.

Fernandez-Morera allows the propagandists enough rope to hang themselves. All he has to do is quote them. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, The University of Chicago, Boston University, Sarah Lawrence, Rutgers, Indiana University, Cambridge, Oxford, The University of London, NYU, Norton, Penguin, Routledge, Houghton Mifflin, the Pulitzer Committee, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Carly Fiorina, children's textbooks, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, PBS, The New York Review of Books, First Things all are in the dock, tripped up in their own false testimony. The inclusion of First Things might surprise; it is a Catholic publication. In it Christian C. Sahner praises Muslims who "exhibited a surprising degree of religious flexibility" because they waited a few decades before razing the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Damascus, rather than destroying it immediately upon arrival. Really.

What is the propagandists' motive?

Follow the money. See, for example, Giulio Meotti's "Islam Buys Out Western Academia" See also the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University. Or the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies at Cambridge University. Or the Alwaleed Centre at Edinburgh University. Or the Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at Yale. Or the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown. The whorehouse cash register overflows with petrodollars.

Follow the pitchforks and torches. In 2008, Sylvain Gouguenheim, a French medievalist, published Aristotle at Mont Saint-Michel, arguing that the West is not in debt to Islam for awareness of Ancient Greek texts; most of those texts were preserved, translated, passed on and used by Christians. For that rather modest claim, Gouguenheim was subjected to an "academic exorcism."

And follow the agenda. The Middle Ages matter to propagandists for one reason only: today's projects. Al-Andalus proves that "Islam can effectively navigate a pluralistic world." Al-Andalus proves that there are no "essential differences" between Islam and the West. Al-Andalus proves that Israel can be replaced with a "Palestinian model in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims can live again under [Islam's] protection." And of course the Ground Zero Mosque was dubbed "Cordoba House" after a caliphate in Muslim Spain.

What tactics do the propagandists use in their publications?

They smear Christians. In one Oxford University Press book, Christians are "a fanatical fringe" resistant to "benefitting" from the great good fortune of living in Muslim Spain. How do the propagandists deal with the forty-eight Christian Martyrs of Cordoba? They mock them, pathologize them, and blame them for their own deaths. These dead were "troublemakers," "self-immolators," guilty of "extremism" for preferring death as Christians to life as Muslims. They were masochists who really wanted to be tortured and killed.

Pelagius was a young Christian boy desired by Abd-al-Rahman III. Pelagius, aka Pelayo, resisted. Islam's scholarly apologists don't condemn the caliph's desire to rape a child. They waste no time respecting the boy's pain – a pain that is representational of countless other kuffar boys raped, castrated, and killed, all in line with the rules of jihad. Rather they condemn Christians for "demonizing Muslims" and having hang-ups about man-boy sodomy. In this academic deflection, one hears echoes of the blame-the-victim response to the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's, 2016, or the 2015 order to US soldiers to ignore "boy play" in Afghanistan – a "boy play" that in one instance involved a child sex slave chained to a bed. "We can hear them screaming," one Marine reported. Respect their culture, he was told.

Another scholarly method of obeying Saudi paymasters and distorting the past: leave out significant details. One book, published by an Ivy League University Press, "makes no mention of stoning, female circumcision, crucifixion, beheadings, or sexual slavery."

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To Sabotage the Future, Lie about the Past