freebeacon
Rachel Frommer
December 20, 2017 5:00 am
One-third employ severely restrictive policies
Over 90 percent of the America's top colleges maintain policies regulating campus free speech, with one third employing severely restrictive policies, according to a study released Tuesday.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reported in its annual end-of-year analysis on campus speech and harassment policies—what FIRE terms "speech codes"—found that over half of the 461 schools included in FIRE's study continue to use methods that have some "chilling effect" on expression.
One in nine campuses continue to preserve "free speech zones," or limited strips of campus to which administrators at public institutions restrict demonstrations, pamphleting, and other public expressions of views, according to the report. These zones can make up less than 1 percent of a campus, according to FIRE.
Samantha Harris, vice president of policy research at FIRE, said such policy is "blatantly unconstitutional."
The U.S. Justice Department has publicly supported students who have filed suits against their colleges zoning guidelines, and the state legislatures of Colorado, Missouri, Arizona, Virginia, Kentucky, and Utah have all approved bills this year banning zones at public universities.
Yet, there has been no tidal wave in eradicating the zones policies.
"Schools, understandably, need to maintain order, and prior restrain policies are attractive and effective," said Harris. "It's the path of least resistance."
Students should be on alert for language in student handbooks banning "offensive speech," a rule banning all spontaneous protest activity, or requirement that students receive prior approval for all club activity.
"The more broad, the more restrictive," Harris offered as a rule of thumb.
Harris urged schools to prioritize protecting speech with a content-neutral statement, like the one issued at the University of Chicago in 2012 and since adopted by 27 other schools or faculty bodies.
But, crucially, universities must then actually follow through. Even when administrators take free speech promises, they can fail to stand by that principle when the heat is on, said Harris.
She pointed to the infamous 2015 incident at Yale, where a pair of married academics who urged students not to be easily offended by Halloween costumes were ultimately forced out of the institution not by official fiat, but due to student pressure.
"You want to be making your position on free speech known before a crisis," said Harris. "Adopt the ‘Chicago Statement' as a first principle, but then put it in all of the official materials at orientation, and integrate it into other policies."
Harris said an increasing number of schools received FIRE's "green light," the group's recognition of a school without its anti-free speech policies.
Since the report was completed, another two schools have been awarded the "green" rating, bringing the total up to 37.
"There's a lot of work left to be done," said Harris. "But we don't want to make perfect the enemy of good."
This entry was posted in Culture and tagged College Campuses, First Amendment. Bookmark the permalink.
Thank You Ms Frommer and Free Beacon
Showing posts with label Academic Cesspools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Academic Cesspools. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Conservative Prof Loses Job After Spat With UCLA Admins
campusreform
Anthony Gockowski Investigative Reporter Jun 29, 2017 at 1:13 PM EDT
Keith Fink had objected to having enrollment in his popular free speech course slashed dramatically, a provocation he believes was contrived in anticipation of his upcoming "Excellence Review."
Three of the faculty members on the review committee were flagged by Fink in advance for potentially harboring bias against him, and the committee ultimately deadlocked 3-3-3.
The tie-breaking vote was left to Social Sciences Dean Laura Gomez, who took several weeks before deciding that Fink's contract would not be renewed.
A popular conservative professor has been fired by the University of California, Los Angeles following an “excellence review” that his defenders say was marred by “politically-motivated” bias.
Keith Fink taught as a communications lecturer at UCLA since 2008, long enough to prompt a routine “excellence review,” though as Campus Reform previously reported, at least two members of the faculty committee had demonstrated prior bias against him, including Department Chair Kerri Johnson.
"Keith will continue to fight for these principles that he holds dear."
[RELATED: Tenured conservative prof retires due to liberal persecution]
Johnson, in fact, arbitrarily limited the number of students who could enroll in his popular free-speech course, repeatedly placing caps on enrollment.
Still, the faculty committee deadlocked in a 3-3 vote on Fink’s case, leaving his fate in the hands of Social Sciences Dean Laura Gomez, who announced Tuesday that his contract would not be renewed because his teaching did “not meet the standard of excellence.”
However, Fink had routinely received glowing end-of-term course evaluations from students, earning an average “Instructor Rating” of 8.17 and an average “Course Rating” of 8.14 on a nine-point scale, both of which figures his colleagues called “very high” compared to the departmental average in their review letter.
[RELATED: Judge upholds Marquette’s suspension of conservative prof]
According to copies of end-of-term evaluations obtained by Campus Reform, students consistently described Fink as “one of the best instructors,” the “epitome of a role model,” and “inspiring and life-changing.”
In their letter to Dean Gomez, the faculty committee responsible for reviewing Fink’s teaching even conceded that “these indices skewed toward a favorable view of Mr. Fink’s teaching effectiveness,” but expressed concern over the “rigor” of his assessment of students, and the “climate fostered within the classroom.”
In response to the faculty committee’s letter, though, Fink demonstrated that his assessment of students was comparable to most other professors in his department.
Nonetheless, Gomez, in a five-sentence letter, notified Fink of his termination Tuesday, a move Fink’s teaching assistant Andrew Litt described as lacking “explanation likely because there are no credible arguments to be made that support the conclusion that Keith is not excellent.”
Indeed, Gomez’s letter offers little explanation as to the rationale behind Fink’s termination apart from stating that his “teaching does not meet the standard of excellence.”
Litt told Campus Reform that “no reason makes sense other than the fact that this review has been conducted in a politically-motivated viewpoint-discriminatory manner from the outset.”
[RELATED: Students say they feel ‘threatened’ by conservative views]
“Keith will continue to fight for these principles that he holds dear,” Litt added. “His termination is an injustice to the students and the taxpayers of the state, a threat to all teachers and academic freedom, and a slap in the face to the notion of due process and fundamental fairness.”
Campus Reform reached out to Gomez for elaboration on her decision, and will update this article if a response is received.
Thank You Mr Gockowski and Campus Reform.
Anthony Gockowski Investigative Reporter Jun 29, 2017 at 1:13 PM EDT
Keith Fink had objected to having enrollment in his popular free speech course slashed dramatically, a provocation he believes was contrived in anticipation of his upcoming "Excellence Review."
Three of the faculty members on the review committee were flagged by Fink in advance for potentially harboring bias against him, and the committee ultimately deadlocked 3-3-3.
The tie-breaking vote was left to Social Sciences Dean Laura Gomez, who took several weeks before deciding that Fink's contract would not be renewed.
A popular conservative professor has been fired by the University of California, Los Angeles following an “excellence review” that his defenders say was marred by “politically-motivated” bias.
Keith Fink taught as a communications lecturer at UCLA since 2008, long enough to prompt a routine “excellence review,” though as Campus Reform previously reported, at least two members of the faculty committee had demonstrated prior bias against him, including Department Chair Kerri Johnson.
"Keith will continue to fight for these principles that he holds dear."
[RELATED: Tenured conservative prof retires due to liberal persecution]
Johnson, in fact, arbitrarily limited the number of students who could enroll in his popular free-speech course, repeatedly placing caps on enrollment.
Still, the faculty committee deadlocked in a 3-3 vote on Fink’s case, leaving his fate in the hands of Social Sciences Dean Laura Gomez, who announced Tuesday that his contract would not be renewed because his teaching did “not meet the standard of excellence.”
However, Fink had routinely received glowing end-of-term course evaluations from students, earning an average “Instructor Rating” of 8.17 and an average “Course Rating” of 8.14 on a nine-point scale, both of which figures his colleagues called “very high” compared to the departmental average in their review letter.
[RELATED: Judge upholds Marquette’s suspension of conservative prof]
According to copies of end-of-term evaluations obtained by Campus Reform, students consistently described Fink as “one of the best instructors,” the “epitome of a role model,” and “inspiring and life-changing.”
In their letter to Dean Gomez, the faculty committee responsible for reviewing Fink’s teaching even conceded that “these indices skewed toward a favorable view of Mr. Fink’s teaching effectiveness,” but expressed concern over the “rigor” of his assessment of students, and the “climate fostered within the classroom.”
In response to the faculty committee’s letter, though, Fink demonstrated that his assessment of students was comparable to most other professors in his department.
Nonetheless, Gomez, in a five-sentence letter, notified Fink of his termination Tuesday, a move Fink’s teaching assistant Andrew Litt described as lacking “explanation likely because there are no credible arguments to be made that support the conclusion that Keith is not excellent.”
Indeed, Gomez’s letter offers little explanation as to the rationale behind Fink’s termination apart from stating that his “teaching does not meet the standard of excellence.”
Litt told Campus Reform that “no reason makes sense other than the fact that this review has been conducted in a politically-motivated viewpoint-discriminatory manner from the outset.”
[RELATED: Students say they feel ‘threatened’ by conservative views]
“Keith will continue to fight for these principles that he holds dear,” Litt added. “His termination is an injustice to the students and the taxpayers of the state, a threat to all teachers and academic freedom, and a slap in the face to the notion of due process and fundamental fairness.”
Campus Reform reached out to Gomez for elaboration on her decision, and will update this article if a response is received.
Thank You Mr Gockowski and Campus Reform.
UC Berkley Claims Right To Suppress Speech In Legal Motion
campus reform
Peter Van Voorhis California Campus Correspondent Jun 30, 2017 at 9:22 AM EDT
The University of California, Berkeley is trying to get a judge to dismiss the First Amendment lawsuit filed by conservative students after the school blocked Ann Coulter from speaking.
The students allege a pattern of administrators stifling conservative speech, such as the use of a vague "high profile speaker" policy used to deny Coulter and other conservative speakers a forum on campus.
The university's motion argues that the issue is "moot" because it has promised to replace its speaker policy, and that the speech restrictions in question were "viewpoint neutral."
The University of California, Berkeley is trying to get a judge to dismiss the First Amendment lawsuit filed by conservative students after the school blocked Ann Coulter from speaking.
The suit alleges that UC administrators have systematically stifled “the speech of conservative students whose voices fall beyond the campus political orthodoxy,” claiming that Berkeley has selectively enforced a new “high profile speaker” policy in order to deny conservatives a platform on campus.
"I am happy that the university has finally realized their draconian policies need reform."
[RELATED: UC-Berkeley will not silence conservatives]
In a court document obtained by Campus Reform, attorneys for the defendants—who include UC System President Janet Napolitano and UC-Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks—petition the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to dismiss the allegations as “moot,” arguing that it has since replaced the “high profile speaker” policy, and that in any event the school was within its rights to shut down Coulter’s speech because it didn’t do so explicitly on the basis of her political viewpoints.
“The alleged restrictions were viewpoint neutral because they were not motivated by disagreement with the speaker’s viewpoint,” the attorneys assert, adding that the restrictions were also “constitutional ‘time, place, and, manner regulations’ because they were content neutral, narrowly tailored to serve the significant government interests in safety, education, and distribution of university resources, and left open ample alternative channels of communication.”
[RELATED: Berkeley riot shows conservatives aren’t welcome on campus]
Young America’s Foundation (YAF), which filed the lawsuit in conjunction with the Berkeley College Republicans, derided UC’s motion to dismiss as “bizarre” in a post on its website Thursday, pointing out that Berkeley has yet to unveil its new free speech policy and insisting that the school’s actions were “clearly viewpoint-discriminatory.”
“This weak attempt by the University of California, Berkeley to brush off their egregious free speech violations is staggering but unfortunately unsurprising given their demonstrated pattern of suppressing the First Amendment rights of conservatives on campus,” YAF spokesman Spencer Brown declared, pledging that “YAF will continue to stand up for students’ rights when their own schools engage in flagrant obstruction of free expression.”
[RELATED: Berkeley riot lays bare liberal hypocrisy on free speech]
“It is preposterous that the university is attempting to dismiss a valid lawsuit over the idea that they plan to make future policy changes,” Berkeley College Republicans member Naweed Tahmas told Campus Reform, saying he is skeptical that the new policy will be the panacea for free speech that university officials are promising.
“While I am happy that the university has finally realized their draconian policies need reform, it does not excuse them of their past actions,” Tahmas continued. “Given UC Berkeley's well-documented precedent of censoring conservative speakers, I have little faith that the university will take any substantial strides in making UC Berkeley the home of free speech again.”
[RELATED: Berkeley students want to fight fascism by banning speech]
CR President Troy Worden offered a similar assessment, saying the club is encouraged but not convinced by the school’s public statements on the matter.
“The UC Berkeley administration claims they have modified and codified their ‘high-profile’ speakers policy such that the First Amendment rights of the Berkeley College Republicans and Young America's Foundation are no longer in jeopardy,” he observed cautiously, saying the move “would be a welcome development if it does what university administrators claims it does.”
For now, though, Worden acknowledged that all conservative students can do is “await this new speakers policy” and hope it is “not aimed at shutting down conservative speech on campus.”
Spokespersons for UC-Berkeley did not respond to a request for comment from Campus Reform.
Thank Yu Mr Van Voorhis and Campus Reform.
Peter Van Voorhis California Campus Correspondent Jun 30, 2017 at 9:22 AM EDT
The University of California, Berkeley is trying to get a judge to dismiss the First Amendment lawsuit filed by conservative students after the school blocked Ann Coulter from speaking.
The students allege a pattern of administrators stifling conservative speech, such as the use of a vague "high profile speaker" policy used to deny Coulter and other conservative speakers a forum on campus.
The university's motion argues that the issue is "moot" because it has promised to replace its speaker policy, and that the speech restrictions in question were "viewpoint neutral."
The University of California, Berkeley is trying to get a judge to dismiss the First Amendment lawsuit filed by conservative students after the school blocked Ann Coulter from speaking.
The suit alleges that UC administrators have systematically stifled “the speech of conservative students whose voices fall beyond the campus political orthodoxy,” claiming that Berkeley has selectively enforced a new “high profile speaker” policy in order to deny conservatives a platform on campus.
"I am happy that the university has finally realized their draconian policies need reform."
[RELATED: UC-Berkeley will not silence conservatives]
In a court document obtained by Campus Reform, attorneys for the defendants—who include UC System President Janet Napolitano and UC-Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks—petition the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to dismiss the allegations as “moot,” arguing that it has since replaced the “high profile speaker” policy, and that in any event the school was within its rights to shut down Coulter’s speech because it didn’t do so explicitly on the basis of her political viewpoints.
“The alleged restrictions were viewpoint neutral because they were not motivated by disagreement with the speaker’s viewpoint,” the attorneys assert, adding that the restrictions were also “constitutional ‘time, place, and, manner regulations’ because they were content neutral, narrowly tailored to serve the significant government interests in safety, education, and distribution of university resources, and left open ample alternative channels of communication.”
[RELATED: Berkeley riot shows conservatives aren’t welcome on campus]
Young America’s Foundation (YAF), which filed the lawsuit in conjunction with the Berkeley College Republicans, derided UC’s motion to dismiss as “bizarre” in a post on its website Thursday, pointing out that Berkeley has yet to unveil its new free speech policy and insisting that the school’s actions were “clearly viewpoint-discriminatory.”
“This weak attempt by the University of California, Berkeley to brush off their egregious free speech violations is staggering but unfortunately unsurprising given their demonstrated pattern of suppressing the First Amendment rights of conservatives on campus,” YAF spokesman Spencer Brown declared, pledging that “YAF will continue to stand up for students’ rights when their own schools engage in flagrant obstruction of free expression.”
[RELATED: Berkeley riot lays bare liberal hypocrisy on free speech]
“It is preposterous that the university is attempting to dismiss a valid lawsuit over the idea that they plan to make future policy changes,” Berkeley College Republicans member Naweed Tahmas told Campus Reform, saying he is skeptical that the new policy will be the panacea for free speech that university officials are promising.
“While I am happy that the university has finally realized their draconian policies need reform, it does not excuse them of their past actions,” Tahmas continued. “Given UC Berkeley's well-documented precedent of censoring conservative speakers, I have little faith that the university will take any substantial strides in making UC Berkeley the home of free speech again.”
[RELATED: Berkeley students want to fight fascism by banning speech]
CR President Troy Worden offered a similar assessment, saying the club is encouraged but not convinced by the school’s public statements on the matter.
“The UC Berkeley administration claims they have modified and codified their ‘high-profile’ speakers policy such that the First Amendment rights of the Berkeley College Republicans and Young America's Foundation are no longer in jeopardy,” he observed cautiously, saying the move “would be a welcome development if it does what university administrators claims it does.”
For now, though, Worden acknowledged that all conservative students can do is “await this new speakers policy” and hope it is “not aimed at shutting down conservative speech on campus.”
Spokespersons for UC-Berkeley did not respond to a request for comment from Campus Reform.
Thank Yu Mr Van Voorhis and Campus Reform.
UC Gets Massive Funding Boost Despite Secret Slush Fund
campus reform
Dan Jackson Campus Reform Intern Jul 03, 2017 at 11:55 AM EDT
The University of California system received a $131.2 million funding increase in this year's state budget, just months after a State Auditor's report found more than $175 million in undisclosed reserves held by the Office of the President.
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has placed a hold on $50 million of that increase, however, until the system implements all 33 recommendations in the audit report and agrees to greater budgetary transparency going forward.
The University of California system is receiving a substantial increase in state funding despite a recent audit finding that administrators had been hiding a $175 million surplus from lawmakers.
According to The Daily Bruin, the 2017-2018 budget approved last week by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown boosts funding for the UC system by $131.2 million, in keeping with a deal struck with UC President Janet Napolitano in 2015 that forestalled tuition hikes for two years.
"It’s clear that the [UC system] can pay for additional students out of their discretionary budget."
That agreement, however, had been premised on the system’s claims that it would be forced to raise tuition by as much as five percent each year for five years without a massive infusion of cash, but an audit ordered by state lawmakers earlier this year appears to cast doubt on that assertion.
[RELATED: UC to investigate claims that Napolitano tampered with audit]
The State Auditor’s report released on April 25 found “more than $175 million in undisclosed restricted and discretionary reserves” amassed surreptitiously by the UC Office of the President, which even created a secret budget to spend some of the reserves on things like inflated administrative salaries and improvements to the president’s residence.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that state lawmakers have been sharply critical of the slush fund, pointing out that $175 million would have been enough to enroll 35,000 students in UC schools.
“There is more money out there to fund more California students at UC,” declared Democratic State Assemblyman Phil Ting. “It’s clear that the Office of the President themselves can pay for additional students out of their discretionary budget.”
Napolitano responded to the audit by saying that she welcomes its “constructive input” and plans to implement the recommendations contained in the report, though she also objected that it “fundamentally and unfairly mischaracterizes UCOP’s budget practices and processes.”
[RELATED:Lawmakers propose defunding Evergreen State amid protests]
UC spokesperson Claire Doan confirmed in a statement to the Bruin that the system plans to implement all 33 recommendations contained in the State Auditor’s report, but Gov. Brown is looking for extra assurance by placing a hold on $50 million of the recent funding increase.
The monies will only be released once the UC system meets several conditions, including full adoption of the State Auditor’s recommendations, curtailment of benefits for some administrators, and a commitment to greater transparency in its budget process.
Even with the additional funding, however, tuition at UC schools is already slated to rise.
Thank You Mr Jackson and Campus Reform.
Dan Jackson Campus Reform Intern Jul 03, 2017 at 11:55 AM EDT
The University of California system received a $131.2 million funding increase in this year's state budget, just months after a State Auditor's report found more than $175 million in undisclosed reserves held by the Office of the President.
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has placed a hold on $50 million of that increase, however, until the system implements all 33 recommendations in the audit report and agrees to greater budgetary transparency going forward.
The University of California system is receiving a substantial increase in state funding despite a recent audit finding that administrators had been hiding a $175 million surplus from lawmakers.
According to The Daily Bruin, the 2017-2018 budget approved last week by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown boosts funding for the UC system by $131.2 million, in keeping with a deal struck with UC President Janet Napolitano in 2015 that forestalled tuition hikes for two years.
"It’s clear that the [UC system] can pay for additional students out of their discretionary budget."
That agreement, however, had been premised on the system’s claims that it would be forced to raise tuition by as much as five percent each year for five years without a massive infusion of cash, but an audit ordered by state lawmakers earlier this year appears to cast doubt on that assertion.
[RELATED: UC to investigate claims that Napolitano tampered with audit]
The State Auditor’s report released on April 25 found “more than $175 million in undisclosed restricted and discretionary reserves” amassed surreptitiously by the UC Office of the President, which even created a secret budget to spend some of the reserves on things like inflated administrative salaries and improvements to the president’s residence.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that state lawmakers have been sharply critical of the slush fund, pointing out that $175 million would have been enough to enroll 35,000 students in UC schools.
“There is more money out there to fund more California students at UC,” declared Democratic State Assemblyman Phil Ting. “It’s clear that the Office of the President themselves can pay for additional students out of their discretionary budget.”
Napolitano responded to the audit by saying that she welcomes its “constructive input” and plans to implement the recommendations contained in the report, though she also objected that it “fundamentally and unfairly mischaracterizes UCOP’s budget practices and processes.”
[RELATED:Lawmakers propose defunding Evergreen State amid protests]
UC spokesperson Claire Doan confirmed in a statement to the Bruin that the system plans to implement all 33 recommendations contained in the State Auditor’s report, but Gov. Brown is looking for extra assurance by placing a hold on $50 million of the recent funding increase.
The monies will only be released once the UC system meets several conditions, including full adoption of the State Auditor’s recommendations, curtailment of benefits for some administrators, and a commitment to greater transparency in its budget process.
Even with the additional funding, however, tuition at UC schools is already slated to rise.
Thank You Mr Jackson and Campus Reform.
UCLA Course Blames 'Car Culture' For 'Spatial Injustice'
Always nice to check in on just how far Out of their own minds the crowd who fostered Psychiatry's Illuminati U in SF have gotten.
campusreform
Toni Airaksinen New York Campus Correspondent Jul 03, 2017 at 2:31 PM EDT
A course being offered this summer at
UCLA aims to teach students how "car culture" and other factors produce
"spatial injustice" in Los Angeles.
The five-credit course fulfills graduation requirements in both Diversity and Social Analysis.
The University of California-Los Angeles is offering a technology class this summer examining how “car culture” contributes to “spatial injustice.”
The course, “LA Tech City: Digital Technologies and Spatial Injustice,” will be offered through the UCLA Digital Humanities department and will be taught by Professor Todd Presner and Professor Dana Cuff.
"The automobile has provided differential and territorial access to particular segments of [the] population."
“Students will investigate spatial justice and injustice in the multi-ethnic city through the lens of three thematic technologies,” the syllabus states, listing cars and highways, the Internet, and film and media as factors that contribute to spatial injustice.
[RELATED: CU-Boulder to offer ‘social justice living environment’]
While Professor Presner declined to comment, he referred Campus Reform to the definition of “spatial injustice” by Edward Soja, who laments the “production of unjust geographies and spatial structures of privilege” within cities, which he argues can be “aggravated further by racism, patriarchy, heterosexual bias.”
Rojas argues that while the inner-city working poor “depend on a more flexible bus network given their multiple and multi-locational job households,” as compared to “the relatively wealthy suburban population” in Los Angeles, “the accumulation of locational decisions in a capitalist economy tends to lead to the redistribution of real income in favor of the rich over the poor.”
During the first week of class, students will learn how “roads and highways have contributed to racial and economic segregation” in Los Angeles because “the automobile has provided differential and territorial access” to “particular segments” of the city’s population, while other segments were displaced to make room for new infrastructure.
The following lesson will focus on “mapping the divided city” to show how “roads operate as indicators of racial and economic segregation.”
[RELATED: CA Dems propose free tuition funded by tax on millionaires]
The course “will also address topics related to unequal representation in film, including whitewashing, problematic depictions of individuals of specific races and gender, and stereotyping,” the syllabus states, after which the focus will shift toward examining social media data in order to “capture the position of various communities on issues related to the divided city.”
Students will earn five credits for completing the class, which fulfills both diversity and general education requirements for UCLA students.
Neither Professor Cuff nor spokespersons for UCLA responded to requests for comment from Campus Reform.
Thank you Ms Airaksinen and Campus Reform.
campusreform
Toni Airaksinen New York Campus Correspondent Jul 03, 2017 at 2:31 PM EDT
The course, “LA Tech City: Digital Technologies and Spatial Injustice,” will be offered through the UCLA Digital Humanities department and will be taught by Professor Todd Presner and Professor Dana Cuff.
"The automobile has provided differential and territorial access to particular segments of [the] population."
“Students will investigate spatial justice and injustice in the multi-ethnic city through the lens of three thematic technologies,” the syllabus states, listing cars and highways, the Internet, and film and media as factors that contribute to spatial injustice.
[RELATED: CU-Boulder to offer ‘social justice living environment’]
While Professor Presner declined to comment, he referred Campus Reform to the definition of “spatial injustice” by Edward Soja, who laments the “production of unjust geographies and spatial structures of privilege” within cities, which he argues can be “aggravated further by racism, patriarchy, heterosexual bias.”
Rojas argues that while the inner-city working poor “depend on a more flexible bus network given their multiple and multi-locational job households,” as compared to “the relatively wealthy suburban population” in Los Angeles, “the accumulation of locational decisions in a capitalist economy tends to lead to the redistribution of real income in favor of the rich over the poor.”
During the first week of class, students will learn how “roads and highways have contributed to racial and economic segregation” in Los Angeles because “the automobile has provided differential and territorial access” to “particular segments” of the city’s population, while other segments were displaced to make room for new infrastructure.
The following lesson will focus on “mapping the divided city” to show how “roads operate as indicators of racial and economic segregation.”
[RELATED: CA Dems propose free tuition funded by tax on millionaires]
The course “will also address topics related to unequal representation in film, including whitewashing, problematic depictions of individuals of specific races and gender, and stereotyping,” the syllabus states, after which the focus will shift toward examining social media data in order to “capture the position of various communities on issues related to the divided city.”
Students will earn five credits for completing the class, which fulfills both diversity and general education requirements for UCLA students.
Neither Professor Cuff nor spokespersons for UCLA responded to requests for comment from Campus Reform.
Thank you Ms Airaksinen and Campus Reform.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Prof: Racist 'Hate Speech' Causes Cigarette Smoking
Your tax dollars paying for the cushy lifestyles of Behaviorist, Blithering Idiots.
Nikita Vladimirov Investigative Reporter @nikvofficial Today at 8:25 AM EDT
A Northwestern University professor argued Wednesday that "hate speech" should be a form of expression that is subject to legal limitation.
Laura Beth Nielsen claims that "racist hate speech" causes negative outcomes like cigarette smoking and PTSD, and should therefore be banned just like incitement to violence.
A Northwestern University professor argued Wednesday that "hate speech" should be a form of expression that is subject to legal limitation.
In an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times, sociology professor Laura Beth Nielsen contends that “members of traditionally marginalized groups suffer” when Americans are granted the freedom “to be hateful.”
"Racist hate speech has been linked to cigarette smoking...and post-traumatic stress disorder."
[RELATED: Volokh demolishes Feinstein in campus free speech hearing]
“Perhaps it’s nonsense to characterize the nature of the harm as nothing more than an emotional scratch,” Nielsen postulates. “That’s a reflection of the deep inequalities in our society, and one that demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of how hate speech affects its targets.”
The professor maintains that free speech is already a limited right, mentioning numerous restrictions on panhandling, protesting veteran’s funerals, advertising, inciting lawless action, and more.
“So soldiers’ families, shoppers, and workers are protected from troubling speech," she deduces. "People of color, women walking down public streets or just living in their dorm on a college campus are not."
To support her argument, Nielsen cites "empirical data" suggesting that “frequent verbal harassment can lead to various negative consequences.” According to the professor, the negative consequences of “racist hate speech” include high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Instead of characterizing racist and sexist hate speech as ‘just speech,’ courts and legislatures need to account for this research and, perhaps, allow the restriction of hate speech as do all of the other economically advanced democracies in the world,” she argues.
While Nielsen briefly considers basic objections that could be raised by “free-speech absolutists,” she reiterated her view that freedom of speech is already “far from absolute.”
[RELATED: UMich paper defends silencing speakers who 'outrage' students]
“But these free-speech absolutists must at least acknowledge two facts," she declares. "First, the right to speak already is far from absolute. Second, they are asking disadvantaged members of our society to shoulder a heavy burden with serious consequences. Because we are 'free' to be hateful, members of traditionally marginalized groups suffer."
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the government may not prohibit hate speech in a case involving an all-Asian American rock band called The Slants, whose name is also a derogatory term for Asians.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing an opinion for four justices, argued that the ability of the government to restrict offensive speech “strikes at the heart of the First Amendment."
“Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful," Alito acknowledged, "but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’”
[RELATED: Evergreen students: 'F*** free speech' that 'validates' hate]
In an interview with Campus Reform, Nielsen said that her main criticism of the legal system is its failure to “recognize some harms even as they recognize others," adding that "those that are recognized tend to be the ones endured by those who already enjoy privilege in our society.”
Zachary Greenberg, Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), agreed that freedom of speech is not "absolute," but warned that there is no clear definition of the term “hate speech.”
“You can ask a hundred people what hate speech is and you get a thousand different answers,” Greenberg told Campus Reform, later adding that “there is really no ending point” once you start punishing offensive expression.
“When you have these very vague, ambiguous terms for punishing speech, you end up suppressing and punishing a wide variety of speech, much more speech than what is intended to be punished to begin with,” he pointed out.
Greenberg also noted that certain “buffer zones” that restrict protests around funerals have been struck down by the Supreme Court, and maintained that even they are not necessarily a “permissible restriction” under the constitutional law.
Thank You Mr Vladimirov and Campus Reform,
Students Can Get Scholarship For Attending 'White Privilege' Conference
daily caller
3:19 PM 06/22/2017
Will they call the awards Excellence in White Privilege? Grand Valley
State University (GVSU) is so keen on its students attending next
year’s “white privilege” conference that it is even offering students
scholarships for going, Campus Reform reports.
The Grand Rapids, Michigan 19th Annual White Privilege Conference is scheduled for April 2018, and GVSU is wasting no time or effort to get a full slate of students for the event, even saying there will be “opportunities for scholarships” for those in attendance.
“There will be opportunities for members of the GVSU community to get involved by helping to spread the word, recruiting attendees, and volunteering during the conference,” said the GVSU website. “In addition, opportunities for scholarships to attend the conference will be made available as part of the Division of Inclusion and Equity’s strategic goal of providing educational and professional development opportunities related to social justice for faculty, staff, and students.”
The “white privilege” conference attracts about 1,500 people annually, including a lot of students, professors and social activists. It no longer focuses exclusively on “white privilege” and has expanded its leftist appeal by also including other forms of “privilege” based on “gender, sexuality, class, disability, etc.”
Organizers of the White Privilege Conference boast that the annual
event now draws more than 1,500 annual attendees, including high school
and college students, higher education professionals, and activists.
“The WPC is a conference that examines the challenging concepts of privilege and oppression,” the GVSU maintains through the dissemination of a FAQ brochure from The Privilege Institute. “It is not a conference designated to attack, degrade, or beat up on white folks. It is not a conference designed to rally white supremacist groups.”
Campus Reform found a GVSU spokeswoman who told them that “the Division of Inclusion and Equity is the primary unit working with the conference organizers,” that “planning efforts are still very early” and that there is “no formal partnership” between the university and the conference organizers.
However, when asked what relationship does exist between the conference and GVSU, the school quickly removed its website page that was promoting the conference, apparently because the conference could not be considered a university event.
GVSU declined to offer any further assistance in responding to
additional queries from Campus Reform regarding the scholarship offer
and the conference media coordinator did not provide any answers either.
The Grand Rapids, Michigan 19th Annual White Privilege Conference is scheduled for April 2018, and GVSU is wasting no time or effort to get a full slate of students for the event, even saying there will be “opportunities for scholarships” for those in attendance.
“There will be opportunities for members of the GVSU community to get involved by helping to spread the word, recruiting attendees, and volunteering during the conference,” said the GVSU website. “In addition, opportunities for scholarships to attend the conference will be made available as part of the Division of Inclusion and Equity’s strategic goal of providing educational and professional development opportunities related to social justice for faculty, staff, and students.”
The “white privilege” conference attracts about 1,500 people annually, including a lot of students, professors and social activists. It no longer focuses exclusively on “white privilege” and has expanded its leftist appeal by also including other forms of “privilege” based on “gender, sexuality, class, disability, etc.”
“The WPC is a conference that examines the challenging concepts of privilege and oppression,” the GVSU maintains through the dissemination of a FAQ brochure from The Privilege Institute. “It is not a conference designated to attack, degrade, or beat up on white folks. It is not a conference designed to rally white supremacist groups.”
Campus Reform found a GVSU spokeswoman who told them that “the Division of Inclusion and Equity is the primary unit working with the conference organizers,” that “planning efforts are still very early” and that there is “no formal partnership” between the university and the conference organizers.
However, when asked what relationship does exist between the conference and GVSU, the school quickly removed its website page that was promoting the conference, apparently because the conference could not be considered a university event.
Thank You Mr Krayden and DC.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Prof Who Called Diversity Training A 'Waste of Time' Forced Out
Divide and Conquer.
Much easier to enslave the serfs once you've got them, and are keeping them, at each other's throats.
dailycaller
David KraydenContributor
4:07 PM 05/23/2017
The Duke University Divinity School professor who characterized diversity training as a “waste” of time and energy was muscled out of his job, The College Fix reports.
Paul Griffiths told the world last week why he resigned. He became the the focus of harassment from his university colleagues who began disciplinary proceedings against them while the school’s dean banned Griffiths from attending faculty meetings.
The trouble started for the professor when Griffiths suggested that attendance at Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training, scheduled for last March, was hardly worth the effort. The diversity training was advertised as an opportunity to make the divinity school “equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture.”
Griffiths apparently thought the school already exhibited such a culture, emailing his colleagues, “I exhort you not to attend this training,” Griffiths said on Feb. 6. “Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty.”
He added that the school had “neither time nor resources to waste. This training is a waste. Please, ignore it.”
Griffiths immediately made himself a prime candidate for diversity re-education as he was accused of being racist and sexist and the object of disciplinary proceedings.
Dean Elaine Heath reprimanded Griffiths for his “inappropriate and unprofessional” message that she said would “humiliate or undermine” the professor who sent the diversity training. invitation.
Griffiths’ dean, Elaine Heath, responded on the listserv that it was “inappropriate and unprofessional” for him to publicly “humiliate or undermine” his colleague who sent the invitation, Prof. Anathea Portier-Young.
Heath wasn’t finished yet. She wrote to Griffith in March: “It is unacceptable for you to refuse to meet with me … Beginning immediately you will not be permitted to attend or participate in faculty meetings or committee meetings … Your continued refusal to meet with me will result in further consequences, including but not limited to the loss of travel and research funds.”
That pushed Griffiths into early retirement.
Griffiths writes in a May 18 Commonwealth Magazine op-ed, “To the University, with Love: Why I Resigned from Duke,” that he was pulling the plug on 34 years in academia. He said his patience was at an end with universities that showed contempt for freedom of though and free speech.
“It’s over because I recently, and freely, resigned my chair in Catholic Theology at Duke University in response to disciplinary actions initiated by my dean and colleagues. Those disciplinary actions, in turn, were provoked by my words: critical and confrontational words spoken to colleagues in meetings; and hot words written in critique of university policies and practices, in support of particular freedoms of expression and thought, and against legal and disciplinary constraints of those freedoms.”
The response among conservative media has been immediate and uncategorically critical of Duke University. “It’s hard to figure out what’s more appalling about this episode: the ease with which powerful faculty members can strip their colleagues of their ability to do their jobs just because those colleagues exercise free speech and don’t sign on to their ideological priorities — or the increasing power of bloated university bureaucracies, especially ‘diversity’ bureaucracies over every facet of existence at a university that is supposed to be devoted to the life of the mind,” writes Weekly Standard contributor Charlotte Allen.
Follow David on Twitter
Tags: Diversity training, Duke University
Thank You Mr Krayden and DC.
Much easier to enslave the serfs once you've got them, and are keeping them, at each other's throats.
dailycaller
David KraydenContributor
4:07 PM 05/23/2017
The Duke University Divinity School professor who characterized diversity training as a “waste” of time and energy was muscled out of his job, The College Fix reports.
Paul Griffiths told the world last week why he resigned. He became the the focus of harassment from his university colleagues who began disciplinary proceedings against them while the school’s dean banned Griffiths from attending faculty meetings.
The trouble started for the professor when Griffiths suggested that attendance at Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training, scheduled for last March, was hardly worth the effort. The diversity training was advertised as an opportunity to make the divinity school “equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture.”
Griffiths apparently thought the school already exhibited such a culture, emailing his colleagues, “I exhort you not to attend this training,” Griffiths said on Feb. 6. “Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty.”
He added that the school had “neither time nor resources to waste. This training is a waste. Please, ignore it.”
Griffiths immediately made himself a prime candidate for diversity re-education as he was accused of being racist and sexist and the object of disciplinary proceedings.
Dean Elaine Heath reprimanded Griffiths for his “inappropriate and unprofessional” message that she said would “humiliate or undermine” the professor who sent the diversity training. invitation.
Griffiths’ dean, Elaine Heath, responded on the listserv that it was “inappropriate and unprofessional” for him to publicly “humiliate or undermine” his colleague who sent the invitation, Prof. Anathea Portier-Young.
Heath wasn’t finished yet. She wrote to Griffith in March: “It is unacceptable for you to refuse to meet with me … Beginning immediately you will not be permitted to attend or participate in faculty meetings or committee meetings … Your continued refusal to meet with me will result in further consequences, including but not limited to the loss of travel and research funds.”
That pushed Griffiths into early retirement.
Griffiths writes in a May 18 Commonwealth Magazine op-ed, “To the University, with Love: Why I Resigned from Duke,” that he was pulling the plug on 34 years in academia. He said his patience was at an end with universities that showed contempt for freedom of though and free speech.
“It’s over because I recently, and freely, resigned my chair in Catholic Theology at Duke University in response to disciplinary actions initiated by my dean and colleagues. Those disciplinary actions, in turn, were provoked by my words: critical and confrontational words spoken to colleagues in meetings; and hot words written in critique of university policies and practices, in support of particular freedoms of expression and thought, and against legal and disciplinary constraints of those freedoms.”
The response among conservative media has been immediate and uncategorically critical of Duke University. “It’s hard to figure out what’s more appalling about this episode: the ease with which powerful faculty members can strip their colleagues of their ability to do their jobs just because those colleagues exercise free speech and don’t sign on to their ideological priorities — or the increasing power of bloated university bureaucracies, especially ‘diversity’ bureaucracies over every facet of existence at a university that is supposed to be devoted to the life of the mind,” writes Weekly Standard contributor Charlotte Allen.
Follow David on Twitter
Tags: Diversity training, Duke University
Thank You Mr Krayden and DC.
Monday, May 22, 2017
Sheer Lunacy On Campus: When Kindergarten Meets Totalitarianism
College Campuses, famous breeding grounds for junk medical politics.
frontpagemag
Walter Williams May 22nd 2017
Parents, taxpayers and donors have little idea of the levels of lunacy, evil and lawlessness that have become features of many of today's institutions of higher learning. Parents, taxpayers and donors who ignore or are too lazy to find out what goes on in the name of higher education are nearly as complicit as the professors and administrators who promote or sanction the lunacy, evil and lawlessness. As for the term "institutions of higher learning," we might start asking: Higher than what? Let's look at a tiny sample of academic lunacy.
During a campus debate, Purdue University professor David Sanders argued that a logical extension of pro-lifers' belief that fetuses are human beings is that pictures of "a butt-naked body of a child" are child pornography. Clemson University's chief diversity officer, Lee Gill, who's paid $185,000 a year to promote inclusion, provided a lesson claiming that to expect certain people to be on time is racist.
To reduce angst among snowflakes in its student body, the University of California, Hastings College of the Law has added a "Chill Zone." The Chill Zone, located in its library, has, just as most nursery schools have, mats for naps and beanbag chairs. Before or after a snooze, students can also use the space to do a bit of yoga or meditate. The University of Michigan Law School helped its students weather their Trump derangement syndrome — a condition resulting from Donald Trump's election — by enlisting the services of an "embedded psychologist" in a room full of bubbles and play dough. To reduce pressure on law students, Joshua M. Silverstein, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, thinks that "every American law school ought to substantially eliminate C grades and set its good academic standing grade point average at the B- level."
Today's academic climate might be described as a mixture of infantilism, kindergarten and totalitarianism. The radicals, draft dodgers and hippies of the 1960s who are now college administrators and professors are responsible for today's academic climate. The infantilism should not be tolerated, but more important for the future of our nation are the totalitarianism and the hate-America lessons being taught at many of the nation's colleges. For example, led by its student government leader, the University of California, Irvine's student body voted for a motion, which the faculty approved, directing that the American flag not be on display because it makes some students uncomfortable and creates an unsafe, hostile environment. The flag is a symbol of hate speech, according to the student government leader. He said that the U.S. flag is just as offensive as Nazi and Islamic State flags and that the U.S. is the world's most evil nation (http://tinyurl.com/kjoax3j).
In a recent New York Times op-ed, New York University provost Ulrich Baer argued: "The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community." That's a vision that is increasingly being adopted on college campuses, and it's leaking down to our primary and secondary levels of education. Baer apparently believes that the test for one's commitment to free speech comes when he balances his views with those of others. His vision justifies the violent disruptions of speeches by Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna College, Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley and Charles Murray at Middlebury College. Baer's vision is totalitarian nonsense. The true test of one's commitment to free speech comes when he permits people to be free to say and write those things he finds deeply offensive.
Americans who see themselves as either liberal or conservative should rise up against this totalitarian trend on America's college campuses. I believe the most effective way to do so is to hit these campus tyrants where it hurts the most — in the pocketbook. Lawmakers should slash budgets, and donors should keep their money in their pockets.
Thank You Professor Williams and FPM.
frontpagemag
Walter Williams May 22nd 2017
Parents, taxpayers and donors have little idea of the levels of lunacy, evil and lawlessness that have become features of many of today's institutions of higher learning. Parents, taxpayers and donors who ignore or are too lazy to find out what goes on in the name of higher education are nearly as complicit as the professors and administrators who promote or sanction the lunacy, evil and lawlessness. As for the term "institutions of higher learning," we might start asking: Higher than what? Let's look at a tiny sample of academic lunacy.
During a campus debate, Purdue University professor David Sanders argued that a logical extension of pro-lifers' belief that fetuses are human beings is that pictures of "a butt-naked body of a child" are child pornography. Clemson University's chief diversity officer, Lee Gill, who's paid $185,000 a year to promote inclusion, provided a lesson claiming that to expect certain people to be on time is racist.
To reduce angst among snowflakes in its student body, the University of California, Hastings College of the Law has added a "Chill Zone." The Chill Zone, located in its library, has, just as most nursery schools have, mats for naps and beanbag chairs. Before or after a snooze, students can also use the space to do a bit of yoga or meditate. The University of Michigan Law School helped its students weather their Trump derangement syndrome — a condition resulting from Donald Trump's election — by enlisting the services of an "embedded psychologist" in a room full of bubbles and play dough. To reduce pressure on law students, Joshua M. Silverstein, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, thinks that "every American law school ought to substantially eliminate C grades and set its good academic standing grade point average at the B- level."
Today's academic climate might be described as a mixture of infantilism, kindergarten and totalitarianism. The radicals, draft dodgers and hippies of the 1960s who are now college administrators and professors are responsible for today's academic climate. The infantilism should not be tolerated, but more important for the future of our nation are the totalitarianism and the hate-America lessons being taught at many of the nation's colleges. For example, led by its student government leader, the University of California, Irvine's student body voted for a motion, which the faculty approved, directing that the American flag not be on display because it makes some students uncomfortable and creates an unsafe, hostile environment. The flag is a symbol of hate speech, according to the student government leader. He said that the U.S. flag is just as offensive as Nazi and Islamic State flags and that the U.S. is the world's most evil nation (http://tinyurl.com/kjoax3j).
In a recent New York Times op-ed, New York University provost Ulrich Baer argued: "The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community." That's a vision that is increasingly being adopted on college campuses, and it's leaking down to our primary and secondary levels of education. Baer apparently believes that the test for one's commitment to free speech comes when he balances his views with those of others. His vision justifies the violent disruptions of speeches by Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna College, Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley and Charles Murray at Middlebury College. Baer's vision is totalitarian nonsense. The true test of one's commitment to free speech comes when he permits people to be free to say and write those things he finds deeply offensive.
Americans who see themselves as either liberal or conservative should rise up against this totalitarian trend on America's college campuses. I believe the most effective way to do so is to hit these campus tyrants where it hurts the most — in the pocketbook. Lawmakers should slash budgets, and donors should keep their money in their pockets.
Thank You Professor Williams and FPM.
Friday, May 19, 2017
Black Students At UCLA Issue Ultimatum Demanding $40 Million, Free Housing, and 'Safe Spaces'
Imagine the uproar if these were white students
weaselzippers
UCLA has simply become a playpen of radical, leftist black separatists and other assorted lunatics.
Via Heat Street:
The Afrikan [sic] Student Union at the University of California has issued a list of demands– which include a $40 million endowment, their own “safe spaces” on campus, and mandatory “cultural awareness training” for all students — as compensation for what they call racially insensitive incidents. The demands, listed in an open letter, cite different “racial attacks” on campus.
“Black students at UCLA are consistently made the targets of racist attacks by fellow students, faculty, and administration,” the Afrikan Student Union writes in their eight-point ultimatum. “Unfortunately, on April 30, 2017, a photo was released depicting the USAC [student government] President holding gang signs.”
(The white student body president caught making the gang sign apologized profusely, saying “this is a result of my white privilege.”)
ASU goes on citing racist stickers that were posted on campus back in 2015.
(One such sticker listed the criminal rap sheet of Freddie Gray, the black man who died in Baltimore police custody in 2015. Another sticker said “If only Freddie Gray had followed the damn law, he’d still be alive,” and another said “Stop whining and start following the goddamn law”).
Another example of racism given by the ASU was a “Kanye Western” theme party held in 2015 during which attendees dressed in baggy clothes or wore padded bottoms to look like Kim Kardashian.
“Since nothing has been done in recent years, the Afrikan Student Union is DEMANDING that UCLA administrators work with black students towards the development of a more positive campus climate,” the group’s open letter says.
Keep reading…
Thank You Heat Street and Huck Funn
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Yale: Social Psychologist 'Diversity' Dean Who Blasts "White Trash" Placed On Leave, Pt II
Autumn Price Virginia Campus Correspondent @AutumnDawnPrice Today at 2:32 PM EDT
Yale University has placed one of its deans on leave after learning of a series of racist comments attributed to her Yelp account.
In one review, June Chu referred to fellow patrons at a local restaurant as “white trash” and “low class folks,” while in another she complained of “barely educated morons trying to manage snack orders for the obese."
Yale University has placed one of its deans on leave for the rest of the academic year after discovering a series of racist and offensive comments on her Yelp account.
June Chu was appointed Dean of Pierson College in May of 2016, and an investigation by The Yale Daily News reveals that throughout her tenure she has periodically left reviews of local establishments in which she makes disparaging comments about white people and the poor.
“These reviews make it clear how Dean Chu thinks about people who are different from her.”
On one occasion, according to screenshots of her reviews, Chu referred to fellow patrons at a local restaurant as “white trash” and “low class folks,” while in another instance she perplexingly praised a movie theater for its lack of “sketchy crowds,” despite its location in a relatively affluent area.
[RELATED: Spurned union plans to disrupt Yale’s commencement ceremony]
The reviews were noticed by Dean of Student Affairs Camille Lizarribar, who brought them to the attention of Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway, but the Daily News reports that screenshots of the provocative posts had been circulating among students for months beforehand.
Chu sent an email to Pierson students Saturday apologizing for those particular comments, which were the only ones of which Holloway had been informed, but the Daily News contends that several other of Chu’s reviews are also deserving of scrutiny.
In one of the many spiteful reviews discovered on her account, Chu rants about having to “remain in line with all the other idiots” at a movie theater, complaining of the “barely educated morons trying to manage snack orders for the obese.”
Holloway nonetheless commended Chu for being “very honest” in her email to the college community, saying he believes that she is “terribly sorry” and has “learned from this,” and noting that he has decided not to ask for her resignation.
“I have learned a lot this semester about the power of words and about the accountability that we owe one another,” Chu wrote in her apology message. “My remarks were wrong. There are no two ways about it. Not only were they insensitive in matters related to class and race; they demean the values to which I hold myself and which I offer as a member of this community.”
[RELATED: Judge fears Yale has forgotten commitment to free expression]
Many Pierson students, however, were far less impressed than Holloway with Chu’s mea culpa, saying they’ve lost respect for her not only because of the offensive nature of her comments, but also because she demonstrated such poor judgment in making them.
Kelsang Dolma, for instance, told the Daily News that the comments “floored” her.
“It is always so refreshing to see an Asian American woman in leadership positions, and many of my female and POC friends were eager to see what she would do for us,” Dolma said. “I look forward to continue having [Chu] as my dean, but this incident has left me and other Piersonites disillusioned.”
One anonymous student argued that it was “inappropriate for someone in her position” to make such “demeaning and offensive” statements, pointing out that “These reviews make it clear how Dean Chu thinks about people who are different from her, and how she feels about New Haven, the city all of us call home for a few years.”
[RELATED: Yale administrators succumb to anti-speech activists]
“I will never be able to look at her in the same way,” another anonymous student concurred. “Dean Chu is trained in human development and psychology so should clearly understand the gravity of her actions, yet the fact that she would put such things on the Internet shows that she really should not be in a position of advising students.”
Tom Conroy, the Director of the Office of Public Affairs & Communications, told Campus Reform that he didn’t have “anything to add to the announcement today by the Pierson Head of College that she was placed on leave.”
Campus Reform reached out to Chu for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AutumnDawnPrice
From her bio, at the end of our first post on Madame "White Trash"
Chu, according to her Pierson biography, has a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California-Davis. She joined the college after serving as an assistant dean of undergraduate students at Dartmouth College. During high school, Chu also worked in a summer program at the Yale Daily News, the same student newspaper that exposed her controversial reviews.
And somebody actually did something about this?
Way Cool.
Yale University has placed one of its deans on leave after learning of a series of racist comments attributed to her Yelp account.
In one review, June Chu referred to fellow patrons at a local restaurant as “white trash” and “low class folks,” while in another she complained of “barely educated morons trying to manage snack orders for the obese."
Yale University has placed one of its deans on leave for the rest of the academic year after discovering a series of racist and offensive comments on her Yelp account.
June Chu was appointed Dean of Pierson College in May of 2016, and an investigation by The Yale Daily News reveals that throughout her tenure she has periodically left reviews of local establishments in which she makes disparaging comments about white people and the poor.
“These reviews make it clear how Dean Chu thinks about people who are different from her.”
On one occasion, according to screenshots of her reviews, Chu referred to fellow patrons at a local restaurant as “white trash” and “low class folks,” while in another instance she perplexingly praised a movie theater for its lack of “sketchy crowds,” despite its location in a relatively affluent area.
[RELATED: Spurned union plans to disrupt Yale’s commencement ceremony]
The reviews were noticed by Dean of Student Affairs Camille Lizarribar, who brought them to the attention of Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway, but the Daily News reports that screenshots of the provocative posts had been circulating among students for months beforehand.
Chu sent an email to Pierson students Saturday apologizing for those particular comments, which were the only ones of which Holloway had been informed, but the Daily News contends that several other of Chu’s reviews are also deserving of scrutiny.
In one of the many spiteful reviews discovered on her account, Chu rants about having to “remain in line with all the other idiots” at a movie theater, complaining of the “barely educated morons trying to manage snack orders for the obese.”
Holloway nonetheless commended Chu for being “very honest” in her email to the college community, saying he believes that she is “terribly sorry” and has “learned from this,” and noting that he has decided not to ask for her resignation.
“I have learned a lot this semester about the power of words and about the accountability that we owe one another,” Chu wrote in her apology message. “My remarks were wrong. There are no two ways about it. Not only were they insensitive in matters related to class and race; they demean the values to which I hold myself and which I offer as a member of this community.”
[RELATED: Judge fears Yale has forgotten commitment to free expression]
Many Pierson students, however, were far less impressed than Holloway with Chu’s mea culpa, saying they’ve lost respect for her not only because of the offensive nature of her comments, but also because she demonstrated such poor judgment in making them.
Kelsang Dolma, for instance, told the Daily News that the comments “floored” her.
“It is always so refreshing to see an Asian American woman in leadership positions, and many of my female and POC friends were eager to see what she would do for us,” Dolma said. “I look forward to continue having [Chu] as my dean, but this incident has left me and other Piersonites disillusioned.”
One anonymous student argued that it was “inappropriate for someone in her position” to make such “demeaning and offensive” statements, pointing out that “These reviews make it clear how Dean Chu thinks about people who are different from her, and how she feels about New Haven, the city all of us call home for a few years.”
[RELATED: Yale administrators succumb to anti-speech activists]
“I will never be able to look at her in the same way,” another anonymous student concurred. “Dean Chu is trained in human development and psychology so should clearly understand the gravity of her actions, yet the fact that she would put such things on the Internet shows that she really should not be in a position of advising students.”
Tom Conroy, the Director of the Office of Public Affairs & Communications, told Campus Reform that he didn’t have “anything to add to the announcement today by the Pierson Head of College that she was placed on leave.”
Campus Reform reached out to Chu for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AutumnDawnPrice
From her bio, at the end of our first post on Madame "White Trash"
Chu, according to her Pierson biography, has a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California-Davis. She joined the college after serving as an assistant dean of undergraduate students at Dartmouth College. During high school, Chu also worked in a summer program at the Yale Daily News, the same student newspaper that exposed her controversial reviews.
And somebody actually did something about this?
Way Cool.
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Yale Dean Loves Diversity Except For "White Trash"
Unfortunately, this nasty ‘elitism’ is not uncommon in liberal academia, she just got caught.
Via NY Post:
A dean at Yale University who championed cultural sensitivity has apologized for her “insensitive” Yelp reviews of restaurants, gyms and movie theaters, including hot takes on what “white trash” customers would find tasty and employees she blasted as “barely educated morons.”
June Chu, dean of Yale’s Pierson College, apologized for the offending reviews, which had been circulating among students for several months, after the Yale Daily News published screenshots on Saturday.
“To put it quite simply: If you are white trash, this is the perfect night out for you!” Chu wrote in one review of a Japanese restaurant. “This establishment is definitely not authentic by any stretch of any imagination and perfect for those low class folks who believe this is a real night out. Over salted and greasy food. Side note: employees are Chinese, not Japanese.”
Keep reading…
Thank You Nick and NY Post.
Feel free to insert any of our generic snark lines regarding the origin, incubation, and maturation of mental/political diseases here.
Black College Cancels GOP Senator's Commencement Speech To Protect "Marginalized" Students
weaselzippers
Via College Fix:
Republican politicians and officials should probably decline invitations from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) for the foreseeable future.
Days after students at Bethune-Cookman University booed and heckled Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos*, Texas Southern University withdrew an invitation to Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas to address its graduating students.
According to Fox News, the HBCU said it was disinviting Cornyn because it wanted students to remember their commencement “positively for years to come,” and that couldn’t happen if a white conservative politician was their speaker.
Just 863 people got Cornyn canned when they signed a Change.org petition demanding his disinvitation.
The petition announces its “stark opposition” to Cornyn, a former judge on the Texas Supreme Court, saying that to let him speak would put the student body’s stamp of approval on “policies and views he has advocated and supported, including both discriminatory policies and politicians.”
Thank You Zip and The College Fix.
How is this kind of racist stupid going to make these 'students' less "Marginalized" when they're through at college and have to go get a job?
The Top 10 College Administrations Most Friendly To Terrorists And Hostile To The 1st Amendment
frontpagemag
Targeting the nation’s worst offenders.
May 15, 2017
Sara Dogan
Over the past two weeks, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has named 10 prestigious college and university campuses to its list of the “Top 10 College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.” These campuses provide financial and institutional support to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech exposing the truth about Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States.
The Freedom Center placed posters exposing the links between the terrorist group Hamas and SJP on each of these ten campuses, both to inform students about the allies to terror in their midst and to challenge these campus administrations to do what they so far have refused to do—to uphold the First Amendment and promote free expression even when doing so means facing down radical students and faculty who demand otherwise.
Already our campaign has yielded positive results. Mainstream Jewish publication JWeekly.com reported on the Freedom Center's poster campaign, quoting David Horowitz and noting that San Francisco State University President Les Wong has come under fire recently for failing to adequately protect Jewish students on campus.
Wong himself has also responded to the campaign in a letter to entire SFSU community (which was reprinted at Jweekly.com) noting that "This week I encountered both the re-emergence of posters on campus attacking and condemning the work of Palestinian activists and their supporters." Wong went on to state, "I believe it is the fundamental role of a university to engage differing viewpoints and to evaluate their merits and shortcomings. It is this belief that compels me to unequivocally reject the concept of 'anti-normalization' outright." SJP as an organization rejects all "normalization" of relations with pro-Israel groups. By making this declaration, Wong is taking an important stand against at least one aspect of SJP's genocidal agenda.
The full report on the ten campus administrations “Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment” follows below.
Introduction:
Of all the disturbing trends to have emerged on college campuses in recent years, perhaps the most ominous is the support universities offer to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech critical of Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States. Administrators at San Francisco State University, UCLA, the University of Chicago, Tufts University, Brooklyn College and other schools have actively supported organizations supporting terrorists and their activities while suppressing their critics.
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has emerged as the leading pro-terrorist, anti-Jewish organization in America, and the driving force behind the recent surge of anti-Semitism on American campuses. SJP is the chief promoter of the Hamas-inspired and funded “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign in America, an effort to weaken and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. SJP also stages annual “Israeli Apartheid” hate weeks on campuses across the nation which feature pro-Hamas speakers and “apartheid walls” in public spaces on campus displaying pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic propaganda. SJP also creates mock checkpoints and die-ins that obstruct student movements on campus, disrupts pro-Israel campus events, threatens Jewish and pro-Israel speakers, and has physically assaulted Jewish students.
As described in the Freedom Center’s recent pamphlet, Students for Justice in Palestine: A Campus Front for Hamas Terrorists, SJP’s pro-terror campaign is guided and funded through a Hamas front called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. AMP was created by Hatem Bazian, a pro-Hamas professor at UC Berkeley who is also the co-founder of SJP.
In recent testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism finance analyst for the United States Department of the Treasury from 2004-2007, described AMP as “arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States” and explained that “AMP spent $100,000 on campus activities in 2014 alone.”
The following report chronicles ten of the worst collegiate offenders in this category of campuses that support anti-Israel terrorists even when their rhetoric and propaganda cross the line into hate speech while rejecting speech critical of the perpetrators and promoters of terrorism.
(Campuses are listed in alphabetical order)
1. Brandeis University
2. Brooklyn College (CUNY)
3. Saint Louis University
4. San Francisco State University
5. Tufts University
6. University of California, Berkeley
7. University of California, Los Angeles
8. University of Chicago
9. University of Minnesota
10. Vassar College
Brandeis University: Campus Administration
Brandeis University, located in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, is notable for being one of America’s few elite universities to be founded by Jews and is named for Louis B. Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court. In recent years, Brandeis has been conspicuous for a more disturbing reason—as an academic center that is uniquely welcoming to pro-terrorist speech and ideology directed against Israel while showing extreme hostility towards those who oppose Israel’s terrorist adversaries.
Members of Brandeis’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine have hosted numerous events featuring speakers that defend anti-Israel terrorism and the genocidal Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Among these are radical professor Noam Chomsky who gave a speech describing Israel’s actions towards Palestine as “vicious, brutal and criminal” and claimed that Israel “is alone in denying” its “illegal occupation of territories.”
In April 2015, the Brandeis administration selected former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering to be honored as the university’s commencement speaker. Known for his extreme anti-Israel views, Pickering has written that Israel has conducted a “half-century-long occupation” of Palestine that is tantamount to “the permanent subjugation and disenfranchisement of a people to which Israel refuses to grant citizenship in the Jewish state.”
In 2014, a Jewish student at Brandeis, Daniel Mael, exposed a secret faculty listserve where more than 90 left-wing Brandeis faculty exchanged radical views. Some of the listserve’s participants promoted Hamas propaganda while espousing anti-Semitic comments and expressing hatred of Israel. Professor Donald Hindley, for instance, referred to the Jewish state as “The Vile, Terrorist Israeli Government,” in a post about the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas terrorists.
Hindley also sarcastically wrote: “Zionist olive trees grow wondrously on Palestinian corpses…” and compared an event challenging the anti-Semitic BDS movement to “Germany in the later 1930s with everyone at least a Nazi sympathizer.”
Brandeis sociology professor Gordon Fellman, meanwhile, wrote on the listserve seeking signatures for an open letter to “end the illegal occupation in Palestine.” According to the letter, “the government of Israel, having provoked the firing of rockets by its rampage through the West Bank, is now using that response as the pretext for an aerial assault on Gaza which has already cost scores of lives.”
When Brandeis University president Fredrick Lawrence condemned these statements as “abhorrent”( but took no official action against the professors who made them), some faculty who participated in the listserve, along with the Brandeis English Department, condemned his comments and sought a faculty forum on freedom of speech on campus.
While welcoming anti-Israel and pro-Hamas speech on campus, Brandeis has also exhibited hostility towards those who are critical of Islamic terrorism. In April 2014, under pressure from students and faculty, the Brandeis administration acted to withdraw an honorary degree that had been offered to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born women’s rights activist and critic of radical Islam who has condemned the mistreatment of women in Muslim countries, and especially the practice of female genital mutilation. Eighty-seven Brandeis faculty members signed a petition citing Ali’s “extreme Islamophobic beliefs” as a reason why the honorary degree should be rescinded. Showcasing the university’s blatant hypocrisy, Brandeis had previously awarded an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner, who has a long history of anti-Semitic statements, among them the claim that “The biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community.”
Brandeis also failed to take action when SJP members disrupted a university panel featuring six members of the Israeli Knesset. The SJP activists repeatedly yelled the epithet “war criminals” at the panel participants and attempted to distribute fake warrants calling for their arrest.
For its history of repeatedly welcoming anti-Israel and pro-terror speakers and protests on campus while allowing those who would present opposing views to be silenced, the Brandeis administration makes our list of Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.
Brooklyn College: Michelle J.Anderson, President
At Brooklyn College, President Michelle Anderson responded to posters protesting the links between the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and Hamas by tearing them down and denouncing their sponsor, the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Anderson emphasized that Brooklyn College’s status as a public university and its obligation to uphold the First Amendment did not in her view extend to speech she considered, without proof or substantiation, “hateful” or “bullying.”
President Anderson failed to address the posters’ central claim that Students for Justice in Palestine is funded by the terrorist organization Hamas, and exists to spread Hamas’s genocidal propaganda against Israel and the Jews. Instead, she cited the widely-discredited smear site of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as the basis for her criticism of the Freedom Center.
Anderson’s response included lofty passages about the importance of free speech and intellectual diversity on a college campus including this one: “Academic freedom not only prevents the suppression of dissident views; it also forces us to confront those whose beliefs are antithetical to our own. The opportunity to have one’s beliefs challenged, to reflect, and to consider change is the very purpose of a university. Free speech, debate, and the open exchange of ideas are the oxygen of our existence on this campus. We must engage.”
Yet she exempted the Freedom Center from these protections by calling its posters “hate speech” – which in any case is constitutionally protected – and defended her decision to tear them down with the following reasoning: “The images and words were frightening and hostile to both supporters of SJP and advocates of free speech on campus, including many Jews. In particular, they targeted individual SJP leaders with the aim of bullying them and making them vulnerable to additional harassment or worse.”
Anderson’s defense of SJP illustrates the intellectual double-standards accepted by administration officials at Brooklyn College. She claims that SJP’s hate speech – in particular its genocidal claims that Israel is an “apartheid state,” and the historical absurdity that Gaza terrorists are “freedom fighters” - are protected speech under the First Amendment while the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s well documented revelation that SJP is promoting Hamas propaganda lies is not.
Brooklyn College SJP has posted articles and videos online defending terrorism including an advertisement titled “The Third Intifada” on its Facebook page. It has hosted speakers promoting the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and even staged an event to publicize its refusal to enter a dialogue with pro-Israel organizations and students. And a gang of 10 anti-Israel activists stormed a campus faculty meeting in February 2016, calling one faculty member a “Zionist pig” and issuing demands for “Zionists off campus.”
Anderson admits that “in years past, some have felt offended by SJP’s protests and have asked the Brooklyn College administration to ban the student group.” But then adds sanctimoniously, “We cannot.” But when given an opportunity to actually defend “dissident views”—which on the campus of Brooklyn College includes the view that SJP is a pawn of anti-Jewish terrorists—Anderson’s First Amendment concerns suddenly disappear.
Saint Louis University: Campus Administration
As the only Catholic university on our list, it would be understandable if St. Louis University exercised a somewhat greater degree of involvement in the selection of speakers who appeared on campus than its public counterparts to ensure that such events are compatible with the Catholic faith. But in fact the administration of St. Louis University is one of the most shameless promoters of anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish Islamic hate mongers. It has welcomed campus speakers and organizations that promote Islamic supremacism and support the anti-Israel terror group Hamas while defaming pro-Israel speakers as racist and Islamophobic and banning them from campus. In recent years, it has hosted events designed to indoctrinate students in Hamas propaganda and train them to support anti-Israel terrorism.
In 2012, Saint Louis University hosted a three-day training and strategy conference for the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, formerly named the International Solidarity Movement, a hate group that spreads Hamas propaganda and promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. SLU also promoted the BDS movement at a 2011 event held at the Busch Student Center called “An Introduction to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement: Nonviolent Resistance to Stop the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.” The event featured Fulbright scholar Sandra Samaan Tamari, a member of the Saint Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee.
In 2015, the university hosted a seminar by a group named #MyJihad which was formed by Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization with extensive ties to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood network. The seminar aimed to whitewash the concept of jihad for American audiences.
But while repeatedly opening its doors to Hamas sympathizers, SLU has taken extreme measures to ban speech and organizations critical of anti-Israel terrorists on campus. In October 2009, Freedom Center founder and CEO David Horowitz was invited to speak at SLU by the campus chapters of the College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation about “Islamo-Fascism Awareness and Civil Rights.” But administrators told the student organizations sponsoring Horowitz’s appearance that they must either disinvite him or radically alter the format of the event to include a second speaker who would interpret Horowitz’s views in light of “Catholic teachings,” stipulations that had never been placed on appearances by several pro-Hamas speakers who appeared at SLU. Ultimately, school administrators cancelled Horowitz’s speech.
This egregious breach of academic freedom and free speech on campus was widely criticized in academia and beyond. Cary Nelson, national president of the American Association of University Professors, declared in a statement that, “Now that Saint Louis University has cancelled a scheduled October speech by conservative activist David Horowitz, it joins the small group of campuses that are universities in name only.”
More recently, in October 2016, SLU attempted to censor the remarks of retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Allen West who was also invited to speak on campus by a conservative student group. The University forbid students from using the words “radical Islam” on advertisements for the event. One administrator even claimed that West—a veteran of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom— did not “have experience with radical Islam.” The University then encouraged students to participate in a mass walkout of West’s speech.
For its disturbing pattern of banning speech critical of anti-Israel terrorists and radical Islam while welcoming Hamas supporters to campus, SLU’s administration makes our list of Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.
San Francisco State University: Leslie E. Wong, President
San Francisco State University cultivates its reputation as one of the most radical campuses in the nation, known for its disruptive protests and extremist student movements. The anti-Israel movement at SFSU, led by an SJP-surrogate group called the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) fits into this tradition. Even in the radicalized world of anti-Israel student organizations, GUPS stands out for its brazen and public Jew hatred.
In April 2016, when Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat appeared on campus, a GUPS mob shouting “Intifada” and chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!,” itself a call for the obliteration of the Jewish state, forced the cancellation of his speech. When SFSU President Leslie Wong called tepidly for an investigation into the protestors who shut down Barkat’s speech, GUPS responded by asserting that this request “criminalize[s] anti-racist speech on campus.”
The former president of GUPS, Mohammad G. Hammad, wrote dozens of social media posts threatening violence to pro-Israel students, Israelis, the IDF and others. He also praised Hamas and the violent Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
During an “emergency rally” held by GUPS at SFSU in December 2013, the phrase “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers” was written with chalk on the concrete stage at Malcolm X Plaza. The same phrase, referring to the Hamas assertion that Jews have colonized Arab Palestine and must be exterminated, was also written on a sign at a display table during the “Edward Said Mural Celebration.”
The faculty advisor for GUPS, Prof. RababAbdulhadi, met with terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah during a university-funded trip to the Middle East. (Khaled is a convicted hijacker and a member of the terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Sheikh Raed Salah has been repeatedly jailed on charges of incitement to terrorist violence.) Abdulhadi also helped to broker a formal collaboration between SFSU and An-Najah National University in Palestine, which is known for its recruitment of students as cadre for Hamas and as suicide bombers.
Despite these many incidents, the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) remains an organization in good standing at SFSU. After it disrupted Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s speech, SFSU President Wong initially called for an open investigation of the incident, but ultimately placed the blame on campus administrators—not the student protestors—writing, “It makes exceptionally clear that the responsibility for the inadequate response prior to, during and following the event falls squarely on the shoulders of San Francisco State University administrators. On April 6, we failed our students — both the event attendees and the protesters — through multiple inactions.”
But while exonerating GUPS for its attack on Barkat, President Wong immediately attacked the David Horowitz Freedom Center and threatened legal action when it placed posters on campus exposing the links between SJP and Hamas, and criticizing SFSU Professor Rabab Abdulhadi for her support of anti-Israel terrorists.
“Flyers were posted by an outside extremist group in numerous locations, singling out one of our faculty members, our students and vandalizing our campus,” Wong wrote in a letter addressed to the entire campus community. “We know that this group is not affiliated with San Francisco State University.”
He continued, “Let me be clear, this is not an issue of free speech; this is bullying behavior that is unacceptable and will not be tolerated on our campus. A line has been crossed, and we are investigating any legal recourse we have with the perpetrators.”
For his repeated failure to censure SJP for its violation of campus policy and incitement of violence against Jewish students while castigating speech critical of SJP as “bullying” and threatening legal action against its agents, Wong makes the case for SFSU’s inclusion on the list of campuses most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.
Tufts University: James M. Glaser, Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, and Jianmin Qu, Dean of the School of Engineering
The campus of Tufts University has repeatedly rolled out the red carpet for supporters of the BDS movement against Israel. In 2014, it hosted the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) National Conference, a secretive event which to which media access was strictly controlled and monitored but according to the conference agenda, instructed attendees on how and when to take “direct action” against supporters of Israel.
Tufts SJP has repeatedly condoned anti-Israel terrorism in its published works and statements and holds an annual “Israeli Apartheid” hate week during which the BDS movement against Israel is promoted. It has also violated campus regulations by distributing mock “eviction notices” to Jewish students in the dorms, which it falsely claims are similar to notices “routinely given to Palestinian families living under oppressive Israeli occupation.” Tufts SJP also attacked and delegitimized the campus pro-Israel group Students Supporting Israel (SSI) by labeling it “literally a hate group.”
No action was taken against SJP, yet when the David Horowitz Freedom Center attempted to hang posters describing SJP’s links to Hamas and its genocidal agenda, three Tufts administrators— Dean of Arts and Sciences James Glaser, Dean of the School of Engineering Jianmin Qu and Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon—emailed a statement to the entire Tufts student body, condemning the posters and claiming that they violated the University’s community standards.
“The university will be sending a statement to the poster’s sponsors in order to make clear that such materials are not welcome on our campus,” the email read.
Two of these administrators—Glaser and Qu—followed up this missive with a letter sent directly to the Freedom Center. It read:
We are writing to express our serious concerns regarding the posters placed on the Tufts University campus on October 19, 2016… The posters in question violate our community standards and are not welcome on our campus. We ask that you cease any further actions that violate our community standards and, in the future, that your organization comply with applicable university policies in any interactions with members of the Tufts community or our campus facilities.
After noting SJP’s financial ties to Hamas and the rampant anti-Semitism behind its call for BDS, Freedom Center founder David Horowitz quoted from Tufts’ community standards—which explicitly state “Freedom of expression and inquiry are fundamental to the academic enterprise” to point out that nothing in the Freedom Center’s posters violate those standards.
For its stunning hypocrisy in tearing down posters critical of SJP and Hamas, while allowing SJP to disregard campus regulations, attack Jewish students and violate the University’s rules of civility, Tufts’ administrators deserve to be named among those who are “most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.”
University of California-Berkeley: Nils Gilman, Associate Chancellor
The University of California-Berkeley has a well-deserved reputation for stigmatizing ideas which don’t fit the extreme left-wing, anti-Israel campus culture. Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman has epitomized this double-standard by failing to condemn outright calls for terrorism and genocide against the Jews from campus anti-Israel groups while denouncing posters putting forth factual information about Students for Justice in Palestine and its links to Hamas.
In a letter sent to the entire campus community in April 2016, Gilman denounced anti-SJP posters hung on campus by the David Horowitz Freedom Center as “a tactic of harassment and intimidation.” He claimed that UC Berkeley “remains committed to combating all forms of bias and discrimination” and asked the campus community to “use this opportunity to reinforce our values as a campus, and to report any further incidents”—in other words, urging Berkeley’s students and faculty to report any speech that challenges the leftist thought control enforced at Berkeley.
When the Freedom Center again hung posters exposing the truth about SJP at Berkeley in October of 2016, Gilman issued another letter stating that the language in the posters “violates our Principles of Community” and ordered them to be taken down.
The UC-Berkeley Principles of Community which he references state, in part, “We affirm the dignity of all individuals and strive to uphold a just community in which discrimination and hate are not tolerated” and “We are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities.”
But by failing to uphold free speech and intellectual diversity, Gilman’s comments in his letters to the Berkeley community violate these Principles. They also degrade the spirit of open discourse and the exploration of all sides of crucial issues which lie at the heart of the mission of the modern liberal arts university.
The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has not faced similar sanctions despite years of rallies and propaganda displays that directly threaten Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus.
In October 2015, Berkeley’s SJP chapter held a rally to support the “International Day of Action” for Palestine and the BDS movement against Israel at Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza. The Muslim Students Association co-sponsored the event. Speakers and participants chanted pro-terrorist slogans including “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (The Intifada is the Arabic name for suicide attacks on Jews, and “from the river to the sea” means the obliteration of the Jewish state and its replacement by an Islamic totalitarian regime identical to the one that now exists in Gaza.)
In March 2016, Berkeley SJP held a “Die-in, March, and Speakout for Palestine.” The rally included the display of a large mock “apartheid wall” which featured anti-Israel slogans and pro-terrorist propaganda. One panel of the “apartheid wall” depicted all of Israel replaced with a Palestinian flag, a visual expression of SJP’s calls for the obliteration of the Jewish State.
Such displays of brutal Hamas propaganda—like the hypocrisy of the school’s administrators— are commonplace on the Berkeley campus. Students for Justice in Palestine remains a student organization in good standing while Chancellor Gilman spends his energies condemning one of the only forms of campus speech to offer a different—and more accurate—account of SJP’s aims and alliances. For this reason, Chancellor Nils Gilman and Berkeley deserve their spot on the list of the university administrations “most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.”
University of California-Los Angeles: Jerry Kang, Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and Gene Block, Chancellor:
UCLA Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang has undergone extreme intellectual and political contortions in defending the UCLA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as “an officially recognized student organization, based on political commitments, that is also in good standing” despite SJP’s constant manifestation of Jew hatred on the Los Angeles campus.
In one widely noted expression of the group’s anti Semitism, SJP members illegally questioned student government candidate Rachel Beyda about whether her status as a Jew would bias her decisions on campus matters. It also attempted to create a litmus test for student government candidates by introducing an initiative that would require them to sign a pledge to not take trips to Israel sponsored by pro-Israel organizations.
Such incidents violate UCLA’s Principles of Community which state, in part, “We are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue, in a respectful and civil manner, on the spectrum of views held by our varied and diverse campus communities.”
Despite his title as the UCLA administrator in charge of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Vice Chancellor Kang has ignored SJP’s continual violation of these Principles of Community, disregarding the harassment of Jewish students forced to endure SJP’s mock “apartheid walls” plastered with Hamas propaganda and its rallies decrying the founding of the Jewish state as “Al-nakba” or “the catastrophe.” But when the David Horowitz Freedom Center hung posters on campus exposing SJP’s ties to anti-Israel terror group Hamas, and naming campus activists who had worked to bring about the destruction of the Jewish state, both Kang and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block were quick to condemn them. In an email to the entire 50,000 member UCLA community, Kang said the posters were “designed to shock and terrify,” and accused the Freedom Center of using “the tactic of guilt by association, of using blacklists, of ethnic slander, and sensationalized images engineered to trigger racially-tinged fear.” In a second diatribe, he claimed the posters caused “chilling psychological harm” and “focused, personalized intimidation.”
University Chancellor Gene Block also reacted to the posters by stating “Islamophobic posters appeared on campus, in complete disregard of our Principles of Community and the dignity of our Muslim students. But we can, and we will, do our best to hold ourselves to the standards of integrity, inclusion, fairness and compassion that are the hallmarks of a healthy community.”
Quick to defend SJP and its violent rhetoric, Kang and Block have been missing in action when Jewish students faced intimidation and harassment from anti-Semitic speakers and Hamas propaganda plastered across campus.
In addition to the incidents listed above, UCLA SJP holds an annual “Palestine Awareness Week” on campus featuring speakers who endorse the genocidal BDS movement against Israel. SJP’s 2016 event featured journalist Max Blumenthal, who stated during his address that suicide bombing against Jews is justified by “the occupation” and described Palestinian terrorists as “young men who took up arms to fight their occupier.” He also compared Israel to the Islamic state, calling it “‘JSIL,’ the Jewish State in Israel and the Levant.” Another speaker, Miko Peled, also defended Palestinian terrorism, renaming it “a struggle for freedom and justice and equality,” and describing terrorists as “very brave Palestinians who are engaged in fighting this brutal occupation.” Peled also described Jews as analogous to Hitler, calling Jewish soldiers “young little Jewish gestapos,” and further accused Israel of “massive, violent, brutal oppression,” “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and of being “a colonialist, apartheid, racist system.”
Nor is such hate speech directed at Israel and Jews restricted to SJP events. In 2015, UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies held a conference on “Palestine and Pedagogy” during which speakers compared Israel to the Nazis, praised anti-Israel terrorism and supported the BDS movement against Israel. UC Irvine Professor and Director of the UC Institute for Humanities Research Theo Goldberg accused Israel of practicing “eliminationist racism” similar to the Nazis’ and claimed Israelis view Palestinians as “vermin, cockroaches, rats, snakes…that take boots on the ground to get rid of.” Goldberg further charged that Israelis make “snuff films” featuring the deaths of innocent Palestinians which go viral resulting in “an orgasm” for Israelis. Meanwhile UC Riverside Professor David Lloyd called Israel “a colonial Zionist project that has become a…nightmare, ever more rigid and oppressive” and endorsed the right of Palestinians to take up arms against Israel.
This hate speech was ignored by Kang and Block and other appeasement-minded UCLA administrators.
Kang’s support for SJP and its pro-terrorism agenda was also evident in his lack of support for second year law student Milan Chatterjee, president of the Graduate Student Association (GSA) at UCLA. When he attempted to keep the GSA out of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction controversy on campus, Chatterjee was subjected to such severe harassment by SJP and Kang that he resigned. He later announced he was leaving UCLA to continue his law degree elsewhere because of the “hostile and unsafe campus climate” created by groups supporting the BDS movement on campus in concert with the UCLA administration.
Chatterjee wrote in a letter to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block: “It is unfortunate, indeed, that your administration has not only allowed BDS organizations and student activists to freely engage in intimidation of students who do not support the BDS agenda, but has decided to affirmatively engage in discriminatory practices of its own against those same students. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that the UCLA campus has become a hostile and unsafe environment for students, Jewish students and non-Jewish, who choose not to support the BDS movement, let alone support the state of Israel.”
In comments made to the media, Chatterjee also stated, “I filed a complaint with the office of Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang, who took zero action and refused to investigate... This is very disturbing behavior and shows a double standard at play at UCLA. If SJP files a complaint, they will bend over backwards. If it’s anyone else, they don’t care.”
In their zeal to defend pro-terrorist campus organizations like SJP, both Kang and Block have not hesitated to violate the First Amendment rights of their critics. The taxpayers of the state of California would be well advised to take note of their actions.
University of Chicago: Campus administration
The University of Chicago has long prided itself on producing independent thinkers and encouraging a certain iconoclasm among its students and faculty. In the fall of 2016, the university’s dean of students, John Ellison, engendered a national controversy by making an explicit statement in support of free speech in a letter to incoming students: “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
It seemed that Ellison was bravely sailing against the winds of political correctness, but recent events at the University of Chicago suggest that this cherished commitment to free speech applies to students and campus organizations that seek Israel’s destruction, but not to those who defend the Jewish state and expose the terrorist connections of its enemies.
In the past few years, Chicago has witnessed the development of a highly active BDS campus movement, U of C Divest, which is currently supported by more than 20 student organizations on campus. In the spring of 2016, U of C Divest succeeded in passing a resolution endorsing BDS in Chicago’s student government. During the debate over the resolution, an amendment supporting the continued self-determination of the Jewish people and the existence of Israel was rejected, indicating that the coalition’s goals align with Hamas’s aims of destroying the Jewish state.
The University of Chicago has brought numerous pro-Hamas speakers to campus. In October 2015, UC-SJP hosted BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti for a speech on “BDS and the Ethical Obligation to End Complicity in Oppression.” During his address, Barghouti labeled Israel a “savage unrepairable society” that conducts “ethnic cleansing.” He praised terrorism against Israel’s Jews, stating that “resistance” is a legitimate response to “the violence of an oppressive system.” Several UC organizations and departments co-sponsored Barghouti’s address including the Global Voices Program – University of Chicago International House, the Pozen Center for Human Rights, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of International Studies.
Later that same month, UC-SJP held a panel titled “Jerusalem in Crisis: Insider Perspectives on the Violence in Palestine-Israel” as part of the “UChicago Israeli Apartheid Week.” One speaker at the event, a graduate student member of SJP, stated: “Palestinian violent resistance against the violent Israeli military is always justified; it is the equivalent of biting the hand that is trying to choke you to death.”
In February 2016, a throng of angry protestors interrupted and threatened a Palestinian human rights activist, Bassam Eid, who came to speak on U. Chicago’s campus about the oppression of Palestinians by the theocratic terrorist regimes in the West Bank and Gaza. SJP members and supporters on campus were upset that Eid’s remarks were critical of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and failed to condemn Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine. In the video of Eid’s speech a young man can be seen screaming in Arabic: “I’m going to destroy this place!” and “I’m going to kill this motherf*****!” and “Wait until you go to your car!” Eid later declared himself to be “terrified” by the ordeal.
The University of Chicago has put forth a “Statement on Principles of Free Expression” which states that it “is an institution fully committed to the creation of knowledge across the spectrum of disciplines and professions, firm in its belief that a culture of intense inquiry and informed argument generates lasting ideas, and that the members of its community have a responsibility both to challenge and to listen.”
An examination of recent events on campus reveals that these principles are not applied without bias. SJP continues to function as a student organization in good standing at the University of Chicago, despite inviting speakers to campus that have engaged in anti-Semitic attacks and expressed Hamas propaganda which threatens the existence of the Jewish state. Yet, when the David Horowitz Freedom Center worked with activists to hang posters on campus which proposed a more truthful narrative revealing the financial and organizational connections between Hamas and Students for Justice in Palestine through a Hamas-front calling itself American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), University spokesperson Marielle Sainvilus said: “While the University of Chicago encourages the free exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives concerning a wide range of issues, these flyers are defamatory and inconsistent with our values and policies.”
For their blatant hypocrisy in allowing and defending speech supporting Hamas while vilifying speech critical of that anti-Israel terror group, the University of Chicago administration makes our list of Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.
University of Minnesota: Danita Brown Young, Vice Provost for Student Affairs and Dean of Students
Residing in America’s heartland, the University of Minnesota is not an obvious choice to make the list of campuses supporting terrorism and expressing hostility to the First Amendment. But the university’s administrators have been as supportive of the hate group Students for Justice in Palestine as schools with more radical pedigrees while also condemning speech critical of the Hamas-funded organization as “hateful” and “repulsive.”
In November of 2015, for instance, SJP at Minnesota, along with the Anti-War Committee, disrupted a talk by Hebrew University professor Moshe Halbertal, co-author of the Israeli Defense Forces’ code of ethics which is titled “Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare.” A crowd of pro-Palestine students took turns shouting epithets at Halbertal, preventing him from being heard or carrying on with his address. Chants from the protestors included “These are massacres, not mistakes! These are war crimes! Free, free Palestine!” and “Occupation is a crime, free, free Palestine!”
The University took no action against the student organizations responsible for shutting down Halbertal’s appearance.
UMN is also home to a strident coalition calling itself “UMN Divest” which spreads disinformation about Israel in an effort to persuade the student government to pass a Hamas-inspired resolution encouraging the University to divest its investments from Israeli companies.
UMN SJP has also repeatedly constructed mock “apartheid walls” on campus plastered with propaganda supporting the Hamas narrative, including propaganda maps claiming to show the Jewish colonization and takeover of Arab Palestine (a nation which has never existed). SJP also held a “die-in” on campus accompanied by a narration that demonized Israel, claiming that it is responsible for the “extrajudicial murders of Palestinian youths” and “atrocities against Palestinians.”
The University of Minnesota administration has continually provided legitimacy and resources to SJP which allow them to spread Hamas propaganda on campus. Yet when the Horowitz Freedom Center attempted to hang posters critical of SJP and the BDS movement on campus, Dean of Students Danita Brown Young immediately condemned them as “repulsive” and “not consistent with our University values or commitment to an inclusive campus environment.”
In a saccharine letter to SJP about these posters, Brown Young wrote: “I am sorry for the hurt and fear this has caused you and the members of your group…This repulsive action weighs heavily on us…. We as a community do NOT accept this incident and we must collectively support each other in our time of need.”
For her support of SJP’s hate campaign against Israel and the Jews while condemning a rare instance of speech critical of that campaign, UMN Dean of Students Danita Brown Young makes the case for Minnesota’s inclusion on the list of university administrations most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.
Vassar College: John Chenette, Interim President, and Ed Pittman, Associate Dean of Campus Life and Diversity
A small liberal arts college located in the quiet town of Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College has for several years been home to a radical, anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas student movement against the Jews and Israel.
In March, 2016, the Vassar Student Association passed a resolution supporting the BDS movement against Israel by a vote of 15-7. The Amcha Initiative, an organization that tracks anti-Semitism on campus, gives insight into the atmosphere as the BDS resolution was debated: “A Jewish student who attended the BDS vote outlined antisemitic activity by pro-BDS students during the meeting, stating, ‘One Jewish student talked about how the BDS campaign had invoked every anxiety nightmare she had ever had. She was crying as she spoke. Pro-BDS students laughed at her.’…Another Jewish student talked about Israel’s founding in the wake of the Holocaust. He was immediately accused of using the Holocaust as a political tool to justify the ‘genocide’ of another people.”
Other events at Vassar indicate the campus SJP chapter’s support of anti-Israel terrorism. In February 2016, Vassar SJP sold T-shirts picturing convicted terrorist Leila Khaled holding a gun with the words “Resistance is not Terrorism” written below the graphic. SJP Vassar also endorsed the T-shirt’s message by a post on social media: “Check out our friends at Existence is Resistance!!! They will be selling sweet fucking antiZionist gear at our events. 100% of profits goes towards organizing Palestinian resistance #ExistenceisResistance.”
In May of 2014, Vassar SJP managed to briefly shock even the radical campus administration by posting a “racist, anti-Semitic graphic” on its social media Tumbler page, depicting a 1940’s-era Nazi propaganda poster of a many-armed figure wearing a loincloth featuring the Star of David and holding a bag of money. The organization was briefly suspended, but was quickly reinstated.
Mostly silent during these outpourings of hatred, the reaction of Vassar administrators was quite different when the David Horowitz Freedom Center challenged the false and one sided campus narrative on Israel by hanging up posters critical of SJP and the BDS movement, and naming campus activists who supported these genocidal causes. Vassar Interim President Jon Chenette sent an email to the entire campus stating that the posters had been taken down and destroyed and that “Those in our community who were singled out in these postings deserve our unconditional support.”
Associate Dean of Campus Life and Diversity Ed Pittman went even further to heal the supposed wounds caused by the Freedom Center’s posters, organizing two separate sessions of an “all campus dialogue.” He stated: “Our best approach in these situations is to stand ready to support those who are impacted. It’s such a politically fueled issue that words and sometimes images are used to hurt, threaten and intimidate others because of their views.” Pittman concluded that the goal of Campus Life and Diversity was “to offer counter opportunities for discourse,” when he and Chenette had just done the very opposite.
For their immediate destruction of posters critical of SJP and coddling of students who may have been offended by them, while continuing to allow Hamas propaganda targeting Jewish students to appear on campus, Vassar administrators Jon Chenette and Ed Pittman make the case for Vassar’s inclusion on our list of administrations most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.
Thank You Ms Dogan and FPM.
Targeting the nation’s worst offenders.
May 15, 2017
Sara Dogan
Over the past two weeks, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has named 10 prestigious college and university campuses to its list of the “Top 10 College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.” These campuses provide financial and institutional support to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech exposing the truth about Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States.
The Freedom Center placed posters exposing the links between the terrorist group Hamas and SJP on each of these ten campuses, both to inform students about the allies to terror in their midst and to challenge these campus administrations to do what they so far have refused to do—to uphold the First Amendment and promote free expression even when doing so means facing down radical students and faculty who demand otherwise.
Already our campaign has yielded positive results. Mainstream Jewish publication JWeekly.com reported on the Freedom Center's poster campaign, quoting David Horowitz and noting that San Francisco State University President Les Wong has come under fire recently for failing to adequately protect Jewish students on campus.
Wong himself has also responded to the campaign in a letter to entire SFSU community (which was reprinted at Jweekly.com) noting that "This week I encountered both the re-emergence of posters on campus attacking and condemning the work of Palestinian activists and their supporters." Wong went on to state, "I believe it is the fundamental role of a university to engage differing viewpoints and to evaluate their merits and shortcomings. It is this belief that compels me to unequivocally reject the concept of 'anti-normalization' outright." SJP as an organization rejects all "normalization" of relations with pro-Israel groups. By making this declaration, Wong is taking an important stand against at least one aspect of SJP's genocidal agenda.
The full report on the ten campus administrations “Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment” follows below.
Introduction:
Of all the disturbing trends to have emerged on college campuses in recent years, perhaps the most ominous is the support universities offer to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech critical of Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States. Administrators at San Francisco State University, UCLA, the University of Chicago, Tufts University, Brooklyn College and other schools have actively supported organizations supporting terrorists and their activities while suppressing their critics.
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has emerged as the leading pro-terrorist, anti-Jewish organization in America, and the driving force behind the recent surge of anti-Semitism on American campuses. SJP is the chief promoter of the Hamas-inspired and funded “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign in America, an effort to weaken and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. SJP also stages annual “Israeli Apartheid” hate weeks on campuses across the nation which feature pro-Hamas speakers and “apartheid walls” in public spaces on campus displaying pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic propaganda. SJP also creates mock checkpoints and die-ins that obstruct student movements on campus, disrupts pro-Israel campus events, threatens Jewish and pro-Israel speakers, and has physically assaulted Jewish students.
As described in the Freedom Center’s recent pamphlet, Students for Justice in Palestine: A Campus Front for Hamas Terrorists, SJP’s pro-terror campaign is guided and funded through a Hamas front called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. AMP was created by Hatem Bazian, a pro-Hamas professor at UC Berkeley who is also the co-founder of SJP.
In recent testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Jonathan Schanzer, a terrorism finance analyst for the United States Department of the Treasury from 2004-2007, described AMP as “arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States” and explained that “AMP spent $100,000 on campus activities in 2014 alone.”
The following report chronicles ten of the worst collegiate offenders in this category of campuses that support anti-Israel terrorists even when their rhetoric and propaganda cross the line into hate speech while rejecting speech critical of the perpetrators and promoters of terrorism.
(Campuses are listed in alphabetical order)
1. Brandeis University
2. Brooklyn College (CUNY)
3. Saint Louis University
4. San Francisco State University
5. Tufts University
6. University of California, Berkeley
7. University of California, Los Angeles
8. University of Chicago
9. University of Minnesota
10. Vassar College
Brandeis University: Campus Administration
Brandeis University, located in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, is notable for being one of America’s few elite universities to be founded by Jews and is named for Louis B. Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court. In recent years, Brandeis has been conspicuous for a more disturbing reason—as an academic center that is uniquely welcoming to pro-terrorist speech and ideology directed against Israel while showing extreme hostility towards those who oppose Israel’s terrorist adversaries.
Members of Brandeis’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine have hosted numerous events featuring speakers that defend anti-Israel terrorism and the genocidal Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Among these are radical professor Noam Chomsky who gave a speech describing Israel’s actions towards Palestine as “vicious, brutal and criminal” and claimed that Israel “is alone in denying” its “illegal occupation of territories.”
In April 2015, the Brandeis administration selected former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering to be honored as the university’s commencement speaker. Known for his extreme anti-Israel views, Pickering has written that Israel has conducted a “half-century-long occupation” of Palestine that is tantamount to “the permanent subjugation and disenfranchisement of a people to which Israel refuses to grant citizenship in the Jewish state.”
In 2014, a Jewish student at Brandeis, Daniel Mael, exposed a secret faculty listserve where more than 90 left-wing Brandeis faculty exchanged radical views. Some of the listserve’s participants promoted Hamas propaganda while espousing anti-Semitic comments and expressing hatred of Israel. Professor Donald Hindley, for instance, referred to the Jewish state as “The Vile, Terrorist Israeli Government,” in a post about the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas terrorists.
Hindley also sarcastically wrote: “Zionist olive trees grow wondrously on Palestinian corpses…” and compared an event challenging the anti-Semitic BDS movement to “Germany in the later 1930s with everyone at least a Nazi sympathizer.”
Brandeis sociology professor Gordon Fellman, meanwhile, wrote on the listserve seeking signatures for an open letter to “end the illegal occupation in Palestine.” According to the letter, “the government of Israel, having provoked the firing of rockets by its rampage through the West Bank, is now using that response as the pretext for an aerial assault on Gaza which has already cost scores of lives.”
When Brandeis University president Fredrick Lawrence condemned these statements as “abhorrent”( but took no official action against the professors who made them), some faculty who participated in the listserve, along with the Brandeis English Department, condemned his comments and sought a faculty forum on freedom of speech on campus.
While welcoming anti-Israel and pro-Hamas speech on campus, Brandeis has also exhibited hostility towards those who are critical of Islamic terrorism. In April 2014, under pressure from students and faculty, the Brandeis administration acted to withdraw an honorary degree that had been offered to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born women’s rights activist and critic of radical Islam who has condemned the mistreatment of women in Muslim countries, and especially the practice of female genital mutilation. Eighty-seven Brandeis faculty members signed a petition citing Ali’s “extreme Islamophobic beliefs” as a reason why the honorary degree should be rescinded. Showcasing the university’s blatant hypocrisy, Brandeis had previously awarded an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner, who has a long history of anti-Semitic statements, among them the claim that “The biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community.”
Brandeis also failed to take action when SJP members disrupted a university panel featuring six members of the Israeli Knesset. The SJP activists repeatedly yelled the epithet “war criminals” at the panel participants and attempted to distribute fake warrants calling for their arrest.
For its history of repeatedly welcoming anti-Israel and pro-terror speakers and protests on campus while allowing those who would present opposing views to be silenced, the Brandeis administration makes our list of Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.
Brooklyn College: Michelle J.Anderson, President
At Brooklyn College, President Michelle Anderson responded to posters protesting the links between the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and Hamas by tearing them down and denouncing their sponsor, the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Anderson emphasized that Brooklyn College’s status as a public university and its obligation to uphold the First Amendment did not in her view extend to speech she considered, without proof or substantiation, “hateful” or “bullying.”
President Anderson failed to address the posters’ central claim that Students for Justice in Palestine is funded by the terrorist organization Hamas, and exists to spread Hamas’s genocidal propaganda against Israel and the Jews. Instead, she cited the widely-discredited smear site of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as the basis for her criticism of the Freedom Center.
Anderson’s response included lofty passages about the importance of free speech and intellectual diversity on a college campus including this one: “Academic freedom not only prevents the suppression of dissident views; it also forces us to confront those whose beliefs are antithetical to our own. The opportunity to have one’s beliefs challenged, to reflect, and to consider change is the very purpose of a university. Free speech, debate, and the open exchange of ideas are the oxygen of our existence on this campus. We must engage.”
Yet she exempted the Freedom Center from these protections by calling its posters “hate speech” – which in any case is constitutionally protected – and defended her decision to tear them down with the following reasoning: “The images and words were frightening and hostile to both supporters of SJP and advocates of free speech on campus, including many Jews. In particular, they targeted individual SJP leaders with the aim of bullying them and making them vulnerable to additional harassment or worse.”
Anderson’s defense of SJP illustrates the intellectual double-standards accepted by administration officials at Brooklyn College. She claims that SJP’s hate speech – in particular its genocidal claims that Israel is an “apartheid state,” and the historical absurdity that Gaza terrorists are “freedom fighters” - are protected speech under the First Amendment while the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s well documented revelation that SJP is promoting Hamas propaganda lies is not.
Brooklyn College SJP has posted articles and videos online defending terrorism including an advertisement titled “The Third Intifada” on its Facebook page. It has hosted speakers promoting the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and even staged an event to publicize its refusal to enter a dialogue with pro-Israel organizations and students. And a gang of 10 anti-Israel activists stormed a campus faculty meeting in February 2016, calling one faculty member a “Zionist pig” and issuing demands for “Zionists off campus.”
Anderson admits that “in years past, some have felt offended by SJP’s protests and have asked the Brooklyn College administration to ban the student group.” But then adds sanctimoniously, “We cannot.” But when given an opportunity to actually defend “dissident views”—which on the campus of Brooklyn College includes the view that SJP is a pawn of anti-Jewish terrorists—Anderson’s First Amendment concerns suddenly disappear.
Saint Louis University: Campus Administration
As the only Catholic university on our list, it would be understandable if St. Louis University exercised a somewhat greater degree of involvement in the selection of speakers who appeared on campus than its public counterparts to ensure that such events are compatible with the Catholic faith. But in fact the administration of St. Louis University is one of the most shameless promoters of anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish Islamic hate mongers. It has welcomed campus speakers and organizations that promote Islamic supremacism and support the anti-Israel terror group Hamas while defaming pro-Israel speakers as racist and Islamophobic and banning them from campus. In recent years, it has hosted events designed to indoctrinate students in Hamas propaganda and train them to support anti-Israel terrorism.
In 2012, Saint Louis University hosted a three-day training and strategy conference for the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, formerly named the International Solidarity Movement, a hate group that spreads Hamas propaganda and promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. SLU also promoted the BDS movement at a 2011 event held at the Busch Student Center called “An Introduction to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement: Nonviolent Resistance to Stop the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.” The event featured Fulbright scholar Sandra Samaan Tamari, a member of the Saint Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee.
In 2015, the university hosted a seminar by a group named #MyJihad which was formed by Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization with extensive ties to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood network. The seminar aimed to whitewash the concept of jihad for American audiences.
But while repeatedly opening its doors to Hamas sympathizers, SLU has taken extreme measures to ban speech and organizations critical of anti-Israel terrorists on campus. In October 2009, Freedom Center founder and CEO David Horowitz was invited to speak at SLU by the campus chapters of the College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation about “Islamo-Fascism Awareness and Civil Rights.” But administrators told the student organizations sponsoring Horowitz’s appearance that they must either disinvite him or radically alter the format of the event to include a second speaker who would interpret Horowitz’s views in light of “Catholic teachings,” stipulations that had never been placed on appearances by several pro-Hamas speakers who appeared at SLU. Ultimately, school administrators cancelled Horowitz’s speech.
This egregious breach of academic freedom and free speech on campus was widely criticized in academia and beyond. Cary Nelson, national president of the American Association of University Professors, declared in a statement that, “Now that Saint Louis University has cancelled a scheduled October speech by conservative activist David Horowitz, it joins the small group of campuses that are universities in name only.”
More recently, in October 2016, SLU attempted to censor the remarks of retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Allen West who was also invited to speak on campus by a conservative student group. The University forbid students from using the words “radical Islam” on advertisements for the event. One administrator even claimed that West—a veteran of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom— did not “have experience with radical Islam.” The University then encouraged students to participate in a mass walkout of West’s speech.
For its disturbing pattern of banning speech critical of anti-Israel terrorists and radical Islam while welcoming Hamas supporters to campus, SLU’s administration makes our list of Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.
San Francisco State University: Leslie E. Wong, President
San Francisco State University cultivates its reputation as one of the most radical campuses in the nation, known for its disruptive protests and extremist student movements. The anti-Israel movement at SFSU, led by an SJP-surrogate group called the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) fits into this tradition. Even in the radicalized world of anti-Israel student organizations, GUPS stands out for its brazen and public Jew hatred.
In April 2016, when Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat appeared on campus, a GUPS mob shouting “Intifada” and chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!,” itself a call for the obliteration of the Jewish state, forced the cancellation of his speech. When SFSU President Leslie Wong called tepidly for an investigation into the protestors who shut down Barkat’s speech, GUPS responded by asserting that this request “criminalize[s] anti-racist speech on campus.”
The former president of GUPS, Mohammad G. Hammad, wrote dozens of social media posts threatening violence to pro-Israel students, Israelis, the IDF and others. He also praised Hamas and the violent Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
During an “emergency rally” held by GUPS at SFSU in December 2013, the phrase “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers” was written with chalk on the concrete stage at Malcolm X Plaza. The same phrase, referring to the Hamas assertion that Jews have colonized Arab Palestine and must be exterminated, was also written on a sign at a display table during the “Edward Said Mural Celebration.”
The faculty advisor for GUPS, Prof. RababAbdulhadi, met with terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah during a university-funded trip to the Middle East. (Khaled is a convicted hijacker and a member of the terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Sheikh Raed Salah has been repeatedly jailed on charges of incitement to terrorist violence.) Abdulhadi also helped to broker a formal collaboration between SFSU and An-Najah National University in Palestine, which is known for its recruitment of students as cadre for Hamas and as suicide bombers.
Despite these many incidents, the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) remains an organization in good standing at SFSU. After it disrupted Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s speech, SFSU President Wong initially called for an open investigation of the incident, but ultimately placed the blame on campus administrators—not the student protestors—writing, “It makes exceptionally clear that the responsibility for the inadequate response prior to, during and following the event falls squarely on the shoulders of San Francisco State University administrators. On April 6, we failed our students — both the event attendees and the protesters — through multiple inactions.”
But while exonerating GUPS for its attack on Barkat, President Wong immediately attacked the David Horowitz Freedom Center and threatened legal action when it placed posters on campus exposing the links between SJP and Hamas, and criticizing SFSU Professor Rabab Abdulhadi for her support of anti-Israel terrorists.
“Flyers were posted by an outside extremist group in numerous locations, singling out one of our faculty members, our students and vandalizing our campus,” Wong wrote in a letter addressed to the entire campus community. “We know that this group is not affiliated with San Francisco State University.”
He continued, “Let me be clear, this is not an issue of free speech; this is bullying behavior that is unacceptable and will not be tolerated on our campus. A line has been crossed, and we are investigating any legal recourse we have with the perpetrators.”
For his repeated failure to censure SJP for its violation of campus policy and incitement of violence against Jewish students while castigating speech critical of SJP as “bullying” and threatening legal action against its agents, Wong makes the case for SFSU’s inclusion on the list of campuses most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.
Tufts University: James M. Glaser, Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, and Jianmin Qu, Dean of the School of Engineering
The campus of Tufts University has repeatedly rolled out the red carpet for supporters of the BDS movement against Israel. In 2014, it hosted the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) National Conference, a secretive event which to which media access was strictly controlled and monitored but according to the conference agenda, instructed attendees on how and when to take “direct action” against supporters of Israel.
Tufts SJP has repeatedly condoned anti-Israel terrorism in its published works and statements and holds an annual “Israeli Apartheid” hate week during which the BDS movement against Israel is promoted. It has also violated campus regulations by distributing mock “eviction notices” to Jewish students in the dorms, which it falsely claims are similar to notices “routinely given to Palestinian families living under oppressive Israeli occupation.” Tufts SJP also attacked and delegitimized the campus pro-Israel group Students Supporting Israel (SSI) by labeling it “literally a hate group.”
No action was taken against SJP, yet when the David Horowitz Freedom Center attempted to hang posters describing SJP’s links to Hamas and its genocidal agenda, three Tufts administrators— Dean of Arts and Sciences James Glaser, Dean of the School of Engineering Jianmin Qu and Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon—emailed a statement to the entire Tufts student body, condemning the posters and claiming that they violated the University’s community standards.
“The university will be sending a statement to the poster’s sponsors in order to make clear that such materials are not welcome on our campus,” the email read.
Two of these administrators—Glaser and Qu—followed up this missive with a letter sent directly to the Freedom Center. It read:
We are writing to express our serious concerns regarding the posters placed on the Tufts University campus on October 19, 2016… The posters in question violate our community standards and are not welcome on our campus. We ask that you cease any further actions that violate our community standards and, in the future, that your organization comply with applicable university policies in any interactions with members of the Tufts community or our campus facilities.
After noting SJP’s financial ties to Hamas and the rampant anti-Semitism behind its call for BDS, Freedom Center founder David Horowitz quoted from Tufts’ community standards—which explicitly state “Freedom of expression and inquiry are fundamental to the academic enterprise” to point out that nothing in the Freedom Center’s posters violate those standards.
For its stunning hypocrisy in tearing down posters critical of SJP and Hamas, while allowing SJP to disregard campus regulations, attack Jewish students and violate the University’s rules of civility, Tufts’ administrators deserve to be named among those who are “most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.”
University of California-Berkeley: Nils Gilman, Associate Chancellor
The University of California-Berkeley has a well-deserved reputation for stigmatizing ideas which don’t fit the extreme left-wing, anti-Israel campus culture. Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman has epitomized this double-standard by failing to condemn outright calls for terrorism and genocide against the Jews from campus anti-Israel groups while denouncing posters putting forth factual information about Students for Justice in Palestine and its links to Hamas.
In a letter sent to the entire campus community in April 2016, Gilman denounced anti-SJP posters hung on campus by the David Horowitz Freedom Center as “a tactic of harassment and intimidation.” He claimed that UC Berkeley “remains committed to combating all forms of bias and discrimination” and asked the campus community to “use this opportunity to reinforce our values as a campus, and to report any further incidents”—in other words, urging Berkeley’s students and faculty to report any speech that challenges the leftist thought control enforced at Berkeley.
When the Freedom Center again hung posters exposing the truth about SJP at Berkeley in October of 2016, Gilman issued another letter stating that the language in the posters “violates our Principles of Community” and ordered them to be taken down.
The UC-Berkeley Principles of Community which he references state, in part, “We affirm the dignity of all individuals and strive to uphold a just community in which discrimination and hate are not tolerated” and “We are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities.”
But by failing to uphold free speech and intellectual diversity, Gilman’s comments in his letters to the Berkeley community violate these Principles. They also degrade the spirit of open discourse and the exploration of all sides of crucial issues which lie at the heart of the mission of the modern liberal arts university.
The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has not faced similar sanctions despite years of rallies and propaganda displays that directly threaten Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus.
In October 2015, Berkeley’s SJP chapter held a rally to support the “International Day of Action” for Palestine and the BDS movement against Israel at Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza. The Muslim Students Association co-sponsored the event. Speakers and participants chanted pro-terrorist slogans including “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (The Intifada is the Arabic name for suicide attacks on Jews, and “from the river to the sea” means the obliteration of the Jewish state and its replacement by an Islamic totalitarian regime identical to the one that now exists in Gaza.)
In March 2016, Berkeley SJP held a “Die-in, March, and Speakout for Palestine.” The rally included the display of a large mock “apartheid wall” which featured anti-Israel slogans and pro-terrorist propaganda. One panel of the “apartheid wall” depicted all of Israel replaced with a Palestinian flag, a visual expression of SJP’s calls for the obliteration of the Jewish State.
Such displays of brutal Hamas propaganda—like the hypocrisy of the school’s administrators— are commonplace on the Berkeley campus. Students for Justice in Palestine remains a student organization in good standing while Chancellor Gilman spends his energies condemning one of the only forms of campus speech to offer a different—and more accurate—account of SJP’s aims and alliances. For this reason, Chancellor Nils Gilman and Berkeley deserve their spot on the list of the university administrations “most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.”
University of California-Los Angeles: Jerry Kang, Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and Gene Block, Chancellor:
UCLA Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang has undergone extreme intellectual and political contortions in defending the UCLA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as “an officially recognized student organization, based on political commitments, that is also in good standing” despite SJP’s constant manifestation of Jew hatred on the Los Angeles campus.
In one widely noted expression of the group’s anti Semitism, SJP members illegally questioned student government candidate Rachel Beyda about whether her status as a Jew would bias her decisions on campus matters. It also attempted to create a litmus test for student government candidates by introducing an initiative that would require them to sign a pledge to not take trips to Israel sponsored by pro-Israel organizations.
Such incidents violate UCLA’s Principles of Community which state, in part, “We are committed to ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue, in a respectful and civil manner, on the spectrum of views held by our varied and diverse campus communities.”
Despite his title as the UCLA administrator in charge of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Vice Chancellor Kang has ignored SJP’s continual violation of these Principles of Community, disregarding the harassment of Jewish students forced to endure SJP’s mock “apartheid walls” plastered with Hamas propaganda and its rallies decrying the founding of the Jewish state as “Al-nakba” or “the catastrophe.” But when the David Horowitz Freedom Center hung posters on campus exposing SJP’s ties to anti-Israel terror group Hamas, and naming campus activists who had worked to bring about the destruction of the Jewish state, both Kang and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block were quick to condemn them. In an email to the entire 50,000 member UCLA community, Kang said the posters were “designed to shock and terrify,” and accused the Freedom Center of using “the tactic of guilt by association, of using blacklists, of ethnic slander, and sensationalized images engineered to trigger racially-tinged fear.” In a second diatribe, he claimed the posters caused “chilling psychological harm” and “focused, personalized intimidation.”
University Chancellor Gene Block also reacted to the posters by stating “Islamophobic posters appeared on campus, in complete disregard of our Principles of Community and the dignity of our Muslim students. But we can, and we will, do our best to hold ourselves to the standards of integrity, inclusion, fairness and compassion that are the hallmarks of a healthy community.”
Quick to defend SJP and its violent rhetoric, Kang and Block have been missing in action when Jewish students faced intimidation and harassment from anti-Semitic speakers and Hamas propaganda plastered across campus.
In addition to the incidents listed above, UCLA SJP holds an annual “Palestine Awareness Week” on campus featuring speakers who endorse the genocidal BDS movement against Israel. SJP’s 2016 event featured journalist Max Blumenthal, who stated during his address that suicide bombing against Jews is justified by “the occupation” and described Palestinian terrorists as “young men who took up arms to fight their occupier.” He also compared Israel to the Islamic state, calling it “‘JSIL,’ the Jewish State in Israel and the Levant.” Another speaker, Miko Peled, also defended Palestinian terrorism, renaming it “a struggle for freedom and justice and equality,” and describing terrorists as “very brave Palestinians who are engaged in fighting this brutal occupation.” Peled also described Jews as analogous to Hitler, calling Jewish soldiers “young little Jewish gestapos,” and further accused Israel of “massive, violent, brutal oppression,” “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and of being “a colonialist, apartheid, racist system.”
Nor is such hate speech directed at Israel and Jews restricted to SJP events. In 2015, UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies held a conference on “Palestine and Pedagogy” during which speakers compared Israel to the Nazis, praised anti-Israel terrorism and supported the BDS movement against Israel. UC Irvine Professor and Director of the UC Institute for Humanities Research Theo Goldberg accused Israel of practicing “eliminationist racism” similar to the Nazis’ and claimed Israelis view Palestinians as “vermin, cockroaches, rats, snakes…that take boots on the ground to get rid of.” Goldberg further charged that Israelis make “snuff films” featuring the deaths of innocent Palestinians which go viral resulting in “an orgasm” for Israelis. Meanwhile UC Riverside Professor David Lloyd called Israel “a colonial Zionist project that has become a…nightmare, ever more rigid and oppressive” and endorsed the right of Palestinians to take up arms against Israel.
This hate speech was ignored by Kang and Block and other appeasement-minded UCLA administrators.
Kang’s support for SJP and its pro-terrorism agenda was also evident in his lack of support for second year law student Milan Chatterjee, president of the Graduate Student Association (GSA) at UCLA. When he attempted to keep the GSA out of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction controversy on campus, Chatterjee was subjected to such severe harassment by SJP and Kang that he resigned. He later announced he was leaving UCLA to continue his law degree elsewhere because of the “hostile and unsafe campus climate” created by groups supporting the BDS movement on campus in concert with the UCLA administration.
Chatterjee wrote in a letter to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block: “It is unfortunate, indeed, that your administration has not only allowed BDS organizations and student activists to freely engage in intimidation of students who do not support the BDS agenda, but has decided to affirmatively engage in discriminatory practices of its own against those same students. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that the UCLA campus has become a hostile and unsafe environment for students, Jewish students and non-Jewish, who choose not to support the BDS movement, let alone support the state of Israel.”
In comments made to the media, Chatterjee also stated, “I filed a complaint with the office of Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang, who took zero action and refused to investigate... This is very disturbing behavior and shows a double standard at play at UCLA. If SJP files a complaint, they will bend over backwards. If it’s anyone else, they don’t care.”
In their zeal to defend pro-terrorist campus organizations like SJP, both Kang and Block have not hesitated to violate the First Amendment rights of their critics. The taxpayers of the state of California would be well advised to take note of their actions.
University of Chicago: Campus administration
The University of Chicago has long prided itself on producing independent thinkers and encouraging a certain iconoclasm among its students and faculty. In the fall of 2016, the university’s dean of students, John Ellison, engendered a national controversy by making an explicit statement in support of free speech in a letter to incoming students: “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
It seemed that Ellison was bravely sailing against the winds of political correctness, but recent events at the University of Chicago suggest that this cherished commitment to free speech applies to students and campus organizations that seek Israel’s destruction, but not to those who defend the Jewish state and expose the terrorist connections of its enemies.
In the past few years, Chicago has witnessed the development of a highly active BDS campus movement, U of C Divest, which is currently supported by more than 20 student organizations on campus. In the spring of 2016, U of C Divest succeeded in passing a resolution endorsing BDS in Chicago’s student government. During the debate over the resolution, an amendment supporting the continued self-determination of the Jewish people and the existence of Israel was rejected, indicating that the coalition’s goals align with Hamas’s aims of destroying the Jewish state.
The University of Chicago has brought numerous pro-Hamas speakers to campus. In October 2015, UC-SJP hosted BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti for a speech on “BDS and the Ethical Obligation to End Complicity in Oppression.” During his address, Barghouti labeled Israel a “savage unrepairable society” that conducts “ethnic cleansing.” He praised terrorism against Israel’s Jews, stating that “resistance” is a legitimate response to “the violence of an oppressive system.” Several UC organizations and departments co-sponsored Barghouti’s address including the Global Voices Program – University of Chicago International House, the Pozen Center for Human Rights, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of International Studies.
Later that same month, UC-SJP held a panel titled “Jerusalem in Crisis: Insider Perspectives on the Violence in Palestine-Israel” as part of the “UChicago Israeli Apartheid Week.” One speaker at the event, a graduate student member of SJP, stated: “Palestinian violent resistance against the violent Israeli military is always justified; it is the equivalent of biting the hand that is trying to choke you to death.”
In February 2016, a throng of angry protestors interrupted and threatened a Palestinian human rights activist, Bassam Eid, who came to speak on U. Chicago’s campus about the oppression of Palestinians by the theocratic terrorist regimes in the West Bank and Gaza. SJP members and supporters on campus were upset that Eid’s remarks were critical of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and failed to condemn Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine. In the video of Eid’s speech a young man can be seen screaming in Arabic: “I’m going to destroy this place!” and “I’m going to kill this motherf*****!” and “Wait until you go to your car!” Eid later declared himself to be “terrified” by the ordeal.
The University of Chicago has put forth a “Statement on Principles of Free Expression” which states that it “is an institution fully committed to the creation of knowledge across the spectrum of disciplines and professions, firm in its belief that a culture of intense inquiry and informed argument generates lasting ideas, and that the members of its community have a responsibility both to challenge and to listen.”
An examination of recent events on campus reveals that these principles are not applied without bias. SJP continues to function as a student organization in good standing at the University of Chicago, despite inviting speakers to campus that have engaged in anti-Semitic attacks and expressed Hamas propaganda which threatens the existence of the Jewish state. Yet, when the David Horowitz Freedom Center worked with activists to hang posters on campus which proposed a more truthful narrative revealing the financial and organizational connections between Hamas and Students for Justice in Palestine through a Hamas-front calling itself American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), University spokesperson Marielle Sainvilus said: “While the University of Chicago encourages the free exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives concerning a wide range of issues, these flyers are defamatory and inconsistent with our values and policies.”
For their blatant hypocrisy in allowing and defending speech supporting Hamas while vilifying speech critical of that anti-Israel terror group, the University of Chicago administration makes our list of Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.
University of Minnesota: Danita Brown Young, Vice Provost for Student Affairs and Dean of Students
Residing in America’s heartland, the University of Minnesota is not an obvious choice to make the list of campuses supporting terrorism and expressing hostility to the First Amendment. But the university’s administrators have been as supportive of the hate group Students for Justice in Palestine as schools with more radical pedigrees while also condemning speech critical of the Hamas-funded organization as “hateful” and “repulsive.”
In November of 2015, for instance, SJP at Minnesota, along with the Anti-War Committee, disrupted a talk by Hebrew University professor Moshe Halbertal, co-author of the Israeli Defense Forces’ code of ethics which is titled “Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare.” A crowd of pro-Palestine students took turns shouting epithets at Halbertal, preventing him from being heard or carrying on with his address. Chants from the protestors included “These are massacres, not mistakes! These are war crimes! Free, free Palestine!” and “Occupation is a crime, free, free Palestine!”
The University took no action against the student organizations responsible for shutting down Halbertal’s appearance.
UMN is also home to a strident coalition calling itself “UMN Divest” which spreads disinformation about Israel in an effort to persuade the student government to pass a Hamas-inspired resolution encouraging the University to divest its investments from Israeli companies.
UMN SJP has also repeatedly constructed mock “apartheid walls” on campus plastered with propaganda supporting the Hamas narrative, including propaganda maps claiming to show the Jewish colonization and takeover of Arab Palestine (a nation which has never existed). SJP also held a “die-in” on campus accompanied by a narration that demonized Israel, claiming that it is responsible for the “extrajudicial murders of Palestinian youths” and “atrocities against Palestinians.”
The University of Minnesota administration has continually provided legitimacy and resources to SJP which allow them to spread Hamas propaganda on campus. Yet when the Horowitz Freedom Center attempted to hang posters critical of SJP and the BDS movement on campus, Dean of Students Danita Brown Young immediately condemned them as “repulsive” and “not consistent with our University values or commitment to an inclusive campus environment.”
In a saccharine letter to SJP about these posters, Brown Young wrote: “I am sorry for the hurt and fear this has caused you and the members of your group…This repulsive action weighs heavily on us…. We as a community do NOT accept this incident and we must collectively support each other in our time of need.”
For her support of SJP’s hate campaign against Israel and the Jews while condemning a rare instance of speech critical of that campaign, UMN Dean of Students Danita Brown Young makes the case for Minnesota’s inclusion on the list of university administrations most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.
Vassar College: John Chenette, Interim President, and Ed Pittman, Associate Dean of Campus Life and Diversity
A small liberal arts college located in the quiet town of Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College has for several years been home to a radical, anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas student movement against the Jews and Israel.
In March, 2016, the Vassar Student Association passed a resolution supporting the BDS movement against Israel by a vote of 15-7. The Amcha Initiative, an organization that tracks anti-Semitism on campus, gives insight into the atmosphere as the BDS resolution was debated: “A Jewish student who attended the BDS vote outlined antisemitic activity by pro-BDS students during the meeting, stating, ‘One Jewish student talked about how the BDS campaign had invoked every anxiety nightmare she had ever had. She was crying as she spoke. Pro-BDS students laughed at her.’…Another Jewish student talked about Israel’s founding in the wake of the Holocaust. He was immediately accused of using the Holocaust as a political tool to justify the ‘genocide’ of another people.”
Other events at Vassar indicate the campus SJP chapter’s support of anti-Israel terrorism. In February 2016, Vassar SJP sold T-shirts picturing convicted terrorist Leila Khaled holding a gun with the words “Resistance is not Terrorism” written below the graphic. SJP Vassar also endorsed the T-shirt’s message by a post on social media: “Check out our friends at Existence is Resistance!!! They will be selling sweet fucking antiZionist gear at our events. 100% of profits goes towards organizing Palestinian resistance #ExistenceisResistance.”
In May of 2014, Vassar SJP managed to briefly shock even the radical campus administration by posting a “racist, anti-Semitic graphic” on its social media Tumbler page, depicting a 1940’s-era Nazi propaganda poster of a many-armed figure wearing a loincloth featuring the Star of David and holding a bag of money. The organization was briefly suspended, but was quickly reinstated.
Mostly silent during these outpourings of hatred, the reaction of Vassar administrators was quite different when the David Horowitz Freedom Center challenged the false and one sided campus narrative on Israel by hanging up posters critical of SJP and the BDS movement, and naming campus activists who supported these genocidal causes. Vassar Interim President Jon Chenette sent an email to the entire campus stating that the posters had been taken down and destroyed and that “Those in our community who were singled out in these postings deserve our unconditional support.”
Associate Dean of Campus Life and Diversity Ed Pittman went even further to heal the supposed wounds caused by the Freedom Center’s posters, organizing two separate sessions of an “all campus dialogue.” He stated: “Our best approach in these situations is to stand ready to support those who are impacted. It’s such a politically fueled issue that words and sometimes images are used to hurt, threaten and intimidate others because of their views.” Pittman concluded that the goal of Campus Life and Diversity was “to offer counter opportunities for discourse,” when he and Chenette had just done the very opposite.
For their immediate destruction of posters critical of SJP and coddling of students who may have been offended by them, while continuing to allow Hamas propaganda targeting Jewish students to appear on campus, Vassar administrators Jon Chenette and Ed Pittman make the case for Vassar’s inclusion on our list of administrations most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.
Thank You Ms Dogan and FPM.
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